THE NORTH AMERICANS OF YESTERDAY.
Imaugh insists on the unity of the North American Indians, and his interesting review of their architecture, dress, weapons, civilisation, is based on this belief. He objects to the cla.ssifica- tien which has obtained in Europe. "Common world planes of culture in time periods are an impossibility," he says. The terms "Paleolithic" and "Neolithic" are an abomination to him, and they are certainly out of place in North America, where races have lived, and live to-day, sometimes with parallel civilisations, sometimes with vastly different civilisations. Moreover, the wanderings of tribes leading to the loss of such position as they had obtained, abandonment of their buildings, Ssc., did not necessarily mean annihilation of the tribe. Look at the Arabs and their relatives, a striking instance, surely, of a stock of distinct type and habits of thought, yet what differences and what degradation ! Mr. Dellenbaugh has made a most interesting series of comparisons and suggestions, plentifully illustrated, of the disappearing races of the continent, thanks to the exhaustive work of those patient contributors to the Bureau of Ethnology. Yet much is wrapped in obscurity. The translation of the Maya manuscripts and the value of the numerals are still conjectural, and Mayas have left the finest remains in the Western Hemisphere. The subject of legends anti religious systems is too vast a subject to be more than alluded to here and there. Yet the collecting of these interesting materials from Indian story-tellers is fall of pitfalls. A well-known ethnologist is said to have obtained Kwakiult legends at the rate of 50 cents an hour. You cannot get results without paying for them, or at least payment stimulates the relation of history and legend. We have found this volume of quite extraordinary interest, though its comprehensiveness and the vast field it covers—the tribes of North America, living and extinct—pre- suppose some acquaintance with American geography and ethnology.
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