to discover the source of this metal that Samuel Hearne 71 undertook his expeditions, which resulted in the discovery of the Coppermine River and its outflow into the Arctic Sea. The owner of the mining district on Lake Erie was a chief of the Fond du Lac tribe, and according to the number of his ancestors that he could name, his pedigree reached back to the beginning of the 12th century.

A German miner who had been director of one of these mines, states that the old Redskins loosened the rocks by firing piles of wood, and by saturating them with water, and from the blocks of metal obtained they separated pieces with stone hammers, and shaped them by cutting with flint knives and striking with hammers, "for the ancients were not acquainted with the process of smelting." This fact has, however, not been proved, at least as to Lake Superior; and, on the other hand, it is maintained that cast copper utensils have occasionally been found.72 There is, therefore, not the slightest necessity for refusing the credit of these mining achievements to the ancient Iroquois, in whose territory the famous copper mines were situated, or for referring them on very doubtful grounds to the Aztecs of Mexico. It is true that obsidian blades have been found in tombs eastward of the Mississippi, and even on Lake Ontario, and that this mineral can only have been procured from Mexico. But these pieces of obsidian are no better evidence of a migration of the Aztecs than the discovery of coins with Kufic inscriptions prove a visit of the Arabs to Iceland. Articles made of nephrite, which must have come from a great distance, and which dated from the reindeer period, were met with at Schussenried, and show that even then commerce must have been widely spread. If a close relation with Aztec culture is to be inferred from the discovery of obsidian blades in the United States, we might insist with equal justice on the influence of the ancient population of Poland on the French of the reindeer period, because horns of the Saiga antelope were excavated from the caves of Périgord. 73

1 Reise zum Eismeer, pp. 4 and 14.

Berlin, 1797.

72 Rau (Archiv für Anthropologie, 1871) has however again stated positively that the ancient inhabitants of the United States were not acquainted with the art of smelting.

73 See above, pp. 37 and 209.

The superiority of the civilization of the hunting tribes of the northern as compared with those of the southern continent is most clearly seen in their social organization. In the north, by comparisons of language, ethnographers have succeeded in uniting the tribes into nations, and in defining the territories occupied by these nations. In Brazil, Guayana, and Venezuela such a classification is unattainable, for in these countries, instead of nations there are merely bands, and artificial names have to be invented for the groups of hordes allied in language. In North America, on the contrary, the Algonkin nations lived in compact territories, into which the Iroquois had intruded on the western slope of the Alleghanies. These nations make their appearance in history when already united into confederations declaring war and peace, and making treaties; occasionally, although only for a short time all the hunting tribes were even leagued together in one great alliance against European oppressors. Certain international ordinances were likewise observed by all the tribes; as, for example, that peace should always prevail throughout the sacred territory of the Red Pipestone.

Lastly, and in our eyes of most importance, we notice among the North Americans the rudiments of a communication of ideas by means of symbolic writing. It is true these inscriptions were legible only to those who knew the meaning of the symbols, and their reference to a particular event, yet these records served to refresh the memory. South America, eastward of the Cordilleras, is destitute of such hopeful indications, and it is therefore indisputable that the inhabitants of the northern continent (independently of its civilized nations, to whom, however, the same observation may apply) had attained a far higher civilization than the inhabitants of South America. It is therefore necessary to ascertain the extent to which the physical features of the two countries have caused this unequal distribution of civilization.

All must recognize the great advantage enjoyed by North America in its closer vicinity of the Old World, so that plants, animals, and human beings which migrated across Behring's Straits, spread over the northern continent before reaching the southern. Just as at a later period the Eskimo immigrated from Asia, and as skill in traversing the sea spread from Kamtshatka

across the Aleutian Islands and the west coast of North America, a number of ideas and inventions made their way from Asia to the tribes of the northern continent. According to our theory that America was peopled from Asia by way of Behring's Straits, the northern continent must have been the earlier home of the Americans, from which South America was discovered as a New World; this must have been accomplished by the expulsion of weaker hordes who were driven from the northern half by stronger ones. The northern continent, as the earlier inhabited, was also more densely populated than the southern.

To the east of the Andes of the southern, and of the Cordilleras of the northern continent, the forest and steppes have not developed any very perceptible difference between their inhabitants. At the most it may be said that the Dahcotas, or Sioux, of the North American prairies, whose places of abode almost exactly coincide with the range of the bison, appear more barbarous than their neighbours eastward of the Mississippi, and from Cabeza de Vaca's experiences, it is quite evident that the aborigines of Texas, as well of Chihuahua as far as the Pacific watershed, were incomparably more degraded than even the Dahcotas.

But if we compare the social development of the various hunting tribes in the northern and southern continents, there is in both countries a sensible improvement as we approach the shores of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea; in other words, in South America, the nations who dwell more to the north, and in North America, the nations who dwell more to the south, are, on an average, the most civilized. The most barbarous tribes of South America, such as the Botocudos, Coroados, Puris, and Lenguas, all belong to the south of Brazil; but, on the Amazon, Spix and Martius met with great advances in the social condition. If we could fully trust the accounts of the first discoverers under Orellana, the upper course of this great river flowed by many populous villages, in which there were temples, and idols moving on wheels. Later visitors have, however, perceived no signs of such things, and even if they existed, it is not impossible that they belonged to tribes which had been expelled from the civilized empire of the Incas. To the north of the Amazon live the gentle Arawaks, among whom the woman already occupies an honourable posi

Primitive Civilization.

433

tion,74 and whose priests preserve the history of the tribes for the instruction of the young. Near them and among them, as far as the gulf which bears their name, are spread the Caribs, who irrigated their fields by artificial water-courses, marked off their plantations with cotton strings, and held fairs, in which salt took the place of money. Here, therefore, the outward state of human society constantly improves from south to north.

Conversely, in the northern continent, the southern neighbours of the rude Athabaskan tribes in the Hudson's Bay territory are the agricultural Algonkin nations, who live to the north of the Iroquois; these latter, again, are favourably distinguished by their mining works on Lake Erie, and by the careful arrangements of their fields in Michigan and Indiana, designated by archeologists as garden-beds; to their territory also belong remains of intrenched villages which are especially frequent and numerous on the Ohio. On the south, the nearest neighbours of the Iroquois were the socalled Appalachic nations, of whose condition the first account was given by Hernando de Soto's freebooting expedition. Among them the Spaniards came upon temples which seem to have been something superior to the so-called "medicine huts" of the northern Redskins. Their chiefs possessed far greater authority than among the other hunting tribes, and in South Carolina or Georgia the government was actually in the hands of a woman, with whom the Spaniards negotiated as with a monarch, a circumstance which clearly proves that the chieftancy had become hereditary in families, and that the women were no longer employed as domestic beasts of burden. Among the Seminoles of Florida, the Spaniards found fixed rafts used as bridges across the lagunes; and real bridges 75 are mentioned in the land of Appalache, that is to say, in Georgia or South Carolina. It is therefore not sur

prising that remains of old roads have been discovered in Florida, for the existence of bridges implies a frequent traffic across the country.

Further westward on the Ohio, the remains of ancient circular

74 Richard Schomburgk, Reisen in Britisch-Guiana, vol. i. p. 227 and vol. ii. p. 314.

Herrera, Indias occidentales.

fortifications of Indian villages lie very closely together. It has been somewhat hastily inferred that the Ohio valley was thickly peopled by an agricultural population, who were extirpated by barbarous hunting tribes before the arrival of Europeans. But other archæologists have suggested that simple natives frequently abandon their abodes, sometimes from superstition, and sometimes on account of an outbreak of disease.76 Hence, although all the old intrenched villages already discovered were certainly not inhabited at the same time, it is, nevertheless, manifest that the present southern states of the American Union were formerly far more densely peopled than at the time when the European emigrants took possession of their territories; that is to say, as densely peopled as when visited by the Spaniards under Hernando de Soto in 1540. At that time there were not only villages but true towns. Of these the largest seems to have been Mavila, the present Mobile. It was surrounded by a wooden wall plastered with clay, and protected by towers, probably mere scaffoldings with breastworks. Within the wall stood eighty large houses or, rather, barrack-like edifices, each supposed to have afforded shelter to one thousand persons, and from the flat roofs or balconies of which missiles were showered down upon the Spaniards. Hernando de Soto with his advanced guard was obliged to endure a conflict of nine hours, and the battle was not decided until the arrival of the main body, then still six hundred strong. The Spanish accounts speak of 11,000 enemies destroyed by fire and sword, while the conquerors lost forty-five horses and eighty-three soldiers, either on the spot or in consequence of their wounds. Where places so populous as Mavila had already sprung up, there can have been no hunting life, for tribes living by the chase never built cities.

If we could thus assure ourselves that the population of both continents became more dense towards the shores of the American Mediterranean, that is to say, the double bay of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, and that these had half renounced the hunter's life, we must be persuaded that the favourable influence of a mild climate upon agricultural pursuits, combined

76 P. Gumilla, El Orinoco ilustrado.