The precise routes of diffusion into the Southeast are not wholly clear. The culture center of the area lay on or near the lower Mississippi—sufficiently close to the Southwest. Yet the district which is now Texas intervened, and this was one of distinctly lower culture, largely occupied by tribes with Plains affiliation. Theoretically it would have been possible for cultural elements to travel from Mexico along the Texas coast to the Southeast. Yet what little is known about the tribes of this coast indicates that they were backward. A third possibility for the transmission of culture was from the Antilles, especially by the short voyage from Cuba or the Bahamas to the point of Florida. Some connections by this route almost certainly took place. But they seem to have affected chiefly the peninsula of Florida, and to have brought less into the Southeast as a whole than reached it overland.
206. The Northern Woodland
The Northeast was historically dependent on the Southeast as this was on the Southwest and the Southwest on Mexico. It was thus the third stage removed from the origins in Middle America. It was inferior to the Southeast in several points. Pottery was cruder, clans mostly patrilinear instead of matrilinear, town and tribal life less organized. Some exceptions within the Northeast can be traced to direct influences or migrations from the Southeast. The matrilinear and confederated Iroquoian tribes of the Northeast, for instance, were linguistic relatives of the Cherokee in the Southeast.
A similar movement of culture or peoples, or both, occurred at an earlier time and has left as its remains the mounds of the Ohio valley—local equivalents of the Mexican temple pyramid. Some of these are of surprising bulk, and others have the form of animals. Associated with them are earthwork fortifications which indicate coherent populational groups of some size. The industries of the Mound Builders were also on a somewhat higher level, especially as regards artistic quality, than those of the historic tribes of the region. In detail the Mound Builder culture represents many interesting points that remain to be cleared up. In the large, however, it was a temporary local extension of the Southeastern culture, from which flowed its occasional resemblances to Middle America.
207. Plains Area
The Plains area is adjacent to the Southwest, but a review of its culture elements shows that a surprisingly small fragment of Southwestern civilization penetrated it. The most advanced Plains tribes seem rather to have been in dependence on the Southeast. This is probably to be explained as the result of a flow of culture up the more immediate Mississippi valley. The western Plains, close to the Rocky mountains, were sparsely populated in aboriginal times, and life there must have been both unsettled and narrow in its scope. Contacts between these western Plains and the Southwest no doubt existed, but presumably the Plains tribes were too backward, and too engrossed in their own special adaptation to their environment, to profit much by what they might have borrowed from the Pueblos.
Certain specific culture traits were developed on the Plains. The nearly exclusive dependence on buffalo stunted the culture in some directions, but led to the originating of other features. Thus the Plains tribes came to live in tipis—tents made of the skin of the buffalo—pitched these in regular order in the camp circle, and traveled with the bundled tents lashed to a “travois” frame dragged by dogs. While they never accomplished anything notable in the way of confederating themselves into larger stable groups, nor even in effective warfare, they did develop a system of “coup counting” or military honors which loomed large in their life.
During the seventeenth century the horse was introduced or became abundant on the Plains. It reached the Indians from Spanish sources, as is shown by their adopting modifications of Spanish riding gear and methods of mounting. The horse gave them an extension of range and a greater sureness of food supply; more leisure also resulted. The consequence was a general upward swing of the culture, which put it, as regards outward appearances, on a par with the cultures of other areas that in purely aboriginal times had outranked the Plains. This development due to the horse is in many ways comparable to that which occurred in the Patagonian area, but with one difference. The Patagonians possessed a meager culture. The introduction of the horse resulted in their hybridizing two elements so dissimilar as their own low civilization and the Caucasian one. The Plains culture had a somewhat fuller content. The Plains tribes were also protected from intimate Caucasian contacts for nearly two centuries, during which they were able to use the new and valuable acquisition of the horse to enrich and deepen their culture without essentially remodeling it. Horse transport was substituted for dog transport, tipis became more commodious and comfortable, the camp circle spread out larger, more property could be accumulated. Warfare continued to be carried on as a species of game with military honors as prizes, but now provided the added incentive of substantial booty of herds easily driven off.
208. The Northwest Coast
The North Pacific coast is the most anomalous of the North American areas, and its history is in many ways unique. It is nearer in miles to the Southwest and Mexico than is the Northeast, yet agriculture and pottery never reached it. At the same time the Northwest culture is obviously more than a marginal one. People with so elaborate a social organization as these Coast tribes, and with so outstanding an art, were certainly not peripheral dependents. The explanation is that much of the development of culture in the Middle American region never became established in the Northwest, but that this area manifested a vitality and initiative of its own which led to the independent development of a number of important culture constituents. The art is in the main of such local origin, since it does not affiliate closely with the art of other areas. Very important too was the stress increasingly laid on wealth in the Northwest. Society was stratified in terms of it. The potlatch, a combination of feast, religious ceremony, and distribution of property, is another peculiar outcome of the same tendency. The use of dentalium shells as a sort of standard currency is a further manifestation. The working of wood was carried farther than anywhere else. Several traits, such as the solstitial calendar and matrilinear clans, which the Northwest Coast shares with other areas, have already been cited as probable instances of independent evolution on the spot.