PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I. THE APPROACHES TO AMERICA..............................................................................1

CHAPTER II. THE FORM OF THE CONTINENT .............................................................................11

CHAPTER III. THE GEOGRAPHIC PROVINCES OF NORTH AMERICA....................................15

CHAPTER IV. THE GARMENT OF VEGETATION .........................................................................24

CHAPTER V. THE RED MAN IN AMERICA ....................................................................................32

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ................................................................................................................45

In writing this book the author has aimed first to present in readable form the main facts about the

geographical environment of American history. Many important facts have been omitted or have been

touched upon only lightly because they are generally familiar. On the other hand, special stress has been laid

on certain broad phases of geography which are comparatively unfamiliar. One of these is the similarity of

form between the Old World and the New, and between North and South America; another is the distribution

of indigenous types of vegetation in North America; and a third is the relation of climate to health and

energy. In addition to these subjects, the influence of geographical conditions upon the life of the primitive

Indians has been emphasized. This factor is especially important because people without iron tools and beasts

of burden, and without any cereal crops except corn, must respond to their environment very differently from

civilized people of today. Limits of space and the desire to make this book readable have led to the omission

of the detailed proof of some of the conclusions here set forth. The special student will recognize such cases

and will not judge them until he has read the author's fuller statements elsewhere. The general reader, for

whom this book is designed, will be thankful for the omission of such purely technical details.

Across the twilight lawn at Hampton Institute straggles a group of sturdy young men with copperhued

complexions. Their day has been devoted to farming, carpentry, blacksmithing, or some other trade. Their

evening will be given to study. Those silent dignified Indians with straight black hair and broad, strong

features are training their hands and minds in the hope that some day they may stand beside the white man as

equals. Behind them, laughing gayly and chattering as if without a care in the world, comes a larger group of

kinkyhaired, thicklipped youths with black skins and African features. They, too, have been working with

the hands to train the mind. Those two diverse races, red and black, sit down together in a classroom, and to

them comes another race. The faces that were expressionless or merely mirthful a minute ago light up with

serious interest as the teacher comes into the room. She stands there a slender, goldenhaired, blueeyed

AngloSaxon girl just out of collegea mere child compared with the score of swarthy, stalwart men as old

as herself who sit before her. Her mobile features seem to mirror a hundred thoughts while their impassive

faces are moved by only one. Her quick speech almost trips in its eagerness not to waste the short, precious

hour. Only a strong effort holds her back while she waits for the slow answers of the young men whom she

drills over and over again in simple problems of arithmetic. The class and the teacher are an epitome of

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another. America is the

last great goal of these migrations. He who would understand its history must know its mountains and plains,

its climate, its products, and its relation to the sea and to other parts of the world. He must know more than

this, however, for he must appreciate how various environments alter man's energy and capacity and give his

character a slant in one direction or another. He must also know the paths by which the inhabitants have

reached their present homes, for the influence of former environments upon them may be more important

than their immediate surroundings. In fact, the history of North America has been perhaps more profoundly

influenced by man's inheritance from his past homes than by the physical features of his present home. It is

indeed of vast importance that trade can move freely through such natural channels as New York Harbor, the

Mohawk Valley, and the Great Lakes. It is equally important that the eastern highlands of the United States

are full of the world's finest coal, while the central plains raise some of the world's most lavish crops. Yet it is

probably even more important that because of his inheritance from a remote ancestral environment man is

energetic, inventive, and longlived in certain parts of the American continent, while elsewhere he has not

the strength and mental vigor to maintain even the degree of civilization to which he seems to have risen.

Three streams of migration have mainly determined the history of America. One was an ancient and

comparatively insignificant stream from Asia. It brought the Indian to the two great continents which the

white man has now practically wrested from him. A second and later stream was the great tide which rolled

in from Europe. It is as different from the other as West is from East. Thus far it has not wholly obliterated

the native people, for between the southern border of the United States on the one hand, and the northern

borders of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay on the other, the vast proportion of the blood is still Indian. The

European tide may in time dominate even this region, but for centuries to come the poor, disinherited Indians

will continue to form the bulk of the population. The third stream flowed from Africa and was as different

The differences between one and another of these three streams of population and the antagonisms which

they have involved have greatly colored American history. The Indian, the European, and the Negro

apparently differ not only in outward appearance but in the much more important matter of mentality.

According to Brinton* the average brain capacity of Parisians, including adults of both sexes, is 1448 cubic

centimeters. That of the American Indian is 1376, and that of the Negro 1344 cubic centimeters. With this

difference in size there appears to be a corresponding difference in function. Thus far not enough accurate

tests have been made upon Indians to enable us to draw reliable conclusions. The Negro, however, has been

tested on an extensive scale. The results seem to leave little doubt that there are real and measurable

differences in the mental powers of races, just as we know to be the case among individuals. The matter is so

important that we may well dwell on it a moment before turning to the cause of the differences in the three

streams of American immigrants. If there is a measurable difference between the inherent brain power of the

white race and the black, it is practically certain that there are also measurable differences between the white

Numerous tests indicate that in the lower mental powers there is no great difference between the black and

the white. In physical reactions one is as quick as the other. In the capacity of the senses and in the power to

perceive and to discriminate between different kinds of objects there is also practical equality. When it comes

to the higher faculties, however, such as judgment, inventiveness, and the power of organization, a difference

begins to be apparent. These, as Ferguson* says, are the traits that "divide mankind into the able and the

mediocre, the brilliant and the dull, and they determine the progress of civilization more directly than do the

simple fundamental powers which man has in common with the lower animals." On the basis of the most

exhaustive study yet made, Ferguson believes that, apart from all differences due to home training and

environment, the average intellectual power of the colored people of this country is only about threefourths

as great as that of white persons of the same amount of training. He believes it probable, indeed, that this

estimate is too high rather than too low. As to the Indian, his past achievements and present condition

indicate that intellectually he stands between the white man and the Negro in about the position that would be

expected from the capacity of his brain. If this is so, the mental differences in the three streams of migration

to America are fully as great as the outward and manifest physical differences and far more important.

Why does the American Indian differ from the Negro, and the European from both? This is a question on

which we can only speculate. But we shall find it profitable to study the paths by which these diverse races

found their way to America from man's primeval home. According to the now almost universally accepted

theory, all the races of mankind had a common origin. But where did man make the change from a

fourhanded, treedwelling little ape to a much larger, upright creature with two hands and two feet? It is a

mistake to suppose that because he is hairless he must have originated in a warm climate. In fact quite the

opposite seems to be the case, for apparently he lost his hair because he took to wearing the skins of slain

beasts in order that he might have not only his own hair but that of other animals as a protection from the

In our search for the startingplace of man's slow migration to America our first step should be to ascertain

what responses to physical environment are common to all men. If we find that all men live and thrive best

under certain climatic conditions, it is fair to assume that those conditions prevailed in man's original home,

and this conclusion will enable us to cast out of the reckoning the regions where they do not prevail. A study

of the relations of millions of deaths to weather conditions indicates that the white race is physically at its

best when the average temperature for night and day ranges from about 50 to 73 degrees F. and when the air

is neither extremely moist nor extremely dry. In addition to these conditions there must be not only seasonal

changes but frequent changes from day to day. Such changes are possible only where there is a distinct winter

and where storms are of frequent occurrence. The best climate is, therefore, one where the temperature ranges

from not much below the freezingpoint at night in winter to about 80 degrees F. by day in summer, and

Surprising as it may seem, this study indicates that similar conditions are best for all sorts of races. Finns

from the Arctic Circle and Italians of sunny Sicily have the best health and greatest energy under practically

the same conditions; so too with Frenchmen, Japanese, and Americans. Most surprising of all, the African

black man in the United States is likewise at his best in essentially the same kind of weather that is most

favorable for his white fellowcitizens, and for Finns, Italians, and other races. For the red race, no exact

figures are available, but general observation of the Indian's health and activity suggests that in this respect he

For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go

back to the very beginning of the human race. Such a characteristic must have become firmly fixed in the

human constitution before primitive man became divided into races, or at least before any of the races had

left their original home and started on their long journey to America. On the way to this continent one race

took on a dark reddish or brownish hue and its hair grew straight and black; another became black skinned

and crinklyhaired, while a third developed a white skin and wavy blonde hair. Yet throughout the thousands

of years which brought about these changes, all the races apparently retained the indelible constitutional

impress of the climate of their common birthplace. Man's physical adaptation to climate seems to be a

deepseated physiological fact like the uniformity of the temperature of the blood in all races. Just as a

change in the temperature of the blood brings distress to the individual, so a change of climate apparently

brings distress to a race. Again and again, to be sure, on the way to America, and under many other

circumstances, man has passed through the most adverse climates and has survived, but he has flourished and

Curiously enough man's body and his mind appear to differ in their climatic adaptations. Moreover, in this

respect the black race, and perhaps the red, appears to be diverse from the white. In America an investigation

of the marks of students at West Point and Annapolis indicates that the best mental work is done when the

temperature averages not much above 40 degrees F. for night and day together. Tests of school children in

Denmark point to a similar conclusion. On the other hand, daily tests of twentytwo Negroes at Hampton

Institute for sixteen months suggest that their mental ability may be greatest at a temperature only a little

lower than that which is best for the most efficient physical activity. No tests of this sort have ever been made

upon Indians, but such facts as the inventiveness of the Eskimo, the artistic development of the people of

northern British Columbia and southern Alaska, and the relatively high civilization of the cold regions of the

Peruvian plateau suggest that the Indian in this respect is more like the white race than the black. Perhaps

man's mental powers underwent their chief evolution after the various races had left the aboriginal home in

which the physical characteristics becamefixed. Thus the races, though alike in their physical response to

climate, may possibly be different in their mental response because they have approached America by

Before we can understand how man may have been modified on his way from his original home to America,

we must inquire as to the geographical situation of that home. Judging by the climate which mankind now

finds most favorable, the human race must have originated in the temperate regions of Europe, Asia, or North

America. We are not entirely without evidence to guide to a choice of one of the three continents. There is a

scarcity of indications of preglacial man in the New World and an abundance of such indications in the Old.

To be sure, several skulls found in America have been supposed to belong to a time before the last glacial

epoch. In every case, however, there has been something to throw doubt on the conclusion. For instance,

some human bones found at Vero in Florida in 1915 seem to be very old. Certain circumstances, however,

suggest that possibly they may not really belong to the layers of gravel in which they were discovered but

may have been inserted at some later time. In the Old World, on the contrary, no one doubts that many human

skulls and other parts of skeletons belong to the interglacial epoch preceding the last glacial epoch, while

some appear to date from still more remote periods. Therefore no matter at what date man may have come to

America, it seems clear that he existed in the Old World much earlier. This leaves us to choose between

Europe and Asia. The evidence points to central Asia as man's original home, for the general movement of

human migrations has been outward from that region and not inward. So, too, with the great families of

mammals, as we know from fossil remains. From the earliest geological times the vast interior of Asia has

been the great mother of the world, the source from which the most important families of living things have

Suppose, then, that we place in central Asia the primitive home of the thinskinned, hairless human race with

its adaptation to a highly variable climate with temperatures ranging from freezing to eighty degrees. Man

could not stay there forever. He was bound to spread to new regions, partly because of his innate migratory

tendency and partly because of Nature's stern urgency. Geologists are rapidly becoming convinced that the

mammals spread from their central Asian point of origin largely because of great variations in climate.* Such

variations have taken place on an enormous scale during geological times. They seem, indeed, to be one of

the most important factors in evolution. Since early man lived through the successive epochs of the glacial

period, he must have been subject to the urgency of vast climatic changes. During the half million years more

or less of his existence, cold, stormy, glacial epochs lasting tens of thousands of years have again and again

During the glacial epochs the interior of Asia was well watered and full of game which supplied the primitive

human hunters. With the advent of each interglacial epoch the rains diminished, grass and trees disappeared,

and the desert spread over enormous tracts. Both men and animals must have been driven to sore straits for

lack of food. Migration to better regions was the only recourse. Thus for hundreds of thousands of years there

appears to have been a constantly recurring outward push from the center of the world's greatest land mass.

That push, with the consequent overcrowding of other regions, seems to have been one of the chief forces

Among the primitive men who were pushed outward from the Asian deserts during a period of aridity, one

group migrated northeastward toward the Kamchatkan corner of Asia. Whether they reached Bering Sea and

the Kamchatkan shore before the next epoch of glaciation we do not know. Doubtless they moved slowly,

perhaps averaging only a few score or a hundred miles per generation, for that is generally the way with

migrations of primitive people advancing into unoccupied territory. Yet sometimes they may have moved

with comparative rapidity. I have seen a tribe of herdsmen in central Asia abandon its ancestral home and

start on a zigzag march of a thousand miles because of a great drought. The grass was so scanty that there

was not enough to support the animals. The tribe left a trail of blood, for wherever it moved it infringed upon

the rights of others and so with conflict was driven onward. In some such way the primitive wanderers were

kept in movement until at last they reached the bleak shores of the North Pacific. Even there

somethingperhaps sheer curiositystill urged them on. The green island across the bay may have been so

enticing that at last a raft of logs was knotted together with stout withes. Perhaps at first the men paddled

themselves across alone, but the hunting and fishing proved so good that at length they took the women and

children with them, and so advanced another step along the route toward America. At other times distress,

strife, or the search for game may have led the primitive nomads on and on along the coast until a day came

when the Asian home was left and the New World was entered. The route by which primitive man entered

America is important because it determined the surroundings among which the first Americans lived for

many generations. It has sometimes been thought that the red men came to America by way of the Kurile

Islands, Kamchatka, and the Aleutian Islands. If this was their route, they avoided a migration of two or three

thousand miles through one of the coldest and most inhospitable of regions. This, however, is far from

probable. The distance from Kamchatka to the first of the Aleutian Islands is over one hundred miles. As the

island is not in sight from the mainland, there is little chance that a band of savages, including women, would

deliberately sail thither. There is equally little probability that they walked to the island on the ice, for the sea

is never frozen across the whole width. Nevertheless the climate may at that time have been colder than now.

There is also a chance that a party of savages may have been blown across to the island in a storm. Suppose

that they succeeded in reaching Bering Island, as the most Asiatic of the Aleutians is called, the next step to

Copper Island would be easy. Then, however, there comes a stretch of more than two hundred miles. The

chances that a family would ever cross this waste of ocean are much smaller than in the first case. Still

another possibility remains. Was there once a bridge of land from Asia to America in this region? There is no

evidence of such a link between the two continents, for a few raised beaches indicate that during recent

The passage from Asia to America at Bering Strait, on the other hand, is comparatively easy. The Strait itself

is fiftysix miles wide, but in the middle there are two small islands so that the longest stretch of water is

only about thirtyfive miles. Moreover the Strait is usually full of ice, which frequently becomes a solid mass

from shore to shore. Therefore it would be no strange thing if some primitive savages, in hunting for seals or

polar bears, crossed the Strait, even though they had no boats. Today the people on both sides of the Strait

belong to the American race. They still retain traditions of a time when their ancestors crossed this narrow

strip of water. The Thilanottines have a legend that two giants once fought fiercely on the Arctic Ocean. One

would have been defeated had not a man whom he had befriended cut the tendon of his adversary's leg. The

wounded giant fell into Bering Strait and formed a bridge across which the reindeer entered America. Later

came a strange woman bringing iron and copper. She repeated her visits until the natives insulted her,

whereupon she went underground with her firemade treasures and came back no more. Whatever may have

been the circumstances that led the earliest families to cross from Asia to America, they little recked that they

Unless the first Americans came to the new continent by way of the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, it was

probably their misfortune to spend many generations in the cold regions of northeastern Asia and

northwestern America. Even if they reached Alaska by the Aleutian route but came to the islands by way of

the northern end of the Kamchatkan Peninsula, they must have dwelt in a place where the January

temperature averages 10 degrees F. and where there are frosts every month in the year. If they came across

Bering Strait, they encountered a still more severe climate. The winters there are scarcely worse than in

northern Kamchatka, but the summers are as cold as the month of March in New York or Chicago.

Perhaps a prolonged sojourn in such a climate is one reason for the stolid character of the Indians. Of course

we cannot speak with certainty, but we must, in our search for an explanation, consider the conditions of life

in the far north. Food is scanty at all times, and starvation is a frequent visitor, especially in winter when

game is hard to get. The long periods of cold and darkness are terribly enervating. The nervous white man

goes crazy if he stays too long in Alaska. Every spring the first boats returning to civilization carry an unduly

large proportion of men who have lost their minds because they have endured too many dark, cold winters.

His companions say of such a man, "The North has got him." Almost every Alaskan recognizes the danger.

"Well," said the other, "you see I begin to like the smell of skunk cabbage, and, when a man gets that way, it's

The skunk cabbage, by the way, grows in Alaska in great thickets ten feet high. The man was perfectly

serious, for he meant that his mind was beginning to act in ways that were not normal. Nowhere is the strain

of life in the far north better described than in the poems of Robert W. Service.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand, As I blundered blind with a trail to find

through that blank and bitter land; Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heartbreaking

woes, And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows! North by the compass, North I

pressed; river and peak and plain Passed like a dream I slept to lose and waked to dream again. River and

plain and mighty peakand who could stand unawed? As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at

the foot of the throne of God. North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes, And

all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes, Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built

in the side of a hill, And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.*

The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate that, in spite of man's boasted ability to live

anywhere, the strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active types of mind. Only those

can endure whose nerves lack sensitiveness and who are able to bear long privation and the strain of hunger

and cold and darkness. Though the Indian may differ from the white man in many respects, such conditions

are probably as bad for him as for any race. For this reason it is not improbable that long sojourns at way

stations on the cold, Alaskan route from central Asia may have weeded out certain types of minds. Perhaps

that is why the Indian, though brave, stoical, and hardy, does not possess the alert, nervous temperament

The ancestors of the red man unwittingly chose the easiest path to America and so entered the continent first,

but this was their misfortune. They could not inherit the land because they chose a path whose unfavorable

influence, exerted throughout centuries, left them unable to cope with later arrivals from other directions. The

parts of America most favorable for the Indian are also best for the white man and Negro. There the alerter

minds of the Europeans who migrated in the other direction have quickly eliminated the Indian. His long

northern sojourn may be the reason why farther south in tropical lands he is even now at a disadvantage

compared with the Negro or with the coolie from the East Indies. In Central America, for instance, it is

generally recognized that Negroes stand the heat and moisture of the lowlands better than Indians. According

to a competent authority: "The American Indians cannot bear the heat of the tropics even as well as the

European, not to speak of the African race. They perspire little, their skin becomes hot, and they are easily

prostrated by exertion in an elevated temperature. They are peculiarly subject to diseases of hot climates, as

hepatic disorders, showing none of the immunity of the African. Furthermore, the finest physical specimens

of the race are found in the colder regions of the temperate zones, the Pampas and Patagonian Indians in the

south, the Iroquois and Algonkins in the north; whereas, in the tropics they are generally undersized,

shortlived, of inferior muscular force and with slight tolerance of disease."* "No one," adds another

observer, "could live among the Indians of the Upper Amazon without being struck with their constitutional

dislike to heat. The impression forced itself upon my mind that the Indian lives as a stranger or immigrant in

these hot regions."** Thus when compared with the other inhabitants of America, from every point of view

the Indian seems to be at a disadvantage, much of which may be due to the path which he took from the Old

Before the red man lost his American heritage, he must have enjoyed it for thousands upon thousands of

years. Otherwise he never could have become so different from his nearest relative, the Mongol. The two are

as truly distinct races as are the white man and the Malay. Nor could the Indians themselves have become so

extraordinarily diverse except during the lapse of thousands of years. The Quichua of the cold highlands of

Peru is as different from the Maya of Yucatan or the Huron of southern Canada as the Swede is from the

Armenian or the Jew. The separation of one stock from another has gone so far that almost countless

languages have been developed. In the United States alone the Indians have fiftyfive "families" of languages

and in the whole of America there are nearly two hundred such groups. These comprise over one thousand

distinct languages which are mutually unintelligible and at least as different as Spanish and Italian. Such

differences might arise in a day at the Tower of Babel, but in the processes of evolution they take thousands

During those thousands of years the red man, in spite of his Arctic handicap, by no means showed himself

wholly lacking in originality and inventive ability. In Yucatan two or three thousand years ago the Mayas

were such good scientists and recorded their observations of the stars so accurately that they framed a

calendar more exact than any except the one that we have used for the last two centuries. They showed still

greater powers of mind in inventing the art of writing and in their architecture. Later we shall depict the

environment under which these things occurred; it is enough to suggest in passing that perhaps at this period

the ancestors of the Indians had capacities as great as those of any people. Today they might possibly hold

their own against the white man, were it not for the great handicap which they once suffered because Asia

The Indians were not the only primitive people who were driven from central Asia by aridity. Another group

pushed westward toward Europe. They fared far better than their Indian cousins who went to the northeast.

These prospective Europeans never encountered benumbing physical conditions like those of northeastern

Asia and northwestern America. Even when ice shrouded the northern part of Europe, the rest of the

continent was apparently favored with a stimulating climate. Then as now, Europe was probably one of the

regions where storms are most frequent. Hence it was free from the monotony which is so deadly in other

regions. When the ice retreated our European ancestors doubtless followed slowly in its wake. Thus their

racial character was evolved in one of the world's most stimulating regions. Privation they must have

suffered, and hardihood and boldness were absolutely essential in the combat with storms, cold, wild beasts,

fierce winds, and raging waves. But under the spur of constant variety and change, these difficulties were

merely incentives to progress. When the time came for the people of the west of Europe to cross to America,

Two facts of physical geography brought Europe into contact with America. One of these was the islands of

the North, the other the tradewinds of the South. Each seems to have caused a preliminary contact which

failed to produce important results. As in the northern Pacific, so in the northern Atlantic, islands are

steppingstones from the Old World to the New. Yet because in the latter case the islands are far apart, it is

harder to cross the water from Norway and the Lofoten Islands to Iceland and Greenland than it is to cross

from Asia by way of the Aleutian Islands or Bering Strait. Nevertheless in the tenth century of the Christian

era bold Norse vikings made the passage in the face of storm and wind. In their slender open ships they

braved the elements on voyage after voyage. We think of the vikings as pirates, and so they were. But they

were also diligent colonists who tilled the ground wherever it would yield even the scantiest living. In Iceland

and Greenland they must have labored mightily to carry on the farms of which the Sagas tell us. When they

made their voyages, honest commerce was generally in their minds quite as much as was plunder. Leif, the

son of that rough Red Eric who first settled Greenland, made a famous voyage to Vinland, the mainland of

America. Like so many other voyagers he was bent on finding a region where men could live happily and on

In view of the energy of the Norsemen, the traces of their presence in the Western Hemisphere are amazingly

slight. In Greenland a few insignificant heaps of stones are supposed to show where some of them built small

villages. Far in the north Stefansson found fairhaired, blueeyed Eskimos. These may be descendants of the

Norsemen, although they have migrated thousands of miles from Greenland. In Maine the Micmac Indians

are said to have had a curious custom which they may have learned from the vikings. When a chief died, they

chose his largest canoe. On it they piled dry wood, and on the wood they placed the body. Then they set fire

to the pile and sent the blazing boat out to sea. Perhaps in earlier times the Micmacs once watched the

flaming funeral pyre of a fairhaired viking. As the ruddy flames leaped skyward and were reflected in the

shimmering waves of the great waters the tribesmen must have felt that the Great Spirit would gladly

It seems strange that almost no other traces of the strong vikings are found in America. The explanation lies

partly in the length and difficulty of the ocean voyage, and partly in the inhospitable character of the two

great islands that served as steppingstones from the Old World to the New. Iceland with its glaciers, storms,

and long dreary winters is bad enough. Greenland is worse. Merely the tip of that island was known to the

Norse and small wonder, for then as now most of Greenland was shrouded in ice. Various Scandinavian

authors, however, have thought that during the most prosperous days of the vikings the conditions in

Greenland were not quite so bad as at the present day. One settlement, Osterbyden, numbered 190 farms, 12

churches, 2 monasteries, and 1 bishopric. It is even stated that appletrees bore fruit and that some wheat was

raised. "Cattle raising and fishing," says Pettersson, "appear to have procured a good living . . . . At present

the whole stock of cattle in Greenland does not amount to 100 animals."* In those days the ice which borders

all the east coast and much of the west seems to have been less troublesome than now. In the earliest accounts

nothing is said of this ice as a danger to navigation. We are told that the best sailing route was through the

strait north of Cape Farewell Island, where today no ships can pass because of the ice. Since the days of the

Norsemen the glaciers have increased in size, for the natives say that certain ruins are now buried beneath the

ice, while elsewhere ruins can be seen which have been cut off from the rest of the country by advancing

* O. Pettersson, "Climatic Variations in Historic and Prehistoric Times." Svenska HydrogrifiskBiologiska

Why the Norsemen disappeared from the Western Hemisphere we do not exactly know, but there are

interesting hints of an explanation. It appears that the fourteenth century was a time of great distress. In

Norway the crops failed year after year because of cold and storms. Provinces which were formerly able to

support themselves by agriculture were obliged to import food. The people at home were no longer able to

keep in touch with the struggling colony in Greenland. No supplies came from the home land, no

reenforcements to strengthen the colonists and make them feel that they were a part of the great world.

Moreover in the late Norse sagas much is said about the ice along the Greenland coast, which seems to have

been more abundant than formerly. Even the Eskimos seem to have been causing trouble, though formerly

they had been a friendly, peaceable people who lived far to the north and did not disturb the settlers. In the

fourteenth century, however, they began to make raids such as are common when primitive people fall into

distress. Perhaps the storms and the advancing ice drove away the seals and other animals, so that the

Eskimos were left hungry. They consequently migrated south and, in the fifteenth century, finally wiped out

the last of the old Norse settlers. If the Norse had established permanent settlements on the mainland of North

America, they might have persisted to this day. As it was, the cold, bleak climate of the northern route across

the Atlantic checked their progress. Like the Indians, they had the misfortune of finding a route to America

Though islands may be steppingstones between the Old World and the New, they have not been the bringers

of civilization. That function in the history of man has been left to the winds. The westerlies, however, which

are the prevailing winds in the latitude of the United States and Europe, have not been of much importance.

On the Atlantic side they were for many centuries a barrier to contact between the Old World and the New.

On the Pacific side they have been known to blow Japanese vessels to the shores of America contrary to the

will of the mariners. Perhaps the same thing may have happened in earlier times. Asia may thus have made

some slight contribution to primitive America, but no important elements of civilization can be traced to this

From latitude 30 degrees N. to 30 degrees S. the tradewinds prevail. As they blow from the east, they make it

easy for boats to come from Africa to America. In comparatively recent times they brought the slave ships

from the Guinea coast to our Southern States. The African, like the Indian, has passed through a most

unfavorable environment on his way from central Asia to America. For ages he was doomed to live in a

climate where high temperature and humidity weed out the active type of human being. Since activity like

that of Europe means death in a tropical climate, the route by way of Africa has been if anything worse than

By far the most important occurrence which can be laid at the door of the tradewinds is the bringing of the

civilization of Europe and the Mediterranean to the New World. Twice this may have happened, but the first

occurrence is doubtful and left only a slight impress. For thousands of years the people around the

Mediterranean Sea have been bold sailors. Before 600 B.C. Pharaoh Necho, so Herodotus says, had sent

Phenician ships on a threeyear cruise entirely around Africa. The Phenicians also sailed by way of Gibraltar

to England to bring tin from Cornwall, and by 500 B.C. the Carthaginians were well acquainted with the

At some time or other, long before the Christian era, a ship belonging to one of the peoples of the eastern

Mediterranean was probably blown to the shores of America by the steady tradewinds. Of course, no one

can say positively that such a voyage occurred. Yet certain curious similarities between the Old World and

the New enable us to infer with a great deal of probability that it actually happened. The mere fact, for

example, that the adobe houses of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico are strikingly like the houses of

northern Africa and Persia is no proof that the civilization of the Old World and the New are related. A

similar physical environment might readily cause the same type of house to be evolved in both places. When

we find striking similarities of other kinds, however, the case becomes quite different. The constellations of

the zodiac, for instance, are typified by twelve living creatures, such as the twins, the bull, the lion, the virgin,

the crab, and the goat. Only one of the constellations, the scorpion, presents any real resemblance to the

animal for which it is named. Yet the signs of the zodiac in Mediterranean lands and in preColumbian

America from Peru to southern Mexico are almost identical. Here is a list showing the Latin and English

names of the constellations and their equivalents in the calendars of the Peruvians, Mexicans, and Mayas. *

* See S. Hagar, "The Bearing of Astronomy on the Problems of the Unity or Plurality and the Probable Place

of Origin of the American Aborigines, in American Anthropologist," vol. XIV (1912), pp. 4348.

Notice how closely these lists are alike. The ram does not appear in America because no such animal was

known there. The nearest substitute was the llama. In the Old World the second constellation is now called

the bull, but curiously enough in earlier days it was called the stag in Mesopotamia. The twins, instead of

being Castor and Pollux, may equally well be a man and a woman or two generals. To landsmen not familiar

with creatures of the deep, the crab and the cuttlefish would not seem greatly different. The lion is unknown

in America, but the creature which most nearly takes his place is the puma or ocelot. So it goes with all the

signs of the zodiac. There are little differences between the Old World and the New, but they only emphasize

the resemblance. Mathematically there is not one chance in thousands or even millions that such a

resemblance could grow up by accident. Other similarities between ceremonies or religious words in the Old

Such resemblances, however, do not indicate a permanent connection between Mediterranean civilization and

that of Central America. They do not even indicate that any one ever returned from the Western Hemisphere

to the Eastern previous to Columbus. Nor do they indicate that the civilization of the New World arose from

that of the Old. They simply suggest that after the people of the Mediterranean regions had become well

civilized and after those of America were also sufficiently civilized to assimilate new ideas, a stray ship or

two was blown by the tradewinds across the Atlantic. That hypothetical voyage was the precursor of the

great journey of Columbus. Without the tradewinds this historic discoverer never could have found the West

Indies. Suppose that a strong west wind had blown him backward on his course when his men were mutinous.

Suppose that he had been forced to beat against head winds week after week. Is there one chance in a

thousand that even his indomitable spirit could have kept his craft headed steadily into the west? But because

there were the tradewinds to bring him, the way was opened for the energetic people of Europe to possess

the new continent. Thus the greatest stream of immigration commenced to flow, and the New World began to

America forms the longest and straightest bone in the earth's skeleton. The skeleton consists of six great

bones, which may be said to form a spheroidal tetrahedron, or pyramid with a triangular base, for when a

globe with a fairly rigid surface collapses because of shrinkage, it tends to assume this form. That is what has

happened to the earth. Geologists tell us that during the thousand million years, more or less, since geological

history began, the earth has grown cooler and hence has contracted. Moreover some of the chemical

compounds of the interior have been transformed into other compounds which occupy less space. For these

reasons the earth appears to have diminished in size until now its diameter is from two hundred to four

hundred miles less than formerly. During the process of contraction the crust has collapsed in four main

areas, roughly triangular in shape. Between these stand the six ridges which we have called the bones. Each

of the four depressed areas forms a side of our tetrahedron and is occupied by an ocean. The ridges and the

areas immediately flanking the oceans form the continents. The side which we may think of as the base

contains the Arctic Ocean. The ridges surrounding it are broad and flat. Large parts of them stand above

sealevel and form the northern portions of North America, Europe, and Asia. A second side is the Pacific

Ocean with the great ridge of the two Americas on one hand and Asia and Australia on the other. Next comes

the side containing the Indian Ocean in the hollow and the ridges of Africa and Australia on either hand. The

last of the four sides contains the Atlantic Ocean and is bounded by Africa and Europe on one hand and

North and South America on the other. Finally the tip of the pyramid projects above the surrounding waters,

It may seem a mere accident that this tip lies near the South Pole, while the center of the opposite face lies

near the North Pole. Yet this has been of almost infinite importance in the evolution not only of plants and

animals but of men. The reason is that this arrangement gives rise to a vast and almost continuous land mass

in comparatively high latitudes. Only in such places does evolution appear to make rapid progress.*

Evolution is especially stimulated by two conditions. The first is that there shall be marked changes in the

environment so that the process of natural selection has full opportunity to do its work. The second is that

numerous new forms or mutants, as the biologists call them, shall be produced. Both of these conditions are

most fully met in large continents in the temperate zone, for in such places climatic variations are most

extreme. Such variations may take the form of extreme changes either from day to night, from season to

season, or from one century to another. In any case, as Darwin long ago pointed out, they cause some forms

of life to perish while others survive. Thus climatic variations are among the most powerful factors in causing

natural selection and hence in stimulating evolution. Moreover it has lately been shown that variations in

temperature are one of the chief causes of organic variation. Morgan and Plough,* for example, have

discovered that when a certain fly, called the drosophila, is subjected to extremes of heat or cold, the

offspring show an unusually strong tendency to differ from the parents. Hence the climatic variability of the

interior of large continents in temperate latitudes provides new forms of life and then selects some of them

for preservation. The fossils found in the rocks of the earth's crust support this view. They indicate that most

of the great families of higher animals originated in the central part of the great land mass of Europe and

Asia. A second but much smaller area of evolution was situated in the similar part of North America. From

these two centers new forms of life spread outward to other continents. Their movements were helped by the

fact that the tetrahedral form of the earth causes almost all the continents to be united by bridges of land.

If any one doubts the importance of the tetrahedral form, let him consider how evolution would have been

hampered if the land of the globe were arranged as isolated masses in low latitudes, while oceans took the

place of the present northern continents. The backwardness of the indigenous life of Africa shows how an

equatorial position retards evolution. The still more marked backwardness of Australia with its kangaroos and

duckbilled platypuses shows how much greater is the retardation when a continent is also small and

isolated. Today, no less than in the past, the tetrahedral form of the earth and the relation of the tetrahedron to

the poles and to the equator preserve the conditions that favor rapid evolution. They are the dominant factors

in determining that America shall be one of the two great centers of civilization.

If North and South America be counted as one major land mass, and Europe, Asia, and Africa as another, the

two present the same general features. Yet their mountains, plains, and coastal indentations are so arranged

that what is on the east in one is on the west in the other. Their similarity is somewhat like that of a man's two

On a map of the world place a finger of one hand on the western end of Alaska and a finger of the other on

the northeastern tip of Asia and follow the main bones of the two continents. See how the chief mountain

systems, the Pacific "cordilleras," trend away from one another, southeastward and southwestward. In the

centers of the continents they expand into vast plateaus. That of America in the Rocky Mountain region of the

United States reaches a width of over a thousand miles, while that of Asia in Tibet and western China

From the plateaus the two cordilleras swing abruptly Atlantic ward. The Eurasian cordillera extends through

the Hindu Kush, Caucasus, and Asia Minor ranges to southern Europe and the Alps. Then it passes on into

Spain and ends in the volcanoes of the Canary Islands. The American cordillera swings eastward in Mexico

and continues as the isolated ranges of the West Indies until it ends in the volcanoes of Martinique. Central

America appears at first sight to be a continuation of the great cordillera, but really it is something quite

differenta mass of volcanic material poured out in the gap where the main chain of mountains breaks down

for a space. In neither hemisphere, however, is the main southward sweep of the mountains really lost. In the

Old World the cordillera revives in the mountains of Syria and southern Arabia and then runs southward

along the whole length of eastern Africa. In America it likewise revives in the mighty Andes, which take their

rise fifteen hundred miles east of the broken end of the northern cordillera in Mexico. In the Andes even more

distinctly than in Africa the cordillera forms a mighty wall running north and south. It expands into the

plateau of Peru and Bolivia, just as its African compeer expands into that of Abyssinia, but this is a mere

incident. The main bone, so to speak, keeps on in each case till it disappears in the great southern ocean. Even

there, however, it is not wholly lost, for it revives in the cold, lofty continent of Antarctica, where it coalesces

It is easy to see that these great cordilleras have turned most of the earth's chief rivers toward the Atlantic and

the Arctic Oceans. That is why these two oceans with an area of only fortythree million square miles receive

the drainage from twenty million square miles of land, while the far larger Indian and Pacific Oceans with an

area of ninetyone million square miles receive the rivers of only ten million square miles. The world's

streams of civilization, like the rivers of water, have flowed from the great cordilleras toward the Atlantic.

Half of the world's people, to be sure, are lodged in the relatively small areas known as China and India on

the Pacific side of the Old World cordillera. Nevertheless the active streams of civilization have flowed

mainly on the other sidethe side where man apparently originated. From the earliest times the mountains

have served to determine man's chief migrations. Their rugged fastnesses hinder human movements and

thereby give rise to a strong tendency to move parallel to their bases. During the days of primitive man the

trend of the mountains apparently directed his migrations northeastward to Bering Strait and then

southeastward and southward from one end of America to the other. In the same way the migrations to

Europe and Africa which ultimately reached America moved mainly parallel to the mountains.

From end to end of America the great mountains form a sharp dividing line. The aboriginal tribes on the

Pacific slope are markedly different from those farther east across the mountains. Brinton sums the case up

"As a rule the tribes of the western coast are not connected with any east of the mountains. What is more

singular, although they differ surprisingly among themselves in language, they have marked anthropologic

similarities, physical and psychical. Virchow has emphasized the fact that the skulls from the northern point

of Vancouver's Island reveal an unmistakable analogy to those from the southern coast of California; and this

is to a degree true of many intermediate points. Not that the crania have the same indices. On the contrary,

they present great and constant differences within the same tribe; but these differences are analogous one to

"There are many other physical similarities which mark the Pacific Indians and contrast them with those east

of the mountains. The eyes are less oblique, the nose flatter, the lips fuller, the chin more pointed, the face

wider. There is more hair on the face and in the axilla, and the difference between the sexes is much more

"The mental character is also in contrast. The Pacific tribes are more quiet, submissive, and docile; they have

less courage, and less of that untamable independence which is so constant a feature in the history of the

Although mountains may guide migrations, the plains are the regions where people dwell in greatest

numbers. The plains in the two great land masses of the Old World and the New have the same inverse or

right and lefthanded symmetry as the mountains. In the north the vast stretches from the Mackenzie River

to the Gulf of Mexico correspond to the plains of Siberia and Russia from the Lena to the Black Sea. Both

regions have a vast sweep of monotonous tundras at the north and both become fertile granaries in the center.

Before the white man introduced the horse, the ox, and iron ploughs, there prevailed an extraordinary

similarity in the habits of the plains Indians from Texas to Alberta. All alike depended on the buffalo; all

hunted him in much the same way; all used his skins for tents and robes, his bones for tools, and his horns for

utensils. All alike made him the center of their elaborate rituals and dances. Because the plains of North

America were easy to traverse, the relatively high culture of the ancient people of the South spread into the

Mississippi Valley. Hence the Natchez tribe of Mississippi had a highly developed form of sunworship and

a welldefined caste system with three grades of nobility in addition to the common people. Even farther

north, almost to the Ohio River, traces of the sunworship of Mexico had penetrated along the easy pathway

South of the great granaries of North America and Eurasia the plains are broken, but occur again in the

Orinoco region of South America and the Sahara of Africa. Thence they stretch almost unbroken toward the

southern end of the continents. In view of the fertility of the plains it is strange that the centers of civilization

The most striking of the inverse resemblances between America and the Old World are found along the

Atlantic border. In the north of Europe the White Sea corresponds to Hudson Bay in America. Farther toward

the Atlantic Ocean Scandinavia with its mountains, glaciers, and fiords is similar to Labrador, although more

favored because warmer. Next the islands of Great Britain occupy a position similar to that of Newfoundland

and Prince Edward Island. But here again the eastern climate is much more favorable than the western.

Although practically all of Newfoundland is south of England, the American island has only six inhabitants

per square mile, while the European country has six hundred. To the east of the British Isles the North Sea,

the Baltic, and Lakes Ladoga and Onega correspond in striking fashion to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the river

of the same name, and the Great Lakes from Ontario to Superior. Next the indented shores of western France

and the peninsula of Spain resemble our own indented coast and the peninsula of Florida. Here at last the

American regions are as favored as the European. Farther south the Mediterranean and Black seas penetrate

far into the interior just as does the Gulf of Mexico, and each continent is nearly cut in two where the canals

of Suez and Panama respectively have been trenched. Finally in the southern continents a long swing

eastward in America balances a similar swing westward in Africa. Thus Cape Saint Roque and Cape Verde

are separated by scarcely 16 degrees of longitude, although the extreme points of the Gulf of Mexico and the

Black Sea are 140 degrees apart. Finally to the south of the equator the continents swing away from one

Even more striking than the inverse resemblance of the New World to the Old is the direct similarity of North

and South America. In physical form the two continents are astonishingly alike. Not only does each have the

typical triangular form which would naturally arise from tetrahedral shrinking of the globe, but there are four

other cardinal points of resemblance. First, in the northeast each possesses an area of extremely ancient rocks,

the Laurentian highlands of Quebec and Labrador in North America and the highlands of Guiana in South

America. Second, in the southeast lie highlands of old but not the most ancient rocks stretching from

northeast to southwest in the Appalachian region of North America, and in the Brazilian mountains of the

southern continent. Third, along the western side of each continent recent crustal movements supplemented

by volcanic action on a magnificent scale have given rise to a complex series of younger mountains, the two

great cordilleras. Finally, the spaces between the three mountain masses are occupied by a series of vast

confluent plains which in each case extend from the northern ocean to the southern and bend around the

southeastern highlands. These plains are the newest part of America, for many of them have emerged from

the sea only in recent geological times. Taken as a whole the resemblance between the two continents is

If these four physiographic provinces of North and South America lay in similar latitudes in the respective

continents we might expect each pair to have a closely similar effect on life. In fauna, flora, and even in

human history they would present broad and important resemblances. As a matter of fact, however, they are

as different as can well be imagined. Where North America, is bathed by icy waters full of seals and floating

ice South America is bathed by warm seas full of flyingfish and coral reefs. The northern continent is

broadest in the cool latitudes that are most favorable for human activity. The southern expands most widely

in latitudes whose debilitating monotony of heat and moisture is the worst of handicaps to human progress.

The great rivers of the northern continent correspond very closely to those of the southern. The Mackenzie,

however, is bound in the rigid bands of winter for eight months each year, while the Orinoco, the

corresponding South American river, lies sweltering under a tropical sun which burns its grassy plains to

bitter dust even as the sharp cold reduced the Mackenzie region to barren tundra. The St. Lawrence flows

through fertile grain fields and the homes of an active people of the temperate zone, but the Amazon winds its

slow way amid the malarious languor of vast tropical forests in which the trees shut out the sky and the few

Only when we come to the Mississippi in the northern continent and the Rio de la Plata in the southern do we

find a pair of rivers which correspond to any degree in the character of the life surrounding them, as well as

in their physiographic character. Yet even here there is a vast difference, especially in the upper courses of

the river. Each at its mouth flows through a rich, fertile plain occupied by a progressive, prosperous people.

But the Rio de la Plata takes its rise in one of the world's most backward plains, the home of uncivilized

Indians, heartless rubber adventurers, and the most rapacious of officials. Not infrequently, the degenerate

white men of these regions, yielding to the subtle and insidious influence of the tropics, inflict the most

outrageous abuses upon the natives, and even kill them on slight provocation. The natives in turn hate their

oppressors, and when the chance comes betray them or leave them to perish in sickness and misery. The

upper Mississippi, on the other hand, comes from a plain where agriculture is carried on with more

laborsaving devices than are found anywhere else in the world. There States like Wisconsin and Minnesota

stand in the forefront of educational and social progress. The contrasts between the corresponding rivers of

the two Americas are typical of the contrasts in the history of the two continents.

The four great physical divisions of North Americathe Laurentian highland, the Appalachian highland, the

plains, and the western cordilleraare strikingly different in form and structure. The Laurentian highland

presents a monotonous waste of rough hills, irregular valleys, picturesque lakes, and crooked rivers. Most of

it is thinly clothed with pine trees and bushes such as the blueberry and huckleberry. Yet everywhere the

ancient rock crops out. No one can travel there without becoming tiresomely familiar with finegrained,

shattered schists, coarse granites, and their curiously banded relatives, the gneisses. This rocky highland

stretches from a little north of the St. Lawrence River to Hudson Bay, around which it laps in the form of a V,

Everywhere this oldest part of the Western Hemisphere presents unmistakable signs of great age. The schists

by their fine crumpling and scaly flakes of mineral show that they were formed deep in the bowels of the

earth, for only there could they be subjected to the enormous pressure needed to transform their minerals into

sheets as thin as paper. The coarse granites and gneisses proclaim still more clearly that they must have

originated far down in the depths of the earth; their huge crystals of mica, quartz, hornblende, feldspar, and

other minerals could never have been formed except under a blanket of rock which almost prevented the

original magmas from cooling. The thousands or tens of thousands of feet of rock which once overlay the

schists and still more the granites and gneisses must have been slowly removed by erosion, for there was no

other way to get rid of them. This process must have taken tens of millions of years, and yet the whole work

must have been practically completed a hundred or perhaps several hundred million years ago. We know this

because the selfsame ancient eroded surface which is exposed in the Laurentian highland is found dipping

down under the oldest known fossiliferous rocks. Traces of that primitive land surface are found over a large

part of the American continent. Elsewhere they are usually buried under later strata laid down when the

continent sank in part below sealevel. Only in Laurentia has the land remained steadily above the reach of

Today this old, old land might be as rich as many others if climate had been kind to it. Its soil, to be sure,

would in many parts be sandy because of the large amount of quartz in the rocks. That would be a small

handicap, however, provided the soil were scores of feet deep like the red soil of the corresponding highland

in the Guiana region of South America. But today the North American Laurentia has no soil worth

mentioning. For some reason not yet understood this was the part of America where snow accumulated most

deeply and where the largest glaciers were formed during the last great glacial period. Not once but many

times its granite surface was shrouded for tens of thousands of years in ice a mile or more thick. As the ice

spread outward in almost every direction, it scraped away the soil and gouged innumerable hollows in the

softer parts of the underlying rock. It left the Laurentian highland a land of rocky ribs rising between clear

lakes that fill the hollows. The lakes are drained by rapid rivers which wind this way and that in hopeless

confusion as they strive to move seaward over the strangely uneven surface left by the ice. Such a land is

good for the hunter and trapper. It is also good for the summer pleasureseeker who would fain grow strong

by paddling a canoe. For the man who would make a permanent home it is a rough, inscrutable region where

one has need of more than most men's share of courage and persistence. Not only did the climate of the past

cause the ice to scrape away the soil, but the climate of the present is so cold that even where new soil has

Around the borders of the Laurentian highland the ice accomplished a work quite different from the

devastation of the interior. One of its chief activities was the scouring of a series of vast hollows which now

hold the world's largest series of lakes. Even the lakes of Central Africa cannot compare with our own Great

Lakes and the other smaller lakes which belong to the same series. These additional lakes begin in the far

north with Great Bear Lake and continue through Great Slave Lake, Lake Athabasca, and Lake Winnipeg to

the Lake of the Woods, which drains into Lake Superior. All these lakes lie on the edge of the great

Laurentian shield, where the ice, crowding down from the highland to the north and east, was compressed

into certain already existent hollows which it widened, deepened, and left as vast bowls ready to be filled

South and southwest of the Laurentian highland the great ice sheet proved beneficial to man. There, instead

of leaving the rock naked, as in the Laurentian region, it merely smoothed off many of the irregularities of the

In doing this, to be sure, the icecap scoured some hollows and left a vastly larger number of basins

surrounded in whole or in part by glacial debris. These have given rise to the innumerable lakes, large and

small, whose beauty so enhances the charms of Canada, New England, New York, Minnesota, and other

States. They serve as reservoirs for the water supply of towns and power plants and as sources of ice and fish.

Though they take land from agriculture, they probably add to the life of the community as much in other

ways as they detract in this. Moreover glaciation diverted countless streams from their old courses and made

them flow over falls and rapids from which waterpower can easily be developed. That is one reason why

glaciated New England contains over forty per cent of all the developed waterpower in the United States.

Far more important, however, than the glacial lakes and rivers is the fertile glacial soil. It comes fresh from

the original rocks and has not yet been exhausted by hundreds of thousands of years of weathering. It also has

the advantage of being well mixed, for generally it is the product of scrapings from many kinds of rocks, each

of which contributes its own particular excellence to the general composition. Take Wisconsin as an

example.* Most parts of that State have been glaciated, but in the southwest there lies what is known as the

"driftless area" because it is not covered with the "drift" or glacial debris which is thickly strewn over the rest

of the State. A comparison of otherwise similar counties lying within and without the driftless area shows an

astonishing contrast. In 1910 the average value of all the farm land in twenty counties covered with drift

amounted to $56.90 per acre. In six counties partly covered with drift and partly driftless the value was

$59.80 per acre, while in thirteen counties in the driftless area it was only $33.30 per acre. In spite of the fact

that glaciation causes swamps and lakes, the proportion of land cultivated in the glaciated areas is larger than

in the driftless. In the glaciated area 61 per cent of the land is improved and in the driftless area only 43.5 per

cent. Moreover, even though the underlying rock and the original topography be of the same kind in both

cases, the average yield of crops per acre is greater where the ice has done its work. Where the country rock

consists of limestone, which naturally forms a rich soil, the difference in favor of the glaciated area amounts

to only 1 or 2 per cent. Where the country rock is sandy, the soil is so much improved by a mixture of

fertilizing limestone or even of clay and other materials that the average yield of crops per acre in the

glaciated areas is a third larger than in the driftless. Taking everything into consideration it appears that the

ancient glaciation of Wisconsin increases the present agricultural output by from 20 to 40 per cent. Upwards

of 10,000,000 acres of glaciated land have already been developed in the most populous parts of the State. If

the average value of all products on this area is reckoned at $15 per acre and if the increased value of

agricultural products due to glaciation amounts to 30 per cent, then the net value of glaciation per year to the

farmers of Wisconsin is $45,000,000. This means about $300 for each farmer in the glaciated area.

* R. H. Whitbeck, "Economic Aspects of Glaciation in Wisconsin", in "Annals of the Association of

Wisconsin is by no means unique. In Ohio, for instance, there is also a driftless area.* It lies in the southeast

along the Ohio River. The difference in the value of the farm land there and in the glaciated region is

extraordinary. In the driftless area the average value per acre in 1910 was less than $24, while in the glaciated

area it was nearly $64. Year by year the proportion of the population of the State in the unglaciated area is

steadily decreasing. The difference between the two parts of the State is not due to the underlying rock

structure or to the rainfall except to a slight degree. Some of the difference is due to the fact that important

cities such as Cleveland and Toledo lie on the fertile level strip of land along the lake shore, but this strip

itself, as well as the lake, owes much of its character to glaciation. It appears, therefore, that in Ohio, perhaps

even more than in Wisconsin, man prospers most in the parts where the ice has done its work.

* William H. Hess, "The Influence of Glaciation in Ohio," in "Bulletin of the Geographical Society of

We have taken Wisconsin and Ohio as examples, but the effect of glaciation in those States does not differ

materially from its effect all over southern Canada and the northern United States from New England to

Kansas and Minnesota. Each year the people of these regions are richer by perhaps a billion dollars because

the ice scraped its way down from Laurentia and spread out over the borders of the great plains on the west

We have considered the Laurentian highland and the glaciation which centered there. Let us now turn to

another highland only the northern part of which was glaciated. The Appalachian highland, the second great

division of North America, consists of three parallel bands which extend southwestward from Newfoundland

and the St. Lawrence River to Georgia and Alabama. The eastern and most important band consists of hills

and mountains of ancient crystalline rocks, somewhat resembling those of the Laurentian highland but by no

means so old. West of this comes a broad valley eroded for the most part in the softer portions of a highly

folded series of sedimentary rocks which are of great age but younger than the crystalline rocks to the east.

The third band is the Alleghany plateau, composed of almost horizontal rocks which lie so high and have

The three Appalachian bands by no means preserve a uniform character throughout their entire length. The

eastern crystalline band has its chief development in the northeast. There it comprises the whole of New

England and a large part of the maritime provinces of Canada as well as Newfoundland. Its broad

development in New England causes that region to be one of the most clearly defined natural units of the

United States. Ancient igneous rocks such as granite lie intricately mingled with old and highly

metamorphosed sediments. Since some of the rocks are hard and others soft and since all have been exposed

to extremely long erosion, the topography of New England consists typically of irregular masses of rounded

hills free from precipices. Here and there hard masses of unusually resistant rock stand up as isolated rounded

heights, like Mount Katahdin in Maine. They are known as "monadnocks" from the mountain of that name in

southern New Hampshire. In other places larger and more irregular masses of hard rock form mountain

groups like the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, and the Berkshires, each of which is merely a great

In the latitude of southern New York the crystalline rocks are compressed into narrow compass and lose their

mountainous character. They form the irregular hills on which New York City itself is built and which make

the suburbs of Westchester County along the eastern Hudson so diverse and beautiful. To the southeast the

topography of the old crystalline band becomes still less pronounced, as may be seen in the rolling, fertile

hills around Philadelphia. Farther south the band divides into two parts, the mountains proper and the

Piedmont plateau. The mountains begin at the Blue Ridge, which in Virginia raises its eventopped heights

mile after mile across the length of that State. In North Carolina, however, they lose their character as a single

ridge and expand into the broad mass of the southern Appalachians. There Mount Mitchell dominates the

eastern part of the American continent and is surrounded by over thirty other mountains rising to a height of

at least six thousand feet. The Piedmont plateau, which lies at the eastern foot of the Blue Ridge, is not really

a plateau but a peneplain or ancient lowland worn almost to a plain. It expands to a width of one hundred

miles in Virginia and the Carolinas and forms the part of those States where most of the larger towns are

situated. Among its low gentle heights there rises an occasional little monadnock like Chapel Hill, where the

University of North Carolina lies on a rugged eminence which strikingly recalls New England. For the most

part, however, the hills of the Piedmont region are lower and more rounded than those in the neighborhood of

Philadelphia. The country thus formed has many advantages, for it is flat enough to be used for agriculture

The prolonged and broken inner valley forming the second band of the Appalachians was of some importance

as a highway in the days of the Indians. Today the main highways of traffic touch it only to cross it as quickly

as possible. From Lake Champlain it trends straight southward in the Hudson Valley until the Catskills have

been passed. Then, while the railroads and all the traffic go on down the gorge of the Hudson to New York,

the valley swings off into Pennsylvania past Scranton, Wilkesbarre, and Harrisburg. There the underlying

rock consists of a series of alternately hard and soft layers which have been crumpled up much as one might

wrinkle a rug with one's foot. The pressure involved in the process changed and hardened the rocks so much

that the coal which they contain was converted into anthracite, the finest coal in all the world and the only

example of its kind. Even the famous Welsh coal has not been so thoroughly hardened. During a long period

of erosion the tops of the folded layers were worn off to a depth of thousands of feet and the whole country

was converted into an almost level plain. Then in the late geological period known as the early Tertiary the

land was lifted up again, and once more erosion went on. The soft rocks were thus etched away until broad

valleys were formed. The hard layers were left as a bewildering succession of ridges with flat tops. A single

ridge may double back and forth so often that the region well deserves the old Indian name of the "Endless

Mountains." Southwestward the valley grows narrower, and the ridges which break its surface become

straighter. Everywhere they are flattopped, steepsided, and narrow, while between them lie parts of the

main valley floor, flat and fertile. Here in the south, even more clearly than in the north, the valley is

bordered on the east by the sharply upstanding range of the crystalline Appalachians, while on the west with

equal regularity it comes to an end in an escarpment which rises to the Alleghany plateau.

This plateau, the third great band of the Appalachians, begins on the south side of the Mohawk Valley. To the

north its place is taken by the Adirondacks, which are an outlier of the great Laurentian area of Canada. The

fact that the outlier and the plateau are separated by the low strip of the Mohawk Valley makes this the one

place where the highly complex Appalachian system can easily be crossed. If the Alleghany plateau joined

the Adirondacks, Philadelphia instead of New York would be the greatest city of America. Where the plateau

first rises on the south side of the Mohawk, it attains heights of four thousand feet in the Catskill Mountains.

We think of the Catskills as mountains, but their steep cliffs and tabletopped heights show that they are

really the remnants of a plateau, the nearly horizontal strata of which have not yet been worn away.

Westward from the Catskills the plateau continues through central New York to western Pennsylvania. Those

who have traveled on the Pennsylvania Railroad may remember how the railroad climbs the escarpment at

Altoona. Farther east the train has passed alternately through gorges cut in the parallel ridges and through

fertile open valleys forming the main floor of the inner valley. Then it winds up the long ascent of the

Alleghany front in a splendid horseshoe curve. At the top, after a short tunnel, the train emerges in a wholly

different country. The valleys are without order or system. They wind this way and that. The hills are not

long ridges but isolated bits left between the winding valleys. Here and there beds of coal blacken the surface,

for here we are among the rocks from which the world's largest coal supply is derived. Since the layers lie

horizontally and have never been compressed, the same material which in the inner valley has been changed

In its southwestern continuation through West Virginia and Kentucky to Tennessee the plateau maintains

many of its Pennsylvanian characteristics, but it now rises higher and becomes more inaccessible. The only

habitable portions are the bottoms of the valleys, but they are only wide enough to support a most scanty

population. Between them most of the land is too rough for anything except forests. Hence the people who

live at the bottoms of the valleys are strangely isolated. They see little or nothing of the world at large or even

of their neighbors. The roads are so few and the trails so difficult that the farmers cannot easily take their

produce to market. Their only recourse has been to convert their bulky corn into whisky, which occupied

little space in proportion to its value. Since the mountaineer has no other means of getting ready money, it is

not strange that he has become a moonshiner and has fought bitterly for what he genuinely believed to be his

rights in that occupation. Education has not prospered on the plateau because the narrowness of the valleys

causes the population to be too poor and too scattered to support schools. For the same reason feuds grow up.

When people live by themselves they become suspicious. Not being used to dealing with their neighbors,

they suspect the motives of all but their intimate friends. Moreover, in those deep valleys, with their steep

sides and their general inaccessibility, laws cannot easily be enforced, and therefore each family takes the law

Today the more rugged parts of the Appalachian system are chiefly important as a hindrance to

communication. On the Atlantic slope of the old crystalline band there are great areas of gentle relief where

an abundant population can dwell. Westward on the edges of the plateau and the plains beyond a still greater

population can find a living, but in the intervening space there is opportunity for only a few. The great

problem is to cross the mountains as easily as possible. Each accessible crossingplace is associated with a

city. Boston, as well as New York, owes much to the low MohawkHudson route, but is badly handicapped

because it has no easy means of crossing the eastern crystalline band. Philadelphia, on the other hand,

benefits from the fact that in its vicinity the crystallizes are low and can readily be crossed even without the

aid of the valleys of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is handicapped, however, by the Alleghany

escarpment at Altoona, even though this is lower there than farther south. Baltimore, in the same way, owes

much of its growth to the easy pathways of the Susquehanna on the north and the Potomac on the south.

Farther south both the crystalline band and the Alleghany plateau become more difficult to traverse, so that

communication between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi Valley is reduced to small proportions. Happy

is New York in its situation where no one of the three bands of the Appalachians opposes any obstacle. The

plains of North America form the third of the four main physical divisions of the continent. For the most part

they lie between the great western cordillera on one side and the Laurentian and Appalachian highlands on

the other. Yet they lap around the southern end of the Appalachians and run far up the Atlantic coast to New

York. They remained beneath the sea till a late date, much later than the other three divisions. They were not,

however, covered with deep water like that of the abysmal oceans, but only with shallow seas from which the

land at times emerged. In spite of the old belief to the contrary, the continents appear to be so permanent that

they have occupied practically their present positions from the remotest geological times. They have moved

slowly up and down, however, so that some parts have frequently been submerged, and the plains are the

The plains of North America may be divided into four parts according to the character of their surface: the

Atlantic coastal plain, the prairies, the northwestern peneplain, and the southwestern high plains. The Atlantic

coastal plain lies along the Atlantic coast from New York southward to Florida and Alabama. It also forms a

great embayment up the Mississippi Valley as far as the Ohio River, and it extends along the shore of the

Gulf of Mexico to the Rio Grande. The chief characteristic of this Atlantic and Gulf coastal plain is its belted

nature. One layer of rocks is sandy, another consists of limestone, and a third of clay. When uplifted and

eroded each assumes its own special topography and is covered with its own special type of vegetation. Thus

in South Carolina and Georgia the crystalline Piedmont band of the Appalachian province is bordered on the

southeast by a belt of sandstone. This rock is so far from the sea and has been raised so high above it that

erosion has converted it into a region of gentle hills, whose tops are six hundred or seven hundred feet above

sealevel. Its sandy soil is so poor that farming is difficult. The hills are largely covered with pine, yielding

tar and turpentine. Farther seaward comes a broad band of younger rock which forms a clayey soil or else a

yellow sandy loam. These soils are so rich that splendid cotton crops can be raised, and hence the region is

thickly populated. Again there comes a belt of sand, the socalled "pine barrens," which form a poor section

about fifty miles inland from the coast. Finally the coastal belt itself has emerged from beneath the sea so

recently and lies so nearly at sealevel that it has not been greatly eroded, and is still covered with numerous

marshes and swamps. The rich soil and the moisture are good for rice, but the region is so unhealthy and so

Everywhere in the coastal plain this same belted character is more or less evident. It has much to do with all

sorts of activities from farming to politics. On consulting the map showing the cotton production of the

United States in 1914, one notices the two dark bands in the southeast. One of them, extending from the

northwestern part of South Carolina across Georgia and Alabama, is due to the fertile soil of the Piedmont

region. The other, lying nearer the sea, begins in North Carolina and extends well into Alabama before it

swings around to the northwest toward the area of heavy production along the Mississippi. It is due to the

fertile soil of that part of the coastal plain known as the "cotton belt." Portions of it are called the "black belt,"

not because of the colored population, but because of the darkness of the soil. Since this land has always been

The Atlantic coastal plain is by no means the only part of the United States where the fertility of the soil is

the dominant fact in the life of the people. Because of their rich soil the prairies which extend from western

Ohio to the Missouri River and northward into Canada are fast becoming the most steadily prosperous part of

America. They owe their surpassing richness largely to glaciation. We have already seen how the coming of

the icesheet benefited the regions on the borders of the old Laurentian highland. This same benefit extended

over practically the whole of what are now the prairies. Before the advent of the ice the whole section

consisted of a broadly banded coastal plain much older than that of the Atlantic coast. When the ice with its

burden of material scraped from the hills of the north passed over the coastal plain, it filled the hollows with

rich new soil. The icy streams that flowed out from the glaciers were full of fine sediment, which they

deposited over enormous flood plains. During dry seasons the winds picked up this dust and spread it out still

more widely, forming the great banks of yellow loess whose fertile soil mantles the sides of many a valley in

the Mississippi basin. Thus glaciers, streams, and winds laid down ten, twenty, fifty, or even one hundred feet

of the finest, most fertile soil. We have already seen how much the soil was improved by glaciation in

Wisconsin and Ohio. It was in the prairie States that this improvement reached a maximum. The soil there is

not only fine grained and free from rocks, but it consists of particles brought from widely different sources

and is therefore full of all kinds of plant foods. In most parts of the world a finegrained soil is formed only

after a prolonged period of weathering which leaches out many valuable chemical elements. In the prairies,

however, the soil consists largely of materials that were mechanically ground to dust by the ice without being

exposed to the action of weathering. Thus they have reached their present restingplaces without the loss of

any of their original plant foods. When such a soil is found with a climate which is good for crops and which

is also highly stimulating to man, the combination is almost ideal. There is some justification for those who

say that the north central portion of the United States is more fortunate than any other part of the earth.

Nowhere else, unless in western Europe, is there such a combination of fertile soil, fine climate, easy

communication, and possibilities for manufacturing and commerce. Iron from that outlier of the Laurentian

highland which forms the peninsula of northern Michigan can easily be brought by water almost to the center

of the prairie region. Coal in vast quantities lies directly under the surface of this region, for the rock of the

ancient coastal plain belongs to the same Pennsylvanian series which yields most of the world's coal. Here

man is, indeed, blessed with resources and opportunities scarcely equaled in any other part of the world, and

finds the only drawbacks to be the extremes of temperature in both winter and summer and the remoteness of

the region from the sea. Because of the richness of their heritage and because they live safely protected from

threats of foreign aggression, the people who live in this part of the world are in danger of being slow to feel

The western half of the plains of North America consists of two parts unlike either the Atlantic coastal plain

or the prairies. From South Dakota and Nebraska northward far into Canada and westward to the Rocky

Mountains there extends an ancient peneplain worn down to gentle relief by the erosion of millions of years.

It is not so level as the plains farther east nor so low. Its western margin reaches heights of four or five

thousand feet. Here and there, especially on the western side, it rises to the crest of a rugged escarpment

where some resistant layer of rocks still holds itself up against the forces of erosion. Elsewhere its smooth

surfaces are broken by lavacapped mesas or by ridges where some ancient volcanic dike is so hard that it

has not yet been worn away. The soil, though excellent, is thinner and less fertile than in the prairies.

Nevertheless the population might in time become as dense and prosperous as almost any in the world if only

the rainfall were more abundant and good supplies of coal were not quite so far away. Yet in spite of these

handicaps the northwestern peneplain with its vast open stretches, its cattle, its wheat, and its opportunities is

South of Nebraska and Wyoming the "high plains," the last of the four great divisions of the plains, extend as

far as western Texas. These, like the prairies, have been built up by deposits brought from other regions. In

this case, however, the deposits consist of gravel, sand, and silt which the rivers have gradually washed out

from the Rocky Mountains. As the rivers have changed their courses from one bed to another, layer after

layer has been laid down to form a vast plain like a gently sloping beach hundreds of miles wide. In most

places the streams are no longer building this up. Frequently they have carved narrow valleys hundreds of

feet deep in the materials which they formerly deposited. Elsewhere, however, as in western Kansas, most of

the country is so flat that the horizon is like that of the ocean. It seems almost incredible that at heights of

four or five thousand feet the plains can still be so wonderfully level. When the grass is green, when the

spring flowers are at their best, it would be hard to find a picture of greater beauty. Here the buffalo wandered

in the days before the white man destroyed them. Here today is the great cattle region of America. Here is the

To the student of land forms there is an everpresent contrast between those due directly to the processes

which build up the earth's surface and those due to the erosive forces which destroy what the others have

built. In the great plains of North America two of the divisions, that is, the Atlantic coastal plain of the

southeast and the peneplain of the northwest, owe their present form to the forces of erosion. The other two,

that is, the prairies and the high plains, still bear the impress of the original processes of deposition and have

A similar but greater contrast separates the mountains of eastern North America and those of the western

cordillerathe fourth and last of the main physical divisions of the continent. In both the Laurentian and the

Appalachian highlands the eastern mountains show no trace of the original forms produced by the faulting of

the crust or by volcanic movements. All the original distinctive topography has been removed. What we see

today is the product of erosion working upon rocks that were thousands of feet beneath the surface when they

were brought to their present positions. In the western cordillera, on the contrary, although much of the

present form of the land is due to erosion, a vast amount is due directly to socalled "tectonic" activities such

as the breaking of the crust, the pouring out of molten lavas, and the bursting forth of explosive eruptions.

The character of these tectonic activities has differed widely in different parts of the cordillera. A broad

upheaval of great blocks of the earth's crust without tilting or disturbance has produced the plateaus of

Arizona and Utah. The gorges that have been rapidly cut into such great upheaved blocks form part of the

world's most striking scenery. The Grand Canyon of the Colorado with its tremendous platforms, mesas, and

aweinspiring cliffs could have been formed in no other way. Equally wonderful are some of the narrow

canyons in the broadly upheaved plateaus of southern Utah where the tributaries of the Virgin and other

rivers have cut red or white chasms thousands of feet deep and so narrow that at their bottoms perpetual

twilight reigns. It is a curious proof of the fallibility of human judgment that these great gorges are often cited

as the most striking examples of the power of erosion. Wonderful as these gorges certainly are, the Piedmont

plain or the northwestern peneplain is far more wonderful. Those regions had their grand canyons once upon

a time, but now erosion has gone so far that it has reduced the whole area to the level of the bottoms of the

gorges. Though such a fate is in store for all the marvelous scenery of the western cordillera, we have it, for

the present at least, as one of the most stimulating panoramas of our American environment. No man worthy

of the name can sit on the brink of a great canyon or gaze up from the dark depths of a gorge without a sense

of awe and wonder. There, as in few other places, Nature shows with unmistakable grandeur the marvelous

In other parts of the great American cordillera some of the simplest and youngest mountain ridges in the

world are found. In southern Oregon, for example, lava blocks have been broken and uplifted and now stand

with steep fresh faces on one side and with the old surface inclining more gently on the other. Tilted blocks

on a larger scale and much more deeply carved by erosion are found in the lofty St. Elias Mountain of

Alaska, where much of the erosion has been done by some of the world's greatest glaciers. The western slope

of the Wasatch Mountains facing the desert of Utah is the wall of a huge fracture, as is the eastern face of the

Sierra Nevadas facing the deserts of Nevada. Each of these great faces has been deeply eroded. At the base,

however, recent breaking and upheaval of the crust have given rise to fresh uneroded slopes. Some take the

form of triangular facets, where a series of ridges has been sliced across and lifted up by a great fault. Others

assume the shape of terraces which sometimes continue along the base of the mountains for scores of miles.

In places they seem like bluffs cut by an ancient lake, but suddenly they change their altitude or pass from

In other parts of the cordillera, mountains have been formed by a single arching of the crust without any

breaking. Such is the case in the Uinta Mountains of northwestern Utah and in some of the ranges of the

Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The Black Hills of South Dakota, although lying out in the plains, are an

example of the same kind of structure and really belong to the cordillera. In them the layers of the earth's

crust have been bent up in the form of a great dome. The dome structure, to be sure, has now been largely

destroyed, for erosion has long been active. The result is that the harder strata form a series of concentric

ridges, while between them are ringshaped valleys, one of which is so level and unbroken that it is known to

the Indians as the "racecourse." In other parts of the cordillera great masses of rock have been pushed

horizontally upon the tops of others. In Montana, for example, the strata of the plains have been bent down

and overridden by those of the mountains. These are only a few of the countless forms of breaking, faulting,

and crumpling which have given to the cordillera an almost infinite variety of scenery.

The work of mountain building is still active in the western cordillera, as is evident from such an event as the

San Francisco earthquake. In the Owens Valley region in southern California the gravelly beaches of old

lakes are rent by fissures made within a few years by earthquakes. In other places fresh terraces on the sides

of the valley mark the lines of recent earth movements, while newly formed lakes lie in troughs at their base.

These Owens Valley movements of the crust are parts of the stupendous uplift which has raised the Sierra

Nevada to heights of over 14,000 feet a few miles to the west. Along the fault line at the base of the

mountains there runs for over 9.50 miles the world's longest aqueduct, which was built to relieve Los Angeles

from the danger of drought. It is a strange irony of fate that so delicate and so vital an artery of civilization

should be forced to lie where a renewal of earthquake movements may break it at any time. Yet there was no

other place to put it, for in spite of man's growing control of nature he was forced to follow the topography of

On the southern side of the Mohave Desert a little to the east of where the Los Angeles aqueduct crosses the

mountains in its southward course, the record of an earthquake is preserved in unique fashion. The steep face

of a terrace is covered with trees forty or fifty years old. Near the base the trees are bent in peculiar fashion.

Their lower portions stand at right angles to the steeply sloping face of the terrace, but after a few feet the

trunks bend upward and stand vertically. Clearly when these trees were young the terrace was not there. Then

an earthquake came. One block of the earth's crust was dropped down while another was raised up. Along the

dividing line a terrace was formed. The trees that happened to stand along the line were tilted and left in a

slanting position on the sloping surface between the two parts of the earth's crust. They saw no reason to stop

growing, but, turning their tips toward the sky, they bravely pushed upward. Thus they preserve in a striking

Volcanoes as well as earth movements have occurred on a grand scale within a few hundred years in the

cordillera. Even where there is today no visible volcanic activity, recent eruptions have left traces as fresh as

if they had occurred but yesterday. On the borders of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado one can see not only

fresh cones of volcanic ash but lava which has poured over the edges of the cliffs and hardened while in the

act of flowing. From Orizaba and Popocatepetl in Mexico through Mount San Francisco in Arizona, Lassen

Peak and Mount Shasta in California, Mount Rainier with its glaciers in the Cascade Range of Washington,

and Mount Wrangell in Alaska, the cordillera contains an almost unbroken chain of great volcanoes. All are

either active at present or have been active within very recent times. In 1912 Mount Katmai, near the

northwestern end of the volcanic chain, erupted so violently that it sent dust around the whole world. The

presence of the dust caused brilliant sunsets second only to those due to Krakatoa in 1883. It also cut off so

much sunlight that the effect was felt in measurements made by the Smithsonian Institution in the French

provinces of North Africa. In earlier times, throughout the length of the cordillera great masses of volcanic

material were poured out to form high plateaus like those of southern Mexico or of the Columbia River in

Oregon. In Utah some of these have been lifted up so that heavy caps of lava now form isolated sheets

topping lofty plateaus. There the lowland shepherds drive their sheep in summer and live in absolute isolation

for months at a time. There, as everywhere, the cordillera bears the marks of mountains in the making, while

the mountains of eastern America bear the marks of those that were made when the world was young.

The geysers and hot springs of the Yellowstone are another proof of recent volcanic activity. They owe their

existence to hot rocks which lie only a little way below the surface and which not long ago were molten lava.

The terraces and platforms built by the geysers are another evidence that the cordillera is a region where the

surface of the earth is still being shaped into new forms by forces acting from within. The physical features of

In spite of the importance of the constructive forces which are still building up the mountains, much of the

finest scenery of the cordillera is due to the destructive forces of erosion. The majestic Columbia Canyon,

like others of its kind, is the work of running water. Glaciers also have done their part. During the glacial

period the forces which control the paths of storms did not give to the cordillera region such an abundance of

snow as was sifted down upon Laurentia. Therefore no such huge continental glaciers have flowed out over

millions of square miles of lower country. Nevertheless among the mountains themselves the ice gouged and

scraped and smoothed and at its lower edges deposited great moraines. Its work today makes the cliffs and

falls of the Yosemite one of the world's most famous bits of scenery. This scenery is young and its beauty

will pass in a short time as geology counts the years, for in natural scenery as in human life it is youth that

makes beauty. The canyons, waterfalls, and geysers of the cordillera share their youth with the lakes,

waterfalls, and rapids due to recent glaciation in the east. Nevertheless, though youth is the condition of most

striking beauty, maturity and old age are the condition of greatest usefulness. The young cordillera with its

mountains still in the making can support only a scanty population, whereas the old eastern mountains, with

the lines of long life engraved upon every feature, open their arms to man and let him live and prosper.

It is not enough that we should picture merely the four divisions of the land of our continent. We must see

how the land meets the sea. In low latitudes in both the Old World and the New, the continents have tended to

emerge farther and farther from the sea during recent geological times. Hence on the eastern side of both

North and South America from New Jersey to Brazil the ocean is bordered for the most part by coastal plains,

uplifted from the sea only a short time ago. On the mountainous western side of both continents, however, the

sea bottom shelves downward so steeply that its emergence does not give rise to a plain but merely to a steep

slope on which lie a series of old beaches several hundred and even one thousand feet above the present shore

line. Such conditions are not favorable to human progress. The coastal plains produced by uplift of the land

may be fertile and may furnish happy homes for man, but they do not permit ready access to the sea because

they have no harbors. The chief harbor of Mexico at Vera Cruz is merely a little nick in the coastline and

could never protect a great fleet, even with the help of its breakwater. Where an enterprising city like Los

Angeles lies on the uplifted Pacific coast, it must spend millions in wresting a harbor from the very jaws of

In high latitudes in all parts of the world the land has recently been submerged beneath the sea. In some

places, especially those like the coasts of Virginia and central California which lie in middle latitudes, a

recent slight submergence has succeeded a previous large emergence. Wherever such sinking of the land has

taken place, it has given rise to countless bays, gulfs, capes, islands, and fiords. The ocean water has entered

the valleys and has drowned their lower parts. It has surrounded the bases of hills and left them as islands; it

has covered low valleys and has created long sounds where traffic may pass with safety even in great storms.

Though much land has thus been lost which would be good for agriculture, commerce has been wonderfully

stimulated. Through Long Island Sound there pass each day hundreds of boats which again and again would

suffer distress and loss if they were not protected from the open sea. It is no accident that of the eight largest

metropolitan districts in the United States five have grown up on the shores of deep inlets which are due to

Nor must the value of scenery be forgotten in a survey such as this. Year by year we are learning that in this

restless, strenuous American life of ours vacations are essential. We are learning, too, that the love of beauty

is one of Nature's greatest healers. Regions like the coast of Maine and Puget Sound, where rugged land and

lifegiving ocean interlock, are worth untold millions because of their inspiring beauty. It is indeed

marvelous that in the latitude of the northern United States and southern Canada so many circumstances

favorable to human happiness are combined. Fertile soil, level plains, easy passage across the mountains,

coal, iron, and other metals imbedded in the rocks, and a stimulating climate, all shower their blessings upon

man. And with all these blessings goes the advantage of a coast which welcomes the mariner and brings the

stimulus of foreign lands, while at the same time it affords rest and inspiration to the toilers here at home.

No part of the world can be truly understood without a knowledge of its garment of vegetation, for this

determines not only the nature of the animal inhabitants but also the occupations of the majority of human

beings. Although the soil has much to do with the character of vegetation, climate has infinitely more. It is

temperature which causes the moss and lichens of the barren tundras in the far north to be replaced by

orchids, twining vines, and mahogany trees near the equator. It is rainfall which determines that vigorous

forests shall grow in the Appalachians in latitudes where grasslands prevail in the plains and deserts in the

Forests, grasslands, deserts, represent the three chief types of vegetation on the surface of the earth. Each is

a response to certain welldefined conditions of climate. Forests demand an abundance of moisture

throughout the entire season of growth. Where this season lasts only three months the forest is very different

from where it lasts twelve. But no forest can be vigorous if the ground habitually becomes dry for a

considerable period during which the weather is warm enough for growth. Desert vegetation, on the other

hand, which consists primarily of bushes with small, droughtresistant leaves, needs only a few irregular and

infrequent showers in order to endure long periods of heat and drought. Discontinuity of moisture is the cause

of deserts, just as continuity is the necessary condition of forest growth. Grasses prevail where the climatic

conditions are intermediate between those of the forest and the desert. Their primary requisite is a short

period of fairly abundant moisture with warmth enough to ripen their seeds. Unlike the trees of the forests,

they thrive even though the wet period be only a fraction of the entire time that is warm enough for growth.

Unlike the bushes of the desert, they rarely thrive unless the ground is well soaked for at least a few weeks.

Most people think of forests as offering far more variety than either deserts or grasslands. To them grass is

just grass, while trees seem to possess individuality. In reality, however, the short turfy grass of the far north

differs from the fourfoot fronds of the bunchy saccaton grass of Arizona, and from the far taller tufts of the

plumed pampas grass, much more than the pine tree differs from the palm. Deserts vary even more than

either forests or grasslands. The traveler in the Arizona desert, for example, has been jogging across a

gravelly plain studded at intervals of a few yards with little bushes a foot high. The scenery is so monotonous

and the noon sunshine so warm that he almost falls asleep. When he wakes from his daydream, so weird are

his surroundings that he thinks he must be in one of the places to which Sindbad was carried by the roc. The

trail has entered an open forest of joshuas, as the big tree yuccas are called in Arizona. Their shaggy trunks

and uncouth branches are rendered doubly unkempt by swordlike, ashyyellow dead leaves that double back

on the trunk but refuse to fall to the ground. At a height of from twelve to twenty feet each arm of the

manybranched candelabrum ends in a stiff rosette of graygreen spiky leaves as tough as hemp. Equally

bizarre and much more imposing is a desert "stand" of giant suhuaros, great fluted treecacti thirty feet or

more high. In spite of their size the suhuaros are desert types as truly as is sagebrush.

In America the most widespread type of forest is the evergreen coniferous woodland of the north. Its pines,

firs, spruces, hemlocks, and cedars which are really junipers, cover most of Canada together with northern

New England and the region south of Lakes Huron and Superior. At its northern limit the forest looks

thoroughly forlorn. The gnarled and stunted trees are thickly studded with halfdead branches bent down by

the weight of snow, so that the lower ones sweep the ground, while the upper look tired and discouraged from

their struggle with an inclement climate. Farther south, however, the forest loses this aspect of terrific

struggle. In Maine, for example, it gives a pleasant impression of comfortable prosperity. Wherever the trees

have room to grow, they are full and stocky, and even where they are crowded together their slender

upspringing trunks look alert and energetic. The signs of death and decay, indeed, appear everywhere in

fallen trunks, dead branches, and decayed masses of wood, but moss and lichens, twinflowers and

bunchberries so quickly mantle the prostrate trees that they do not seem like tokens of weakness. Then, too,

in every open space thousands of young trees bank their soft green masses so gracefully that one has an

everpresent sense of pleased surprise as he comes upon this younger foliage out of the dim aisles among the

Except on their southern borders the great northern forests are not good as a permanent home for man. The

snow lies so late in the spring and the summers are so short and cool that agriculture does not prosper. As a

home for the fox, marten, weasel, beaver, and many other furbearing animals, however, the coniferous

forests are almost ideal. That is why the Hudson's Bay Company is one of the few great organizations which

have persisted and prospered from colonial times to the present. As long ago as 1670 Charles II granted to

Prince Rupert and seventeen noblemen and gentlemen a charter so sweeping that, aside from their own

powers of assimilation, there was almost no limit to what the "Governor and Company of Adventurers of

England trading into Hudson's Bay" might acquire. By 1749, nearly eighty years after the granting of the

charter, however, the Company had only four or five forts on the coast of Hudson Bay, with about 120

regular employees. Nevertheless the poor Indians were so ignorant of the value of their furs and the

consequent profits were so large that, after Canada had been ceded to Great Britain in 1763, a rival

organization, the Northwest Fur Company of Montreal, was established. Then there began an era that was

truly terrible for the Indians of the northern forest. In their eagerness to get the valuable furs the companies

offered the Indians strong liquors in an abundance that ruined the poor red man, body and soul. Moreover the

furbearing animals were killed not only in winter but during the breeding season. Many mother animals

were shot and their little ones were left to die. Hence in a short time the wild creatures of the great northern

In spite of this slaughter of furbearing animals, the same Company still draws fat dividends from the

northern forest and its furry inhabitants. If the forest had been more habitable, it would long ago have been

occupied by settlers, as have its warmer, southern portions, and the Company would have ceased to exist.

Aside from the regions too cold or too dry to support any vegetation whatever, few parts of the world are

more deadening to civilization than the forests of the far north. Near the northern limit of the great evergreen

forest of North America wild animals are so rare that a family of hunting Indians can scarcely find a living in

a thousand square miles. Today the voracious maw of the daily newspaper is eating the spruce and hemlock

by means of relentless saws and rattling pulpmills. In the wake of the lumbermen settlers are tardily

spreading northward from the more favored tracts in northern New England and southern Canada.

Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and

trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.

Outliers of the pine forest extend far down into the United States. The easternmost lies in part along the

Appalachians and in part along the coastal plain from southern New Jersey to Texas. The coastal forest is

unlike the other coniferous forests in two respects, for its distribution and growth are not limited by long

winters but by sandy soil which quickly becomes dry. This drier southern pine forest lacks the beauty of its

northern companion. Its trees are often tall and stately, but they are usually much scattered and are

surrounded by stretches of scanty grass. There is no trace of the mossy carpet and dense copses of

undergrowth that add so much to the picturesqueness of the forests farther north. The unkempt halfbreed or

Indian hunter is replaced by the prosaic gatherer of turpentine. As the man of the southern forests shuffles

along in blue or khaki overalls and carries his buckets from tree to tree, he seems a dull figure contrasted with

the active northern hunter who glides swiftly and silently from trap to trap on his rawhide snowshoes. Yet

though the southern pine forest may be less picturesque than the northern, it is more useful to man. In spite of

its sandy soil, much of this forest land is being reclaimed, and all will some day probably be covered by

Two other outliers of the northern evergreen forest extend southward along the cool heights of the Rocky

Mountains and of the Pacific coast ranges of the United States. In the Olympic and Sierra Nevada ranges the

most western outlier of this northern band of vegetation probably contains the most inspiring forests of the

world. There grow the vigorous Oregon pines, firs, and spruces, and the still more famous Big Trees or

sequoias. High on the sides of the Sierra above the yuccas, the live oaks, and the deciduous forest of the

lower slopes, one meets these Big Trees. To come upon them suddenly after a long, rough tramp over the

sunny lower slopes is the experience of a lifetime. Upward the great trees rise sheer one hundred feet without

a branch. The huge fluted trunks encased in soft, red bark six inches or a foot thick are more impressive than

the columns of the grandest cathedral. It seems irreverent to speak above a whisper. Each tree is a new

wonder. One has to walk around it and study it to appreciate its enormous size. Where a tree chances to stand

isolated so that one can see its full majesty, the sense of awe is tempered by the feeling that in spite of their

size the trees have a beauty all their own. Lifted to such heights, the branches appear to be covered with

masses of peculiarly soft and rounded foliage like the piledup banks of a white cumulus cloud before a

thunderstorm. At the base of such a tree the eye is caught by the sharp, triangular outline of one of its young

progeny. The lower branches sweep the ground. The foliage is harsh and rough. In almost no other species of

trees is there such a change from comparatively ungraceful youth to a superbly beautiful old age.

The second great type of American forest is deciduous. The trees have broad leaves quite unlike the slender

needles or overlapping scales of the northern evergreens. Each winter such forests shed their leaves. Among

the mountains where the frosts come suddenly, the blaze of glory and brilliance of color which herald the

shedding of the leaves are surpassed in no other part of the world. Even the colors of the Painted Desert in

northern Arizona and the wonderful flowers of the California plains are less pleasing. In the Painted Desert

the patches of red, yellow, grayblue, white, pale green, and black have a garish, almost repellent

appearance. In California the flamecolored acres of poppies in some places, of white or yellow daisylike

flowers in others, or of purple blossoms elsewhere have a softer expression than the bare soil of the desert.

Yet they lack the delicate blending and harmony of colors which is the greatest charm of the autumn foliage

in the deciduous forests. Even where the forests consist of such trees as birches, beeches, aspens, or

sycamores, whose leaves merely turn yellow in the fall, the contrast between this color and the green tint of

summer or the bare branches of winter adds a spice of variety which is lacking in other and more monotonous

From still other points of view the deciduous forest has an almost unequaled degree of variety. In one place it

consists of graceful little birches whose white trunks shimmering in the twilight form just the background for

ghosts. Contrast them with the oak forest half a mile away. There the sense of gracefulness gives place to a

feeling of strength. The lines are no longer vertical but horizontal. The knotted elbows of the branches recall

the keels of sturdy merchantmen of bygone days. The acorns under foot suggest food for the herds of

halfwild pigs which roam among the trees in many a southern county. Of quite another type are the stately

forests of the Appalachians where splendid magnolia and tulip trees spread their broad limbs aloft at heights

Deciduous forests grow in the wellbalanced regions where summer and winter approach equality, where

neither is unduly long, and where neither is subject to prolonged drought. They extend southward from

central New England, the Great Lakes, and Minnesota, to Mississippi, Arkansas, and eastern Texas. They

predominate even in parts of such prairie States as Michigan, Indiana, southern Illinois, and southeastern

Missouri. No part of the continent is more populous or more progressive than the regions once covered by

deciduous forests. In the United States nearly sixty per cent of the inhabitants live in areas reclaimed from

such forests. Yet the area of the forests is less than a quarter of the three million square miles that make up

In their relation to human life the forests of America differ far more than do either grasslands or deserts. In

the far north, as we have seen, the pine forests furnish one of the least favorable environments. In middle

latitudes the deciduous forests go to the opposite extreme and furnish the most highly favored of the homes of

man. Still farther southward the increasing luxuriance of the forests, especially along the Atlantic coast,

renders them less and less favorable to mankind. In southern Mexico and Yucatan the stately equatorial rain

forest, the most exuberant of all types of vegetation and the most unconquerable by man, makes its

appearance. It forms a discontinuous belt along the wet east coast and on the lower slopes of the mountains

from southern Yucatan to Venezuela. Then it is interrupted by the grasslands of the Orinoco, but revives

again in still greater magnificence in the Guianas. Thence it stretches not only along the coast but far into the

little known interior of the Great Amazon basin, while southward it borders all the coast as far as southern

Brazil. In the Amazon basin it reaches its highest development and becomes the crowning glory of the

Except in its evil effects on man, the equatorial rain forest is the antithesis of the forests of the extreme north.

The equatorial trees are hardwood giants, broad leaved, bright flowered, and often fruitbearing. The

northern trees are softwood dwarfs, needleleaved, flowerless, and conebearing. The equatorial trees are

often branchless for one hundred feet, but spread at the top into a broad overarching canopy which shuts out

the sun perpetually. The northern trees form sharp little pyramids with low, widely spreading branches at the

base and only short twigs at the top. In the equatorial forests there is almost no underbrush. The animals, such

as monkeys, snakes, parrots, and brilliant insects, live chiefly in the lofty treetops. In the northern forests

there is almost nothing except underbrush, and the foxes, rabbits, weasels, ptarmigans, and mosquitoes live

close to the ground in the shelter of the branches. Both forests are alike, however, in being practically

uninhabited by man. Each is peopled only by primitive nomadic hunters who stand at the very bottom in the

Aside from the rain forest there are two other types in tropical countriesjungle and scrub. The distinction

between rain forest, jungle, and scrub is due to the amount and the season of rainfall. An understanding of

this distinction not only explains many things in the present condition of Latin America but also in the history

of preColumbian Central America. Forests, as we have seen, require that the ground be moist throughout

practically the whole of the season that is warm enough for growth. Since the warm season lasts throughout

the year within the tropics, dense forests composed of uniformly large trees corresponding to our oaks,

maples, and beeches will not thrive unless the ground is wet most of the time. Of course there may be no rain

for a few weeks, but there must be no long and regularly recurrent periods of drought. Smaller trees and such

species as the cocoanut palm are much less exacting and will flourish even if there is a dry period of several

months. Still smaller, bushy species will thrive even when the rainfall lasts only two or three months. Hence

where the rainy season lasts most of the year, rain forest prevails; where the rainy and dry seasons do not

differ greatly in length, tropical jungle is the dominant growth; and where the rainy season is short and the

The relation of scrub, jungle, and rain forest is well illustrated in Yucatan, where the ancient Mayas reared

their stately temples. On the northern coast the annual rainfall is only ten or fifteen inches and is concentrated

largely in our summer months. There the country is covered with scrubby bushes six to ten feet high. These

are beautifully green during the rainy season from June to October, but later in the year lose almost all their

leaves. The landscape would be much like that of a thick, bushy pasture in the United States at the same

season, were it not that in the late winter and early spring some of the bushes bear brilliant red, yellow, or

white flowers. As one goes inland from the north coast of Yucatan the rainfall increases. The bushes become

taller and denser, trees twenty feet high become numerous, and many rise thirty or forty feet or even higher.

This is the jungle. Its smaller portions suggest a second growth of timber in the deciduous forests of the

United States fifteen or twenty years after the cutting of the original forest, but here there is much more

evidence of rapid growth. A few species of bushes and trees may remain green throughout the year, but

during the dry season most of the jungle plants lose their leaves, at least in part.

With every mile that one advances into the more rainy interior, the jungle becomes greener and fresher, the

density of the lower growths increases, and the proportion of large trees becomes greater until finally jungle

gives place to genuine forest. There many of the trees remain green throughout the year. They rise to heights

of fifty or sixty feet even on the borders of their province, and at the top form a canopy so thick that the

ground is shady most of the time. Even in the drier part of the year when some of the leaves have fallen, the

rays of the sun scarcely reach the ground until nine or ten o'clock in the morning. Even at high noon the

sunlight straggles through only in small patches. Long, sinuous lianas, often queerly braided, hang down

from the trees; epiphytes and various parasitic growths add their strange green and red to the complex variety

of vegetation. Young palms grow up almost in a day and block a trail which was hewn out with much labor

only a few months before. Wherever the death of old trees forms an opening, a thousand seedlings begin a

fierce race to reach the light. Everywhere the dominant note is intensely vigorous life, rapid growth, and

In their effect on man, the three forms of tropical forest are very different. In the genuine rain forest

agriculture is almost impossible. Not only does the poor native find himself baffled in the face of Nature, but

the white man is equally at a loss. Many things combine to produce this result. Chief among them are malaria

and other tropical diseases. When a few miles of railroad were being built through a strip of tropical forest

along the coast of eastern Guatemala, it was impossible to keep the laborers more than twenty days at a time;

indeed, unless they were sent away at the end of three weeks, they were almost sure to be stricken with

virulent malarial fevers from which many died. An equally potent enemy of agriculture is the vegetation

itself. Imagine the difficulty of cultivating a garden in a place where the weeds grow all the time and where

many of them reach a height of ten or twenty feet in a single year. Perhaps there are people in the world who

might cultivate such a region and raise marvelous crops, but they are not the indolent people of tropical

America; and it is in fact doubtful whether any kind of people could live permanently in the tropical forest

and retain energy enough to carry on cultivation. Nowhere in the world is there such steady, damp heat as in

these shadowy, windless depths far below the lofty tops of the rain forest. Nowhere is there greater

disinclination to work than among the people who dwell in this region. Consequently in the vast rain forests

of the Amazon basin and in similar small forests as far north as Central America, there are today practically

no inhabitants except a mere handful of the poorest and most degraded people in the world. Yet in ancient

times the northern border of the rain forest was the seat of America's most advanced civilization. The

Tropical jungle borders the rain forest all the way from southern Mexico to southern Brazil. It treats man far

better than does the rain forest. In marked contrast to its more stately neighbor, it contains abundant game.

Wild fruits ripen at almost all seasons. A few banana plants and palm trees will wellnigh support a family. If

corn is planted in a clearing, the return is large in proportion to the labor. So long as the population is not too

dense, life is so easy that there is little to stimulate progress. Hence, although the people of the jungle are

fairly numerous, they have never played much part in history. Far more important is the role of those living in

the tropical lands where scrub is the prevailing growth. In our day, for example, few tropical lowlands are

more progressive than the narrow coastal strip of northern Yucatan. There on the border between jungle and

scrub the vegetation does not thrive sufficiently to make life easy for the chocolatecolored natives. Effort is

required if they would make a living, yet the effort is not so great as to be beyond the capacity of the indolent

Leaving the forests, let us step out into the broad, breezy grasslands. One would scarcely expect that a

journey poleward out of the forest of northern Canada would lead to an improvement in the conditions of

human life, yet such is the case. Where the growing season becomes so short that even the hardiest trees

disappear, grassy tundras replace the forest. By furnishing food for such animals as the muskox, they are a

great help to the handful of scattered Indians who dwell on the northern edge of the forest. In summer, when

the animals grow fat on the short nutritious grass, the Indians follow them out into the open country and hunt

them vigorously for food and skins to sustain life through the long dreary winter. In many cases the hunters

would advance much farther into the grasslands were it not that the abundant muskoxen tempt the Eskimo

of the seacoast also to leave their homes and both sides fear bloody encounters.

With the growth of civilization the advantage of the northern grasslands over the northern forests becomes

still more apparent. The domestic reindeer is beginning to replace the wild muskox. The reindeer people,

like the Indian and Eskimo hunters, must be nomadic. Nevertheless their mode of life permits them to live in

much greater numbers and on a much higher plane of civilization than the hunters. Since they hunt the

furbearing animals in the neighboring forests during the winter, they diminish the food supply of the hunters

who dwell permanently in the forest, and thus make their life still more difficult. The northern forests bid fair

to decline in population rather than increase. In this New World of ours, strange as it may seem, the almost

uninhabited forest regions of the far north and of the equator are probably more than twice as large as the

South of the tundras the grasslands have a still greater advantage over the forests. In the forest region of the

Laurentian highland abundant snow lasts far into the spring and keeps the ground so wet and cold that no

crops can be raised. Moreover, because of the still greater abundance of snow in former times, the largest of

ice sheets, as we have seen, accumulated there during the Glacial Period and scraped away most of the soil.

The grassy plains, on the contrary, are favored not only by a deep, rich soil, much of which was laid down by

the ice, but by the relative absence of snow in winter and the consequent rapidity with which the ground

becomes warm in the spring. Hence the Canadian plains from the United States boundary northward to

latitude 57 degrees contain a prosperous agricultural population of over a million people, while the far larger

The question is often asked why, in a state of nature, trees are so scarce on the prairiesin Iowa, for

instancealthough they thrive when planted. In answer we are often told that up to the middle of the

nineteenth century such vast herds of buffaloes roamed the prairies that seedling trees could never get a

chance to grow. It is also said that prairie fires sweeping across the plains destroyed the little trees whenever

they sprouted. Doubtless the buffaloes and the fires helped to prevent forest growth, but another factor

appears to be still more important. All the States between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains

receive much more rain in summer than in winter. But as the soil is comparatively dry in the spring when the

trees begin their growth, they are handicapped. They could grow if nothing else interfered with them, just as

peas will grow in a garden if the weeds are kept out. If peas, however, are left uncared for, the weeds gain the

upper hand and there are no peas the second year. If the weeds are left to contend with grass, the grass in the

end prevails. In the eastern forest region, if the grass be left to itself, small trees soon spring up in its midst. In

half a century a field of grass goes back to forest because trees are especially favored by the climate. In the

same way in the prairies, grass is especially favored, for it is not weakened by the spring drought, and it

grows abundantly until it forms the wonderful stretches of waving green where the buffalo once grew fat.

Moreover the fine glacial soil of the prairies is so clayey and compact that the roots of trees cannot easily

penetrate it. Since grasses send their roots only into the more friable upper layers of soil, they possess another

Far to the south of the prairies lie the grasslands of tropical America, of which the Banos of the Orinoco

furnish a good example. Almost everywhere their plumed grasses have been left to grow undisturbed by the

plough, and even grazing animals are scarce. These extremely flat plains are flooded for months in the rainy

season from May to October and are parched in the dry season that follows. As trees cannot endure such

extremes, grasses are the prevailing growth. Elsewhere the nature of the soil causes many other grassy tracts

to be scattered among the tropical jungle and forest. Trees are at a disadvantage both in porous, sandy soils,

where the water drains away too rapidly, and in clayey soil, where it is held so long that the ground is

saturated for weeks or months at a time. South of the tropical portion of South America the vast pampas of

Argentina closely resemble the North American prairies and the drier plains to the west of them. Grain in the

east and cattle in the west are fast causing the disappearance of those great tussocks of tufted grasses eight or

nine feet high which hold among grasses a position analogous to that of the Big Trees of California among

It is often said that America has no real deserts. This is true in the sense that there are no regions such as are

found in Asia and Africa where one can travel a hundred miles at a stretch and scarcely see a sign of

vegetationnothing but barren gravel, graceful wavy sand dunes, hard windswept clay, or still harder rock

salt broken into rough blocks with upturned edges. In the broader sense of the term, however, America has an

abundance of desertsregions which bear a thin cover of bushy vegetation but are too dry for agriculture

without irrigation. On the north such deserts begin in southern Canada where a dry region abounding in small

salt lakes lies at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. In the United States the deserts lie almost wholly

between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountain ranges, which keep out any moisture that might come

from either the west or the east. Beginning on the north with the sagebrush plateau of southern Washington,

the desert expands to a width of seven hundred miles in the gray, sagecovered basins of Nevada and Utah.

In southern California and Arizona the sagebrush gives place to smaller forms like the saltbush, and the

desert assumes a sterner aspect. Next comes the cactus desert extending from Arizona far south into Mexico.

One of the notable features of the desert is the extreme heat of certain portions. Close to the Nevada border in

southern California, Death Valley, 250 feet below sealevel, is the hottest place in America. There alone

among the American regions familiar to the writer does one have that feeling of intense, overpowering aridity

which prevails so often in the deserts of Arabia and Central Asia. Some years ago a Weather Bureau

thermometer was installed in Death Valley at Furnace Creek, where the only flowing water in more than a

hundred miles supports a depressing little ranch. There one or two white men, helped by a few Indians, raise

alfalfa, which they sell at exorbitant prices to deluded prospectors searching for riches which they never find.

Though the terrible heat ruins the health of the white men in a year or two, so that they have to move away,

they have succeeded in keeping a thermometer record for some years. No other properly exposed,

outofdoor thermometer in the United States, or perhaps in the world, is so familiar with a temperature of

100 degrees F. or more. During the period of not quite fifteen hundred days from the spring of 1911 to May,

1915, a maximum temperature of 100 degrees F. or more was reached on five hundred and fortyeight days,

or more than onethird of the time. On July 10, 1913, the mercury rose to 134 degrees F. and touched the top

of the tube. How much higher it might have gone no one can tell. That day marks the limit of temperature yet

reached in this country according to official records. In the summer of 1914 there was one night when the

thermometer dropped only to 114 degrees F., having been 128 degrees F. at noon. The branches of a

peppertree whose roots had been freshly watered wilted as a flower wilts when broken from the stalk.

East and south of Death Valley lies the most interesting section of the American desert, the socalled

succulent desert of southern Arizona and northern Mexico. There in greatest profusion grow the cacti,

perhaps the latest and most highly specialized of all the great families of plants. There occur such strange

scenes as the "forests" of suhuaros, whose giant columns have already been described. Their beautiful crowns

of large white flowers produce a fruit which is one of the mainstays of the Papagos and other Indians of the

regions. In this same region the yucca is highly developed, and its tall stalks of white or greenish flowers

make the desert appear like a flower garden. In fact this whole desert, thanks to light rains in summer as well

as winter, appears extraordinarily green and prosperous. Its fair appearance has deceived many a poor settler

Farther south the deserts of America are largely confined to plateaus like those of Mexico and Peru or to

basins sheltered on all sides from rainbearing winds. In such basins the suddenness of the transition from

one type of vegetation to another is astonishing. In Guatemala, for instance, the coast is bordered by thick

jungle which quickly gives place to magnificent rain forest a few miles inland. This continues two or three

score miles from the coast until a point is reached where mountains begin to obstruct the rainbearing

tradewinds. At once the rain forest gives place to jungle; in a few miles jungle in its turn is replaced by

scrub; and shortly the scrub degenerates to mere desert bush. Then in another fifty miles one rises to the main

plateau passing once more through scrub. This time the scrub gives place to grasslands diversified by

deciduous trees and pines which give the country a distinctly temperate aspect. On such plateaus the chief

civilization of the tropical LatinAmerican countries now centers. In the past, however, the plateaus were far

We are wont to think of deserts as places where the plants are of few kinds and not much crowded. As a

matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a

prairie. The reason is simple. Every desert contains wet spots near springs or in swamps. Such places abound

with all sorts of waterloving plants. The deserts also contain a few valleys where the larger streams keep the

ground moist at all seasons. In such places the variety of trees is as great as in many forests. Moreover almost

At such times the seeds of all sorts of little annual plants, including grasses, daisies, lupines, and a host of

others, sprout quickly, and give rise to a carpet of vegetation as varied and beautiful as that of the prairie.

Thus the desert has not only its own peculiar bushes and succulents but many of the products of vegetation in

swamps, grasslands, and forests. Though much of the ground is bare in the desert, the plants are actually

crowded together as closely as possible. The showers of such regions are usually so brief that they merely wet

the surface. At a depth of a foot or more the soil of many deserts never becomes moist from year's end to

year's end. It is useless for plants to send their roots deep down under such circumstances, for they might not

reach water for a hundred feet. Their only recourse is to spread horizontally. The farther they spread, the

more water they can absorb after the scanty showers. Hence the plants of the desert throttle one another by

extending their roots horizontally, just as those of the forest kill one another by springing rapidly upward and

Vegetation, whether in forests, grasslands, or deserts, is the primary source of human sustenance. Without it

man would perish miserably; and where it is deficient, he cannot rise to great heights in the scale of

civilization. Yet strangely enough the scantiness of the vegetation of the deserts was a great help in the ascent

of man. Only in dry regions could primitive man compete with nature in fostering the right kind of

vegetation. In such regions arose the nations which first practised agriculture. There man became

comparatively civilized while his contemporaries were still nomadic hunters in the grasslands and the forests.

When the white man first explored America, the parts of the continent that had made most progress were by

no means those that are most advanced today.* None of the inhabitants, to be sure, had risen above

barbarism. Yet certain nations or tribes had advanced much higher than others. There was a great contrast, for

example, between the wellorganized barbarians of Peru and the almost completely unorganized Athapascan

* In the present chapter most of the facts as to the Indians north of Mexico are taken from the admirable

"Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico," edited by F. W. Hodge, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau

of Ethnology, Bulletin 30, Washington, 1907, two volumes. In summing up the character and achievements

of the Indians I have drawn also on other sources, but have everywhere taken pains to make no statements

which are not abundantly supported by this authoritative publication. In some cases I have not hesitated to

In the northern continent aboriginal America reached its highest development in three typical environments.

The first of these regions centered in the valley of Mexico where dwelt the Aztecs, but it extended as far

north as the Pueblos in Arizona and New Mexico. The special feature of the environment was the relatively

dry, warm climate with the chief rainfall in summer. The Indians living in this environment were notable for

their comparatively high social organization and for religious ceremonials whose elaborateness has rarely

been surpassed. On the whole, the people of this summer rain or Mexican type were not warlike and offered

little resistance to European conquest. Some tribes, to be sure, fought fiercely at first, but yielded within a

few years; the rest submitted to the lordly Spaniards almost without a murmur. Their civilization, if such we

may call it, had long ago seen its best days. The period of energy and progress had passed, and a time of

inertia and decay had set in. A century after the Spaniards had overcome the aborigines of Mexico, other

EuropeansFrench, English, and Dutchcame into contact with a sturdier type of red man, best

represented by the Iroquois or Five Nations of central New York. This more active type dwelt in a physical

environment notable for two featuresthe abundance of cyclonic storms bringing rain or snow at all seasons

and the deciduous forest which thickly covered the whole region. Unlike the Mexican, the civilization of the

Iroquois was young, vigorous, and growing. It had not learned to express itself in durable architectural forms

like those of Mexico, nor could it rival the older type in social and religious organization. In political

organization, however, the Five Nations had surpassed the other aboriginal peoples of North America. When

the white man became acquainted with the Iroquois in the seventeenth century, he found five of their tribes

organized into a remarkable confederation whose avowed object was to abolish war among themselves and to

secure to all the members the peaceful exercise of their rights and privileges. So well was the confederation

organized that, in spite of war with its enemies, it persisted for at least two hundred years. One of the chief

characteristics of the Iroquois was their tremendous energy. They were so energetic that they pursued their

enemies with an implacable relentlessness similar to the restless eagerness with which the people of the

region from New York to Chicago now pursue their business enterprises. This led the Iroquois to torture their

prisoners with the utmost ingenuity and cruelty. Not only did the savages burn and mutilate their captives, but

they sometimes added the last refinement of torture by compelling the suffering wretches to eat pieces of

flesh cut from their own bodies. Energy may lead to high civilization, but it may also lead to excesses of evil.

The third prominent aboriginal type was that of the fishermen of the coast of British Columbia, especially the

Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The most important features of their environment were the submerged

coast with its easy navigation, the mild oceanic climate, and the dense pine forests. The Haidas, like the

Iroquois, appear to have been a people who were still advancing. Such as it was, their greatness was

apparently the product of their own ingenuity and not, like that of the Mexicans, an inheritance from a greater

past. The Haidas lacked the relentless energy of the Iroquois and shared the comparatively gentle character

which prevailed among all the Indians along the Pacific Coast. They were by no means weaklings, however.

Commercially, for instance, they seem to have been more advanced than any North American tribe except

those in the Mexican area. In architecture they stood equally high. We are prone to think of the Mexicans as

the best architects among the aborigines, but when the white man came even the Aztecs were merely

imitating the work of their predecessors. The Haidas, on the contrary, were showing real originality. They

had no stone with which to build, for their country is so densely forested that stone is rarely visible. They

were remarkably skillful, however, in hewing great beams from the forest. With these they constructed

houses whose carved totem poles and graceful facades gave promise of an architecture of great beauty.

Taking into account the difficulties presented by a material which was not durable and by tools which were

nothing but bits of stone, we must regard their totem poles and mural decorations as real contributions to

In addition to these three highest types of the red man there were many others. Each, as we shall see, owed its

peculiarities largely to the physical surroundings in which it lived. Of course different tribes possessed

different degrees of innate ability, but the chief differences in their habits and mode of life arose from the

topography, the climate, the plants, and the animals which formed the geographical setting of their homes.

In previous chapters we have gained some idea of the topography of the New World and of the climate in its

relation to plants and animals. We have also seen that climate has much to do with human energy. We have

not, however, gained a sufficiently clear idea of the distribution of climatic energy. A map of the world

showing how energy would be distributed if it depended entirely upon climate clarifies the subject. The dark

shading of the map indicates those regions where energy is highest. It is based upon measurements of the

strength of scores of individuals, upon the scholastic records of hundreds of college students, upon the

piecework of thousands of factory operatives, and upon millions of deaths and births in a score of different

countries. It takes account of three chief climatic conditionstemperature, humidity, and variability. It also

takes account of mental as well as physical ability. Underneath it is a map of the distribution of civilization

on the basis of the opinion of fifty authorities in fifteen different countries. The similarity of the two maps is

so striking that there can be little question that today the distribution of civilization agrees closely with the

distribution of climatic energy. When Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, and Rome were at the height of their power

this agreement was presumably the same, for the storm belt which now gives variability and hence energy to

the thickly shaded regions in our two maps then apparently lay farther south. It is generally considered that no

race has been more closely dependent upon physical environment than were the Indians. Why, then, did the

energizing effect of climate apparently have less effect upon them than upon the other great races? Why were

not the most advanced Indian tribes found in the same places where white civilization is today most

advanced? Climatic changes might in part account for the difference, but, although such changes apparently

took place on a large scale in earlier times, there is no evidence of anything except minor fluctuations since

the days of the first white settlements. Racial inheritance likewise may account for some of the differences

among the various tribes, but it was probably not the chief factor. That factor was apparently the condition of

agriculture among people who had neither iron tools nor beasts of burden. Civilization has never made much

progress except when there has been a permanent cultivation of the ground. It has been said that "the history

of agriculture is the history of man in his most primitive and most permanent aspect." If we examine the

achievements and manner of life of the Indians in relation to the effect of climate upon agriculture and human

energy, as well as in relation to the more obvious features of topography and vegetation, we shall understand

why the people of aboriginal America in one part of the continent differed so greatly from those in another

part. In the far north the state of the inhabitants today is scarcely different from what it was in the days of

Columbus. Then, as now, the Eskimos had practically no political or social organization beyond the family or

the little group of relatives who lived in a single camp. They had no permanent villages, but moved from

place to place according to the season in search of fish, game, and birds. They lived this simple life not

because they lacked ability but because of their surroundings. Their kayaks or canoes are marvels of

ingenuity. With no materials except bones, driftwood, and skins they made boats which fulfilled their purpose

with extraordinary perfection. Seated in the small, round hole which is the only opening in the deck of his

canoe, the Eskimo hunter ties his skin jacket tightly outside the circular gunwale and is thus shut into a

practically watertight compartment. Though the waves dash over him, scarcely a drop enters the craft as he

skims along with his double paddle among cakes of floating ice. So, too, the snowhouse with its anterooms

and curved entrance passage is as clever an adaptation to the needs of wanderers in a land of ice and snow as

is the skyscraper to the needs of a busy commercial people crowded into great cities. The fact that the

oilburning, soapstone lamps of the Eskimo were the only means of producing artificial light in aboriginal

America, except by ordinary fires, is another tribute to the ingenuity of these northerners. So, too, is the

firedrill by which they alone devised a means of increasing the speed with which one stick could be twirled

against another to produce fire. In view of these clever inventions it seems safe to say that the Eskimo has

remained a nomadic savage not because he lacks inventive skill but partly because the climate deadens his

Southward and inland from the coastal homes of the Eskimo lies the great region of the northern pine forests.

It extends from the interior of Alaska southeastward in such a way as to include most of the Canadian

Rockies, the northern plains from Great Bear Lake almost to Lake Winnipeg, and most of the great

Laurentian shield around Hudson Bay and in the peninsula of Labrador. Except among the inhabitants of the

narrow Pacific slope and those of the shores of Labrador and the St. Lawrence Valley, a single type of

barbarism prevailed among the Indians of all the vast pine forest area. Only in a small section of the

wheatraising plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan have their habits greatly changed because of the arrival of

the white man. Now as always the Indians in these northern regions are held back by the long, benumbing

winters. They cannot practice agriculture, for no crops will grow. They cannot depend to any great extent

upon natural vegetation, for aside from blueberries, a few lichens, and one or two other equally insignificant

products, the forests furnish no food except animals. These lowly people seem to have been so occupied with

the severe struggle with the elements that they could not even advance out of savagery into barbarism. They

were homeless nomads whose movements were determined largely by the food supply.

Among the Athapascans who occupied all the western part of the northern pine forests, clothing was made of

deerskins with the hair left on. The lodges were likewise of deer or caribou skins, although farther south these

were sometimes replaced by bark. The food of these tribes consisted of caribou, deer, moose, and muskox

together with smaller animals such as the beaver and hare. They also ate various kinds of birds and the fish

found in the numerous lakes and rivers. They killed deer by driving them into an angle formed by two

converging rows of stakes, where they were shot by hunters lying in wait. Among the Kawchodinne tribe

near Great Bear Lake hares were the chief source of both food and clothing. When an unusually severe winter

or some other disaster diminished the supply, the Indians believed that the animals had mounted to the sky by

means of the trees and would return by the same way. In 1841 owing to scarcity of hares many of this tribe

died of starvation, and numerous acts of cannibalism are said to have occurred. Small wonder that civilization

was low and that infanticide, especially of female children, was common. Among such people women were

naturally treated with a minimum of respect. Since they were not skilled as hunters, there was relatively little

which they could contribute toward the sustenance of the family. Hence they were held in low esteem, for

among most primitive people woman is valued largely in proportion to her economic contribution. Her low

position is illustrated by the peculiar funeral custom of the Takulli, an Athapascan tribe on the Upper Frazer

River. A widow was obliged to remain upon the funeral pyre of her husband till the flames reached her own

body. When the fire had died down she collected the ashes of her dead and placed them in a basket, which

she was obliged to carry with her during three years of servitude in the family of her husband. At the end of

that time a feast was held, when she was released from thraldom and permitted to remarry if she desired.

Poor and degraded as the people of the northern forests may have been, they had their good traits. The

Kutchins of the Yukon and Lower Mackenzie regions, though they killed their female children, were

exceedingly hospitable and kept guests for months. Each head of a family took his turn in feasting the whole

band. On such occasions etiquette required the host to fast until the guests had departed. At such feasts an

interesting wrestling game was played. First the smallest boys began to wrestle. The victors wrestled with

those next in strength and so on until finally the strongest and freshest man in the band remained the final

victor. Then the girls and women went through the same progressive contest. It is hard to determine whether

the people of the northern pine forest were more or less competent than their Eskimo neighbors. It perhaps

makes little difference, for it is doubtful whether even a race with brilliant natural endowments could rise far

The Eskimos of the northern coasts and the people of the pine forests were not the only aborigines whose

development was greatly retarded because they could not practice agriculture. All the people of the Pacific

coast from Alaska to Lower California were in similar circumstances. Nevertheless those living along the

northern part of this coast rose to a much higher level than did those of California. This has sometimes been

supposed to show that geographical environment has little influence upon civilization, but in reality it proves

The coast of British Columbia was one of the three chief centers of aboriginal America. As The

Encyclopaedia Britannica* puts it: "The Haida people constituted with little doubt the finest race and that

most advanced in the arts of the entire west coast of North America." They and their almost equally advanced

Tlingit and Tsimshian neighbors on the mainland displayed much mechanical skill, especially in

canoebuilding, woodcarving, and the working of stone and copper, as well as in making blankets and

baskets. To this day they earn a considerable amount of money by selling their carved objects of wood and

slate to traders and tourists. Their canoes were hollowed out of logs of cedar and were often very large.

Houses which were sometimes 40 by 100 feet were built of huge cedar beams and planks, which were first

worked with stone and were then put together at great feasts. These correspond to the "raising bees" at which

the neighbors gathered to erect the frames of houses in early New England. Each Haida house ordinarily had

a single carved totem pole in the middle of the gable end which faced toward the beach. Often the end posts

in front were also carved and the whole house was painted. Another evidence of the fairly advanced state of

the Haidas was their active commercial intercourse with regions hundreds of miles away. At their

"potlatches," as the raising bees were called by the whites, trading went on vigorously. Carved copper plates

were among the articles which they esteemed of highest value. Standing in the tribe depended on the

possession of property rather than on ability in war, in which respect the Haidas were more like the people of

Slavery was common among the Haidas. Even as late as 1861, 7800 Tlingits held 828 slaves. Slavery may

not be a good institution in itself, but it indicates that people are welltodo, that they dwell in permanent

abodes, and that they have a wellestablished social order. Among the more backward Iroquois, captives

rarely became genuine slaves, for the social and economic organization was not sufficiently developed to

admit of this. The few captives who were retained after a fight were adopted into the tribe of the captors or

else were allowed to live with them and shift for themselvesa practice very different from that of the

Another feature of the Haidas' life which showed comparative progress was the social distinctions which

existed among them. One of the ways in which individuals maintained their social position was by giving

away quantities of goods of all kinds at the potlatches which they organized. A man sometimes went so far as

to strip himself of nearly every possession except his house. In return for this, however, he obtained what

seemed to him an abundant reward in the respect with which his fellowtribesmen afterward regarded him.

At subsequent potlatches he received in his turn a measure of their goods in proportion to his own gifts, so

that he was sometimes richer than before. These potlatches were social as well as industrial functions, and

dancing and singing were interspersed with the feasting. One of the amusements was a musical contest in

which singers from one tribe or band would contend with one another as to which could remember the

greatest number of songs or accurately repeat a new song after hearing it for the first time. At the potlatches

the children of chiefs were initiated into secret societies. They had their noses, ears, and lips pierced for

ornaments, and some of them were tattooed. This great respect for social position which the Haidas

manifested is doubtless far from ideal, but it at least indicates that a part of the tribe was sufficiently

advanced to accumulate property and to pass it on to its descendantsa custom that is almost impossible

among tribes which move from place to place. The question suggests itself why these coast barbarians were

so much in advance of their neighbors a few hundred miles away in the pine woods of the mountains. The

climate was probably one reason for this superiority. Instead of being in a region like the center of the pine

forests of British Columbia where human energy is sapped by six or eight months of winter, the Haidas

enjoyed conditions like those of Scotland. Although snow fell occasionally, severe cold was unknown. Nor

was there great heat in summer. The Haidas dwelt where both bodily strength and mental activity were

stimulated. In addition to this advantage of a favorable climate these Indians had a large and steady supply of

food close at hand. Most of their sustenance was obtained from the sea and from the rivers, in which the runs

of salmon furnished abundant provisions, which rarely failed. In Hecate Strait, between the Queen Charlotte

Islands and the mainland, there were wonderfully productive halibut fisheries, from which a supply of fish

was dried and packed away for the winter, so that there was always a store of provisions on hand. The forests

in their turn furnished berries and seeds, as well as bears, mountain goats, and other game.

Moreover the people of the northwest coast had the advantage of not being forced to move from place to

place in order to follow the fish. They lived on a drowned shore where bays, straits, and sounds are

extraordinarily numerous. The great waves of the Pacific are shut out by the islands so that the waterways are

almost always safe for canoes. Instead of moving their dwellings in order to follow the food supply, as the

Eskimo and the people of the pine forest were forced to do, the Haidas and their neighbors were able without

difficulty to bring their food home. At all seasons the canoes made it easy to transport large supplies of fish

from places even a hundred miles away. Having settled dwellings, the Haidas could accumulate property and

acquire that feeling of permanence which is one of the most important conditions for the development of

civilization. Doubtless the Haidas were intellectually superior to many other tribes, but even if they had not

been greatly superior, their surroundings would probably have made them stand relatively high in the scale of

civilization. Southward from the Haidas, around Puget Sound and in Washington and Oregon, there was a

gradual decline in civilization. The Chinook Indians of the lower Columbia, beyond the limits of the great

northern archipelago, had large communal houses occupied by three or four families of twenty or more

individuals. Their villages were thus fairly permanent, although there was much moving about in summer

owing to the nature of the food supply, which consisted chiefly of salmon, with roots and berries indigenous

to the region. The people were noted as traders not only among themselves but with surrounding tribes. They

were extremely skillful in handling their canoes, which were well made, hollowed out of single logs, and

often of great size. In disposition they are described as treacherous and deceitful, especially when their

cupidity was aroused. Slaves were common and were usually obtained by barter from surrounding tribes,

though occasionally by successful raids. These Indians of Oregon by no means rivaled the Haidas, for their

food supply was less certain and they did not have the advantage of easy water communication, which did so

Of the tribes farther south an observer says: "In general rudeness of culture the California Indians are scarcely

above the Eskimo, and whereas the lack of development of the Eskimo on many sides of their nature is

reasonably attributable in part to their difficult and limiting environment, the Indians of California inhabit a

country naturally as favorable, it would seem, as it might be. If the degree of civilization attained by a people

depends in any large measure on their habitat, as does not seem likely, it might be concluded from the case of

the California Indians that natural advantages were an impediment rather than an incentive to progress." In

some of the tribes, such as the Hupa, for example, there existed no organization and no formalities in the

government of the village. Formal councils were unknown, although the chief might and often did ask advice

of his men in a collected body. In general the social structure of the California Indians was so simple and

loose that it is hardly correct to speak of their tribes. Whatever solidarity there was among these people was

due in part to family ties and in part to the fact that they lived in the same village and spoke the same dialect.

Between different groups of these Indians, the common bond was similarity of language as well as frequency

and cordiality of intercourse. In so primitive a condition of society there was neither necessity nor

opportunity for differences of rank. The influence of chiefs was small and no distinct classes of slaves were

known. Extreme poverty was the chief cause of the low social and political organization of these Indians. The

Maidus in the Sacramento Valley were so poor that, in addition to consuming every possible vegetable

product, they not only devoured all birds except the buzzard, but ate badgers, skunks, wildcats, and mountain

lions, and even consumed salmon bones and deer vertebrae. They gathered grasshoppers and locusts by

digging large shallow pits in a meadow or flat. Then, setting fire to the grass on all sides, they drove the

insects into the pit. Their wings being burned off by the flames, the grasshoppers were helpless and were thus

collected by the bushel. Again of the Moquelumne, one of the largest tribes in central California, it is said

that their houses were simply frameworks of poles and brush which in winter were covered with earth. In

summer they erected coneshaped lodges of poles among the mountains. In favorable years they gathered

large quantities of acorns, which formed their principal food, and stored them for winter use in granaries

raised above the ground. Often, however, the crop was poor, and the Indians were left on the verge of

Finally in the far south, in the peninsula of Lower California, the tribes were "probably the lowest in culture

of any Indians in North America, for their inhospitable environment which made them wanderers, was

unfavorable to the foundation of government even of the rude and unstable kind found elsewhere." The

Yuman tribes of the mountains east of Santiago wore sandals of maguey fiber and descended from their own

territory among the mountains "to eat calabash and other fruits" that grew beside the Colorado River. They

were described as "very dirty on account of the much mescal they eat." Others speak of them as "very filthy

in their habits. To overcome vermin they coat their heads with mud with which they also paint their bodies.

On a hot day it is by no means unusual to see them wallowing in the mud like pigs." They were "exceedingly

poor, having no animals except foxes of which they had a few skins. The dress of the women in summer was

a shirt and a bark skirt. The men appear to have been practically unclothed during this season. The practice of

selling children seems to have been common. Their sustenance was fish, fruits, vegetables, and seeds of

grass, and many of the tribes were said to have been dreadfully scorbutic." A little to the east of these

degraded savages the much more advanced Mohave tribe had its home on the lower Colorado River. The

contrast between these neighboring tribes throws much light on the reason for the low estate of the California

Indians. "No better example of the power of environment to better man's condition can be found than that

shown as the lower Colorado is reached. Here are tribes of the same family (as those of Lower California)

remarkable not only for their fine physical development, but living in settled villages with welldefined tribal

lines, practising a rude, but effective, agriculture, and well advanced in many primitive Indian arts. The usual

Indian staples were raised except tobacco, these tribes preferring a wild tobacco of their region to the

This quotation is highly significant. With it should be compared the fact that there is no evidence that corn or

anything else was cultivated in California west of the Rio Colorado Valley. California is a region famous

throughout America for its agriculture, but its crops are European in origin. Even in the case of fruits, such as

the grape, which have American counterparts, the varieties actually cultivated were brought from Europe.

Wheat and barley, the chief foodstuffs for which California and similar subtropical regions are noted, were

unknown in the New World before the coming of the white man. In preColumbian America corn was the

only cultivated cereal. The other great staples of early American agriculture were beans and pumpkins. All

three are preeminently summer crops and need much water in July and August. In California there is no rain

at this season. Though the fall rains, which begin to be abundant in October and November, do not aid these

summer crops, they favor wheat and barley. The winter rains and the comparatively warm winter weather

permit these grains to grow slowly but continuously. When the warm spring arrives, there is still enough rain

to permit wheat and barley to make a rapid growth and to mature their seeds long before the long, dry

summer begins. The comparatively dry weather of May and June is just what these cereals need to ripen the

Crops can of course be grown during the summer in California by means of irrigation, but this is rarely a

simple process. If irrigation is to be effective in California, it cannot depend on the small streams which

practically dry up during the long, rainless summer, but it must depend on comparatively large streams which

flow in welldefined channels. With our modern knowledge and machinery it is easy for us to make canals

and ditches and to prepare the level fields needed to utilize this water. A people with no knowledge of

agriculture, however, and with no iron tools cannot suddenly begin to practice a complex and highly

developed system of agriculture. In California there is little or none of the natural summer irrigation which, in

certain parts of America, appears to have been the most important factor leading to the first steps in tilling the

ground. The lower Colorado, however, floods broad areas every summer. Here, as on the Nile, the retiring

floods leave the land so moist that crops can easily be raised. Hence the Mohave Indians were able to practice

agriculture and to rise well above their kinsmen not only in Lower California but throughout the whole State.

In the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, just as on the Pacific coast, the condition of the tribes

deteriorated more and more the farther they lived to the south. In the regions where the rainfall comes in

summer, however, and hence favors primitive agriculture, there was a marked improvement. The Kutenai

tribes lived near the corner where Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia now meet. They appear to have

been of rather high grade, noteworthy for their morality, kindness, and hospitality. More than any other

Indians of the Rocky Mountain region, they avoided drunkenness and lewd intercourse with the whites. Their

mental ability was comparatively high, as appears from their skill in buffalohunting, in making dugouts and

bark canoes, and in constructing sweathouses and lodges of both skins and rushes. Even today the lower

Kutenai are noted for their watertight baskets of split roots. Moreover the degree to which they used the

plants that grew about them for food, medicine, and economical purposes was noteworthy. They also had an

esthetic appreciation of several plants and flowersa gift rare among Indians. These people lived in the zone

of most stimulating climate and, although they did not practice agriculture and had little else in their

surroundings to help them to rise above the common level, they dwelt in a region where there was rain

enough in summer to prevent their being on the verge of starvation, as the Indians of California usually were.

Moreover they were near enough to the haunts of the buffalo to depend on that great beast for food. Since one

buffalo supplies as much food as a hundred rabbits, these Indians were vastly better off than the people of the

South of the home of the Kutenai, in eastern Oregon, southern Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and neighboring regions

dwelt the Utes and other Shoshoni tribes. In this region the rainfall, which is no greater than that of

California, occurs chiefly in winter. The long summer is so dry that, except by highly developed methods of

irrigation, agriculture is impossible. Hence it is not surprising to find a traveler in 1850 describing one tribe

of the Ute family as "without exception the most miserable looking set of human beings I ever saw. They

have hitherto subsisted principally on snakes, lizards, roots." The lowest of all the Ute tribes were those who

lived in the sagebrush. The early explorer, Bonneville, found the tribes of Snake River wintering in brush

shelters without roofs merely heaps of brush piled high, behind which the Indians crouched for protection

from wind and snow. Crude as such shelters may seem, they were the best that could be constructed by

people who dwelt where there was no vegetation except little bushes, and where the soil was for the most part

The food of these Utes and Shoshonis was no better than their shelters. There were no large animals for them

to hunt; rabbits were the best that they could find. Farther to the east, where the buffalo wandered during part

of the year and where there are some forests, the food was better, the shelters were more effective, and, in

general, the standard of living was higher, although racially the two groups of people were alike. In this case,

as in others, the people whose condition was lowest were apparently as competent as those whose material

conditions were much better. Today, although the Ute Indians, like most of their race, are rather slow, some

tribes, such as the Payutes, are described as not only "peaceful and moral," but also "industrious." They are

highly commended for their good qualities by those who have had the best opportunities for judging. While

not as bright in intellect as some of the prairie tribes whom we shall soon consider, they appear to possess

more solidity of character. By their willingness and efficiency as workers they have made themselves

necessary to the white farmers and have thus supplied themselves with good clothing and many of the

comforts of life. They have resisted, too, many of the evils coming from the advance of civilization, so that

one agent speaks of these Indians as presenting the singular anomaly of improving by contact with the whites.

Apparently their extremely low condition in former times was due merely to that same handicap of

Compare these backward but not wholly ungifted Utes with the Hopi who belonged to the same stock. The

relatively high social organization of the latter people and the intricacy and significance of their religious

ceremonials are well known. Mentally the Hopi seem to be the equal of any tribe, but it is doubtful whether

they have much more innate capacity than many of their more backward neighbors. Nevertheless they made

much more progress before the days of the white man, as can easily be seen in their artistic development.

Every one who has crossed the continent by the Santa Fe route knows how interesting and beautiful are their

pottery, basketry, and weaving. Not only in art but also in government the Hopi are highly advanced. Their

governing body is a council of hereditary elders together with the chiefs of religious fraternities. Among these

officials there is a speaker chief and a war chief, but there seems never to have been any supreme chief of all

the Hopi. Each pueblo has an hereditary chief who directs all the communal work, such as the cleaning of the

springs and the general care of the village. Crimes are rare. This at first sight seems strange in view of the fact

that no penalty was inflicted for any crime except sorcery, but under Hopi law all transgressions could be

reduced to sorcery. One of the most striking features of Hopi life was its rich religious development. The

Hopi recognized a large number of supernatural beings and had a great store of most interesting and poetic

mythological tales. The home of the Hopi would seem at first sight as unfavorable to progress as that of their

Ute cousins, but the Hopi have the advantage of being the most northwesterly representatives of the Indians

who dwell within the regions of summer rain. Fortunately for them, their country is too desert and unforested

for them to subsist to any great degree by the chase. They are thus forced to devote all their energy to

agriculture, through which they have developed a relatively high standard of living. They dwell far enough

south to have their heaviest rainfall in summer and not in winter, as is the case in Utah, so that they are able

to cultivate crops of corn and beans. Where such an intensive system of agriculture prevails, the work of

women is as valuable as that of men. The position of woman is thus relatively high among the Hopi, for she

is useful not only for her assistance in the labors of the field but also for her skill in preserving the crops,

grinding the flour, and otherwise preparing the comparatively varied food which this tribe fortunately

From northern New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico City summer rains, dry winters, and still drier springs,

are the rule. Forests are few, and much of the country is desert. The more abundant the rains, the greater the

number of people and the greater the opportunities for the accumulation of wealth, and thus for that leisure

which is necessary to part of a community if civilization is to make progress. That is one reason why the

civilization of the summer rain people becomes more highly developed as they go from north to south. The

fact that the altitude of the country increases from the United States border southward also tends in the same

direction, for it causes the climate to be cooler and more bracing at Mexico City than at places farther north.

The importance of summer rains in stimulating growth and in facilitating the early stages of agriculture is

noteworthy. Every one familiar with Arizona and New Mexico knows how the sudden summer showers fill

the mountain valleys with floods which flow down upon the plain and rapidly spread out into broad, thin

sheets, often known as playas. There the water stands a short time and then either sinks into the ground or

evaporates. Such places are favored with the best kind of natural irrigation, and after the first shower it is an

easy matter for the primitive farmer to go out and drop grains of corn into holes punched with a stick.

Thereafter he can count on other showers to water his field while the corn sprouts and grows to maturity. All

that he needs to do is to watch the field to protect it from the rare depredations of wild animals. As time goes

on the primitive farmer realizes the advantage of leading the water to particularly favorable spots and thus

begins to develop a system of artificial irrigation. In regions where such advantageous conditions prevail, the

people who live permanently in one place succeed best, for the work that they do one year helps them the

next. They are not greatly troubled by weeds, for, though grasses grow as well as corn in the places where the

water spreads out, the grasses take the form of little clumps which can easily be pulled up. In the drier parts

of the area of summer rain, it becomes necessary to conserve the water supply to the utmost. The Hopi

consider sandy fields the best, for the loose sand on top acts as a natural blanket to prevent evaporation from

the underlying layers. Sometimes in dry seasons the Hopi use extraordinary methods to help their seeds to

sprout. For instance, they place a seed in a ball of saturated mud which they bury beneath several inches of

sand. As the sand prevents evaporation, practically all the water is retained for the use of the seed, which

thereupon sprouts and grows some inches by the time the first summer floods arrive.

The Indians of the Great Plains lived a very different life from that of the natives of either the mountains or

the Pacific coast. In the far north, to be sure, the rigorous climate caused all the Indians to live practically

alike, whether in the Rockies, the plains, or the Laurentian highland. South of them, in that great central

expanse stretching from the latitude of Lake Winnipeg to the Rio Grande River, the Indians of the plains

possessed a relatively uniform type of life peculiar to themselves. This individuality was due partly to the

luxuriant carpet of grass which covered the plains and partly to the supply of animal food afforded by the vast

herds of buffaloes which roamed in tens of thousands throughout the whole territory. The grass was important

chiefly because it prevented the Indians from engaging in agriculture, for it must never be forgotten that the

Indians had neither iron tools nor beasts of burden to aid them in overcoming the natural difficulties in the

way of agriculture. To be sure, they did occasionally pound meteoric iron into useful implements, but this

substance was so rare that probably not one Indian in a hundred had ever seen a piece. The Indians were quite

familiar with copper, but there is not the slightest evidence that they had discovered any means of hardening

it. Metals played no real part in the life of any of the Indians of America, and without such tools as iron

spades and hoes it was impossible for them to cultivate grassland. If they burned the prairie and dropped

seeds into holes, the corn or beans which they thus planted were sure to be choked by the quickly springing

grass. To dig away the tough sod around the hole for each seed would require an almost incredible amount of

work even with iron tools. To accomplish this with wooden spades, rude hoes made of large flakes of flint, or

the shoulder blades of the buffalo, was impossible on any large scale. Now and then in some river bottom

where the grass grew in clumps and could be easily pulled up, a little agriculture was possible. That is all that

The Indians could not undertake any widespread cultivation of the plains not only because they lacked iron

tools but also because they had no draft animals. The buffalo was too big, too fierce, and too stupid to be

domesticated. In all the length and breadth of the two Americas there was no animal to take the place of the

useful horse, donkey, or ox. The llama was too small to do anything but carry light loads, and it could live

only in a most limited area among the cold Andean highlands. Even if the aboriginal Americans could have

made iron ploughs, they could not have ploughed the tough sod without the aid of animals. Moreover, even if

the possession of metal tools and beasts of burden had made agriculture possible in the grasslands, it would

have been difficult, in the absence of wood for fences, to prevent the buffalo from eating up the crops or at

least from tramping through them and spoiling them. Thus the fertile land of the great plains remained largely

unused until the white man came to the New World bringing the iron tools and domestic animals that were

Although farming of any sort was almost as impossible in the plains as in the dry regions of winter rains

farther west, the abundance of buffaloes made life much easier in many respects. It is astonishing to see how

many purposes these animals served. An early traveler who dwelt among one of the buffalohunting tribes,

the Tonkawa of central Texas, says: "Besides their meat it [the buffalo] furnishes them liberally what they

desire for conveniences. The brains are used to soften skins, the horns for spoons and drinking cups, the

shoulder blades to dig up and clear off the ground, the tendons for threads and bow strings, the hoofs to glue

the arrowfeathering. From the tailhair they make ropes and girths, from the wool, belts and various

ornaments. The hide furnishes . . . shields, tents, shirts, footwear, and blankets to protect them from the

The buffalo is a surprisingly stupid animal. When a herd is feeding it is possible for a man to walk into the

midst of it and shoot down an animal. Even when one of their companions falls dead, the buffaloes pay no

attention to the hunter provided he remains perfectly still. The wounded animals are not at first dangerous but

seek to flee. Only when pursued and brought to bay do they turn on their pursuers. When the Indians of an

encampment united their forces, as was their regular habit, they were able to slaughter hundreds of animals in

a few days. The more delicate parts of the meat they ate first, often without cooking them. The rest they dried

and packed away for future use, while they prepared the hides as coverings for the tents or as rugs in which to

Wherever the buffaloes were present in large numbers, the habits of the Indians were much the same. They

could not live in settled villages, for there was no assurance that the buffalo would come to any particular

place each year. The plains tribes were therefore more thoroughly nomadic than almost any others, especially

after the introduction of horses. Because they wandered so much, they came into contact with other tribes to

an unusual degree, and much of the contact was friendly. Gradually the Indians developed a sign language by

which tribes of different tongues could communicate with one another. At first these signs were like

pictographs, for the speaker pointed as nearly as possible to the thing that he desired to indicate, but later they

became more and more conventional. For example, man, the erect animal, was indicated by throwing up the

hand, with its back outward and the index finger extending upward. Woman was indicated by a sweeping

downward movement of the hand at the side of the head with fingers extended to denote long hair or the

Among the plains Indians, the Dakotas, the main tribe of the Sioux family, are universally considered to have

stood highest not only physically but mentally, and probably morally. Their bravery was never questioned,

and they conquered or drove out every rival except the Chippewas. Their superiority was clearly seen in their

system of government. Personal fitness and popularity determined chieftainship more than did heredity. The

authority of the chief was limited by the Band Council, without whose approbation little or nothing could be

accomplished. In one of the Dakota tribes, the Tetons, the policing of a village was confided to two or three

officers who were appointed by the chief and who remained in power until their successors were appointed.

Day and night they were always on the watch, and so arduous were their labors that their term of service was

necessarily short. The brevity of their term, however, was atoned for by the greatness of their authority, for in

the suppression of disturbances no resistance was suffered. Their persons were sacred, and if in the execution

of their duty they struck even a chief of the second class they could not be punished.

The Dakotas, who lived in the region where their name is still preserved, inhabited that part of the great plain

which is climatically most favorable to great activity. It is perhaps because of their response to the influence

of this factor of geographical environment that they and their neighbors are the best known of the plains

tribes. Their activity in later times is evident from the fact that the Tetons were called "the plundering Arabs

of America." If their activities had been more wisely directed, they might have made a great name for

themselves in Indian history. In the arts they stood as high as could be expected in view of the wandering life

which they led and the limited materials with which they had to work. In the art of making pictographs, for

instance, they excelled all other tribes, except perhaps the Kiowas, a plains tribe of Colorado and western

Kansas. On the hides of buffalo, deer, and antelope which formed their tents, the Dakotas painted calendars,

which had a picture for each year, or rather for each winter, while those of the Kiowas had a summer symbol

and a winter symbol. Probably these calendars reveal the influence of the whites, but they at least show that

Farther south the tribes of the plains stood on a much lower level than the Dakotas. The Spanish explorer,

Cabeza de Vaca, describes the Yguases in Texas, among whom he lived for several years, in these words:

"Their support is principally roots which require roasting two days. Many are very bitter. Occasionally they

take deer and at times fish, but the quantity is so small and the famine so great that they eat spiders and eggs

of ants, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes, and vipers that kill whom they strike, and they eat earth and all

that there is, the dung of deer, things I omit to mention and I earnestly believe that were there stones in that

land they would eat them. They save the bones of the fish they consume, the snakes and other animals, that

they may afterward beat them together and eat the powder." During these painful periods, they bade Cabeza

de Vaca "not to be sad. There would soon be prickly pears, although the season of this fruit of the cactus

might be months distant. When the pears were ripe, the people feasted and danced and forgot their former

privations. They destroyed their female infants to prevent them being taken by their enemies and thus

East of the Great Plains there dwelt still another important type of Indians, the people of the deciduous

forests. Their home extended from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. As we have already seen, the

Iroquois who inhabited the northern part of this region were in many respects the highest product of

aboriginal America. The northern Iroquois tribes, especially those known as the Five Nations, were second to

no other Indian people north of Mexico in political organization, statecraft, and military prowess. Their

leaders were genuine diplomats, as the wily French and English statesmen with whom they treated soon

discovered. One of their most notable traits was the reverence which they had for the tribal law. The wars that

they waged were primarily for political independence, for the fundamental principle of their confederation

was that by uniting with one another they would secure the peace and welfare of all with whom they were

connected by ties of blood. They prevented blood feuds by decreeing that there should be a price for the

killing of a cotribesman, and they abstained from eating the flesh of their enemies in order to avoid future

strife. So thoroughly did they believe in the rights of the individual that women were accorded a high

position. Among some of the tribes the consent of all the women who had borne children was required before

any important measure could be taken. Candidates for a chiefship were nominated by the votes of the

mothers, and, as lands and houses were the property of the women, their power in the tribe was great.

The Iroquois were sedentary and agricultural, and depended on the chase for only a small part of their

existence. The northern tribes were especially noted for their skill in building fortifications and houses. Their

socalled castles were solid wooden structures with platforms running around the top on the inside. From the

platforms stones and other missiles could be hurled down upon besiegers. According to our standards such

dwellings were very primitive, but they were almost as great an advance upon the brush piles of the Utes as

our skyscrapers are upon them. Farther south in the Carolinas, the Cherokees, another Iroquoian tribe, stand

out prominently by reason of their unusual mental ability. Under the influence of the white man, the

Cherokees were the first to adopt a constitutional form of government embodied in a code of laws written in

their own language. Their language was reduced to writing by means of an alphabet which one of their

number named Sequoya had devised. Sequoya and other leaders, however, may not have been pure Indians,

for by that time much white blood had been mixed with the tribe. Yet even before the coming of the white

man the Cherokees were apparently more advanced in agriculture than the Iroquois were, but less advanced

in their form of government, in their treatment of women, and in many other respects. In general, as we go

from north to south in the region of deciduous forests, we find that among the early Indians agriculture

became more and more important and the people more sedentary, though not always more progressive in

other ways. The Catawbas, for instance, in South Carolina were sedentary agriculturists and seem to have

differed little in general customs from their neighbors. Their men were brave and honest but lacking in

energy. In the Muskhogean family of Indians, comprising the Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles,

who occupied the Gulf States from Georgia to Mississippi, all the tribes were agricultural and sedentary and

occupied villages of substantial houses. The towns near the tribal frontiers were usually palisaded, but those

more remote from invasion were unprotected. All these Indians were brave but not warlike in the violent

fashion of the Five Nations. The Choctaws would fight only in selfdefense, it was said, but the Creeks and

especially the Chickasaws were more aggressive. In their government these Muskhogean tribes appear to

have attained a position corresponding to their somewhat advanced culture in other respects. Yet their

confederacies were loose and flimsy compared with that of the Five Nations. Another phase of the life of the

tribes in the southern part of the region of deciduous forests is illustrated by the Natchez of Mississippi.

These people were strictly sedentary and depended chiefly upon agriculture for a livelihood. They possessed

considerable skill in the arts. For instance, they wove a cloth from the inner bark of the mulberry tree and

made excellent pottery. They also constructed great mounds of earth upon which to erect their dwellings and

temples. Like a good many of the other southern tribes, they fought when it was necessary, but they were

peaceable compared with the Five Nations. They had a form of sunworship resembling that of Mexico, and

in other ways their ideas were like those of the people farther south. For instance, when a chief died, his

wives were killed. In times of distress the parents frequently offered their children as sacrifice.

Many characteristics of the Natchez and other southern tribes seem to indicate that they had formerly

possessed a civilization higher than that which prevailed when the white man came. The Five Nations, on the

contrary, apparently represent an energetic people who were on the upward path and who might have

achieved great things if the whites had not interrupted them. The southern Indians resemble people whose

best days were past, for the mounds which abound in the Gulf States appear to have been built chiefly in

preColumbian days. Their objects of art, such as the remarkable wooden mortars found at Key Marco and

the embossed copper plates found elsewhere in Florida, point to a highly developed artistic sense which was

It is interesting to see the way in which climatic energy tended to give the Five Nations a marked superiority

over the tribesmen of the South, while agriculture tended in the opposite direction. There has been much

discussion as to the part played by agriculture among the primitive Americans, especially in the northeast.

Corn, beans, and squashes were an important element in the diet of the Indians of the New England region,

while farther south potatoes, sunflower seeds, and melons were also articles of food. The New England tribes

knew enough about agriculture to use fish and shells for fertilizer. They had wooden mattocks and hoes made

from the shoulder blades of deer, from tortoise shells, or from conch shells set in handles. They also had

stone hoes and spades, while the women used short pickers or parers about a foot long and five inches wide.

Seated on the ground they used these to break the upper part of the soil and to grub out weeds, grass, and old

cornstalks. They had the regular custom of burning over an old patch each year and then replanting it.

Sometimes they merely put the seeds in holes and sometimes they dug up and loosened the ground for each

seed. Clearings they made by girdling the trees, that is, by cutting off the bark in a circle at the bottom and

thus causing the tree to die. The brush they hacked or broke down and burned when it was dry enough.

There is much danger of confusing the agricultural condition of the Indian after the European had modified

his life with his condition before the European came to America. For instance, in the excellent article on

agriculture in the "Handbook of American Indians," conditions prevailing as late as 1794 in the States south

of the Great Lakes are spoken of as if typical of aboriginal America. But at that time the white man had long

been in contact with the Indian, and iron tools had largely taken the place of stone. The rapidity with which

European importations spread may be judged by the fact that as early as 1736 the Iroquois in New York not

only had obtained horses but were regularly breeding them. The use of the iron axe of course spread with

vastly greater rapidity than that of the horse, for an axe or a knife was the first thing that an Indian sought

from the white man. In the eighteenth century agriculture had thus become immeasurably easier than before,

yet even then the Indians still kept up their old habit of cultivating the same fields only a short time. The

regular practice was to cultivate a field five, ten, and sometimes even twenty or more years, and then abandon

*Ordinarily it is stated that this practice was due to the exhaustion of the soil. That, however, is open to

question, for five or ten years' desultory cultivation on the part of the Indian would scarcely exhaust the soil

so much that people would go to the great labor of making new clearings and moving their villages.

Moreover, in the Southern States it is well known today that the soil is exhausted much more rapidly than

farther north because it contains less humus. Nevertheless the southern tribes cultivated the land about their

villages for long periods. Tribes like the Creeks, the Cherokees, and the Natchez appear to have been

decidedly less prone to move than the Iroquois, in spite of the relatively high development of these northern

What hindered agriculture most in the northern part of the deciduous forest was the grass. Any one who has

cultivated a garden knows how rapidly the weeds grow. He also knows that there is no weed so hard to

exterminate as grass. When once it gets a foothold mere hoeing seems only to make it grow the faster. The

only way to get rid of grass when once it has become well established is to plow the field and start over again,

but this the Indians could not do. When first a clearing was made in the midst of the forest, there was no grass

to be contended with. Little by little, however, it was sure to come in, until at length what had been a garden

was in a fair way to become a meadow. Then the Indians would decide that it was necessary to seek new

One might suppose that under such circumstances the Indians would merely clear another patch of forest not

far from the village and so continue to live in the old place. This, however, they did not do because the labor

of making a clearing with stone axes and by the slow process of girdling and burning the trees was so great

that it was possible only in certain favored spots where by accident the growth was less dense than usual.

When once a clearing became grassy, the only thing to do was to hunt for a new site, prepare a clearing, and

then move the village. This was apparently the reason why the Iroquois, although successful in other ways,

failed to establish permanent towns like those of the Pueblos and the Haidas. Their advancement not only in

architecture but in many of the most important elements of civilization was for this reason greatly delayed.

There was little to stimulate them to improve the land to which they were attached, for they knew that soon

Farther south the character of the grassy vegetation changes, and the condition of agriculture alters with it.

The grass ceases to have that thick, close, turfy quality which we admire so much in the fields of the north,

and it begins to grow in bunches. Often a southern hillside may appear from a distance to be as densely

covered with grass as a New England hayfield. On closer examination, however, the growth is seen to consist

of individual bunches which can easily be pulled up, so that among the southern tribes the fields did not

become filled with grass as they did in the north, for the women had relatively little difficulty in keeping out

In this survey of aboriginal America we have been impressed by the contrast between two diverse aspects of

the control of human activities by physical environment. We saw, in the first place, that in our own day the

distribution of culture in America is more closely related to climatic energy than to any other factor, because

man is now so advanced in the arts and crafts that agricultural difficulties do not impede him, except in the

far north and in tropical forests. Secondly, we have found that, although all the geographical factors acted

upon the Indian as they do today, the absence of metals and beasts of burden compelled man to be nomadic,

and hence to remain in a low stage of civilization in many places where he now can thrive. In the days long

before Columbus the distribution of civilization in the Red Man's Continent offered still a third aspect,

strikingly different both from that of today and from that of the age of discovery. In that earlier period the

great centers of civilization were south of their present situation. In the southern part of North America from

Arizona to Florida there are abundant evidences that the Indians whom the white man found were less

advanced than their predecessors. The abundant ruins of Arizona and New Mexico, their widespread

distribution, and the highly artistic character of the pottery and other products of handicraft found in them

seem to indicate that the ancient population was both denser and more highly cultured than that which the

Europeans finally ousted. In the Gulf States there is perhaps not much evidence that there was a denser

population at an earlier period, but the excellence of the preColumbian handicrafts and the existence of a

decadent sun worship illustrate the way in which the civilization of the past was higher than that of later days.

The Aztecs, who figure so largely in the history of the exploration and conquest of Mexico, were merely a

warlike tribe which had been fortunate in the inheritance of a relatively high civilization from the past. So,

too, the civilization found by the Spaniards at places such as Mitla, in the extreme south of Mexico, could not

compare with that of which evidence is found in the ruins. Most remarkable of all is the condition of Yucatan

and Guatemala. In northern Yucatan the Spaniards found a race of mild, decadent Mayas living among the

relics of former grandeur. Although they used the old temples as shrines, they knew little of those who had

built these temples and showed still less capacity to imitate the ancient architects. Farther south in the

forested region of southern Yucatan and northern Guatemala the conditions are still more surprising, for

today these regions are almost uninhabitable and are occupied by only a few sickly, degraded natives who

live largely by the chase. Yet in the past this region was the scene of by far the highest culture that ever

developed in America. There alone in this great continent did men develop an architecture which, not only in

massiveness but in wealth of architectural detail and sculptural adornment, vies with that of early Egypt or

Chaldea. There alone did the art of writing develop. Yet today in those regions the density of the forest, the

prevalence of deadly fevers, the extremely enervating temperature, and the steady humidity are as hostile to

The only explanation of this anomaly seems to be that in the past the climatic zones of the world have at

certain periods been shifted farther toward the equator than they are at present. Practically all the geographers

of America now believe that within the past two or three thousand years climatic pulsations have taken place

whereby places like the dry Southwest have alternately experienced centuries of greater moisture than at

present and centuries as dry as today or even drier. During the moist centuries greater storminess prevailed,

so that the climate was apparently better not only for agriculture but for human energy. At such times the

standard of living was higher than now not only in the Southwest but in the Gulf States and in Mexico. In

periods when the deserts of the southwestern United States were wet, the Maya region of Yucatan and

Guatemala appears to have been relatively dry. Then the dry belt which now extends from northern Mexico

to the northern tip of Yucatan apparently shifted southward. Such conditions would cause the forests of

Yucatan and Guatemala to become much less dense than at present. This comparative deforestation would

make agriculture easily possible where today it is out of the question. At the same time the relatively dry

climate and the clearing away of the vegetation would to a large degree eliminate the malarial fevers and

other diseases which are now such a terrible scourge in wet tropical countries. Then, too, the storms which at

the present time give such variability to the climate of the United States would follow more southerly

courses. In its stimulating qualities the climate of the home of the Mayas in the days of their prime was much

From first to last the civilization of America has been bound up with its physical environment. It matters little

whether we are dealing with the red race, the black, or the white. Nor does it matter whether we deal with one

part of the continent or another. Wherever we turn we can trace the influence of mountains and plains, of

rocks and metals from which tools are made, of water and its finny inhabitants, of the beasts of the chase

from the hare to the buffalo, of domestic animals, of the native forests, grasslands, and deserts, and, last but

not least, of temperature, moisture, and wind in their direct effects upon the human body. At one stage of

human development the possibilities of agriculture may be the dominant factor in man's life in early America.

At another, domestic animals may be more important, and at still another, iron or waterways or some other

factor may be predominant. It is the part of the later history of the American Continent to trace the effect of

these various factors and to chronicle the influence that they have had upon man's progress.

Although many books deal with the physical features of the Western Hemisphere and many others with the

Indians, few deal with the two in relation to one another. One book, however, stands out preeminent in this

respect, namely, Edward John Payne's "History of the New World Called America," 2 vols. (189299). This

book, which has never been finished, attempts to explain the conditions of life among the American

aborigines as the result of geographical conditions, especially of the food supply. Where the author carries

this attempt into the field of special customs and religious rites, he goes too far. Nevertheless his work is

uncommonly stimulating and deserves the careful attention of the reader who would gain a broad grasp of the

Two other good books which deal with the relation of geography to American history are Miss Ellen C.

Semple's "American History and its Geographical Conditions" (1903) and A. P. Brigham's "Geographic

Influences in American History" (1903). Both of these books interpret geography as if it included little except

the form of the land. While they bring out clearly the effect of mountain barriers, indented coasts, and easy

routes whether by land or water, they scarcely touch on the more subtle relationships between man on the one

hand and the climate, plants, and animals which form the dominant features of his physical environment on

In their emphasis on the form of the land both Semple and Brigham follow the lead of W. M. Davis. In his

admirable articles on America and the United States in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica" (11th edition) and in

The International Geography edited by H. R. Mill (1901), Davis has given an uncommonly clear and vivid

description of the main physical features of the New World. Living beings, however, play little part in this

description, so that the reader is not led to an understanding of how physical geography affects human

Other good descriptions of the North American continent are found in the following books: I. C. Russell's

"North America" (1904), Stanford's "Compendium of Modern Geography and Travel," including the volumes

on Canada, the United States, and Central America, and the great volumes on America in "The Earth and its

Inhabitants" by Elise Reclus, 19 vols. (18761894). Russell's book is largely physiographic but contains

some good chapters on the Indians. In Stanford's "Compendium" the purpose is to treat man and nature in

their relation to one another, but the relationships are not clearly brought out, and there is too much emphasis

on purely descriptive and encyclopedic matter. So far as interest is concerned, the famous work by Elise

Reclus holds high rank. It is an encyclopedia of geographical facts arranged and edited in such a way that it

has all the interest of a fine book of travel. Like most of the other books, however, it fails to bring out

As sources of information on the Indians, two books stand out with special prominence. "The American

Race," by D. G. Brinton (1891), is a most scholarly volume devoted largely to a study of the Indians on a

linguistic basis. It contains some general chapters, however, on the Indians and their environment, and these

are most illuminating. The other book is the "Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico," edited by F.

W. Hodge, and published by the United States Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1897, 1910, 1911). Its two

large volumes are arranged in encyclopedic form. The various articles are written by a large number of

scholars, including practically all the students who were at work on Indian ethnology at the time of

publication. Many of the articles are the best that have been written and will not only interest the general

reader but will contribute to an understanding of what America was when the Indians came here and what it