Besides face and body painting, employed for various purposes and widespread over the continent, particularly in ceremonial observances, during war-time, in courting, mourning, &c., painting found expression among the North American aborigines most fully in the products of the wood art of the Indians of the North Pacific coast (masks, utensils, houses, totem-poles, furniture, &c.), in the more or less ceremonial and symbolic paintings on skins, tipi-covers and the like of some of the Plains tribes (e.g. Kiowa, Sioux) and in ceramic art, notably in the remarkable polychrome pottery of the Pueblos tribes. Among several Pueblos tribes of Arizona and New Mexico (also the Navaho and Apache and of a ruder sort among some of the Plains tribes, e.g. Cheyenne, Arapaho, Blackfeet) “dry-painting,” most highly developed in the sacred ceremonies of the Navaho, is practised and is evidently of great antiquity. The pictures of deities, natural phenomena, animals and plants are made of powdered sandstone of various colours, &c.

Pictography among the aborigines north of Mexico varied from the rude petroglyphs of some of the Shoshonian tribes to the incised work on ivory, &c., of the Eskimo and the paintings on buffalo and other animal skins by some of the Plains tribes, the work of the Pueblos Indians, &c., the nearest approach to hieroglyphics in North America outside of Mexico. Some Indian tribes (e.g. the Kootenay) seem not at all given to pictography, while many others have practised it to an almost limitless extent. The pictography and picture-writing of the North American Indians have been the subject of two detailed monographs by Mallery (4th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., 1882-1883, pp. 3-256; 10th Rep., 1888-1889, pp. 1-1290), and the graphic art of the Eskimo has received special treatment by Hoffman (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1895). Some have argued that this ivory pictography of the Eskimo is of recent origin and due practically to the introduction of iron by the whites, but Boas thinks such a theory refuted by the resemblance of the Eskimo graphic art in question to the birch-bark art of the neighbouring Indian tribes. No real “hieroglyphs,” much less any system of writing of an alphabetic nature, have been discovered north of Mexico; the alleged specimens of such, turning up from time to time, are frauds of one sort or another.

The music and song of the American Indians north of Mexico have been studied since the time of Baker (Über die Musik der Nordamerikanischen Wilden, Leipzig, 1882) by Boas, Fillmore, Curtis, Fletcher, Stumpf, Cringan (Ann. Arch. Rep. Ont., 1902, 1905), &c. According to Miss Fletcher (Indian Story and Song, 1900; also Publ. Peab. Mus., 1893), “among the Indians music envelops like an atmosphere every religious tribal and social ceremony, as well as every personal experience,” and “there is not a phase of life that does not find expression in song”; music, too, is “the medium through which man holds communion with his soul and with the unseen powers which control his destiny.” Music, in fact, “is coextensive with tribal life,” and “every public ceremony as well as each important act in the career of an individual has its accompaniment of song.” Moreover, “The music of each ceremony has its peculiar rhythm, so also have the classes of songs which pertain to individual acts: fasting and prayer, setting of traps, hunting, courtship, playing of games, facing and defying death.” In structure the Indian song “follows the outline of the form which obtains in our own music,” and “the compass of songs varies from 1 to 3 octaves.” Among some of the tribes with highly developed ceremonial observances “men and women, having clear resonant voices and good musical intonation, compose the choirs which lead the singing in ceremonies and are paid for the services.” A peculiar development of music among the Eskimo is seen in the “nith-songs,” by which controversies are settled, the parties to the dispute “singing at” each other till the public laughter, &c., proclaim one the victor. Among the American Indians songs belonging to individuals, societies, clans, &c., are met with, which have to be purchased by others from the owners, and even slight mistakes in the rendition of singing, dancing, &c., are heavily penalized. Musical contests were also known (e.g. among the Indians of the Pacific coast). The development of the “tribal song” among the Iroquoian peoples is seen in Hale’s Iroquois Book of Rites (1881). Songs having no words, but merely changeless vocables, are common. As Dr Boas has pointed out, the genius of the American Indian has been devoted more to the production of songs than to the invention of musical instruments. The musical instruments known to the aborigines north of Mexico, before contact with the whites, according to Miss Fletcher (Handb. of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 960), were drums of great variety in size and form, from the plank or box of some of the tribes of the North Pacific coast to the shaman’s drums of the Algonkian and Iroquoian peoples; whistles of bone, wood, pottery, &c. (often employed in ceremonies to imitate the voices of birds, animals and spirits); flageolet or flute (widely distributed and used by young men in courtship among the Siouan tribes); the musical bow (found among the Maidu of California and important in religion and sorcery). Rattles of gourd, skin, shell, wood, &., are universal, and among some of the tribes of the south-west “notched sticks are rasped together or on gourds, bones or baskets to accentuate rhythm.” From the rattle in the Pueblos region developed a sort of ball of clay or metal.

So far as is known, the primitive culture of the aborigines of North America is fundamentally indigenous, being the reactions of the Indian to his environment, added to whatever rude equipment of body and of mind was Culture of Indians essentially indigenous. possessed by the human beings who at some remote epoch reached the new world from the old, if, indeed, America was not, as Ameghino, on the basis of the discoveries of fossil anthropoids and fossil man in southern South America, maintains, the scene of origin of man himself.

Professor A. H. Keane (Internat. Monthly, vol. v., 1902, pp. 338-357), Stewart Culin (Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci. vol. lii., 1903, pp. 495-500) and Dr Richard Andree (Stzgsb. d. anthrop. Ges. in Wien, 1906, pp. 87-98) all agree as to the general autochthony of aboriginal American culture. The day of the argument for borrowing on the ground of mere resemblances in beliefs, institutions, implements, inventions, &c., is past. An admirable instance of the results of exact scientific research in this respect is to be found in Dr Franz Boas’s discussion (Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1908, pp. 321-344) of the needle-cases of the Alaskan Eskimo, which were at first supposed to be of foreign (Polynesian) origin. Other examples occur in Mr Culin’s study of American Indian games, where, for the first time, the relation of certain of them in their origin and development, and sometimes also in their degeneration and decay, is made clear. The independent origin in America of many things which other races have again and again invented and re-invented in other parts of the world must now be conceded.

The extreme north-western region of North America has recently been shown to be of great importance to the ethnologists. The investigations in this part of America and among the more or less primitive peoples of north-eastern Asia, carried on by the Jesup North Pacific expedition in 1897-1902, have resulted in showing that within what may be called the “Bering Sea culture-area” transmissions of culture have taken place from north-eastern Siberia to north-western America and vice versa. The only known example, however, of the migration of any people one way or the other is the case of the Asiatic Eskimo, who are undoubtedly of American origin, and it seems probable, in the language of Dr Boas, the organizer of the Jesup expedition and the editor of its publications, that “the Chukchee, Koryak, Kamchadal and Yukaghir must be classed with the American race rather than with the Asiatic race,” and possibly also some of the other isolated Siberian tribes; also that, “in a broad classification of languages, the languages of north-eastern Siberia should be classed with the languages of America” (Proc. Intern. Congr. Amer., New York, 1902, pp. 91-102). It appears, further, that the arrival of the Eskimo on the Pacific coast (this, although not recent, is comparatively late) from their home in the interior, near or east of the Mackenzie, “interrupted at an early period the communication between the Siberian and Indian tribes, which left its trace in many cultural traits common to the peoples on both sides of the Bering Sea.”

This establishment of the essential unity of the culture-type (language, mythology, certain arts, customs, beliefs, &c.) of the “Palaeo-Asiatic” peoples of north-eastern Siberia and that of the American Indians of the North Pacific coast, as demonstrated especially by the investigations of Jochelson, Bogoras, &c., is one of the most notable results of recent organized ethnological research. No such clear proof has been afforded of the theory of Polynesian influence farther south on the Pacific coast of America, believed in, more or less, by certain ethnologists (Ratzel, Mason, &c.). This theory rests largely upon resemblances in arts (clubs, masks and the like in particular), tattooing, mythic motifs, &c. But several things here involved, if not really American in origin, are so recent that they may perhaps be accounted for by such Hawaiian and other Polynesian contact as resulted from the establishment of the whale and seal-fisheries in the 18th century.

Between the Indians of North America and those of South America few instances of contact and intercommunication, or even of transference of material products and ideas, have been substantiated. It is by way of the Antilles and the Bahamas that such contact as actually occurred took place. In 1894 (Amer. Anthrop. vol. vii. p. 71-79) Professor W. H. Holmes pointed out traces of Caribbean influences in the ceramic art of the Florida-Georgia region belonging to the period just before the Columbian discovery. The decorative designs in question, paddle-stamp patterns, &c., akin to the motives on the wooden and stone stools from the Caribbean areas in the West Indies, have been found as far north as 36° in North Carolina and as far west as 84° in Tennessee and 89° in south-eastern Alabama. But the evidence does not prove the existence of Carib colonies at any time in any part of this region, but simply the migration from the West Indies to the North American coast of certain art features adopted by the Indians of the Timuquan and Muskogian Indians and (later) in part by the Cherokee. More recently (1907) Dr F. G. Speck, in a discussion of the aboriginal culture of the south-eastern states (Amer. Anthrop. vol. ix., n.s., pp. 287-295), cites as proof of Antillean or Caribbean influence in addition to that indicated by Holmes, the following: employment of the blow-gun in hunting, use of hammock as baby-cradle, peculiar storage-scaffold in one corner of house, plastering houses with clay, poisoning fish with vegetable juices. It is possible also that the North American coast may have been visited from time to time by small bodies of natives from the West Indies in search of the mythic fountain of youth (Bimini), the position of which had shifted from the Bahamas to Florida in its movement westward. Indeed, just about the time of the advent of the Europeans in this part of the world a number of Indians from Cuba, on such a quest, landed on the south-western shore of Florida, where they were captured by the Calusas, among whom they seem to have maintained a separate existence down to 1570 or later. This Arawakan colony, indicated on the map of linguistic stocks of American Indians north of Mexico, published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907, is the only one demonstrated to have existed, but there may have been others of a more temporary character. In the languages of this region there are to be detected perhaps a few loan-words from Arawakan or Cariban dialects. The exaggerated ideas entertained by some authorities concerning the “mound-builders” of the valley of the Ohio and Mississippi and their alleged “civilization” have led them to assume, without adequate proof, long-continued relations of the tribes inhabiting this part of the country in the past with the ancient peoples of Yucatan and Mexico, or even an origin of their culture from beyond the Gulf. But since these mounds were in all probability wholly the work of the modern Indians of this area or their immediate ancestors, and the greater part, if not all, of the art and industry represented therein lies easily within the capacity of the aborigines of North America, the “Mexican” theory in this form appears unnecessary to explain the facts. In its support stress has been laid upon the nature of some of the copper implements and ornaments, particularly the types of elaborate repoussé work from Etowah, Georgia, &c. That the repoussé work was not beyond the skill of the Indian was shown by Cushing in his study of “Primitive Copper Working” (Amer. Anthrop. vol. vii. pp. 93-117), who did not consider the resemblance of these mound-specimens to the art of Mexico proof of extra-North American origin. Holmes (Handb. of Inds. N. of Mex., 1907, pt. i. p. 343) points out that the great mass of the copper of mounds came from the region of Lake Superior, and that had extensive intercourse between Mexico or Central America and the mound-country existed, or colonies from those southern parts been present in the area in question, artifacts of undoubtedly Mexican origin would have been found in the mounds in considerable abundance, and methods of manipulation peculiar to the south would have been much in evidence. The facts indicate at most some exotic influence from Mexico, &c., but nothing far-reaching in its effects.

In the lower Mississippi valley the culture of certain peoples has been thought to contain elements (e.g. the temples and other religious institutions of the Natchez) suggestive of Mexican or Central American origin, either by inheritance from a common ancient source or by later borrowings. When one reaches the Pueblos region, with its present and its extinct “village culture,” there is considerable evidence of contact and inter-influence, if not perhaps of common origin, of culture-factors. Dr J. Walter Fewkes, a chief authority on the ethnic history of Arizona, New Mexico and the outlying areas of “Pueblos culture,” especially in its ceremonial aspects, has expressed the opinion (Amer. Anthrop. vol. vii. p. 51) that “it is not improbable that both Mexican and Pueblos cultures originated in a region in northern Mexico, developing as environment permitted in its northern and southern homes.” Unfavourable milieu in the north prevented the culture of the Pueblos Indians and the Cliff-dwellers, their ancestors, reaching the height attained in Mexico and Central America, represented by temple-architecture, ornamentation of buildings, hieroglyphs, &c. Strong evidence of Pueblos-Mexican relationship Dr Fewkes sees (Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., 1900) in the great serpent cult of Tusayan, the “New Fire” and other Pueblos ceremonials of importance; also in the mosaic objects (gorgets, ear-pendants, breast-ornaments, &c.) from Pueblos ruins in Arizona, some of the workmanship of which equals that of similar character in old Mexico. The arid region of the south-western United States and part of northern Mexico may well have been a centre for the dispersion of such primitive, institutions and ideas as reached their acme in the country of the Aztecs. But of the Pueblos languages, the Moqui or Hopi of north-eastern Arizona is the only one showing undoubted, though not intimate, relationship with the Nahuatl of ancient Mexico. The Shoshonian family, represented in the United States by the Shoshonees, Utes, Comanches and other tribes, besides the Moqui, includes also the numerous Sonoran tribes of north-western Mexico, as well as the Nahuatl-speaking peoples farther south, some of the outliers having wandered even to Costa Rica (and perhaps to Panama). This linguistic unity of the civilized Aztecs with the rude Utes and Shoshones of the north is one of the most interesting ethnological facts in primitive America. Change of environment may have had much to do with this higher development in the south. Besides the Shoshonian, the Coahuiltecan and the Athabaskan are or have been represented in northern Mexico, the last by the Apaches and Tobosos. From the period of the Spanish colonization of New Mexico down to about the last quarter of the 19th century (and sporadically later, e.g. the attack in 1900 on the Mormon settlement in Chihuahua), these Indians have hovered around the Mexican border, &c., their predatory expeditions extending at one time as far south as Jalisco. In the far west the Yuman family of languages belongs on both sides of the border.

In the popular mind the religion of the North American Indian consists practically of belief in the “Great Spirit” and the “Happy Hunting Grounds.” But while some tribes, e.g. of the Iroquoian and Caddoan stocks Religion, Mythology, &c. appear to have come reasonably near a pantheistic conception tending toward monism and monotheism, not a little of present Indian beliefs as to the “Great Spirit,” “God” and “Devil,” “Good Spirit” and “Evil Spirit,” &c., as well as concerning moral distinctions in the hereafter, can reasonably be considered the result of missionary and other influences coming directly or indirectly from the whites. The central idea in the religion and mythology of the aborigines north of Mexico is what Hewitt (Amer. Anthrop., 1902) has proposed to term orenda, from “the Iroquois name of the fictive force, principle or magic power which was assumed by the inchoate reasoning of primitive man to be inherent in every body and being of nature and in every personified attribute, property or activity belonging to each of these and conceived to be the active cause or force or dynamic energy involved in every operation or phenomenon of nature, in any manner affecting or controlling the welfare of man.” The orendas of the innumerable beings and objects, real and imagined, in the universe differed immensely in action, function, power, &c., and in like manner varied were the efforts of man by prayers, offerings and sacrifices, ceremonies and rites of a propitiatory or sympathetic nature to influence for his own welfare the possessor of this or that orenda, from the “high gods” to the least of all beings. Corresponding to the Iroquoian orenda is the wakanda of the Siouan tribes, some aspects of which have been admirably treated by Miss Fletcher in her “Notes on Certain Beliefs concerning Will Power among the Siouan Tribes” (Science, vol. v., n.s., 1897). Other parallels of orenda are Algonkian manito, Shoshonian pokunt, Athabaskan cæn. As Hewitt points out, these Indian terms are not to be simply translated into English by such expressions as “mystery,” “magic,” “immortal,” “sorcery,” “wonderful,” &c. Man, indeed, “may sometimes possess weapons whose orenda is superior to that possessed by some of the primal beings of his cosmology.”