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Icopy 1
INFLUENCE OF ENVIE
INDUSTEIF
BY
OTIS TUFTON MASON
FROM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1895, PAOES 639-665
(WITH PLATE LXIX).
WASHmGTON":
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
1896.
■^^^d d:
INFLUENCE OF ENVIEONMENT UPON HUMAN
INDUSTRIES OE AETS.
OTIS TUFTON MASON,
FEOM THE SMITHSONIAN REPORT FOR 1895, PAGES 639-665
(WITH PLATE LXIX).
WASHmGTON:
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
1896.
•.; •*• *•• •*"
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES
OR ARTS.i
By Otis Tupton Mason,
THE ARTS OF LIFE.
My part in this programme is to speak to you upon the influence of
environment upon human industries or arts.
By arts of life are meant all those activities which are performed by
means of that large body of objects usually called apparatus, imj)le-
ments, tools, utensils, machines, or mechanical powers, in the utiliza-
tion of force derived from the human body, from animals, and from
natural agencies, such as gravity, wind, flre, steam, electricity, and the
like.
There is a study of the activities of life that belongs to natural his-
tory, being concerned with what men are and what they do as mere
animals. They eat, drink, sleep, walk about, and help themselves to
the bounties of nature, regardless of race. Their bones, muscles, and
vital organs in their adult state, in their growth from embryo to decay,
in their specific forms, are to be studied alongside of and in comparison
with the same parts of other creatures. These natural activities of
mankind constitute what, in old-time writers, was the natural as dis-
tinguished from the renewed man. In reality, all these natural endow-
ments, along with other matters of which I am to speak, form part of
the occasioning environment of arts and industries. But our concern
now is with inventions, artificial implements, processes, and results.
We have to study culture or the doings of the artificial man — the
renewed man. All that he does through new devices constitutes his
industries or his true industrial life. The higher any subspecies or
race or nation has climbed into this renewed life the greater has been
its culture.
THE ENVIRONMENT OF ARTS.
The environment of arts is really the sum total of all that is outside
of and in touch with them, including the whole earth and all that on it
dwell, the sun and the planets also, and many of the stars, since men
' Saturday lecture in Assembly Hall of United States National Museum, May 2, 1896.
639
640 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTEIES.
guide their journeys by them, set their clocks and adjust their cal-
endars according to their movements, and invent the most delicate
apparatus to gaze upon them.
Practically, however, the environment of liuman arts is the combined
action of the sun, the moon, and the earth, especially at any given
place or in any culture center.
When you look at a terrestrial globe the first thing you notice is
its smoothness and homogeneity. No-w, if the earth were as smooth and
homogeneous, that would end the matter. There would have been no
arts, no lectures on their relation to environment, no audiences, and, to
make a long story very short, no environment worth speaking about.
If you were to look closely at a globe you would see that it is painted to
represent a great variety of facts about the earth, to declare its physi-
ographic outlines and features, its roughness and heterogeneity. To
be precise, the earth consists of three inclosures — the laud, the water,
the air — enveloped in the all-pervading ether. The solid portion may be
called the geosi)here, the liquid portion the hydrosphere, the gaseous
portion the atmosphere. These are not so many distinct things, like a
nest of encapsulating boxes, but there exists the most intimate associ-
ations among them; they environ one another. The geosphere invades
the waters and the air. Nowhere are the w^aters and the atmosphere
free from the invasion of solid particles of matter. The hydrosphere
invades the other two, rising into the atmosphere in enormous quanti-
ties, and sinking into the earth to unknown distances. Finally, the
atmosphere is found permeating the waters, making life possible, and
finding its way deep into the structure of the solid crust. The compo-
nents of the air and of the waters are also the chief ingredients in the
structure of the solid portions. There is no element in the air nor in
the waters that does not exist in another form in the earth's crust.
I speak of this to impress upon your minds the fact that this mother
planet of ours is not a mere pile of substances without interest in one
another, but a very carefully organized body to do a certain kind of
work. I shall not now stop to inquire whether it was intelligently
planned to do this wonderful work, of which I shall soon speak, or
whether the work is simj)ly the result of its cooperative activities. It
will suit my present purpose if I can get you to see with me this mar-
velous set of terrestrial cooperations.
THE SUN AND THE ENVIRONMENT.
The sun in its relation to the geosphere, the hydrosphere, and the
atmosphere forms a part of the environmental cooi^erations. Our dis-
tance from the source of heat and light and actinism, our curve and
velocity about it and the speed of diurnal revolution, the degree of
inclination of the earth's axis of revolution to the plane of its annual
I^ath, and, finally, our journey with the sun through space are all a iiart
of one scheme or congeries of natural phenomena out of which the
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 641
minutest phases of our industrial life spring. By a simple diagram
(see i)late) this action of the sun and interaction of earth strata may
he shown. The ancients divided phenomena into those of earth, Avater,
air, fire — not a bad division wlien we are considering the influence of
environment on human actions.
The terrestrial fires are responsible for the corrugations on the earth's
crust. The solar fires, in cooperation with the moon and the earth's mo-
tions and its inclination in its orbit are responsible for the movements
of the waters and the air in tides and climate and all the marvelous
changes included in that word. The waters of the earth iireserve tol-
erablj^ well the spheroidal form, and the winds and climates of the seas
conform to the simple laws of s^iherical motion under given conditions.
The lands projecting from the seas by their elevations and conforma-
tions modify the movements of the air and the waters so as to re-create
themselves. The winds of the Atlantic, saturated with moisture, sliding
westward as the earth spins eastward at the rate of a thousand miles an
hour, strike against the mountaiu barrier of the two Americas, Their
waters are precipitated in deluges on the lowlands and blizzards of
snow on the high mountains. This provokes the action of disintegrat-
ing frosts, of avalanches, of glaciers, of torrents, of rank vegetation to
break down the mountains and form the continents eastward. On the
contrary, west of this vast upheaval the winds from which the water
has been wrung turn the western slopes almost to a desert.
The Eastern Hemisphere has other codes of behavior for the earth,
the air, and the water. The results are the long slope toward the Arctic
and a series of rivers whose mouths are stopped with ice at the moment
when their higlier channels are in the periods of inundation. The
Eussiau and Siberian wastes are the result, and the long north sloping-
Piedmont from the North Sea to Lake Baikal,
These coordinating activities result in the rich rivers of China, the
garden spot of Jajjan, the overwatered regions of southeastern Asia,
the great desert region of central Asia, the varied climate of India, the
excessively complex arrangement of elevation, heat, precipitation, and
water front about southern and western Europe. In Africa and the
Indo-Paciflc Archipelagos the phenomena also form part of a single
scheme.
To the arts of man all mountains, all rivers, forests, prairies, and
deserts are necessary, — the deep sea no less than those prolific feeding-
grounds into which early men ventured and learned their first lesson in
self-confidence, the end of which would come to be familiarity witli the
whole globe.
In fact, the whole world is now, and always has been, a single envi-
ronment for man, fitted up witli more or less spacious environments
in which the first human groups settled, and as they became ricber and
stronger they took larger and larger apartments. Each one of these
environments Lad a character of its own and the only possibility for a
SM .95 41
642 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
race to occupy more tlian one was to become more and more artificial
and to multiply its wants.
SPECIAL ENVIKONMBNTS.
In this connection, it will be profitable to note bow tbe cosmic forces
have cooperated to create special environmental relationsbips in tbe
three kingdoms of nature. The arts of mankind have to do with the
mineral, vegetal, and animal resources of the earth, to i^rocure them,
to manufacture them, to transport them, to count, weigh, measure, and
value them, to exchange them, and to enjoy them, in answer to an ever-
increasing body of wants, working them as materials by means of tools
and machinery, according to methods which constitute the processes of
the arts, always with definite ends in view.
Now, these three kingdoms of nature, though they may have no king
apparent to our senses, are far from being for our race a purposeless
rabble. As with the three spheres of the earth, they also play into
one another indefinitely under the sway of the imperial sun. This
relationship has been represented as in the diagram (see plate).
In the case of the spheres, it was easy to see that if the earth were
perfectly homogeneous and smooth the movements of air and water
would be tolerably uniform; but as things are arranged this would not
be so with our three kingdoms. There would be tropical, tem]>erate,
and arctic i^lants and animals even then. But with the present order
of contours and movements in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geo-
sphere, the kingdoms of minerals, vegetables, and animals undergo an
endless variety of changes, creating no end of subvarieties in the
environments and stimuli to action and artificial life.
The mineral kingdom is awakened by the sun ; not only its mechanical
movements are quickened in the air, the water, and the earth, the cur-
rents of the ocean, the rains, snows, ice, frost, and heat, but somehow his
beams are entangled with life itself, for only in his presence are the
fields and forests clad in emerald, the organs of regeneration made
resplendent in flowers of every possible hue, and new beings come into
life at his bidding. It is only in the unfathomable abysses and in the
unillumined earth that life is not. The stream of life flows into the veg-
etal kingdom through the mineral, and a return current brings liberated
oxygen and the jiroducts of decay. The stream of life flows from the
vegetal into the mineral with return currents of carbonic acid gas,
decayed matter, and the preparation of the soil. The stream of life
descends from the animal to the mineral, with return currents in
the form of air to breathe, water to drink, and a host of mineral
substances wrought into our blood, brains, and bones.^ The invisible
iDr. C. Hart Merriam's studies iu the relation of fauna to annual heat units is
interesting in this connection, since they really stand for the total solar force,
luminous, actinic and heating. (Smithsonian Report, 1891, pp. 365-415.)
Smithsonian Report, 1895.
Plate LXIX.
Fig. 1. Chart showing how the sun, operating on the geosphere, the hydrosphere, and the
atmosphere, makes of them a single environment for the whole human species. The
air invades the earth and the waters; the waters invade the earth and the air; the earth
invades the waters and the air. Their mutual activities depend upon the sun.
■tmi
Fig. 2. Showing how the three kingdoms of nature are in their totaUties under the rule of
the sun and how their interdependencies are created by that luminary, the whole con-
stituting a single environment of man.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTEIES. 643
motions i^rocluced. by the sun's Ibrce becomes visible in the rising
vapors; the motions of the air in the movements of theclonds; the
secret motions of the snow and rain, the dew and the frost in the
downward movement of the lands; the unseen movements of the land
appear in the families, genera, and species of animals; finally, the dis-
tribution of these reveal themselves in ways not known to us in the
specific cultures of mankind belonging to the areas where they arose.
Do you not see that the total result of these natural activities gives
us a world that almost mimics a thoughtful being, with something to
bestow, many things to suggest, power uulimited to lend, and, mark
me, an intelligent discrimination of rewards and punishments whose
effect has been to glorify the good and to destroy the unfit,
I do not say that the world is alive and thoughtful, that its provinces
or areas of separate environmental characterizations are each governed
by a viceroy, but the law of the ingenious mind of man working in
these makes it appear so. His subjective activity is projected upon
the background of the earth, until it is quite certain that he is in coop-
eration with the power that governs it. It is not yet decided how far
this force obtrudes itself upon his will, since it is certain that his con-
servatism imi)els him to certain activities against the environment.
KINDS OF ACTIVITIES.
There are six kinds of human industrial arts as regards the environ-
ment, to wit:
(1) Taking the gifts of nature: Man is then a quarryman or miner,
a gleaner, a fisherman, a hunter, and later a domesticator,
(2) Changing the form of natural objects: Man is then a manufac-
turer, mechanic, artisan, an inventor of tools and machines.
(3) Changing the i^lace or position of himself and of things: Man is
then a traveler, a carrier, an engineer, a subduer of force.
(4) Intelligent accounting for things and measuring: Man is then a
statistician, a measuier, surveyor, ganger, weigher, a maker of clocks
and almanacs, a scientific explorer.
(5) The exchanging of the fruits of labor, commerce, business,
money : Man becomes a merchant.
(6) The arts of enjoyment: Man becomes a user of food, houses, fur-
niture, utensils, equipage, fine art in all its branches.
It is certain that Ave are brought into relation with nature or envi-
ronment in and by all of these. Indeed, it is due to the great diversity
of environments that they are all possible. If you will run your eye
along the perspective of human history, you will see cultures running
into one another like the streams of a river or the lines of a great struc-
ture. Each culture was developed in a special environment. The
union of two environments eventuates in the union of two cultures,
widening both.
644 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES,
CHARACTERISTICS OF ENVIRONMENT,
We- may now be allowed to enumerate some of those characteristics
of this composite nature of things whose influence upon our daily-
activities we are now contemplating. And first we can not help seeing
that the environment is the i^rovider of all raw materials. This seems
trite, and in its simple statement may be so. Bat see how each people
of the earth is characterized by its raw materials. An Eskimo collec-
tion is white; the same ideas are expressed by the Haidas south of
them in jet black. The art of the British Columbian is red, of Oregon
and California yellow, of the Pueblos ecru, of Mexico gray. All this
is plain enough when j'ou know the color of walrus ivory, of slate, and
mountain goat horn, of cedar, of grasses and spruce root, of fire clay
when baked, and of volcanic building stones. People express them-
selves in the material at hand. The Egyptian was furnished with lime-
stone and syenite, so he hammered away at that. His ideas could
mount no higher than the material. On the other hand, the Greek was
provided by environment with the whitest, finest, and thickest quar-
ries of marble on earth. It was expected of him that he should give
the highest expression of the aesthetic faculty in sculpture and archi-
tecture, though his potterj^ was somewhat inferior. When the whole
world is brought into one environment by the art of transportation,
then other lands have hope to imbibe some of the genius engendered
and fostered about the quarries of Pentelicus. But in the generative
period of industrial forms, before the world-embracing commerce, it
was not so.
Nature or environment appears to us, secondly, in the light of a pur-
veyor of force. At first our race had only the force of its own frail
but versatile bodies to dei)end upon, yet men will never cease to marvel
at this mechanism as an economic device for storing and utilizing
power. Whether we regard a machine in the light of saving fuel,
of si)eed, of ability to change rectilinear motion readily into that of
any curve or succession of curves, the body of man will ever remain
for inventors to wonder at and imitate. Long ago backs and hands
and feet were wearied with ever-increasing burdens, and so the dog,
the reindeer, the horse, the ass, the cow, the camel, the llama, the ele-
phant, and even the sheep were handed over in innumerable packs and
herds to give additional power to industry. These creatures not only
fed and clothed men, they made men's legs longer, their backs stronger,
their hands more skillful. Then came the wind to blow upon the mat,
the sail, the mill, and the water, moving in its natural currents and
then iu artificial channels to turn the wheels of industrialism. How
bountiful has nature been in the supply of force! Who ever dreamed
of exhausting it? How many ships upon the sea would it take to use
up all the winds that blow, and how many turbine wheels would it
INFLUENCE OP ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 645
require to take up and transform iuto useful arts the force of all water-
falls?
]t is true there are euvironmental gifts that may be ruthlessly
wasted. As Professor McGee has shown, the resources of fertility
wasted in the United States every year exceed those reproduced in
crops. Six liundred million tons of coal are the output annually in the
United States. Many species of most useful animals have been irre-
trievably extinguished, but who ever thought of exhausting gravity,
elasticity, the mechanical i^owers, the forces of the environment. How-
ever, we must admit that even these natural forces are unequally dis-
tributed, and that gives character also to the arts. There are no
turbine wheels in the desert, no sails cross the zone of calms, and each
domestic anii^ial has its geographic range beyond which it becomes
unprofitable.
In the third place, the environment manifests itself as the teacher of
industries, I should be the last iiersou in the world to rob the ingen-
ious miud of man of its glory in achievements through human industry;
but the fact remains that wherever you enter his workshop, called the
world, you will see hanging ou the walls and lying about him all sorts
of i>atterns and models, and a multitude of processes are going ou
which he falls iuto as ''heir of all the ages."
There were cave dwellers before there were men ; spiders, mud wasps,
beavers, and birds spun and worked in clay and cut down trees and
made soft beds for tlieir young long ago. Plants reared \essels and mol-
lusks produced dishes that even now are the patterns of the most
skillful potters. There were hammers, gimlets, pins, needles, saws,
baskets, and sandpaper at hand when the human artisan first became
an apprentice. And I would ask you whether there is any possibility
of this suggestiveness of nature ever being exhausted. Whisperings
are yet going ou iu her school. The little birds have not told all the
secrets. The processions toward the patent office prove that the grow-
ing coordinations of environment in relation to the common industries
have turned the village school, with its circumscribed advantages, iuto
a world-embracing university.
Lastly, I must not fail to tell you that the environment itself is capa-
ble of unlimited education and improvement in relation to the com-
monest wants of life and our ways of satisfying them. There is one
thought about the nature of the common things among which we min-
gle that fillvS me with ever-increasing delight. It is the sj^mpathetic
response of nature or environment to every affectionate touch. An
industrious and wise farmer settles upon a piece of land. Soon you
behold remunerative crops replacing the forest and the waste. The
man is enriched; he then enriches the land, and by a kind of mutual
admiration they two grow fat together. When a progressive race
has settled down in a part of the earth not too icy, not too torrid, not
646 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
discoiiragiugly luxuriant, not absolutely a desert, the same lias been
true. The wild and cooperatively relentless wolves have become faith-
ful dogs. The capability was slumbering there. The feeble grasses are
transformed simply by giving the best a chance into prolific grains.
The modest wild flower becomes the florist's delight, landscape garden-
ing the composite expression of all testhetic pleasures in form, color,
number, odor, and motion. Professor McGee has called our attention
to the partial desert as the best possible arena for starting certain forms
or epochs of this artificial life which we are now considering, and it is.
Indeed, in this perfectibility of the environment of which I am now
speaking it seems to be the manifest destiny, the natural pi^oclivity, the
ambition of the desert to blossom as the rose. How delightful to con-
temiilate this readiness of nature to respond to the touch of man.
AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTS.
It must have frequently occiirred to my hearers that the more cir-
cumscribed the environment the more dependent the activity must be
upon it and therefore the more monotonous the life must have been.
This is true in the kingdoms of life and also true as among genera and
species of animals. It has been also true among the races of men.
The best examples, therefore, of environment affecting arts and indus-
tries will be found where the tribes are still living in the eiidogamic
stage of social culture, so that the happy arrangement between the
arts and their surroundings have been as little disturbed as possible.
Taking the Americas at the time when they were first revealed to the
historian you will find that they range through natural conditions
diversified enough to bring into prominence arts adapted to each cul-
ture area and obtrusively different from those of other areas.^
For our present purpose, there may be said to have been eighteen
American Indian environments or culture areas, to wit: Arctic, Atha-
pascan, Algonquian, Iroquoian, Muskhogean, Plains of the Great West,
North Pacific Coast, Columbia drainage, Interior Basin, California-
Oregon, Pueblo, Middle American, Antillean, South American Cordil-
leran, Andean Atlantic Slope, Eastern Brazilian, Central Brazilian,
Argentine-Patagonian, Fuegian.^ These will be given seriatim with the
factors constituting the motives and processes of the arts of life. A
table will follow with the factors at the top. By writing the chai'acter-
istics of each factor for each environment you would have at a glance
'These culture areas should he compared with Major Powell's linguistic map, 7th
An. T?ep. Bur. Ethnol., with Thomas's mouud maps, 12th An. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., with
Bancroft's geographic areas in his Native Races of the Pacific States, hut especially
with Franz Boas's Anthropology of the North American Indians, Mon. Internat. Cong.
ofAnthrop., Chicago; C. Hart Merriam's Geographic Distribution of Life in North
America, Smithsonian Report, 1891, and J. A. Allen's Geographic Distribution of
North American Mammals, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., New York, Vol. IV.
=See Powell (J. W.), 7th An. Rep. Bur. Ethnol.; Brinton (D. G.), The American
Race, New York, 1891.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 647
the whole result of our inquiry. This elaboration uiay be tabulated to
;uiy degree of miuuteness, but for the preseut we must be satisfied
with —
(1) Climate aud physiography;
(2) Predomiuaut miuerals, vegetables, auimals;
(3) Foods, drinks, narcotics, stimulants, medicines;
(4) Olothiug aud adornment of the body;
(5) House, fire, furniture, utensils;
(G) Arts in stone, clay, plants, animal tissues;
(7) Implements and utensils of fishing, bunting, and war;
(8) Locomotion.
ENVIRONMENTS AND OHARACTEEISXICS.
The Arctic environment, according to the eight classes of character-
istics laid down, may be thus defined as having —
(1) Intensely cold climate, six months day and six montlis night,
abundance of ice and snow, no vertical zones, much water line aud level
coast.
(2) Chert, slate, soapstone, pectolite; driftwood, wreckage, no timber,
berries; aquatic invertebrates, mammals and birds, reindeer, land car-
nivores, and rodents.
(3) Little vegetable diet, meat of fish, birds, aquatic mammals, aud
deer; pi^je aud snuff' introduced.
(4) Dress of furs, birdskius and intestines, labrets and tattooing.
(5) Underground houses or igloos, snow house, stone lamp-stove,
steamed wood for dishes.
(6) Chipping, sawing, boring, grinding, and carving stone; carving
bone, antler and ivory; a little pottery at Bristol Bay; textile in bas-
ketry, sinew twining and braiding, tailoring in skins ; ingenious weapon
makers.
(7) Hunting implements, harpoons, bird darts, fish darts, lances, fish-
hooks, nets, composite bows and arrows.
(8) For travel, poor snowshoes, ice creepers, sleds, kaiaks,. umiaks.
The Athapascan environment has the following characteristics :
(1) The drainage of the Yukon and the Mackenzie and the barren
ground southward to British Columbia.
(2) Poor in the industrial minerals; birch, conifers, and poplars;
fish, birds, caribou, bear, and fur animals in profusion.
(3) Fish, meat, berries, cooked by boiling with hot stones or roasted.
(4) Deerskin clothing, with or without fur, bonnet, shirt, pantaloons,
moccasins; much ornamented; no tattooing.
(5) Bark lodge, movable; bark and basketry dishes; fur bedding;
open fire.
(6) Manufacture of hunting implements, basketry, bark work; excel-
lent skin working; no pottery.
(7) Plain bows, arrows Avith bone heads, lances, fishing nets and
hooks, gigs.
648 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
(8) Snowshoes of finest webbing, sleds, bark canoes.
The Algonquin-Iroquois cbaracteristics of environment are:
(1) Climate temperate to subarctic; wide expanse of lowland; exten-
sive inland waters and indented Atlantic coast.
(2) Materials for industry, quartzite, diorite, sandstone, etc., for chip-
ping, battering, and polishing, and mines of jasper, copper, and steatite;
hard wood, birch, conifers, wild rice; game birds and mammals, lish,
mollnsks.
(3) Dietary of great variety in the animal products of land, fresh
water, and salt water; maize, pumpkins, beans, natural fruits; boiling
with stones or in pots, roasting; tobacco pipe.
(4) Shirt, breech clout, leggings, moccasins of tawed skin, in winter
fur clothing; body frequently exposed in the southern partof the area.
(5) Dwellings of bark lodges, skin lodges, bark and skin long houses
or arbors, communal barracks, village camps; tires in center; little
furniture; extensive use of mats woven or sewed together, and skin
robes. In this area there are the largest number of geometric earth-
works, fortifications, mounds, and shell heaps.
(G) The arts were not of high order ; they included chipped, battered,
and i)olished stone; poor, red i^ottery; bark, dugout, and wicker ves-
sels; quill work; tawed skin, sinew, and thong or babiche work;
mortar grinding.
(7) The weapons of war and capture were clubs, stone knives, lances,
plain bow and stone-pointed arrows, barbed spears, fish pounds, traps,
hooks, gigs, scalps were taken,
(8) They traveled afoot, along well-known trails, on snowshoes in
Canada; on the water in birch canoes or in dugouts; portages.
The Muskhogean area includes the Southern States of the Union
below the northern boundary of Carolina. In it were other tribes and
j)arts of Northern families, but the area dominated the activities of all.
(1) Low mountains, rich river valleys, abundant rain, ocean and
gulf coast, climate temperate to subtropical.
(2) Eiver gravels, and mines of flint, mica, and copper; abundant
timber, cane, tobacco, and natural fruits; deer, turkeys and other
birds, fish and aquatic invertebrates in profusion.
(3) Food of maize, melons, pulse, fruits, the products of the chase,
and the rich harvest of the waters;' roasting, pot boiling, baking in hot
ashes, smoked and fire-dried food.
(4) The dress of this area was partly of tawed skins, little clothing
was worn, in fact. The caves reveal cai^es and iietticoats of bast and
native hemp, woven and fringed. Feather work, shell beadwork, and
pearls were used in jirofusion.
(5) They lived in small huts and grass lodges and in wattled houses
daubed with mud. These were collected in fortified villages. The
furniture was of cane and matting, vessels of clay and diagonal bas-
ketry; open fire. Here abound geometric mounds and earthworks,
shell heaps, and shell mounds.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 649
(()) The avts were chipping, pecking, and polishing stone; pottery
making of a distinct school; twined and plaited textiles of cane and
native hemp; feather working; grinding in log mortars.
(7) The weapons of capture and war were plain bows, reed arrows,
reed knives, stone tomahawks, lances with stone points, clnbs for
braining.
(8) Traveling on foot, and packing; on water were used canoes
hollowed from the soft poplar and gum trees, which are abundant.
The plains of the Great West have constituted a definite culture area
characterized by —
(1) A piedmont sloping down to the immense prairies of the Missouri,
the Platte, and the Arkansas; temi^erate climate.
(2) Few good industrial minerals and those prized and guarded by
intertribal agreements; plants restricted to small trees for tent poles,
arms and cradles, apocynum for textiles; buffalo overwhelmingly.
(3) The dietary was meat flavored and supplemented with berries;
kinnikinic; no farming.
(i) Skin clothing in excess, hood, shirt, clout, leggings, moccasins,
robes; paint the body.
(.j) Skin lodges in circles; earth lodges like those south; furniture of
hides, fur, and intestines; dung for fuel; jerked meat; stone boiling in
small pits lined with rawhide; roasting.
(()) Stone chipping, ijecking, carving, and polishing a little; skin
dressing, tailoring, embroidery in quill, spinning iiax without spindle
occupied the entire time of the women. The men were hunters preemi-
nently.
(7) The weapons of capture and of war were compound, sinew-backed,
and self-bows, and stone pointed arrows, stone tomahawks and casse-
tetes, clubs armed with jagged blades, lances.
(8) Travel was on foot and the dog was a beast of burden; for
crossing rivers the bull boat or buffalo-hide coracle was ever at hand.
The North Pacific area extends froui Mount St. Elias to the Straits of
Fuca, embracing Tlingit (Koloschau), Haida (Skittagetan), Tsimshian,
and Nutka, or Wakashan, tribes. Its characteristics are:
(1) Moist, temperate climate; archipelagic and mountainous coast.
(2) Its material resources are slate and granular rocks, immense for-
ests of conifers, sea fauna inexhaustible by savages, herring, salmon,
halibut, oolachon, mollusks of great size.
(3) Fish diet, mixed with fruits; no grain; snuff and tobacco; stone
boiling and roasting.
(4) Woven clothing of goat, sheep, and dog hair and cedar bark;
labrets and tattooing.
(.5) Their dwellings were communal barracks, with totem posts; cen-
tral fires; furniture and utensils of stone, wood dugout, woven bark,
and exquisite twined and checker basketry.
(6) Their arts were stone carving by battering and scraping, no
chipping; wood carving, twined and plain weaving; no pottery.
650 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
I
(7) The weapons of war and capture were retrieving harpoons, gigs,
and the like; fish traps, clubs, few appliances for land animals,
(8) They traveled in dugout cauoes altogether, keeping close to shores
and water courses. At the extreme north the fine snowshoe, borrowed
from the Athapascan, was in vogue.
The Columbia drainage area includes the entire basin of that stream
and some contiguous patches. It is very difl'erent from the foregoing,
having the following characteristics:
(1) Stern, islandless coast, but prolific tide water and streams; rich
lands; mild climate.
(2) Its material resources for savagery are siliceous and granular
rocks; textile plants and forest quite varied; salmon and waterfowl;
abimdauce of edible roots and fruits.
(3) Their dietary included fish and mollusk, with camass, kouse, and
other roots and fruits in abundance; no agriculture; stone boiling and
pit roasting.
(4) The tribes dressed partly in skins, partly in textile garments, but
the mild climate allowed them to expose their bodies much.
(5) Their houses were likewise communal barracks, with interior
iuclosures, but the huge totem post is lacking; furniture of greatly
varied matting, wallets, rigid baskets.
(G) The arts were chipping and battering stone; no pottery; many
types of weaving and basketry, including plain, checker, diagonal,
twined bird cage, coiled meshes, and stitches; an exceedingly mixed
region.
(7) Tlieir weapons of capture and war were bows and arrows, har-
poons, lances, clubs, hooks, and traps.
(8) They traveled in bark canoes, Amoor type, and near the salt
water in excellent dugouts. On foot in winter they used coarse snow-
shoes.
The interior basin of the United States includes the lauds between
the western slopes of the Kockies and the eastern slopes of the Sierras.
It lies north of New Mexico and Arizona, and includes the most of Col-
orado, Utah, Nevada, eastern Oregon, Idaho, and a corner of Wyoming.
Its characteristics are :
(1) Partial deserts among mountains with rich and wooded patches.
(2) Materials for savage arts, siliceous and friable stone, deer, ante-
lope, and other game, few fish, nutritious plants, poor timber, and
textile plants.
(3) Diet meager, meat scarce, bread, mush, and soups of acorns and
wild plant seeds; insects and grubs eaten; cooking with hot stones
and roasting or x)arclung in trays with hot stones.
(4) Buckskin shirts, clouts, leggins, moccasin excellent, hats of
coarse, twined basketry; no tattooing.
(5) Shelters of brush by the side of bluff's or in the open ; partial
cave dwellers; stick beds, vessels of basketry dipped in pitch; no
pottery; fire out of doors.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 651
(6) Chippiug stone, good skin dressers, basketry in tNsined ware,
rough and coarse by reason of tbe material; excellent gleaners and
millers.
(7) Tbeir weapons are sinew-backed bows, sbort, stone-pointed
arrows, clubs, and land nets.
(8) Traveling on foot, no artificial appliances for land or water;
carrying in conical baskets by means of headband.
The Californian-Oregon area embraces a part of Oregon and all of
California, except the southeastern third. Its characteristics are:
(1) A series of short and isolated valleys, descending to the ocean,
and without harbors, or to San Francisco Bay. Though there are
mountains, there are no vertical zones of culture. The climate is
vigorous and salubrious. The isolation is obtrusively shown in the
fact that here twenty-six linguistic families were packed.
(2) Materials lor arts were siliceous stones for chipping, superb; no
fictile clay; fibers, fruits, and woods excellent; fish and game plentiful.
(3) Diet of acorns, seeds, fish, birds, and mammals. Cooking with
hot stones in mush and in pits; open roastry; tubular pipes.
(4) Dress of buckskin, rabbitskin, and grass fringes, scanty ; tattooing.
(5) Insignificant shelters, varied, partly below ground; granary
baskets ; shell heaps.
(G) Stone chipping admirable; stone and basketry mortars ; basketry
of every type in seven distinct species of weaving: flax twine.
(7) Weapons, neatly made sinew-backed bows and elegant arrows in
many styles, with most delicate stone points; fish si^ears, retrieving
arrows, fish and animal traps.
(8) Poor boats; rafts and balsas in the south; snowshoes rare and
rude; conical baskets and carrying bands.
The Pueblo culture area includes New Mexico and Arizona, with
extensions into Utah, southern Califoruia, and northern Mexico. Its
characteristics are:
(1) Arid, hot climate, elevated mesas, canyons, irrigable valleys,
mountains.
(2) Materials of industry, shales, clays, turquoise, volcanic rocks;
mesquite, oak, cottonwood, yucca, basket shrubs, cultivated foods,
and fruits; deer, rabbits^ goat, mountain lion, coyote.
(3) Maize, pulse, melons; little meat until the introduction of sheep ;
griddle cakes, mush, and pottage; cigarettes.
(4) The clothing is somewhat scant, for a long time of buckskin and
woven fabrics, formerly rabbit-skin robes, feather robes, weaving in
apocynum and agave fiber, paints, no tattooing.
(5) Pueblos, either underground, crater, cave, cavate, cliff, mesa, or
lowland; towers,
(6) Chipping, polishing, and boring stone; smooth and painted pot-
tery in great profusion; mythological in motive; basketry in wicker,
diagonal, twined, and coiled ware; weaving in frames and with grating
harness, in plain and diaper; wrapped ornamentation; bone and horn
work rude; mealing stones in sets; sand painting, irrigation.
652 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
(7) Weapons of war and the chase were bows and arrows, shields,
rabbit clubs for throwing, laud nets, clubs.
(8) On foot only, no conveyance by land or by sea; carrying on the
head with ring, or on the back with forehead band.
Middle American culture area, including southern Mexico and Cen-
tral Amerfca. The characteristics are:
(1) IMouiitains, terraces, and table-lands; vertical zones of climate
from torrid seacoast to temperate uplands; wet and dry season; no
good harbors; culture forces centrifugal.
(2) Materials are obsidian, volcanic building stone, gems; yuccas,
agaves, excellent timber, cotton, food plants; animals inferior, abun-
dance of beautiful birds, fish and shellfish on the const,
(3) Food largely artificial, of maize, pulse, flesh, fish, chile In many
forms; chocolate, pulque.
(4) Sandals of fiber, scanty body garb of poncho and serape, straw
hats, feather clothing superb, labrets.
(5) Thatched hut, open fire, hammock, pyramids, great buildings of
hammer-dressed and carved stone; vessels of gourd and clay.
(6) The arts were mining, metallurgy, stone cutting, gem cutting,
grotesquely modeled pottery, loom weaving, netting, feather embroid-
ery, gourd work, inetate milling, paper and bark cloth; irrigation.
(7) Weapons were atlatl and spear, bladed clubs, obsidian daggers,
bow and sling not i:)romineut.
(8) Dugouts and reed floats, canals, professional carriers, headband
and breastband.
Antillean or insular area, called also the West Indies. To this region
belongs also southern Florida, a portion of the northern coast of South
America :
(1) Perpetual summer (77° to 82° F.); mountainous insular areas in
deep, clear sea; currents northwestward; islands easily accessible one
from another.
(2) Granular stone, little for chipping, great canoe trees, cacao; mol-
lusks and fish; great mammals, none.
(3) Dietary of manioc, sweet potato, cacao, fish, iguana, turtles; snuff
and cigarettes.
(4) Clothing meager, of vegetal fiber wholly.
(5) Thatched shelters near the sea chiefly, pile dwellings, hammocks,
no storage, open fires, and hammock fires.
(G) The arts of Antillean peoples : Excellent carving and polishing of
stone and wood ; red ])ottery rudely modeled and engraved; diagonal
weaving, metate grinding, canoe making.
(7) Weapons were spears, clubs, tomahawks, with celt in perforated
handle.
(8) Sandals for foot travel, dugout canoes; carrying on the head, i)er-
haps introduced from Africa.
South American mountain or Cordilleran culture area, including the
INFLUENCE OF ENVIEONJVIENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. G53
moiiataius and especially the Pacific slope of Colombia, Ecuador, and
Peru. The families of Indians were those usually called civilized.
The characteristics are:
(1) Elevated and continuous plateaus broken here and there by
lofty mountains, beneath the plateaus vertical zones of climate; gener-
ally arid, desert in the south; gorges in the west slope, coast plain
little indented ; culture forces centripetal.
(2) Materials of arts, volcanic, architectural rocks, gold and silver;
coca, reeds, cinchona, cacao, maize, potato, beans, fish, llama, guanaco,
vicuuya, paco; timber scarce.
(3) Food of frozen potatoes on the plateau; maize, beans, meat, fish,
lower down. Coca is chewed to economize strength.
(4) The clothing was woven stuffs of llama wool and cotton, tine in
quality and characteristically figured; sandals.
(5) The buildings were thatched huts in fortified villages, furnished
with hammocks or beds on the ground; open fire, dung fuel, griddle
and i)ot cooking.
(6) The arts were hammering and carving of stone, building with
huge blocks, metallurgy, pottery modeling and molding; diagonal,
twilled, and open weaving; irrigation, quipu.
(7) Stone-headed club, sling, wooden saber.
(8) Traveling afoot, or on balsas of logs or reeds; carrying on human
backs or llamas, post roads and susiiension bridges.
Andean Atlantic slope, including the eastern margin of Colombia,
Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. It is in fact the loop in which arise the
great rivers that feed the Amazon. Its characteristics are:
(1) A tropical piedmont, sloping eastward, profusely watered and
forested.
(2) Its resources for culture have been little studied; iniueral sub-
stances are little used; the vegetation is absolutely overpowering.
(3) The food of the scanty population is fish, monkeys, peccary, and
such natural fruits as may be found.
(4) Little or no costume was anciently worn, except in the form of
ornament, which consisted of gorgeous plumage of birds sewed to bark
cloth and teeth and pretty seeds and wings of gorgeous beetles strung
in armlets, leglets, and necklaces.
(5) Wooden houses thatched with palm leaf were the habitations,
with sleeping bunks.
(G) The arts of life were those of savagery alone; little agriculture
was known. To hunt, to fish, to war, to combat nature and one another
was their continuous occui)ation. They were good woodworkers and
feather workers; had no pottery.
(7) Weapons in this area were and are blow tubes and poisoned
arrows, rectangular sectioned, long bows, shields, trident lances, throw-
ing sticks, drum signals, dried heads, ourari.
654 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTKIES.
(8) Travel afoot in the forests, now using the ever faithful machete;
use headband iu carrying; water travel in canoes down the cataracts
of the upper rivers.
Eastern Brazilian area, from the Tocantins Eiver eastward. The
characteristics of tliis area are :
(1) Tropical climate, elevated table-lands between sierras, forested,
rivers filled with cataracts.
(2) Little economic stone for savagery, or rather other useful sub-
stances easier to work more abundant; gems; vegetation immense;
food mammals scarce; birds of i)lumage, fish, and marine invertebrates
plentiful.
(3) Food partly natural, partly cultivated, cassava, fish, mollusks,
turtles.
(4) Clothing little or none, bark cloth; decoration of the person with
labrets, tattoo, and jewelry of teeth and other animal tissues.
(5) Immense huts and shelters, open below, thatched roofs, ham-
mocks, central and individual fires.
(6) Polished stone, no chipping: pottery massive ; diagonal weaving;
shell heaps or sambaquis, agriculture.
(7) Weapons are rounded bows decorated with feathers and geomet-
ric seizing; ari'ows barbed with bone or bladed ; clubs.
(8) Travel afoot; navigation of rivers difficult by reason of rapids;
on the coast of Brazil canoes and house boats.
The central Brazilian area, thci Matto Grosso, lying between the east-
ward sloxiing roof of Brazil and the Andean Atlantic slope, largely
between the Araguay and the western boundary of Brazil. It is a
most complicated area in its environmental resources, its stocks aud
tribes, and its arts. Its characteristics are:
(1) Hot climate, wet, alluvial, forested; rivers flowing into the Ama-
zon and the Paraguay, abounding in cataracts.
(2) Materials of arts: Few minerals, replaced by bone, shell, and
teeth; palm wood, hard woods, excellent reeds, gourds, cotton; fish,
turtles, birds, monkeys.
(3) Dietary mixed vegetable and animal, cultivated and wild; manioc,
yam, beans, fish.
(4) Dress, little; clouts, pretty feather ornaments, jewelry of teeth,
masks, labrets, nose ornament; no tatoo.
(5) Houses open shelters with palm-leaf roofs; hammocks, open fires;
gourd and pottery dishes.
(6) Tools of shell, teeth, bone; spindle, diagonal weaving, sand paint-
ing, (;assava manufacture, agriculture; ijottery quite suggestive of
mound-builders' ware,
(7) Bows of Peru and of east Brazil and intermediary forms; arrows
with bone and reed points; throwing sticks Australian type, clubs,
axes.
(8) Barefoot travel, headband and carrying frame; canoes of a single
Ijiece of bark (wood skins) and dugouts.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 655
Soutli of the Matto Grosso, or mixed region, lies tlie Argentinian
pampas, shading down to Patagonia. Differing much in features from
place to place, the culture is not altogether to be dissociated from that
farther north. The characteristics are :
(1) Monotonous plains, pampas, from high grassy chaco to the bleak
wastes at the south.
(2) Only near the western border any stone for working ; fish, guanaco,
American ostrich {Rhea darwinii).
(3) Food consists of roots, fruit, aquatic products in some places,
flesh of guanaco, and rhea; no husbandry; Paraguay tea.
(4) Dress scanty, guanaco robes, woven blankets ; foot gear of peltry,
hair side out.
(5) The house, or toldo, of the Patagouian is an awning of guanaco
skin; fuel of grass, open roasting ; skin beds; pai)poose hammocks and
frames, the iirst south of California.
(6) Arts are skin dressing, sewing with ostrich sinew thread, weaving,
and hunting; no pottery; no chipped stone southward.
(7) The weapons were the spear, the lasso, and the bolas.
(8) Locomotion aboriginally altogether afoot; now on horseback.
The Fuegian culture area terminates the American Continent south-
ward, and yet on this desolate point, 55 degrees south, Brinton finds
three linguistic families. The characteristics are :
(1) Eocky islands with numerous inlets between dangerous head-
lands; cold and wet climate.
(2) The material resources are siliceous rocks, beech trees, rushes;
land mammals scarce; marine fauna rich; dogs.
(3) The dietary is mollusks and fish largely, sea mammals, whales,
fungi; cooking in hot ashes.
(4) Clothing scanty; a skin worn hanging on the neck as a wind
break ; paint and ornaments.
(5) Their houses are miserable huts of wattling covered with grass;
no furniture; fire made with pyrites and carried about in canoes.
(6) Their arts are in wood, bark, bone, and textile; shell knife; no
stone art.
(7) For weapons t\xej use stones thrown from the hand, poor bows
and arrows, barbed harpoons, slings, limpet sticks, nets; no fishhook.
(8) Little travel afoot; small canoe sled; large canoe of beech bark,
made in three sections, to be easily taken apart in portages across
headlands.
656 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
Table shoiving American environments in
Area and physiography.
1. Arctic.
Six montlis day; ice and
snow ; country low
along the coast.
2. Athapascan.
Tuton and Mackenzie
drainage; lowland,
stiljarctic fanna and
flora.
S. Algonquin — Iroquois.
Subarctic to temperate;
lowlands, prairies, and
indented waterw ays
and coasts.
4. Southern United States .
Eich riror valleys and
low mountains; abun-
dant rain; Gulf Coast
8uhtroi)ical.
5. Plains of the West.
Piedmont sloi)ing to im-
mense prairies of Mis-
sissippi Valley.
6. North Pacific.
Moist, warm climate ;
archipelagoes and
mountainous coast.
7. Vancouver to Columbia.
Stern coast, prolifie in-
land waters ; rich lands
coast to mountains.
8. Interior Basin.
Partial desert among
mountains.
Chief minerals, plants,
and animals.
Soapstone, chert, slate,
pectolite ; stunted
vegetation, drift;
abundance of fish,
birds, and mammals of
sea and land.
Poor in industrial min-
erals ; birch, conifers,
poplars ; cariboii.bear,
birds, fish, and fur
animals.
Quartzite, sandstone,
soapstone, d i o r i t e ;
hard woods,birch, wild
rice, tobacco; game,
fish, moUuslvS.
River gravels ; stone,
granular .and siliceous
in place ; timber, cane,
tobacco, maize ; game,
fish, and sea products.
Few minerals ; jasper,
pipostone; apocy-
nuni,hois diarc; buf-
falo, overwhelmingly.
Slate, granular rock ;
immense forests of
conifers : sea fauna
inexhaustible.
Siliceous and granular
rocks; textile plants
and forest timber,
edible roots ; fish,
waterfowl.
Siliceous and stratified
stone; few fish; deer
and other game ; tim-
ber poor ; seed plants
abundant.
Alimentation.
llress and adornment.
Drink water only ; eat
fish, seal meat, whale,
reindeer, raw and
seethed.
Drink water ; meat, fish
of lakes, berries, and
bark.
Diet varied, meat, fish,
marine invertebrates,
wild grains and fruits,
maize; granaries; to-
bacco.
Fish, meat, mollusks,
maize, wild fruits
.nbundant; granaries;
tobacco.
Meat; fish a little; wild
fruits, jjemmican, kin-
nikinic.
Fish diet, mixed with
berries ; snuff and
pipe.
Fish diet, mixed with
roots and henies ; no
agriculture; stone
boiling in basket and
pit roasting.
Dietarj' meager; bread,
mush, soups, meat;
in some cases grubs
and insects: hot stone
and roasting.
Sleeved coats and
hoods; skins of
birds, seal, reindeer,
and intestines ; tat-
too; labrets.
Tawfd caribou skin,
much adorned witli
quill work and
beads; gaiter-like
moccasins.
Tawed-skin shirt, leg-
gins, moccasins (low
and adorned); tat-
too and paint.
Slight ; deerskin robes,
mantles of wild
hemi) ; bodies paint-
ed; moccasins.
Skin clothing; low
moccasins ; feather
and (juill decora-
tions; body paint
and mutilations.
Clothing of bark and
hair, woven in twin-
ed pattern; tattoo-
ing of totems.
Skin and bark clotli-
ing: gaiter mocca-
sins ; head flattening.
Buckskin clothing,
rabbit-skin robes ;
high moccasins; no
painting or tattoo-
ing.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 657
association with aboriginal industries.
House and house life.
Manufactures.
Hunting, fishing, war.
Locomotion and trans-
portation
Uudergrouml igloos of
Chipping, sawing,grind-
Harpoons, bird darts.
Fur boots, ice creeper.
oartli on timbers or
ing, carving stone and
fish darts, lance, fish-
sled, dog, kaiak.
whalebone ; s n o %v
hard tissue ; tailoring
hook, net, trap, bow
umiak ; snowshoes,
huts and summer
iu skins ; pottery a
compound and sinew-
rude .
tents; stone lamp
little in the west.
backed.
stove, dishes of wood.
Conical bark lodges;
No pottery ; coiled bas-
B)w and arrow, lance.
Snowshoes, excellent;
baskets, pots, and
ketry; bark vessels,
nets, hooks, traps.
bark canoes, tobog-
dishes of wood, bark.
excellent skin dress-
and pounds, abundant
gans, dogs; much
and basketry; stone
ing and working;
and varied.
portage.
boiling.
curved knife.
Conical and cylindrical
Chipped and polished
Club, stono knife, lance.
On foot; in canoes and
lodges of skin or bark ;
stone; poor pottery;
tomahawk, bow and
dugouts ; snowshoes,
barracks, shell heaps ;
bark dugout and
arrow plain, barbed
dogs, and portages at
central fire; roasting
wicker vessels; mor-
spear, pound, trap.
the north.
and boiling.
tar grinding ; skin
working ; twined bas-
ketry.
weir.
Huts of cane, with mud
Chipping and polishing
Bows and reed arrows,
On foot; dugout ca-
cli inking, grass
stone; gray pottery,
blow tubes, weirs,
noes ; rafts of cane.
lodges, earthworks,
stamped; diagonal
tomahawks.
snell heaps ; open fire,
weaving.
smoking, roasting.
seething.
Skin lodges in circles;
Stone chipping ; pipe
Little fishing ; plain,
Onfootandsnowshoes ;
earth lodge; furniture
making; hammer-
compound, and sinew-
bull-boat; dog and
and utensils, and fuel
stone, hafted ; twined
backed bow, short ar-
horse for riding and
from the buffalo.
basketry ; quill and
row, club, lance, tom-
packing.
hide work ; little pot-
ahawk.
tery.
Communal barracks;
Carved wood, slate, bone ;
Harpoons, floats, gigs.
Dugout canoes alto-
totem posts, central
twined, square, and
weirs ; arts created by
gether ; little land
fires ; furniture and
diagonal -weaving in
fishing; daggers, skin
travel except pack-
utensils of stone and
wood,bark, and grass;
armor, slat armor.
ing over the moun-
wood; stone boiling in
no pottery.
slave killer.
tains.
dugouts.
"-
Communal houses ; fur-
Flinty and granular
Harpoon, club.fishhook,
Dugouts, bark boats,
nitui'e in greatly va-
stonework; carving
traps; daggers, bows
monitor shape;
ried textiles; fire in
in soft and hard mate-
and arrows.
open-work snow-
pits.
rial ; no pottery ; bas-
shoes; packing over
ketry of five types.
the mountains.
Shelters ; lire out of
Chipping stone; no pot-
Sinew-lined bow, plain
No artificial travel ;
doors ; stick beds ; ves-
tery; good skin work-
arrow, short clubs ;
carrying in conical
sels of twined baskets,
ers ; twined baskets
round shields.
baskets with head-
pitched ; mush bas-
for vessels; seed gath-
band.
kets; fire outside.
ering, milling, and
cooking.
SM 95-
-42
658 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
Table ahoioing American environments in
Areaanfl physiography
Chief minerals, plants,
and animals.
Alimentation .
Dress and adornment.
.9. California and Oregon.
Short valleys isolated en-
No clay, siliceous and
Diet of fish, meat,acorns,
Buckskin and grass-
closing rirers stocked
friable stone; fibrous
piuyon; mush; stone
fringed skirts,rohes.
with sea products.
plants, fruits, and
woods abundant ; fish,
moUusks, and game.
boiling.
and moccasins.
10. Pueblo region.
Arid mesas and canyons
Shales, clays, gems;
Maize, pulse, melons.
Tawed skin and wo-
among mountains; ir-
mesquite, yucca,
little meat ; griddle
ven garments; for-
rigable lands.
agave, oak; deer, rab-
and cooking pot.
merly rabbit robes,
bit, antelope, coyote.
^
feathers and paint;
puma.
no tattooing.
11, Middle America.
Mountains and table-
Friable stone, obsidian,
Maize ground, frijoles.
Woven and bark gar-
lands, wet and dry sea-
jade-liko stone, silver
griddle cookiu g ;
ments, sandals of
son, isothonn 82° to
yucca, agave, cotton.
pulque, mescal, cacao.
twine, hats, feather
59° r.; vertical cli
maize,beans, peppers,
iguana.
work, labret.s.
mate zones.
fish, birds.
I?. Iilttoral and Intvlar
Americas.
Perpetual summer ; no
Granularstone.no chip-
Fish and moUusk, ca-
Little clothing, bark
snow; mountains and
ping; shells, great
cao, cassava, batatas.
cloth, featlicr work.
insular areas in deep.
canoe trees, cacao.
turtle, iguana, chlcha.
dear seas ; currents
manioc ; no great
snuff.
northwestward.
mammals; fishes,
birds, and mollusks.
13. Cordilleras of South
America.
Elevated plateaus, with
Volcanic rocks, gold
Bread of maize, pota-
Woven stufis of cot-
high mountains,
and silver; maize, po-
toes, fish, llama,
ton and wool ; san-
gorges, desert coast.
tatoes, cotton, coca,
guanaco, coca, chi
dals, poncho.
rainless, vertical cli-
cinchona, cochineal ;
cha, salt.
mate zones.
llama.
14. Andean Atlantic
Slope.
Orinoco, Amazon, Maian-
Minerals scarce; vege-
Fish, turtle, monkeys.
Bark cloth; feather
yon, Madeira, Napo,
tation reeking; ani-
Ijeccary, manatee.
ornaments, jewelry
etc. ; tropical prod-
mal life arboreal and
of teeth .
ucts ; well watered and
aquatic.
forested.
15. Eastern Brazil.
Tropical ; elevated table-
Friable stone, clay ; for-
Some maize and cassava.
Cotton, bark cloth,
lands between low
ests, palm trees, hard-
but chiefly on natural
scanty clothing ;
sierras ; forested ;
woods; mollusks and
products of the soil;
labrets.
rivers full of cataracts.
fish.
roasting and boiling.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 659
associatio7i xoitli ahoriginal industries — Continued.
House and house life.
Insignificant shelters,
some under ground;
no order in camiis;
sliellheaps.granaries;
fire in doors.
Under ground, crater,
cave, cavato, c 1 i if,
lijesa, and lowland
pueblos ; ladders ; fur-
niture and utensils of
clay and textiles ;
ovena and open fire.
Thatched and daubed
hut, cut- stone build-
ings and temples,
hammocks, granaries.
Thatched huts, often
daubed or on posts;
hammocks ; no stor-
age; chair.s from sin-
gle blo(;k.
Fortified villages;
thatched huta; bed
on the ground ; clay
dishes; open fire;
llama, dung fuel.
Wooden houses, thatch-
ed; sleeping bunks,
couvade.
Manufactures.
Excellent stone chip-
ping; composite mor-
tars ; seven styles of
basketry ; twine, nets.
Polishing and boring
stone; smooth, paint-
ed pottery ; basketry
five kinds, cloth ; wall
building; irrigation.
Stone hammering and
chiseling, gem cut-
ting, grotes<ine and
painted pottery, pa-
per, bark cloth; irri-
gation canals.
No chipping; excellent
carved and polished
yokes, zemis, etc. ; red
pottery, stamped ;
shellwork and wood
carving.
Hammered stone; huge
buildiugs, little carv-
ed; metallurgy; pot-
tery modeled; diago-
nal weaving, embroi-
dery, o[uipu.
Work in wood with
tools of teeth, bone,
^and shell.
Irainenso huts and slie'i- j Pottery, diagonal weav-
ters, hammocks, cen- I ing, agriculture; on
tral fire, shell heaps. the waters extensive
I fishing.
Hunting, fishing, war.
Sinew-lined bowandex-
(luisite arrows, fish
spears, slat armor,
traps.
Bows and arrows rude ;
throwing clubs; nets
for birds and rabbits ;
spears and axes.
Locomotion and trans-
portation.
Poor boats, rafts ; no
snowshoes ; conical
carrying Ij a s k e 1 3
with headband.
On foot only ; carrying
with headband and
toting with head-
ring ; sandals and
moccasins.
Atlatl and spear, bladed j Dugouts, reed floats.
clubs, obsidian dag-
gers, spears, slings ;
bows.
Clubs, throwing sticks,
sharks' teeth, sword
clubs, spears, toma-
hawk, or celt in
pierced handle.
Sling, club with or with-
out stone or metal
head, saber of hard-
wood.
Blowtube, poisoned ar-
rows, square sec-
tioned bow, dried
heads, shields, trident
lances, drum signals.
professional carriers
using headband and
breastband, wearing
sandals.
On foot; aandals of
textile; dugout ca-
noes; headband for
carrying.
Afoot; log and reed
balsas; carrying on
men and llamas ; sus-
pension bridges;
couriers.
Afoot little ; canoes of
bark ; headband in
carrying.
Bounded bows, deco- [ Travel afoot; canoes
rated ; barbed and
bladed arrows.
and house boats.
660 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
Table showing American environments in
Area and physiography
Chief minerals, plants,
and animals.
Alimentation.
Dress and adornment.
16. Mato Grosso, Ceiitral
South America.
Hot, alluvial ; upper
Pew minerals ; bone and
Maize, cassava, yams,
Little; pretty feath-
waters iu torrents.
shell ; palm, hard-
beans, turtle eggs.
ers and teeth ;
wood, reed, gourd,
fish, smoking, roast-
masks, nose orna-
cotton; turtles, plum-
ing, cooking pot.
ments ; no bark
age birds, monkeys.
cloth.
17. Argentina and Pata-
gonia.
Monotonous pampas.
Pampas grasses; huan-
Koots, some fish and
Tur moccasins, huan-
grassy plains to Weak
aco; rhea.
sea products ; flesh of
aco robes, woven
wastes south ; treeless.
ostrich and hnanaco;
open roasting with
grass fuel.
blankets.
18. Fuegian.
Keck Islands ; precipi-
Siliceous stone ; rushes,
Sea animals, verte-
Scanty; skin of seal,
tous; cold and wet;
beech, marine fauna,
brate and inverte-
etc., for wind-break ;
55° south.
birds, dogs ; few mam-
brate; fungi; no stor-
l)aint and adorn-
mals.
age ; open fire.
ment.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 661
association with aboriginal industries — Continued.
House aod hou.se life.
Manufactures.
Hunting, fl.shing, war.
Locomotion and trans-
l)ortation.
Open shelters, palin
Tools of shell, hone, and
Mixed kinds of how
Barefooted ; h e a d-
huts and roofs; liam-
teeth ; diagonal weav-
and arrow, throwing
band and frame for
mocks ; open fire,
ing; pottery, agricul-
stick, cluhs;ax; fish
c a r r y i n g ; wood
gourd and clay uten-
ture; graters; sand
poison.
skins for boats.
sils.
painting.
Skin tolderias or awn-
No pottery, no stone
Bolas; spear, liand
Tiaveling afoot and
ings, open fire, grass
working; weaving.
noose.
on horse.
fuel, cradle frames.
skin dressing, ostrich-
skin heds.
sinew thread.
Miserahle huts of wat-
Little stone art; hark.
Throwing stones, poor
Section canoes of
tling covered with
hone, textile work,
bows and arrows,
beech bark for port-
grass; no furniture;
shell knife.
slings, barbed har-
age; canoe .sled.
fire made with py-
l)oons, limpet stick,
rites.
nets.
662 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
THE COMPREHENSIVE ENVIRONMENT,
In closing, I desire to call your special attention to the ever increas-
ing size and variety and comprehensiveness of the term environment
as culture has advanced. At first, in ^vhat may be called the centrifu-
gal condition of human evolution, the execution of limited environments
went hand in hand with the production of races and varieties of i)eo-
ples and languages and typical groups of industries. The overstepping
of the boundaries of these in the course of time produced many
changes of the jirofoundest significance in men and their activities.
First, The increase of knowledge was accompanied with the refine-
ment, the intensifying, and the multiplication of desires and the means
of gratifying them.
Second, These demanded longer journeys and the perfection of
machinery; changes in commerce and the ministers of enjoymeDt,
Third. They demanded modification and increase of cooperative
forces, of language, of law, of knowledge and intelligence.
Fourth, Growing by what it fed upon, these irresistible tendencies
seized the whole earth, and henceforth it was one oikoumene, one
enclave, one environment,
ENVIRONMENT THE OCCASION NOT THE CAUSE OF INDUSTRIES.
From one i)oint of view it would appear that all mankind and all arts
are the outright product of this cunning environment. But a sober
view, while it gives to the latter all deserved encomium beholds in the
ingenious human creature the true source of all arts, I do not know
a better proof of this than the fact that the withholding or the conceal-
ing of gifts by nature acts as a stimulus to ingenuity. Take, for exam-
ple, the bow. There are regions where the wood for this implement is
perfect, as in South America, or the Iiard-wood forests of Eastern
United States, Here the very embarrassment of riches lead men to be
satisfied with a very poorly made bow,
Now, the characteristics of a good bow are rigidity aiul elasticity.
When our ingenious friend, the Indian, climbed the eastern slopes of the
Rocky Mountains, away from the hard -wood forests, he invoked the mam-
mals to yield the sinew from the leg or the scapula and with this he
glues an elastic back upon his poor implement, or unites two or three
horns so as to get his effect, the middle piece giving the columnar resis-
tance, the wings putting to flight the arrow. By and by you approach
the Hyperborean man, you ask him how he is going to have a bow.
He tells you that he is in the current of progressive culture whose law
is "the poorer the environment the greater the ingenuity." It is true
that he has only brittle driftwood, that glue will not hold in his cold
and daraj) clime, and that materials for arrows are scarce. The result
of this is the sinew-backed bow and the harpoon arrow, together the
most complicated and ingenious device ever contrived by savage mind.
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 663
The bow wood has one virtue, that of rigidity. By an ingenious wrap-
ping of hundreds of feet of line sinew thread or braid from end to end
along the back with half hitches on the limbs, at every danger-point
the virtue of elasticity is added and you have one of the most quickly
responsive implements in the world. The arrow is quite as cleverly
conceived, for it pierces its victim, acts as a drag or log to impede its
progress and by its feather as a signal to the hunter in following his
victim.
I am sure I should weary you if I should undertake to repeat this
process of thought through the endless varieties of architecture, cook-
ing, living, dressing, manufacturing, and going about. The story is
the same. If men waut houses, stoves, furniture, clothing, tools, power,
or carriages or boats, they invent them, spite of environment, or rather
by knowing and mastering the environment. As the size and shape of
a cast is conditioned by the mold, not caused by it, industries are
molded in the environment.
ALL ARE NOT IN THE CURRENTS OF CULTURE.
And now, in thanking you for your patience, let me say that in our
comprehensive epoch, when all sunshine and all lands, and all winds,
and all streams, and all terrestrial phenomena, and all history form the
single and organized environment of every mind, it depends on each
nation and each individual to say how much it or he will enter into the
conscious occupation of this estate. Here in the nation's capital you
may find men and women who can not read or perform any skilled
labor whatever, who are the survivals of long past ages of ignorance
and inexperience, who are only in the eddies of culture — in the zone of
calms. Here also are the great minds of the world in touch with all
culture. Between the two extremes are we, each and all, and I should
be untrue to you if I did not implore each one before me to strive to be
in the moving current as much as possible. We are the heirs of the
ages and do not desire to be their prodigal son.
DUTIES OP THE FRIENDS OF TECHNOGRAPHIC SCIENCE.
When we turn our eyes toward that wonderful piece of architecture
and sculi)ture called the earth, we need not ask in what laboratory it
was executed. Time and Law were the workmen. The hills are almost
as old as the earth, the streams of water are as old as the lulls, the con-
tours and coast lines are more ancient than man. All the forms of
physiographic and vital existence are open for our study. The ground,
the waters, and the air have been associated in the production of the
earth as we now have it. More than all else the earth is the "heir of
all the ages."
I need not tell a company of educated students that the living body
of man is the inheritor ot all general biological laws. To acquaint
ourselves with these laws and to obey them is half the battle of life.
664 INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES.
Now, few of us liave learned tLis lesson and none of us profit by it.
In tLat perfect day that is to come the heir of all the ages will look
upon every indulgence that is fatal to life and to iuU intellectual activity
as a sin and a crime against humanity akin to maiming and murder.
But there are higher laws of existence and the ages have richer
treasures than gravity and physics and chemistry and biology.
A great philosopher of the past tells us that the spiritual life and
the conquest of the earth are better than the owuershi]) of the earth.
This is what Tennyson meant by the ages of which you are the heir.
The substitution of beast, Avater, steam, and electric power for mere bod-
ily power; the substitution of mechanical devices aud engineering for
the hands and the arms of men ; the development of literature, paint-
ing, lace work, engraving, sculpture, music, architecture, and land-
scape outof the natural sights and sounds of the world; the origination
and perfecting of language; the gradual organization of the family,
society, and government; the ever-improving explanation of the cos-
mos and ourselves called science and philosophy; the more ideal and
less grossly material unfolding of the spirit world and the divine life
within us are the inheritance of the present generation.
The heir of the ages is one who owns the ages. He is the master of
the ages, not their slave. Their lands and resources, their powers and
machines, their productions and commerce, their accumulations and
enjoyments are his to control. The heir of the ages is a master spirit.
He causes the fire to burn, he is not consumed by it; he causes the
waters to flow, he is not overwhelmed by them; he passes through
the deep, the deep can not enter him; he rides on the wings of the
wind; he harnesses the lightning to his chariot. He is now the realiza-
tion ot the myth of Orpheus, at whose touch the rapid rivers indeed
ceased to flow, the savage beasts of the forest forgot their wildness, and
the mountains moved to listen to his song. All nature in his presence
wore new charms. But the comparison does not stop there. This all-
conquering son of Apollo, stricken for the loss of his sensuous Eurydice,
Ijursued her to the under world. He was allowed to lead her thence
on the promise that he would not look back. But when he turned to
gaze on his lovely Eurydice she vanished forever from his sight. In
uncousolable grief he gave himself to melancholy and was torn to
pieces by dntnken Thracian women. They threw him into the Hebrus,
and it is said that its waters as they roll to the sea still whisper Eurj^d-
ice, Eurydice! And thus the heir of all the ages, like a prodigal bird,
perished in the electric light of his own i)assions.
There is a special sense in which this particular body of hearers are
the heirs of all the ages. It is as the children and the heirs of sci-
ence. Changing events and diversities of ambitions and interests will
bring other men to our side and drive them away again. But the stamp
of our intellectual kinship is upon us. Into our keeping must or ought
to fall her interests and her good name. You should ever be foremost
INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT UPON HUMAN INDUSTRIES. 665
in unselflsli devotion, in zeal tliat iooks for uo recompeuse, in love that
springs from intellectual maternity.
One by one or in groups tlie guardians of the i)ast are surrendering
their trusteeships. Today it is a great secretary or a genius among
discoverers who lays aside his pen ; to-morrow it is a brilliant inventor
or master mechanic; the next day it is a cunning hand that carries to
the dark chamber its j^encil or chisel which it can not will away; anon,
a generous patron of science lives uo more.
Now, who of all human beings should have a true and abiding inter-
est in the preservation of these honored careers? Whose hearts should
bleed when such men die"? Whose hearts should be glad when they
are honored, who in their unwritten wills gave and bequeathed to their
children and heirs to have and to hold so long as they live and to hand
down with accrued interest and betterments to their successors all true
knowledge, all skill acquired with infinite pains, all the harvest of
human industries that have been raised upon the generous and fertile
environment called earth?
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