Page:The American Indian.djvu/405

Rh social habits that resist change. Then the successful adjustment of one tribe to a given locality will be utilized by neighbors to the extension of the type, and to the inhibition of new inventions, or adjustments. Therefore, the origin of a culture center seems due to ethnic factors more than to geographical ones. The location of these centers is largely a matter of historic accident, but once located and the adjustments made, the stability of the environment doubtless tends to hold each particular type of culture to its initial locality, even in the face of many changes in blood and language.

As to actual movements of tribes from one center to the other, we have no good historical examples. Our discussion of migrations has shown that the tendency was to move about in the same geographical area, yet these wanderings must have sometimes led to other culture areas. The most probable case of this kind is to be found in the history of the Cheyenne Indians. According to Mooney, they left Minnesota, where they had an intermediate Plains culture and joined the typical tribes at the center, where, in the course of a century, they became typical in culture. On linguistic grounds, we assume that the Blackfoot and Arapaho did the same at a much earlier date. In California and the Southwest we see Athapascan-speaking remnants who are most likely immigrants from the North, yet this does not show itself in their culture. The fact seems to be that these migrating units were not strong enough to prevent their people from following the lead of neighbors wherever they happened to tarry. It is clear, however, that such migrations must have been but occasional and exceptional, for, unless the distinctive tribes remained in force at the culture center, the type would have been destroyed. Hence, we must assume very great stability of these centers and a fair degree of stability for the New World as a whole.

Now reverting to the correlations of language, culture, and somatic type, we are prepared to see that while the environment does not produce the culture, it furnishes the medium in which it grows, and that when once rooted in a geographical area, culture tends to hold fast. The somatic type, while not