157. Era of Regional Differentiation
It is now necessary to return to the four regional divisions or sub-culture-areas of the modern tribes of California. Since the Northwestern one affiliated with the extensive North Pacific culture, and those of Southern California and the Colorado River with the great culture of the Southwest, many of their customs must have originated in those parts of these two culture-areas which lie outside of California. Even if the northern and southern Californians “lent” as well as “borrowed” inventions and institutions, they must on the whole have received or learned or imitated more in the interchange than they imparted. This is clear from the fact that the Indians of British Columbia are more advanced in their manufacturing ability, richer in variety of tools and utensils, and more elaborate in their organization of society, than those of Northwestern California; and a similar relation of superiority and priority exists between the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona and the Southern California tribes (§ [87]). In other words, a stream of civilizational influences has evidently run from southern Alaska and British Columbia southward along the coast as far as Northwestern California, and another from the town-dwelling Pueblos to the village-inhabiting tribes of Southern California, in much the same way that civilization flowed from ancient Babylonia into Palestine, from Egypt into Crete, from Greece to Rome, from Rome to Gaul and Britain, from western Europe to the Americas after their discovery, and from the Christian to the non-Christian nations of to-day. Somewhere in the unraveling of the prehistory of California the first indications of these streams from the outside should be encountered.
They are not manifest in the two periods which have so far been established. The distribution of the Girls’ Rite of the First Period and of the Mourning Anniversary and First-salmon Rite of the Second, does not coincide with the major culture-areas of the continent. The Southwest, for instance, from which the modern southern Californians have received so much, does not possess any of these ceremonies. The Southwest culture therefore evidently originated, or began to take on its recent aspect, or at least to influence Southern California, chiefly after the two periods had passed by in which these ceremonies became established in California. The Girls’ Rite, to be sure, extends up the Pacific coast into Alaska. Yet it is more widespread than the North Pacific Coast culture, since this has its southerly limit in Northwestern California, whereas the ceremony is universal as far as to the southern end of the state, besides occurring inland throughout the Great Basin and Plateau regions. Being more widely spread than the Coast culture, the Girls’ Rite is presumptively more ancient.
The beginnings of the four modern types of California native culture must thus evidently be looked for at about the point now reached in our reconstruction. At first there was a single very widespread ceremony; then two less widely diffused ones; the next logical step in development would have been the growth of a still larger number of ceremonies or ritual systems. These, on account of their greater recency, and perhaps on account of conflicting with one another, would have spread only over comparatively small areas. Let us therefore assume that to this Third Period belonged the beginnings of the Wealth-display dances of the Northwestern Indians which are coupled with the idea of world renovation (table, p. 299); the so-called Kuksu dances made among the Central Californians by members of a secret society disguised as divinities; the Jimsonweed rites of the Southern tribes who use this narcotic plant as a mystical means of initiating the young into their religious society; and the series of long singings that the Colorado River tribes are addicted to and believe they have miraculously dreamed.
Of course, the idea could scarcely be entertained that these four local systems sprang into existence full-fledged. They are complicated sets of rituals, quite different from the simple Girls’ Rite and Mourning Anniversary. They must have grown up gradually from more meager beginnings and have been a considerable time reaching their present elaboration. It would thus seem justifiable to add not only one but two further periods of religious growth, in the earlier of which—the Third—these ceremonial systems of the historic Indians began their development, whereas in the later or Fourth they achieved it.