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    The Myths of the North American Indians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    The Myths of the North American Indians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
    The Myths of the North American Indians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)
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    The Myths of the North American Indians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

    By Lewis Spence and Kenneth Mello

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    In The Myths of the North American Indians, Lewis Spence offers insight into what is unique and distinctive about the Native-American cultures and peoples. Part ethnography, part history, and part literary study, this collection is accessible to academic scholars and mainstream readers alike. Spence presents the distinct cultural and social differences between tribal groups as he examines hunting, costumes, and the afterlife. Spence explores native identity, life, and environment, and at the same time draws connections to similar European motifs and ideologies.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble
    Release dateSep 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411431478
    The Myths of the North American Indians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

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      The Myths of the North American Indians (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading) - Lewis Spence

      INTRODUCTION

      ONE of the more underrepresented areas of cultural studies is the study of the important narratives that peoples around the world tell. It is in the narrative that culture and identity are imbedded, and through which we can come to a more honest and complete understanding of others. In Myths of the North American Indians, Lewis Spence offers his readers just this type of insight. He opens the door for all interested parties, whether they be academic scholars or mainstream readers interested in learning more about Native American peoples and cultures, to begin to understand and appreciate what is unique and distinctive about these cultures and peoples. Part ethnography, part history, and part literary study, this collection was unique for its time, and continues to be a valuable resource for the study of Native American cultures and narratives today. While other such studies have become obsolete or dated, Spence’s insight and understanding have kept this text relevant across time, and have made it one of the most important texts within the genres of both folklore and Native American studies. This is not simply a historical text, or a study of literature or folklore, but rather it is a study of culture, of identity, and of what makes Native American perspectives unique, and therefore is as relevant today as it was when it was released in 1914. Spence writes in a style that is accessible to all readers, and in a way that is both clarifying and introspective, so that the reader is drawn into the journey with him, building on knowledge and insight along the way.

      James Lewis Spence was born in Scotland in 1874, and his journey toward being a scholar of folklore and anthropology is as unique as his writings. Originally trained at Edinburgh University in the field of dentistry, Spence soon moved into the area of journalism, and through his journalistic endeavors became interested in the history, culture, and folklore of both Scotland and the various peoples of the world, particularly Mexico and the Americas as a whole, with whom he saw distinct connections in mythology and culture. After publishing a study of the Mayan sacred text Popul Vuh in 1908 and A Dictionary of Mythology in 1910, Spence published this text, which was one of his first efforts at a complete study of the mythology and narratives of a specific cultural group. Although based strongly in the evolutionary anthropology of its day, Spence’s work also reflects some of the cultural relativism which Franz Boas was developing at the same time, thus reflecting an important transition in how academics were changing their views on indigenous cultures. Spence would go on to eventually publish more than forty works in the areas of mythology and folklore, becoming more popular later in life for his works on the occult and on Atlantis. Many of his texts are considered landmarks in their fields. While building his publishing career, Spence was also active in Scottish nationalism, being a founding member of the Scottish National Movement, which would later become the National Party of Scotland. Lewis Spence was a man interested in making sure that people, all people, were properly understood, and that all cultures were given equal and adequate respect, and this ethic is strongly evident within this very text.

      Spence’s biggest motivation in writing this book seems to have been his concern that, despite the longstanding interest in Europe concerning Native Americans, little attention up to that point had been paid to narratives, and the ways in which they might inform and enlighten those wishing to move the Indian from the realm of imagination to the real, true, and factual. As someone interested in anthropology and culture, Spence saw anthropology as having failed Native Americans, for it offered little that was truly insightful about their cultures, and little that was more science than conjecture, which was what he was hoping for. His interest, therefore, was in presenting a general view of the mythology of Native Americans, using both historical and ethnographic materials to develop some context within which readers could better understand the narratives. Spence was not only interested in exploring what was different or unique about native cultures, however; he also sought to draw connections between Asian, European, and American traditions. In doing so, his work countered the common anthropological thinking of the time, espoused by major figures such as Louis Henry Morgan and Edward Taylor, who studied people based on a notion of stages of cultural development in which European cultures were thought to be distinct and unique from indigenous cultures, and thus lacked any modern similarities. Anthropology up to that point had only studied difference, and Spence’s work broke new ground in positing that there are many valuable similarities to be understood and studied as well. Although he is not as well known in the field of anthropology as Franz Boas, whose Culture and Race was published at almost the same time (1913), his ideas are very similar -- that the study of people hinges on the notion that all cultures develop similarly, and differences are attributable to different histories, geographies, and societies, and not to any inherent superiority or inferiority. Although at times Spence teeters between the two schools of cultural evolutionism and cultural relativism, his work is groundbreaking in its movement and transition from one to the other.

      Although Myths of the North American Indians begins with something of an ethnography of Native Americans, it is a unique one, because it does not attempt to provide a complete picture. Instead, it focuses on addressing the ideas that Europeans might be most familiar with about native cultures, such as the story of Pocahontas and the literature of white captivity, while spending little time on those elements which would do little to inform an understanding of the mythology, such as types of dwellings and tribal law. Spence presents the reader with some of the distinct cultural and social differences between tribal groups when he examines areas such as ideas about hunting, costumes, and conceptions of the afterlife, countering the commonly held notion at the time that if you studied one Indian group, you could know something about them all. Again, Spence here flirts with ensconcing himself within the field of cultural anthropology, but also wavers back to the field of evolutionism when he is critical of native cultures--he notes that native art is distinctive and peculiar, and not of an exalted form, and dismisses the idea that precontact Indians could have built the great mounds found throughout mid-America. At times he also presents conflicting views of native life, first describing Native American childhood as devoid of violence, punishment, and fighting, and then, in his discussion of Native American warfare techniques, describing natives as violent and bloodthirsty, and placing cruelty squarely at the top of the ideas that define manhood in native cultures. Perhaps the reason for this was that he studied warfare as it existed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, and not how it had existed and functioned within tribal societies prior to European contact. If he had the latter, he surely could have come to a different conclusion. But, limited as he was to an indirect experience of native cultures, he does a commendable job of presenting a fair and balanced interpretation, based on the materials available to him at the time. In hindsight, we cannot blame him for not knowing what we know now, because at the time of his writing, he was actually ahead of the curve in terms of how anthropology was studying and understanding native cultures.

      Prior to engaging the actual mythological materials, Spence also attempts to explain native religious identity, which he terms mythologies. Focusing on ideas such as animism (the idea that everything has life/vibrancy), totemism (recognizing a strong connection between humans and animals), and fetishism (recognizing power in ceremonial items and charms), Spence again straddles the line between cultural evolutionism and relativism, in that he shows tremendous understanding for how these ideas function in native societies and spiritual systems, but lacks the native voice to provide insight into the motivations behind them. He gets a great deal of it right, and again that puts him far ahead of the curve for his time, but offers a cultural interpretation of the data which would likely have been very different from the interpretation Native Americans themselves might have offered. Cultural anthropology would not become popular until the 1920s and 1930s, so again Spence was breaking ground, but the field had not yet advanced enough for him to see the entire picture. One of the most important things he does offer readers, however, is his challenge to understand native cultures and narratives in light of missionary influence. In his discussion of creation narratives, Spence clearly challenges us as both scholars and readers to watch out for Christian influences within the narratives (the dichotomy of good versus evil, white versus dark, etc.) and in doing so clearly recognized that native belief systems had adapted and changed, based on historical and cultural circumstances, and that in order to put these changes in context, we need to understand the history behind them. Here again he sounds a lot like Boas, and opens the door for his readers to approach the study with a more critical eye--he is giving us the tools, rather than telling us indisputable facts.

      Spence’s study of Native American mythology is broad, using language families as its point of reference. The majority of the narratives included in the text focus on the Algonquian and Iroquoian groups, likely because there had already been significant, major studies done on the folklore of these groups, and there would have been ample material for Spence’s study. He also includes briefer studies of the Sioux, Pawnee, Northern and Northwestern Indians, California tribes, and Athapascans, providing the reader with a wide breadth of materials in which to view similarities and differences. These narratives are not meant to represent the totality of possibility, but instead are representative of the wide variety and distinctness of the narratives. Where they are most important is where they offer the reader the opportunity to see the cultural distinctness of these groups (although now we might certainly question the value of studying people based on language groupings alone, it was common practice in the field at the time)--their varied ideas about human creation, social relations, community interaction, kinship, and death, for example. It is here that Spence is at his best, for he is able to clearly document and represent the diversity of Native American cultures, viewpoints, and narratives, countering the notion that these are non-distinct cultures. His collections represents the rich fabric of indigenous cultures, without being overburdened with undue analysis or commentary, instead allowing the material to stand for itself, and the reader to draw his or her own conclusions and interpretations. These materials document historical, cultural, and social change, incorporate ancestors and more contemporary historical figures, and provide a window to understanding and more fully appreciating Native American cultures.

      Myths of the North American Indians is truly a diverse study--it is history, ethnography, cultural study, folklore, and religion, all in one. In gathering these materials, Lewis Spence attempts to stress the uniqueness of Native American cultures and narratives, as part of the fabric of native identity, life, and environment, while at the same time drawing unique connections to similar European motifs and ideologies. Yet rather than suggesting a common mythological origin, Spence makes a push for a reasoned consideration of Native American narratives as distinct elements of their cultures, shaped and impacted by unique histories, societies, and environments, all of which must be understood in order to properly understand the materials. Although previously misunderstood and misrepresented, according to Spence, Native Americans deserve a more serious and scholarly study, and he makes an important effort at such a cultural understanding here. For Spence, the native is neither monster nor marvel, but rather simply a unique human person and society. Difference does not necessitate merely critical appraisal, but suggests uniqueness, which is worthy of any serious study. This text is a landmark in the study of Native American narratives, and their role within various distinct native cultures, and inasmuch remains one of the most important studies available today. Nearly a century later, Spence’s work remains an example of the type of study which can illuminate the various peoples of the world, rather than denigrate them, and it is required reading for anyone seriously interested in the study of Native American folklore, culture, and identity.

      Dr. Kenneth Mello is of Passamaquoddy descent, and is currently an assistant professor in the departments of Religion and ALANA/U.S. Ethnic Studies at the University of Vermont. His work focuses on contemporary Native American identity and religiosity, and he also studies and teaches in the areas of environmentalism, folklore, mythography, and sacred space.

      PREFACE

      THE North American Indian has so long been an object of the deepest interest that the neglect of his picturesque and original mythologies and the tales to which they have given rise is difficult of comprehension. In boyhood we are wont to regard him as an instrument specially designed for the execution of tumultuous incident, wherewith heart-stirring fiction may be manufactured. In manhood we are too apt to consider him as only fit to be put aside with the matter of Faery and such evanescent stuff and relegated to the limbo of imagination. Satiated with his constant recurrence in the tales of our youth, we are perhaps but too ready to hearken credulously to accounts which picture him as a disreputable vagabond, getting a precarious living by petty theft or the manufacture of bead ornaments.

      It is, indeed, surprising how vague a picture the North American Indian presents to the minds of most people in Europe when all that recent anthropological research has done on the subject is taken into account. As a matter of fact, few books have been published in England which furnish more than the scantiest details concerning the Red Race, and these are in general scarce, and, when obtained, of doubtful scientific value.

      The primary object of this volume is to furnish the reader with a general view of the mythologies of the Red Man of North America, accompanied by such historical and ethnological information as will assist him in gauging the real conditions under which this most interesting section of humanity existed. The basic difference between the Indian and European mental outlook is insisted upon, because it is felt that no proper comprehension of American Indian myth or conditions of life can be attained when such a distinction is not recognized and allowed for. The difference between the view-point, mundane and spiritual, of the Red Man and that of the European is as vast as that which separates the conceptions and philosophies of the East and West. Nevertheless we shall find in the North American mythologies much that enters into the composition of the immortal tales of the older religions of the Eastern Hemisphere. All myth, Asiatic, European, or American, springs from similar natural conceptions, and if we discover in American mythology peculiarities which we do not observe in the systems of Greece, Rome, or Egypt, we may be certain that these arise from circumstances of environment and racial habit as modified by climate and kindred conditions alone.

      In the last thirty years much has been accomplished in placing the study of the American aborigines on a sounder basis. The older school of ethnologists were for the most part obsessed with the wildest ideas concerning the origin of the Indians, and many of them believed the Red Man to be the degenerate descendant of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel or of early Phoenician adventurers. But these ‘antiquaries’ had perforce to give way to a new school of students well equipped with scientific knowledge, whose labours, under the admirable direction of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, have borne rich fruit. Many treatises of the utmost value on the ethnology, mythology, and tribal customs of the North American Indians have been issued by this conscientious and enterprising State department. These are written by men who possess first-hand knowledge of Indian life and languages, many of whom have faced great privations and hardships in order to collect the material they have published. The series is, indeed, a monument to that nobler type of heroism which science can kindle in the breast of the student, and the direct, unembellished verbiage of these volumes conceals many a life-story which for quiet, unassuming bravery and contempt for danger will match anything in the records of research and human endurance.

      LEWIS SPENCE

      EDINBURGH: March 1914

      CHAPTER I

      DIVISIONS, CUSTOMS, AND HISTORY OF THE RACE

      THE FIRST INDIANS IN EUROPE

      ALMOST immediately upon the discovery of the New World its inhabitants became a source of the greatest interest to all ranks and classes among the people of Europe. That this should have been so is not a little surprising when we remember the ignorance which prevailed regarding the discovery of the new hemisphere, and that in the popular imagination the people of the new-found lands were considered to be inhabitants of those eastern countries which European navigation had striven so long and so fruitlessly to reach. The very name ‘Indian’ bestowed upon the men from the islands of the far western ocean proves the ill-founded nature and falsity of the new conditions which through the discovery of Columbus were imposed upon the science of geography. Why all this intense and vivid interest in the strange beings whom the Genoese commander carried back with him as specimens of the population of the new-found isles? The Spaniards were accustomed to the presence and sight of Orientals. They had for centuries dwelt side by side with a nation of Eastern speech and origin, and the things of the East held little of novelty for them. Is it not possible that the people, by reason of some natural motive difficult of comprehension, did not credit in their hearts the scientific conclusions of the day? Something deeper and more primitive than science was at work in their minds, and some profound human instinct told them that the dusky and befeathered folk they beheld in the triumphal procession of the Discoverer were not the inhabitants of an Orient with which they were more or less familiar, but erstwhile dwellers in a mystic continent which had been isolated from the rest of mankind for countless centuries.

      There are not wanting circumstances which go far to prove that instinct, brushing aside the conclusions of science, felt that it had rightly come upon the truth. The motto on the arms granted to Columbus is eloquent of the popular feeling when it states, and the news was greeted in London with the pronouncement that it seemed a thing more divine than human—a conclusion which could scarcely have been arrived at if it was considered that the reaching of the farthest Orient point alone had been achieved.

      To Castile and Leon

      Columbus gave a new world,

      The primitive and barbarous appearance of the Indians in the train of Columbus deeply impressed the people of Spain. The savage had before this event been merely a legendary and heraldic animal like the griffin and the phœnix. In the person of the Indian he was presented for the first time to the astonished gaze of a European people, who were quick to distinguish the differences in feature and general appearance between the Red Man and the civilized Oriental—although his resemblance to the Tartar race was insisted upon by some early writers.

      Popular interest, instead of abating, grew greater, and with each American discovery the ‘Indian’ became the subject of renewed controversy. Works on the origin and customs of the American aborigines, of ponderous erudition but doubtful conclusions, were eagerly perused and discussed. These were not any more extravagant, however, than many theories propounded at a much later date. In the early nineteenth century a school of enthusiastic antiquaries, perhaps the most distinguished of whom was Lord Kingsborough, determined upon proving the identity of the American aborigines with the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and brought to bear upon the subject a perfect battery of erudition of the most extraordinary kind. His lordship’s great work on the subject, The Antiquities of Mexico, absorbed a fortune of some fifty thousand pounds by its publication. The most absurd philological conclusions were arrived at in the course of these researches, examples of which it would but weary the reader to peruse. Only a shade less ridiculous were the deductions drawn from Indian customs where these bore a certain surface resemblance to Hebrew rite or priestly usage.

      INDIANS AS JEWS

      As an example of this species of argument it will be sufficient to quote the following passage from a work published in 1879:¹ The Indian high-priest wears a breastplate made of a white conch-shell, and around his head either a wreath of swan feathers, or a long piece of swan skin doubled, so as to show only the snowy feathers on each side. These remind us of the breastplate and mitre of the Jewish high-priest. They have also a magic stone which is transparent, and which the medicinemen consult; it is most jealously guarded, even from their own people, and Adair could never procure one. Is this an imitation of the Urim and Thummim? Again, they have a feast of first-fruits, which they celebrate with songs and dances, repeating ‘Halelu-Halelu-Haleluiah’ with great earnestness and fervour. They dance in three circles round the fire that cooks these fruits on a kind of altar, shouting the praises of Yo-He-Wah (Jehovah?). These words are only used in their religious festivals.

      To what tribe the writer alludes is not manifest from the context.

      WELSH-SPEAKING INDIANS

      An ethnological connexion has been traced for the Red Man of North America, with equal parade of erudition, to Phoenicians, Hittites, and South Sea Islanders. But one of the most amusing of these theories is that which attempts to substantiate his blood-relationship with the inhabitants of Wales! The argument in favour of this theory is so quaint, and is such a capital example of the kind of learning under which American ethnology has groaned for generations, that it may be briefly examined. In the author’s Myths of Mexico and Peru (p. 5) a short account is given of the legend of Madoc, son of Owen Gwyneth, a Welsh prince, who quitted his country in disgust at the manner in which his brothers had partitioned their father’s territories. Sailing due west with several vessels, he arrived, says Sir Thomas Herbert in his Travels (1634), at the Gulf of Mexico, not far from Florida, in the year 1170. After settling there he returned to Wales for reinforcements, and once more fared toward the dim West, never to be heard of more. But, says the chronicler, though the Cambrian issue in the new found world may seeme extinct, the Language to this day used among these Canibals, together with their adoring the Crosse, using Beades, Reliques of holy men and some other, noted in them of Acusano and other places, . . . points at our Madoc’s former being there. The Cambrians, continued Sir Thomas, left in their American colony many names of "Birds, Rivers, Rocks, Beasts and the like, some of which words are these: Gwrando, signifying in the Cambrian speech to give eare unto or hearken. Pen-gwyn, with us a white head, refered by the Mexicans to a Bird so-called, and Rockes complying with that Idiom. Some promontories had like denominations, called so by the people to this day, tho’ estranged and concealed by the Spaniard. Such are the Isles Corroeso. The Cape of Brutaine or Brittaine. The floud Gwyndowr or white water, Bara bread, Mam mother, Tate father, Dowr water, Bryd time, Bu or Buch a Cow, Clugar a Heathcocke, Llwynog a Fox, Wy an Egge, Calaf a Quill, Trwyn a Nose, Nef Heaven; and the like then used; by which, in my conceit, none save detracting Opinionatists can justly oppose such worthy testimonies and proofes of what I wish were generally allowed of."

      ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN AMERICA

      To turn to more substantial conclusions concerning the racial affinities of the Red Man, we find that it is only within very recent times that anything like a reasoned scientific argument has been arrived at. Founding upon recently acquired geological, anthropological, and linguistic knowledge, inquirers into the deeper realms of American ethnology have solved the question of how the Western Hemisphere was peopled, and the arguments they adduce are so convincing in their nature as to leave no doubt in the minds of unbiased persons.

      It is now admitted that the presence of man in the Old World dates from an epoch so far distant as to be calculated only by reference to geological periods of which we know the succession but not the duration, and research has proved that the same holds good of the Western Hemisphere. Although man undoubtedly found his way from the Old World to the New, the period at which he did so is so remote that for all practical purposes he may be said to have peopled both hemispheres simultaneously. Indeed, his relative antiquity in each has no bearing on the history of his advancement.

      It is known that the American continent offers no example of the highly organized primates—for example, the larger apes—in which the Old World abounds, save man himself, and this circumstance is sufficient to prove that the human species must have reached America as strangers. Had man been native to the New World there would have been found side by side with him either existing or fossil representatives of the greater apes and other anthropoid animals which illustrate his pedigree in the Old World.

      THE GREAT MIOCENE BRIDGE

      Again, many careful observers have noticed the striking resemblance between the natives of America and Northern Asia. At Bering Strait the Old World and the New are separated by a narrow sea-passage only, and an elevation of the sea-bed of less than two hundred feet would provide a ‘land-bridge’ at least thirty miles in breadth between the two continents. It is a geological fact that Bering Strait has been formed since the Tertiary period, and that such a ‘land-bridge’ once existed, to which American geologists have given the name of ‘the Miocene bridge.’ By this ‘bridge,’ it is believed, man crossed from Asia to America, and its subsequent disappearance confined him to the Western Hemisphere.

      AMERICAN MAN IN GLACIAL TIMES

      That this migration occurred before the Glacial period is proved by the circumstance that chipped flints and other implements have been discovered in ice-drift at points in Ohio, Indiana, and Minnesota, to which it is known that the southern margin of the ice-sheet extended. This proves that man was driven southward by the advancing ice, as were several Old World animal species which had migrated to America. However, it is difficult in many cases to accept what may seem to be evidence of the presence of prehistoric man in North America with any degree of confidence, and it will be well to confine ourselves to the most authentic instances. In the loess of the Mississippi at Natchez Dr. Dickson found side by side with the remains of the mylodon and megalonyx human bones blackened by time. But Sir Charles Lyell pointed out that these remains might have been carried by the action of water from the numerous Indian places of burial in the neighbourhood. In New Orleans, while trenches were being dug for gas-pipes, a skeleton was discovered sixteen feet from the surface, the skull of which was embedded beneath a gigantic cypress-tree. But the deposit in which the remains were found was subsequently stated to be of recent origin. A reed mat was discovered at Petit Anse, Louisiana, at a depth of from fifteen to twenty feet, among a deposit of salt near the tusks or bones of an elephant. In the bottomlands of the Bourbeuse River, in Missouri, Dr. Koch discovered the remains of a mastodon. It had sunk in the mud of the marshes, and, borne down by its own ponderous bulk, had been unable to right itself. Espied by the hunters of that dim era, it had been attacked by them, and the signs of their onset—flint arrow-heads and pieces of rock—were found mingled with its bones. Unable to dispatch it with their comparatively puny weapons, they had built great fires round it, the cinder-heaps of which remain to the height of six feet, and by this means they had presumably succeeded in suffocating it.

      In Iowa and Nebraska Dr. Aughey found many evidences of the presence of early man in stone weapons mingled with the bones of the mastodon. In California, Colorado, and Wyoming scores of stone mortars, arrow-heads, and lance-points have been discovered in deposits which show no sign of displacement. Traces of ancient mining operations are also met with in California and the Lake Superior district, the skeletons of the primitive miners being found, stone hammer in hand, beneath the masses of rock which buried them in their fall. As the object of these searchers was evidently metal of some description, it may reasonably be inferred that the remains are of comparatively late date.

      THE CALAVERAS SKULL

      In 1866 Professor J. D. Whitney discovered the famous ‘Calaveras’ skull at a depth of about a hundred and thirty feet in a bed of auriferous gravel on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, California. The skull rested on a bed of lava, and was covered by several layers of lava and volcanic deposit. Many other remains were found in similar geological positions, and this was thought to prove that the Calaveras skull was not an isolated instance of the presence of man in America in Tertiary times. The skull resembles the Eskimo type, and chemical analysis discovered the presence of organic matter. These circumstances led to the conclusion that the great age claimed by Whitney for the relic was by no means proved, and this view was strengthened by the knowledge that displacements of the deposits in which it had been discovered had frequently been caused by volcanic agency.

      MORE RECENT FINDS

      More recent finds have been summarized by an eminent authority connected with the United States Bureau of Ethnology as follows: In a post-Glacial terrace on the south shore of Lake Ontario the remains of a hearth were discovered at a depth of twenty-two feet by Mr. Tomlinson in digging a well, apparently indicating early aboriginal occupancy of the St. Lawrence basin. From the Glacial or immediately post-Glacial deposits of Ohio a number of articles of human workmanship have been reported: a grooved axe from a well twenty-two feet beneath the surface, near New London; a chipped object of waster type at Newcomerstown, at a depth of sixteen feet in Glacial gravel; chipped stones in gravels, one at Madisonville at a depth of eight feet, and another at Loveland at a depth of thirty feet. At Little Falls, Minn., flood-plain, deposits of sand and gravel are found to contain many artificial objects of quartz. This flood-plain is believed by some to have been finally abandoned by the Mississippi well back toward the close of the Glacial period in the valley, but that these finds warrant definite conclusions as to time is seriously questioned by Chamberlain. In a Missouri river-beach near Lansing, Kansas, portions of a human skeleton were recently found at a depth of twenty feet, but geologists are not agreed as to the age of the formation. At Clayton, Mo., in a deposit believed to belong to the loess, at a depth of fourteen feet, a well-finished grooved axe was found. In the Basin Range region, between the Rocky Mountains and the sierras, two discoveries that seem to bear on the antiquity of human occupancy have been reported: in a silt deposit in Walker River Valley, Nevada, believed to be of Glacial age, an obsidian implement was obtained at a depth of twenty-five feet; at Nampa, Idaho, a clay image is reported to have been brought up by a sand-pump from a depth of three hundred and twenty feet in alternating beds of clay and quicksand underlying a lava flow of late Tertiary or early Glacial age. Questions are raised by a number of geologists respecting the value of these finds.

      LATER MAN IN AMERICA

      Whatever doubt attaches to the presence of man in America during the Tertiary period—a doubt which is not shared by most American archaeologists—there is none regarding his occupation of the entire continent in times less remote, yet far distant from the dawn of the earliest historical records of Asia or Europe. In caves and ‘kitchen-middens’ or rubbish-heaps over the entire length and breadth of the American continent numerous evidences of the presence of populous centres have been discovered. Mingled with the shells of molluscs and the bones of extinct animals human remains, weapons, and implements are to be found, with traces of fire, which prove that the men of those early days had risen above the merely animal existence led by the first-comers to American soil.

      AFFINITIES WITH SIBERIAN PEOPLES

      As has already been indicated, careful observers have repeatedly remarked upon the strong likeness between the American races and those of Northeastern Asia. This likeness is not only physical, but extends to custom, and to some extent to religious belief.

      "The war-dances and medicine customs of the Ostiaks resemble those of the Kolusches even to the smallest details, and the myth of a heaven-climber, who ascends the sky from a lofty tree, lowering himself again to earth by a strip of leather, a rope of grass, a plait of hair, or the curling wreath of smoke from a hut, occurs not only among the Ugrian tribes, but among the Dogrib Indians. Such myths, it is contended, though insufficient to prove common descent, point to early communications between these distant stocks. Superstitious usages, on the other hand, it is argued, are scarcely likely to have been adopted in consequence of mere intercourse, and indicate a common origin. Thus, among the Itelmians of Kamchatka it is forbidden to carry a burning brand otherwise than in the fingers; it must on no account be pierced for that purpose with the point of a knife. A similar superstition is cherished

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