William M. Davis, David Hannay and Otis T. Mason

“ However, looking over the whole field of North American achievement, architectural and non-architectural, composite and monolithic, the palm for boldness, magnitude of proportions and infinity of labour, must go to the sculptured mosaics of Yucatan. Maya architecture is the best remaining index of the art achievements of the American race. ”

“ The sword and military discipline supplied the only effective instruments of government. It would have been a miracle if the first generation of Mexican and South American history had not been anarchical. And though in recent years Spanish America has seemingly settled down, and republican institutions have followed upon long periods of continual revolution, yet over the American continent as a whole there is an overwhelming predominance, material and intellectual, of the communities of English speech and politically of English origin. ”

“ This vast extension of the area of independence in America could not but have its proportionate effect on the general balance of power among nations. So long as Spain retained her colonies on the mainland, while England held Canada, and the English, Dutch and French had possessions in Guiana, the New World must have remained in political dependence on the Old. When the Spanish colonies secured effective independence, and even before their freedom was formally recognized, foreign sovereignty became at once the exception in America. ”

“ On the one hand are the United States and Canada. On the other are all the states formed out of the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal. The states of the American Union are non-tropical, adapted to the development of European races, not mixed with Indian blood, and possessed by long inheritance of the machinery needed for the successful conduct of self-government. They grew during the 19th century in population and wealth at a rate that placed them far ahead of the Spanish and Portuguese states, which in the year 1800 were the richer and the more populous. ”

“ Europe is still possessed of some measure of sovereign power in the New World, in Canada, in Guiana and in the West Indian islands. But Canada is bound only by a voluntary allegiance, Guiana is unimportant, and in the West Indian islands, where the independence of Hayti and the loss of Cuba and Porto Rico by Spain have diminished the European sphere, European dominion is only a survival of the colonial epoch. America, North and South, does form a separate system. ”

“ The peoples of the thirteen states which had secured emancipation from British sovereignty were wisely intent on framing their own Federal Union, and in taking effective possession of the vast territories in the Ohio region and beyond the Mississippi. But their example worked. Their independence tempted, their prosperity stimulated. From the freedom of the United States came the revolt of Spanish America, and the grant by Great Britain to Canada of the amplest rights of self-government. ”

“ The universal reliance on animal life stimulated the study of the animal kingdom. Everywhere there were names for a large number of species; industries and fine arts were developed through animal substances. Society was organized in most cases on animal clans, and religion was largely zoomorphic. The hunting tribes knew well the nature and habits of animals, their anatomy, their migrations, and could interpret their voices. Out of this practical knowledge, coupled with the belief in personeity, grew a folk-lore so vast that if it were written down the world would not contain the books. ”

“ The significance of these great events in the general history of America is that from 1783 onwards there was, in the New World, an autonomous community not wholly unified at once, nor without strife, but self-governing and self-subsisting, in entire separation from European control. ”

“ They inherited no machinery of self-government. Townships governed by close corporations, and all embedded in the despotic power of the crown, presented none of the elements out of which a commonwealth could be formed. It was inevitable that in the early stages of their history, the so-called Latin communities should fall under the control of “the single person,” and no less inevitable that he should be a soldier. ”

“ The concepts on which the peoples of the Old World have been classified, such as stature, colour, skeletal measurements, nationality, and so on, cannot as yet be used in America with success. The only basis of division practicable is language, which must be kept separate in the mind from the others. However, before the conquest, in no Classification.other part of the globe did language tally so nearly with kinship. Marriage was exogamic among clans in a tribe, but practically, though not wholly endogamic as between tribes, wife and slave capture being common in places. ”

“ Since most American tribes lived upon flesh, the activities of life were associated with the animal world. These activities were not confined to the land, but had to do also with those littoral meadows where invertebrate and vertebrate marine animals fed in unlimited numbers. An account of savage Zootechny.life, therefore, includes the knowledge of the animal life of America and its distribution, regarding the continent, not only as a whole, but in those natural history provinces and migrations which governed and characterized the activities of the peoples. ”

“ Tribes that have changed residence have changed stature. The tallest statures are on the plains in both Americas. The mountains of the south-east and of the west reveal the shortest statures. The whole Mississippi valley was occupied by tall peoples. The Athapascans of New Mexico are of middle stature, the Pueblo peoples are short. The Shoshoni, Shahaptin and Salish tribes are of middle stature; on the coast of British Columbia, Puget Sound, in Oregon, and northern California, are the shortest of all the North Americans save the Eskimo, while among them, on the Columbia, are taller tribes. ”

“ To the south, the English, French and Dutch, though often in rivalry with one another, combined to break in on the monopoly of the Spaniards. They turned the maxim that “there is no peace beyond the line” against its inventors. They invaded the West Indies, seized one island after another, and formed the freebooting communities known as the Brethren of the Coast and the Buccaneers (q.v) . After the renewal of the war between Spain and Holland in 1621, the Dutch invaded the Portuguese colony of Brazil, and seized Bahia. ”

“ Great Britain and the United States were, indeed, not in complete agreement as to the legitimacy of fresh colonial settlements in the New World, but they were practically resolved that nobody should make any new settlements except themselves. ”

“ Institutions in Europe and America have gathered abundant material for an intelligent comprehension of American Indian sociology. The British Association had a committee reporting during many years on the tribes of north-west Canada. The American Museum in New York has prepared a series of monographs on the tribes of the North Pacific Sociology.coast, of northern Mexico, and of the Cordilleras of South America. The reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington cover the Eskimo, east and west, and all the tribes of the United States. ”

“ The hegemony of the Aztecs, who dominated the other tribes from the central valley of Mexico, was oppressive. Cortes, the most accomplished and statesmanlike of the Spanish conquerors, raised the subject peoples against them. His conquest was effected by 1521. His example stimulated the settlers at Panama, who had heard of a great people owning vast quantities of gold to the south of them. Between 1524 and 1535 Francisco Pizarro (q.v.) and Diego de Almagro had completed the conquest of Peru, which was followed, however, by a long period of strife among the Spaniards, and of rebellions. ”

“ In the culture areas the environment gave specific characters to the religion. In the Arctic province the overpowering influence of meteorological phenomena manifested itself both in the doctrine of shades and in their shamanistic practices. The raven created the world. The Déné (Tinneh) myths resembled those of the Eskimo, and all the hunting tribes of eastern Canada and United States and the Mississippi valley have a mythology based upon their zootechny and their totemism. ”

“ Algonquin-Iroquois tribes made creditable ware in Canada and eastern United States. Muskhogean tribes were potters, but Siouan tribes, as a rule, in all the Mississippi drainage were not. In their area, however, dwelt clay-working tribes, and the Mandans had the art. Moreover, the mound-builders in the eastern half of this vast plain, being sedentary, were excellent potters. The efflorescence of aboriginal pottery is to be found in the Pueblo region of south-western United States, in Mexico, Central America, Caribbean Islands, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and restricted areas of eastern Brazil. ”

“ In South America the shell-heaps, of enormous size, are supposed to show that the animals have undergone changes in size and that such vast masses require untold ages to accumulate. The first is a biological problem. As for the second, the elements of savage voracity and wastefulness, of uncertainty as to cubical contents on uneven surface, and of the number of mouths to fill, make it hazardous to construct a chronological table on a shell-heap. Hudson’s village sites in Patagonia contain pottery, and that brings them all into the territory of Indian archaeology. ”

“ The aesthetic arts of the American aborigines cannot be studied apart from their languages, industries, social organizations, lore and worships. Art was limited most of all by poverty in technical appliances. There were just as good materials and inspirations, but what could the best of them do without metal tools? One and all skilful to a surpassing Fine art.degree—weavers, embroiderers, potters, painters, engravers, carvers, sculptors and jewelers,—they were wearied by drudgery and overpowered by a never-absent, weird and grotesque theology. ”

“ Thus regarded, it becomes reasonable to suppose that North and South America have in a broad way been developed under a succession of somewhat similar strains in the earth’s crust, and that they are, in so far, favourable witnesses to the theory that there is something individual in the plan of continental growth. ”

“ Remembering the organization of the tribe everywhere prevalent, it is not difficult to understand that the army, or horde, that stands for the idea, was assembled on the clan basis. The number of men arrayed under one banner, the time during which they might cohere, the distances from home they could march, their ability to hold permanently what they had gained, together form an excellent metric scale of the culture grade in the several American provinces, and nowhere, even in the most favoured, is this mark high. ”

“ The mound builders, Pueblo tribes, middle Americans and Peruvians, were potters of many schools; gorgeous colour fascinated the Amazonians, the Patagonians delighted in skins, and even the Fuegians saw beauty in the pretty snail shells of their desolate island shores. Of the Mexican and Central American sculpture and architecture a competent judge says that Yucatan and the southern states of Mexico are not rich in sculptures, apart from architecture ”

“ The first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river Plate at Buenos Aires dates from 1580. In its main lines the Spanish conquest was complete by 1550. What the Spaniards had then overrun from Mexico to Chile is still Spanish America. Brazil, after a period of exploration which began in 1510, was gradually settled by the Portuguese, though its bounds on the south remained a subject of dispute with the Spaniards till the 18th century. ”

“ One of the most interesting topics of study is the trails along which the seasonal and annual migrations of tribes occurred, becoming in Peru the paved road, with suspension bridges and wayside inns, or tambos. In Mexico, and in Peru especially, the human back was utilized to its utmost extent, and in most parts of America harness adapted for carrying was made and frequently decorated with the best art. In the Mexican codices pictures of men and women carrying are plentiful. ”

“ Doorways were usually square, but corbelled archways and gateways surmounted with sculptures were not uncommon. Ornamentation was in carving and in colour, the latter far more effectively used than in Middle America. A glance at the exquisite textiles reveals at once the inspiration of mural decorations. The most prolific source of Peruvian relics is the sepulchres or huacas, the same materials being used in their construction as in building the houses. ”

“ The Spanish and Portuguese states of America are mainly tropical, and therefore ill adapted to the health of a white race. Their population is divided between a white minority, among whom there are to be found strains of Indian blood, and a coloured majority, sometimes docile and industrious, sometimes mere savages. ”

“ Museums of aboriginal culture are without number; in Washington the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology and the American Anthropologist issue publications on every division of the subject, lists of their publications and general bibliographies. ”

“ The study of mechanics involves materials, tools, processes and products. No iron tools existed in America before the invasion of the whites. Mineral, vegetable and animal substances, soft and hard, were wrought into the supply of wants by means of tools and apparatus of stone, wood and Aboriginal mechanics.bone—tools for cutting, or edged tools; tools for abrading and smoothing the surfaces of substances, like planes, rasps and sand-paper; tools for striking, that is, pounding for the sake of pounding, or for crushing and fracturing violently ”