Lewis H. Morgan’s Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines (Washington, 1881) is the completest study of the habitations of the early peoples; but it is written too exclusively in the light of universal communal custom, and this must be borne in mind in using it. The edifices of middle America and Peru have been given a bibliographical apparatus in another part of the present volume; but references may be made to Wilson’s Prehistoric Man (ii. ch. 16), Viollet le Duc’s Habitations of Man, translated by R. Bucknall (Boston, 1876), and to Bandelier’s Archæological Tour, 226, where he quotes as typical the description of a native house in 1583, drawn by Juan Bautista Pomar.
There is no good comprehensive account of American prehistoric trade. The T-shaped pieces of copper in use by the Mexicans came nearest to currency as we understand it, unless it be the wampum of the North American Indians, and the shell money in use on the Pacific coast; but it should be remembered that copper axes and copper plates served such a purpose with some tribes.[1846] The Peruvians used weights, but the Mexicans did not. The latter had, however, a system of measures of length.[1847] The canoe was a great intermediary in the practice of barter.[1848] The Peruvians alone understood the use of sails, and the earliest Spanish navigators on the Pacific were surprised at what they thought were civilized predecessors in those seas when they espied in the distance the large white sails of the Peruvian rafts of burden.[1849] The chief source of trade in such conditions was barter, and we know how the Mexican travelling merchants got information that was availed of by the Mexican marauders in their invasions. Bandelier[1850] gives us the references on the barter system, the traders, and the currency in that country, and we need to consult Dr. W. Behrnauer’s Essai sur le Commerce dans l’ancien Méxique et en Pérou, in the Archives de la Soc. Amér. de France (n. s., vol. i.).
All the treatises on the mounds of the Ohio Valley derive illustrations of intertribal traffic from the shells of the coast, the copper of Lake Superior, the mica of the Alleghanies, the obsidian of the Rocky Mountains or of Mexico, and the unique figurines which the explorations of the mounds have disclosed. Charles Rau has a paper on this aboriginal trade in North America, published in the Archiv für Anthroplogie (Braunschweig, 1872, vol. iv.), which was republished in English in the Smithsonian Report, 1872, p. 249. Bancroft’s references under “Commerce” (v. p. 668) will help the student out in various particulars.
[IV.]
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON AMERICAN LINGUISTICS.
By the Editor.
It cannot be said that the study of American linguistics has advanced to a position wholly satisfactory. It is beset with all the difficulties belonging to a subject that has not been embraced in written records for long periods, and it is open to the hazards of articulation and hearing, acting without entire mutual confidence. And yet we may not dispute Max Müller’s belief,[1851] that it is the science of language which has given the first comprehensive impulse to the study of mankind.
Out of the twenty distinct sounds which it is said the voice of man can produce,[1852] there have been built up from roots and combinations a great diversity of vocabularies. Comparisons of these, as well as of the methods of forming sentences, have been much used in investigations of ethnical relations. Of these opposing methods, neither is sufficiently strong, it is probable, to be pressed without the aid of the other, though the belief of the Bureau of Ethnology at Washington, under the influence of Major Powell, practically discards all tests but the vocabulary, in tracing ethnological relations. It is held that this one test of words satisfies, as to customs, myths, and other ethnological traits, more demands of classifications than any other. Granted that it does, there are questions yet unsolvable by it; and many ethnologists hold that there are still other tests, physiological, for instance,[1853] which cannot safely be neglected in settling such complex questions. The favorite claim of the Bureau is that its officers are studying man as a human being, and not as an animal; but it is by no means sure that the physical qualities of man are so disconnected with his mind and soul as to be unnecessary to his interpretation. Even if language be given the chief place in such studies, there is still the doubt if the vocabulary can in all ways be safely followed to the exclusion of the structure of the language; and it is not to be forgotten, as Haven recognized thirty years ago, that “one of the greatest obstacles to a successful and satisfactory comparison of Indian vocabularies is caused by the capricious and ever-varying orthography applied by writers of different nations.” This is a chance of error that cannot be eliminated when we have to deal with lists of words made in the past, by persons not to be communicated with, in whom both national and personal peculiarities of ear and vocal organs may exist to perplex. A part of the difficulty is of course removed by trained assistants acting in concert, though in different fields; but the individual sharpness or dulness of ear and purity and obscurity of articulation will still cause diversity of results,—to say nothing of corresponding differences in the persons questioned. There is still the problem, broader than all these divisionary tests, whether language is at all a safe test of race, and on this point there is room for different opinions, as is shown in the discussions of Sayce, Whitney, and others.[1854] “Any attempt,” says Max Müller, “at squaring the classification of races and tongues must necessarily fail.”[1855] On the other hand, George Bancroft (Final revision, ii. 90) says that “the aspect of the red men was so uniform that there is no method of grouping them into families but by their languages.”