Throughout the continent — more especially, however, in part of South America — devices for hunting and fishing and appliances in wood craft, primitive agriculture, etc., were trans ferred to the European colonists during the period of settlement, and many of them are still in active use, Fish-poisoning by narcotics, the use of the blow-gun for killing birds and small animals without damaging the skin, methods of stalking beasts of the chase, cer tain traps and snares, etc., belong here. In connection with agriculture we have menhaden manure, guano, etc., the planting of corn and beans or pumpkins together, the burning over of land before tillage, etc. But it is upon the food-supply of the world that the American Indian has exerted the greatest influence. Potatoes (common and sweet, both), maize and the tomato, now in use by all the civilized world, were first cultivated by him and taken ever by the whites after the discovery. Cacao, jalap, the kidney bean, several varieties of squash, and pumpkin, manioc, Jerusalem arti choke, coca, agave, guinea, persimmon, and perhaps also the peanut, came to us from the Indians. Maple-sugar and maple-syrup, pem mican, jerked beef, etc., are from a like source. Tobacco, the great narcotic, was one of the first gifts of America to the Old World. Of drinks the American Indian has given us Paraguayan mall, "Labrador tea° and several other like concoctions, chocolate, Mexican pulque and a considerable number of other in toxicating beverages from South America.
Many medicines and medicinal plants were made known to the whites by the Indians, and in the era of settlement and colonization the •Indian doctor° (male and female) was not unimportant — New England, for example, had its "Joe Pye,° after whom the "Joe Pye weed° (Eupatorium purpureum) is named. The Cali fornian Indians have furnished perhaps the three most important contributions recent years to the American pharmacopcm. South America, besides numerous locally known rem edies, etc., has furnished the world-famous quinine, and ipecacuanha, while the drugs cocaine and curari must ultimately be credited to the aborigines of America. Many dye-stuffs and dye-woods were first given to the civilized world by the Indians, both for domestic use and for employment in the larger world of aesthetic manufacture. These dyes range from the poke of northeast North America for dye in• basketry to the famous roucou or anotto of Venezuela, used, among other purposes, for staining cheese. Pottery and other household utensils of Indian manufacture are used throughout Spanish America. The hammock of the Arawak Indians belongs now to all civilized peoples. All that india rubber means, civilization owes to the Indian. Both in small things and in great the American aborigines, through their gifts to the white race, will long be remembered, even if, as some authorities (upon imperfect evidence) believe, they are rapidly passing away. On this point one may cite the remark of Deniker that Humboldt in 1825 estimated the total pc, ciliation of America at 13,000,000 whites, 6,111,000 half-breeds, 6,000,000 negroes and 9,000,000 Indians, while a comparative computation made in 1916 rec koned 120,000,000 whites, 42,100,000 half breeds, 12,006,000 negroes and 12,000,000 In dians; total, 186,106,000. See AMERICA : Po
LITICAL Divistoxs.
Antiquity of Man in The ques tion of the antiquity of the American Indian culture is difficult to settle satisfactorily. Time must be allowed for the divergence of the origi nal stock into numerous (more numerous in pre-Columbian eras) tribes and peoples inhab iting America at the time of its discovery,— time for the production of the Eskimo and the Iroquois, the Carib and the Patagonian. Time, again, must be allowed for the development of the Aztec from the primitive Shoshonean, the Mayan from the rude stock of that people, the Chibchan from the savage Bolivian, the Peruvian from the ancient barbarian of equa torial America. Then the civilizations of Mex ico, Central America and South America as such probably took ages to rise and flourish. Town and village life, with all its social and religious implications, the differing architectural monuments of the various centres of American civilization, etc., did not spring up in a day, any more than did the culture of mediaeval Europe. The domestication of the dog, the llama etc., the change of maize, tobacco, the squash. the tomato, the potato, the pineapple, etc., from wild to cultivated plants, require a long lapse of time. Moreover, it is now known that American Indian languages do not now change and have not in the past changed at the fast rate once assigned to them by philologists. So, while one may not believe that America was the original habitat of the human race, he may be certain that very many millenniums have elapsed since the "Red Man° began his career as the autochthone of the New World. There seems every reason to believe that at the close of the Glacial Age man had spread over a considerable portion of both North and South America and was contemporary with European man of an early epoch. To calculate man's residence in the American environment by years is impossible on present evidence. Dr. Stoll assures us that the linguistic phenom ena met with in the Mayan dialects alone re quire thousands of years for their evolution, and some of the results deduced from the Mayan hieroglyphs by certain investigators imply the existence of civilization of the Cen tral American order for very many millenniums. Perhaps it is fair to say that man has been in America at least 25,000 years and not more than 200,000, and that the civilizations of Mex ico, Central America and South America were probably as long-lived as those of Rome, Greece, •etc. They were also in many respects just as typical of human attempt and achieve ment, for the American Indian was a man as we are men.