Page:The American Indian.djvu/257

Rh all the traits of the typical group. For example, the Mandan made some use of tipis, hunted buffalo, used the travois, worked in skins and rawhide, and armed and clothed themselves like the typical Plains tribes; but also added other traits, pottery, basketry, agriculture, and earth-lodges. Thus we see that while in this area there are marked culture differences, the traits constituting these differences tend to be typical of other areas; hence, we are quite justified in taking the cultures of the central group as the type for the area as a whole.

2. Plateau Area. The Plateau area joins the Plains on the west. It is far less uniform in its topography, the south being a veritable desert while the north is moist and fertile. To add to the difficulties in systematically characterizing this culture, arising from lack of geographical unity, is the want of definite information for many important tribes. Our readily available sources are Teit's Thompson, Shuswap, and Lillooet; Spinden's Nez Percé; and Lowie's Northern Shoshone; but there is also an excellent summary of the miscellaneous historical information by Lewis. In a general way, these intense tribal studies give us the cultural nuclei of as many groups, the Interior Salish, the Shahaptian, and the Shoshoni. Of these, the Salish seem the typical group, because both the Nez Percé and the Shoshoni show marked Plains traits. It is also the largest, having sixteen or more dialectic divisions and considerable territorial extent. Of these the Thompson, Shuswap, Okanagan (Colville, Nespelim, Sanpoil, Senijixtia), and Lillooet seem to be the most typical. The material traits may be summarized as: extensive use of salmon, deer, roots (especially camas), and berries; the use of a handled digging-stick; cooking with hot stones in holes and baskets; the pulverization of dried salmon and roots for storage; winter houses, semi-subterranean, a circular pit with a conical roof and smoke hole entrance; summer houses; movable or transient, mat or rush-covered tents and the lean-to, double and single; the dog sometimes used as a pack animal; water transportation weakly developed, crude dug-outs and bark canoes being used; pottery not known; basketry