180. The Primitive Culture of the Immigrants
As to the culture the immigrants brought with them, direct testimony being lacking, it is necessary to fall back on the working hypothesis that this culture was about the equivalent of the most backward American culture of to-day; or, better, of the common denominator of all American cultures, including the lowest. This procedure yields the group of elements entered in the bottommost layer of [Figure 35]. These elements were either brought along on the invasions or developed so soon afterwards as to become equally widely diffused. The harpoon, for instance, was used in Europe in the Magdalenian—at the close of the Palæolithic. For the bow and arrow, there is no proof in Europe until the opening of the Neolithic. The dog, the earliest animal attached to man, is known from the same period, whereas cattle, swine, and sheep were kept only at the height of the Neolithic (§ [67], [222]). As the American Indians possess dogs, it is difficult to attribute the custom otherwise than to a heritage from the same culture stage in the Old World to which the harpoon and bow belong. This connection is made more certain by the fact that the Indian dog is most closely related not to the specifically American coyote but to the circumpolar wolf and perhaps the jackal, and diverged into much the same types of breeds as the Old World dog. There are American races of dogs—some of them ancient, as represented by skeletons from mounds, and mummies from Arizona and Peru—that are respectively droop eared, curly tailed, short legged, long furred, hairless, or undershot in the jaw, thus corresponding closely to the breeds evolved with similar traits in the eastern hemisphere, and virtually forcing the conclusion that the dog was brought into America by man and not domesticated from a wild species in this continent.
Such evidence as this it is that yields the period indicated—the closing stages of the Palæolithic or earliest Neolithic—as the time of man’s entry into America. The ten thousand years set as the lapse since this event are admittedly more arbitrary. No one pretends to date the remoter stages of European prehistory exactly. Relative durations are all that it is legitimate to pin much faith on. Dates are avowedly approximations. The estimate here chosen for the end of the Paleolithic is 8000 B.C.—ten thousand years ago. This round number, not taken too literally, has the virtue of concreteness and seems somewhere near the truth. It may yet prove to be a few thousand years short or over. But it does allow enough time, and no obtrusive excess of time, for the diversification of the Indians in race, speech, and culture; and this seeming accord of the assumption with the present facts may be taken as a rough corroboration.
The other culture elements assigned in [Figure 35] to the first or immigrant stratum cannot be dated by any concrete remains, since some are institutions and others are arts whose materials are perishable—baskets and fire-drills, for instance. They are, however, found among all or most of the lower American tribes, and recur more or less widely in the eastern hemisphere.
The first settlers may accordingly be pictured as a people living off nature; hunting, fishing, gathering roots and fruits and seeds, digging or picking shellfish. Their best weapons were the bow and the harpoon with detachable head. The latter may already have been propelled by the atlatl or spear-thrower, an artificial extension of the arm. Simpler weapons were also used: clubs, stones, probably darts and spears, perhaps daggers of bone or stone. Flint was chipped and flaked, other stones were beginning to be ground or rubbed into form. Bone awls served for piercing; less certainly, eyed needles for sewing. Cordage of bast was twisted, and in all likelihood baskets, bins, weirs, traps were woven or twined, perhaps also nets made. Dogs were alternately played with and kicked about; they were half kept, half tolerated, probably eaten in time of need. There was no organization of society but on a basis of blood and contiguity. Related groups would act together until they fell apart. Labor was sex allotted; the men of each community possibly maintained a house or place of meeting at which they gathered in their leisure, perhaps nightly, and which women feared to enter. Beliefs in souls and spirits were already immemorially old. The people had risen to the point of being no longer passive toward the immaterial; the most intense-minded among them aspired to communication with the spirits; they demonstrated to their fellows their control and utilization of supernatural beings, and were what we call shamans. Custom in fact conceded the influence of the spiritual world on every human being, and felt it to be strongest at times of passage or crisis—birth, maturity, death. Puberty in particular seemed important, as portentous of the whole of adult life. The welfare of the individual and his proper relation to the community were therefore sought to be insured by spiritual safe-guarding. Girls were secluded, treated or doctored, trained; boys subjected to whipping or other ordeals of fortitude; the passing of such initiation admitted them to the men’s house.