isolated fragments of knowledge, with disjointed portions of 
the framework of human history, now essays to add in building 
up the entire skeleton of that history, and, with the aid of the 
allied sciences of Ethnology and Psychology, in clothing it 
with the integuments of a living reality. 
America is talcing a noteworthy part in this rehab- 
ilitation of the race and fortunately is most helpful just 
where the Old World is weakest. In America the past of man, 
for the most part at least, connects directly with the present 
and with the living. Each step backward in culture is a step 
f- 
out from a well established and fully understood base and theft 
is thus no baffling gap between history and prehistory, as in 
the Old World. 
In America all the steps of culture from the highest 
to the lowest, within the native range, are to be observed among 
the living peoples, and we are thus able to avoid many of the 
snares of speculation with respect to what men have thought 
and men have done under the greatly diversified conditions of 
