Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/178

166 Pacific, there are others which agree best with the routes far north. A remarkable piece of evidence pointed out by General Pitt-Rivers is the geographical distribution of the Tartar or composite bow, which in construction is unlike the long-bow, being made of several pieces spliced together, and which is bent backward to string it. This distinctly Asiatic form may be followed across the region of Behring Strait into America among the Esquimaux and northern Indians, so that it can hardly be doubted that its coming into America was by a northern line of migration. This important movement in culture may have taken place in remotely ancient times.

A brief account may now be given of the present state of information as to movements of civilization within the double continent of America. Conspicuous among these is what may be called the northward drift of civilization, which comes well into view in the evidence of botanists as to cultivated plants. Maize, though allied to, and probably genetically connected with, an Old World graminaceous family, is distinctly American, and is believed by De Candolle to have been brought into cultivation in Peru, whence it was carried from tribe to tribe up into the North. To see how closely the two continents are connected in civilization, one need only look at the distribution on both of maize, tobacco, and cacao. It is admitted as probable that from the Mexican and Central American region agriculture traveled northward, and became established among the native tribes. This direction may be clearly traced in a sketch of their agriculture, such as is given in Mr. Lucien Carr's paper on the "Mounds of the Mississippi Valley." The same staple cultivation passed on from place to place—maize, haricots, pumpkins, for food, and tobacco for luxury. Agriculture among the Indians of the Great Lakes is plainly seen to have been an imported craft by the way in which it had spread to some tribes but not to others. The distribution of the potter's art is similarly partial, some tribes making good earthen vessels, while others still boiled meat in its own skin with hot stones, so that it may well be supposed that the arts of growing corn and making the earthen pot to boil the hominy came together from the more civilized nations of the south. With this northward drift of civilization other facts harmonize. The researches of Buschmann, published by the Berlin Academy, show how Aztec words have become imbedded in the languages of Sonora, New Mexico, and up the western side of the continent, which could not have spread there without Mexican intercourse extending far northwest. This, indeed, has left many traces still discernible in the industrial and decorative arts of the Pueblo Indians. Along the courses of this northward drift of culture remain two remarkable series of structures probably connected with it. The casas grandes, the fortified communal barracks (if I may so call them) which provided house-room for hundreds of families, excited the astonishment of the early Spanish explorers, but are only beginning to be thoroughly described now that