The accounts of what the Jesuit fathers saw and the records of Kalm, Loskiel, Haeckewelder and many others make no mention of many forms of implements, ceremonial objects and talismans that are now familiar objects in all considerable collections of Indian antiquities; but the simpler forms, as the grooved axe, the polished celt, the arrow-head, flake-knife and pottery are not only referred to definitely, but the method of manufacture is given in consider able detail. Their hunting and agriculture are made plain, and we know with what tools they sought their game and tilled the soil, and more prominent than all else, the culture of tobacco, and the pipe in which it was burned, figure in the pages of the early travelers. Not less con spicuous as objects were more than one form of wrought stone implements to which no refer ence is made. It is inconceivable that they were successfully hidden, and we can only conclude that they had passed wholly out of use. Assuming that all the products of the Indian's skill in shaping stone, of which we now know nothing, were wholly in disuse and either intentionally hidden or effectually lost, it is strange that the pioneer explorers should have had so little of the archaeological instinct as not to have detected traces of them.
With so great an extent of country and such diverse physical and climatic conditions, it is obvious that what were originally one people should by force of environment be come widely differentiated in habits of life, and that what are now the almost tropical regions of Arizona, New Mexico and southern Colorado have been long peopled with Indians that superficially differ widely from those of the more northern regions. Their cliff dwellings, rock shelters and well-built permanent dwell ings other than those on the faces of cliffs; their pottery, which they had learned to color; their weaving, basket-making and skill in stone chipping and polishing, all point to a distinct advance over the more northern nomadic tribes. It is practically demonstrated, in the judgment of those who have most exhaustively explored this southwestern region of the United States, that when the country was first occupied by the ancestors of the present Pueblo Indian, the physical conditions and climate were more favorable for human occu pation than at present; a fact that has its significance, for the antiquity of man in Ameri ca is one that has been long disputed; at least an antiquity at all comparable to that of man in Europe. Wandering along our Atlantic coast and laboriously picking from the accu mulated shells that have almost hardened into rock, trifling potsherd, or a rude arrow point, or inland, walking over a newly-ploughed field, we gather a grooved stone axe, a celt, spear-head, arrow-point, skin-scraper or a drill; some one or two or perhaps all of these in the course of a morning, we arc enabled at best to picture man in but an humble way and think of him as almost one with the wild beasts of the forest on which he preyed—an erroneous, but common impression — then, transplanted quickly to the vast southwest, note the substantial dwelling and skillful prod ucts in many lines, it is, at first, difficult to think that these people are but as branches of the same tree. The contrast is impressive and by just so much is it misleading. Step by step the gradations may be traced and when familiar with the handiwork of early man everywhere in North America, the relationship is quite apparent. The need of foreign influence to produce the differences, impressed here and there and again and again, is not apparent.
Mexico and Central America present prob lems that are not yet solved. Here we are brought face to face with what may be digni fied as a real civilization, and so far as its gene sis and continuance have been determined, it is essentially a thing of itself and points to no influences other than those that the country might exert. That a foreign element gamed lodgment here and through intellectual superi ority gained control over and finally absorbed a pre-occupying people has not been demon strated. So far as we now know of it, it is not a civilization beyond the reach of a native Amer ican race. All that is in it that resembles the culture in other continents is far more likely to be coincidence than a transplantation. That essentially the same ideas in given lines may independently arise is beyond dispute. So much more impressive is all that remains of ancient Mexican centres of population that attention has been called to the subject for more than a century and the literature of the subject is enormous, and not free of the curse of undue haste in reaching a conclusion. The Aztec has not been shown to be other than an American Indian, but one advanced beyond the "hunter stage* and so with a fixed habitation. He dwelt where his forefathers had lived and so a more rational, that is, truthful form of tra dition was preserved. They were mechanics and artists. They "made useful implements and weapons and high-grade ornaments and jewels from stones, obsidian, and metal (cop per, tin, lead, silver, gold); made paper and dyes and were far advanced in weaving, em broidery and feather-work.* (Hrdlicka). They knew well the properties of clay and so ceramic skill was highly developed. With these ac complishments, it is not to be wondered at that they were also skilled in architecture and erected not dwellings merely, but temples on an elaborate scale and carved their surfaces in most intricate manner. The advanced artisan
is always an aspirant and not satisfied, as he might well be, with the acquirements of reason able creature comfort; in this instance of the Aztec he devised an intricate form 'of govern ment and formulated a religion, polytheistic and including "the cult of the sun, moon, and stars; but with this there was a well-defined belief in a single Supreme Deity.* (Hrdlicka). This Aztecan civilization was not alone in America. The Mayans of Yucatan were equally advanced as architects, as artisans and with society established on an elaborate and intricate basis. If their records have been read aright, they reach back for some 75 or more centuries, and granting this as 'approximating the truth, and claiming the culture existing as an in digenous growth, the date of man's appearance on the continent is carried so far into the past that we must reckon by centuries and not by years. Pure-blooded Aztecs still survive, but the glory of their culture as it blossomed in pre-conquest times is a matter of history. How great, how far comparable this civilization was to our own can be judged by the exhaustive studies of Madam Zelia Nuttall in her work, The Fundamental Principles of Old and New World Civilizations' (Peabody Museum Memoirs 1901). There is nothing suggestive of the "Indian* as we know him in all these pages. Astronomy, mathematics and abstruse philosophical disquisition' are dealt with and we find, not unnaturally, that in striving to compass the unknowable they were led to the most extreme cruelty through that anthropo morphic idea of Deity which universally has proved a curse to mankind. The conclusion reached by Mrs. Nuttall is directly the opposite of what has been held in this article as almost if not quite demonstrable; the home, origin and growth of what has been revealed by archeological research. She writes: *1 can but think that the material I have collected will also lead to a recognition that the role of the Phoenicians, as intermediaries of ancient civilization, was greater than has been sup posed, and that it is imperative that future re search • be devoted to a fresh study and ex amination of those indications which appear to show that America must have been intermit tently colonized by the intermediation of Med iterranean Southward, when the adjoining continent is reached, we find in the vast plains, forests, and following the wonderful rivers of that region, savages that have not as high a standing as those of the temperate regions of North Amer ica. The struggle for existence has been, in the tropics, and is, too keen to give opportunity to a mental growth not directly concerned with the bodily passions and demands. Above all else, the savage must eat, and if the food supply is to be had without effort, the result is bodily inactivity and mental stultification. If the food required must be struggled for, then the body only is excited to vigor; and food obtained, the body is too fatigued to follow physical exertion by mental. This is the result in the extremes of tropical conditions and it is not surprising that man shows to more advantage as the climate becomes more temperate. Mind and body seem then to have more equal chance; and the same unevenness of development is found among South American Indians that originally obtained in North America. The differences are those that the different physical features of the country suggested. As Mexico stands to the country north of it, the favored spot wherein flowered and fruited the native civili zation of that continent, so in Peru, we find a people who abandoned the more primitive features of a nomadic life, and establishing cities, organized government, society, gave such attention to art, agriculture and skill in varied handicraft, that they stood apart, finally, from the other peoples of South America. Compared with the advanced civilization of to day it may seem crude indeed, but if we take their products of handicraft separately into consideration we shall find that they made most excellent thread and dyed it so honestly that to-day many a fabric a thousand or more years old has not lost its brilliancy of color. They were honest workmen as well as artists. It has often been asked would this culture in the interior of Peru have gone on developing had not it been snuffed out by a really as sav age but more powerful a people. It cannot be determined, but as civilization is merely evolu tion, there is no logical reason why the potter in Peru should not finally have vitrified and glazed his wares, and the metal workers have wrought even greater wonders with the prod uct brought to them by miners who knew their work. Peruvian products in pre-Columbian time never found a foreign market, but it is rash to say they never would have found it had they not been molested and their career destroyed for all time by the infamous invader. An antiquity of the South American native has been frequently claimed by those well qualified to express an opinion, equal to that of the North American aborigine. This is in herently probable. The indications of such antiquity are well attested, and the recent ef forts of modernists of the radical type to mini mize the importance of the conclusions of South American archeologists have proved an utter failure. The antiquity of man in South America may yet be in the non-proved stage, but to date the claimants of antiquity have far the better of the question.