Cover Page

Contents

Preface
Letter

SECTION I

Orientation
Summary

SECTION II

History
Needs
Geography
Historic Sites
Competitors
Economic Aspects

SECTION III

Federal Lands
State and Interstate
Local

SECTION IV

Division of Responsibility
Local
State
Federal
Circulation

SECTION V

Educational Opportunities

Much of what I shall say has been said before. But I repeat deliberately, and chiefly because the current trend in archaeological methods again urges introspection. I believe we might profitably pause periodically to take stock; to seek out the weak links of the chain we are forging; to ask which of our inherited tasks is most slighted at the moment. It is just such a stock taking that I propose for this occasion.

As we interpret it in this country, archaeology has to do with prehistory. Where written history begins there archaeology ends. Archaeology seeks to supply the text for those chapters that obviously preceded historical beginnings. Archaeology is the backward extension of recorded history!

In his researches, the archaeologist expects to meet with obstacles—the trails he follows are known to be dim and uncharted. But it should be his privilege to work without the millstones of individual and communal interference encircling his neck. Lacking Federal recognition as of national concern, archaeology in the United States has been, and is still being, exploited by selfish or misinformed persons; it is being fettered by local emotions and further handicapped by obsolete conceptions as to the fundamental purpose of original field investigations.

Within the United States, archaeological inquiry centers about those aboriginal peoples, early or late, who inhabited the area prior to its conquest and occupancy by Europeans. Pursuit of this inquiry has been more or less casual and too frequently influenced by personal preferences. Rarely have major problems been attacked with understanding and perseverance.

Our only Federal law having to do with preservation of antiquities refers solely to lands owned or controlled by the Government. Within recent years certain states have identified such prehistoric remains as happen to lie within their respective boundaries as assets of the commonwealth and have passed laws which tend to place a monetary, rather than an historic value on aboriginal objects. There still exist museum officials who measure the success of an expedition by the number of specimens recovered, not by completeness of the data relating to those specimens. In consequence of these well-known facts, especially trained investigators are often restricted in their efforts to learn all that is ascertainable about the antecedents of our modern Indian tribes—the real aim of archaeology in the United States—and the gains an erroneous idea of the object in view.

Public interest in prehistory is deep and firmly rooted. No other subject surpasses archaeology in popular appeal; none so quickly awakens the lay imagination. Civilized man is at least curious about his remote past; he is even more curious about primitive peoples, dead cities, and almost-forgotten empires. The Valley of the Kings discloses unknown splendors of ancient Egypt; Ur of the Chaldees adds substance to Biblical history; the felled jungles of Middle America exhibit ruins of marvelous pro-Spanish temples; colossal mounds in Ohio, shattered cliff dwellings in Arizona, gradually yield their secrets. Scarcely a day passes without press account, however garbled or improbable it may be, of archaeological explorations somewhere in progress. News of such investigations finds ready welcome at the editorial desk; pleas for illustrations and feature stories are endless. I venture the guess that eighty percent of our people possess a latent curiosity which, given opportunity, will spur them to physical activity on an old Indian camp ground. The casual stroller, having found an arrowhead, lingers to seek its fellow; transcontinental tourists and local picnic parties amuse themselves digging for relics. In the last 2 years this proven public appetite for information pertaining to primitive man and his accomplishments has prompted numerous books and magazine articles by pseudo-scientists and rehash artists who write with an air of authority yet know very little, actually, of the intent or results of current anthropological research.

As a science, United States archaeology had its uncertain birth less than 100 years ago. During its period of adolescence it was characterized by wild imaginings and fantastic theories, some few of which still persist. But the last half century, more especially the last quarter century, has witnessed a definite forward movement. Progress was certain to follow realization that the 200 or more principal Indian tribes inhabiting our country at the time of its discovery had a remote, common origin, however independent their subsequent development may have been. Keen minds, analyzing artifacts from prehistoric sites in various localities, detected apparent relationships indicative of tribal migrations or cultural influences. Which tribe, which culture, came first? When these questions were asked the time element was introduced; chronology became a factor. And now, with field explorations based on stratigraphy as the foundation of chronology, the science of archaeology in the United States may be said to approach maturity.

Despite certain notable achievements which influenced this growth, one cannot avoid the feeling that archaeology in our country has not yet won the permanent place it rightfully merits. It does not command sufficient respect; it is too generally regarded as a mere game, an avocation, at which all may play with equal promise of success. Witness the number of ancient sites mutilated each year by those not trained carefully to observe or to interpret their observations; witness the prevailing custom of designating as an "archaeologist" any collector of curios, every dabbler in prehistory. Upon occasion, even reputable institutions have sent out on collecting trips representatives with absolutely no knowledge of where to look or how to proceed. It may be that we students take ourselves and our work too seriously, but I have a feeling that relatively few of our neighbors realize fully that archaeology is a subject requiring a deal of application and considerable experience for the proper evaluation, and more likely solution, of the complex problems involved. For these problems vary with each site; no two are exactly the same. Neither strength to wield a shovel nor success in amassing specimens makes an archaeologist.

I have tried earnestly to fathom this situation; to learn why so many of our fellow citizens look upon Old World archaeology with something of reverence and yet regard every ancient village site or burial ground in this country as fair prey for the first person who happens along. And I have reached the conclusion that lack of Government attention is primarily responsible. Ours is the land of equal opportunity; always we have stressed the paramount rights of the individual. But the history of any country, and so its prehistory, is more truly national than individualistic. The United States is the only major power in the world, perhaps the only American republic, that does not reserve in behalf of its nationals a prior right to all material records of its prehistoric past, wherever and however found. It will surprise many to learn that Mexico, in proportion to national wealth, leads the world in Federal effort toward the conservation, and investigation, of her archaeological heritage. In marked contrast, we of the United States, prone to boast of our educational leadership, contribute from the Treasury an extremely insignificant sum for anthropological research and make a very feeble gesture indeed toward preservation of such aboriginal works as have survived from precolonial days.

Our only national law pertaining to this subject is the so-called Antiquities Act of June 8, 1906. This relates exclusively to the public domain—lands administered, respectively, by the Secretaries of Agriculture, the Interior, and War. What a Secretary of War, for example, might know of archaeological matters is a moot question. But the case loses its humorous aspect when one realizes that the rules designed to carry out the provisions of the Antiquities Act may be changed at any time by the Secretaries of the three Departments without reference to the Smithsonian Institution, since 1846 the Government's recognized authority on, and depository for, anthropological material. Then, too, no provision has ever been made for enforcing the act or its dependent regulations; in consequence, illegal excavations still continue on Federal lands, frequently by local agents of the departments supposedly responsible for preservation of American antiquities.

Throughout the mound area east of the Mississippi, as in the Southwestern States, the gathering and sale of prehistoric objects is a recognized, though minor, industry; local residents regard it as their inalienable right to dig for "relics" wherever fancy dictates. Neither public nor private property is secure from these vandals. Their work, to be sure, is largely superficial but it is equally true that, in proportion to their activities, every site attacked is rendered useless to the student qualified to read from its fragmentary, cultural remains something of the aboriginal people who once occupied it. The pot hunter seeks salable specimens only; his interest goes no farther.

I prefer to believe that a desire to check commercialism, and the vandalism which feeds it, actuated those primarily responsible for certain recent State laws governing archaeological exploration. But not all these could possibly have been worded by men thoroughly cognizant of the scope of archaeology. Natural barriers and not the arbitrary, political lines we may draw on maps, tend to limit the wanderings of primitive tribes. Our native Americans recognized territorial divisions that meant nothing to their European conquerors. Therefore, when any State by legislative enactment reserves to itself the right to excavate prehistoric sites within the State, prohibits the sale or transportation beyond its borders of archaeological specimens, and makes it a misdemeanor for any nonresident, directly or in directly, to conduct local investigations even of a superficial nature, selfishness and not science is being served. Manifestly illegal, laws of this type carry the unmistakable odor of commercialism; they imply a ready market for old Indian artifacts and leave with the uninformed an impression that the State itself intends to monopolize the sale of curios. It follows that those with opportunity at hand are stimulated to greater activity; pot hunting continues, if less openly.

Within the past 4 months I have seen, from citizens of States which prohibit archaeological exploration by nonresidents, several letters offering for sale collections of antiquities from those States. I have in my possession a list of over 200 objects illegally collected from cliff dwellings on the Navaho Reservation, yet I am informed the Department having jurisdiction over that reservation cannot confiscate this collection nor punish the collector for violation of a Federal statute because no one actually saw him exhume the objects. Yet I have his signed letter and list; his offer to sell. The father of this same man, while employed by the Government to prevent unauthorized excavations in ruins on certain public lands, gathered from those ruins and sold a similar collection larger than that noted above. But no one saw him do it; there is no redress.

Now the act of June 8, 1906, is sufficient insofar as the public domain is concerned; where advisable, laws can be formulated which amply protect any State's interest in prehistoric ruins situated on State lands. The difficulty lies in the fact that such laws do not enforce themselves. Someone must he charged definitely with that responsibility. Too many individuals have found pleasure or profit digging for curios; they would resent any curtailment of what they have come to regard as a personal privilege. Legislation affecting private property is not readily passed, especially if it appear inconsequential to the legislative mind. But Massachusetts has already pointed the way by extending its right of eminent domain to include objects of antiquarian or historic import. This is altogether equitable and should prove efficacious provided authority, appropriations, and a trained personnel are available to make it effective.

During optimistic moments I have thought a concerted educational program on the part of anthropologists might suffice to create a public sentiment so intense and sincere as to guard from further spoliation ancient Indian remains either on private or other lands. But what a task that would be. I have thought, too, of possible State legislation prohibiting traffic in aboriginal American antiquities. Yet, even this scarcely seems feasible. Action would come too late; the damage would have been done before 48 States could pass enforceable laws toward which a considerable number of their citizens were unsympathetic. One other alternative suggests itself: Museum officials can contribute gradually to discouragement of pot hunting through refusal to purchase specimens offered by professional diggers. Extensive vandalism, however, would have occurred before these men, and the retailers, learned by actual experience that the ultimate market had been closed to them.

There is another angle to this subject of commercialism, namely, faking. The widespread demand for curios and the ambitions of a few collectors of special forms have brought about the fabrication and sale, in ever increasing numbers, of spurious antiquities. Just now these frauds come mostly from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama; others have appeared heretofore, from New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. Some, at least, of these fakes are so cleverly made as to deceive the expert. Generally they go first into private collections but sooner or later they reach public museum bearing seemingly plausible notations as to the place and date of discovery. We shall always have with us, no doubt, the man intent upon hoaxing the scientist but the successful faker is a snake of different color.

Recently there came to my desk the advertisement of a Kentuckian offering to reproduce, at from $1.50 to $10 each, almost any type of stone object used by the ancient Indians. This man dodges postal regulations by stating on his printed catalog that the items offered are "modern forms made at the present time." But who may say at what museum these reproductions will eventually appear, perhaps with a donated private collection, as genuine antiquities? Commercialism is the most insurmountable obstacle to constructive research with which we have to contend, and I cannot but believe that the strength of its present position results solely from failure of our Government to exhibit an active interest in that diverse Indian civilization which it supplanted.

If we turn to consideration of field work in the United States we are again forced to conclude that, after 75 years, archaelogy has less of substance to its credit than one could wish. Explorations have continued almost annually; notable achievements have been recorded. But, by far and large, these explorations have been haphazard and without definite objective other than collection of specimens. That their results fail wholly to meet our needs today is further proof that the science of archaeology has matured with the years. Experience has taught that detached artifacts do not suffice in tracing the migrations of a prehistoric people; in reaching a comprehensive understanding of the life they led, or its bearing upon that of later tribes. Specialists have learned the historic worth of a specimen is determinable not from its physical appearance alone but from the data accompanying it in situ. Those data form the indispensable factor in modern archaelogical research; without them any product of aboriginal industry is merely something else to look at.

I do not wish to appear too dogmatic nor too ungenerous in my criticism. I doubt that anyone can be too critical of investigative work, whatever its nature; I doubt that anyone who has given thought to public and private exploitation of prehistoric remains in the United States can fail to realize that past and present archaeologists will be censured bitterly by those of the future for failure to record all essential data relating to field researches. Bear in mind that, of necessity, the archaelogist destroys his major evidence as he collects his information. No mound is the same after excavation, even though its former contour be restored; opportunities for observation, once lost, are gone forever. A ruin mutilated by pot hunters retains but an incomplete story for the trained observer.

Here and there across the continent one finds still an institution still guided by the notion that accumulation of specimens is the prime purpose of archaeology. In such cases, close inspection usually discloses an individual vanity dominating the research staff. The latter, if engaged in field work, invariably have discovered that the circumstances under which a specimen is found may be, and frequently are, more important than the specimen itself. An earthenware pot from Illinois is just an earthenware pot from Illinois but one found 4 feet below the surface of Cahokia mound, for example, and underlying material undeniably Iroquoian in origin would immediately assume an historical significance entirely outweighing whatever interest the specimen might hold as an object of primitive craftsmanship. Despite the crudeness of this illustration, it clarifies my point: Chronology is the key that will unlock many secrets of American prehistory, and stratigraphy is the stuff of which chronology is made!

As a student of archaeology, engaged with such collections as come before me, I am constantly being reminded of the paucity of fundamental information at our disposal concerning Indian peoples of the colonial period and following. Our historic tribes are the immediate descendants of those we call prehistoric; a more complete knowledge of historic Indians, their manners and customs, would contribute largely to our meager understanding of tribal life in pre-Columbian times. Of work along that hazy borderline between the historic and prehistoric, United States archaeology stands in greatest need today.

In our ethnological researches, study of material culture has rather gone out of fashion during the last quarter century; emphasis has been placed on fast-disappearing languages, ceremonies, and social organizations. Indian arts and crafts, the effect of environment and tribal contact, have not received their due share of attention. We are told that some two hundred unrelated, or distantly related, tribes inhabited the present United States at the time of its discovery by Europeans. For how many of these tribes do we know the types of buildings ancestrally employed, their detailed methods of construction, and the purposes to which each was dedicated? One searches almost in vain for light on this subject. For how many tribes do we possess reasonably complete information concerning domestic utensils, weapons, and objects of personal adornment, together with all the minute factors involved in the manufacture and use of such diverse artifacts? In only three or four cases, so far as I am aware, has serious effort been made to list the native plants, of culinary or medicinal value, utilized by tribes familiar to us. Yet, since 1900, a half dozen plants known and used anciently by American Indians have been developed into twentieth century economic necessities. At least 300 similar plants or plant products remain to be tested, perhaps adopted and improved for our use, by botanists and chemists. Maize was widely grown throughout the United States in prehistoric times, yet we know precious little, actually, of varying tribal practices in its cultivation, preparation, and use.

There are those who hold such information nonessential; that surmises or inferences bring us close enough to the truth. It is my contention, on the contrary, that we who seek to construct the groundwork for future knowledge of Indian peoples, past and present, within the United States have assumed an obligation to make our studies as thorough as is humanly possible. We have not been thorough heretofore simply because no one perceived the present requirements of our science. We are not being thorough today since the current tendency toward specialization leads naturally to omission of significant data—data which may prove highly desirable a few years hence.

This is true of anthropology in its broader aspects. Although we have come to think of them as separate fields for investigation, it is impossible absolutely to divorce archaeology and ethnology. Especially is this so here in the United States where the prehistoric merges imperceptibly with the historic. Mounds erected since colonial days are distinguishable from those of an earlier period only by the presence of articles of European manufacture. To be at all certain in his deductions, the archaeologist necessarily works from the known to the unknown; hence, he is dependent to a considerable degree upon ethnological findings. Were exhaustive ethnographic studies more numerous, the prehistory of our Indian groups could be reconstructed with greater assurance.

In presenting my thoughts I seem quite unable to avoid a paternalistic attitude. I truly regret this. But it should be self-evident that any endeavor to portray the current status of archaeology in the United States, especially from that particular angle I have chosen, necessarily means a balancing of methods and results. If, by indicating some of the deficiencies I perceive, there follows a more determined effort to supply them before it is altogether too late, I shall be content.

Few of our so-called "wild" Indians now remain as prospective informants. Before they, too, pass on, it should be possible—surely a way can be found—to secure whatever they recall of the past, be it tribal customs, material culture, folklore. Vocabularies, alone, are inadequate; anatomical studies possess but limited application. There are tasks for a hundred workers; time presses. Anthropologists are fully aware of the present, rapid Americanization of our Indian tribes; of the rapidity with which old practices are dying out; of the certainty with which the accumulated lore inherited from past generations is passing beyond our reach. For three successive summers I recently employed a Zuñi boy, still in his early twenties, who could recite the capitals of the 48 States, expound at length upon Eli Whitney's cotton gin, or give a plausible impersonation of ex-President Wilson delivering an address, but he knew nothing of Zuñi history, mythology, or ritualism. The same lack of knowledge may be found in any other village. Indian youth, home from school, has little patience with the older order of timings. What cannot be salvaged within the next few years is lost, utterly.

An archaeologist rarely finds his ideal—a region inhabited by Indians whose forefathers lived at known sites to which they had moved from other, older locations. The Pueblo area of the Southwest most nearly approaches such an ideal; the Iroquois section of New York, to a less degree. But there are few archaeologists in the United States who have not nursed an ambition to trace a given Indian tribe, through remains of its evolving culture, backward from historic and proto-historic villages to the very point of its independent origin. Doubtless such an ambition will never be realized but it would be quite possible to travel far along prehistoric trails if the ethnography of historic tribes were more completely recorded.

Within a few hours' motor ride from Washington are village sites, occupied at known periods by Indian groups whose identity may be learned from early histories and books of travel. Few, if any, of those sites have been examined intensively by trained archaeologists. Algonquian, Siouan, and Iroquoian tribes contended for the verdant valleys of Virginia; their superimposed cultures should be evident at some favorable site. But our knowledge of tribal groups in this vicinity is woefully inadequate considering the 321 years that have elapsed since settlement of Jamestown.

From Maine come meager data on the so-called "red paint" people, makers of adzes, gouges, and ground-slate projectile points types of stone artifacts that do not occur in nearby shell heaps. Did the clam diggers precede those who buried in ocher-stained graves? And what relationship if any, existed between these simple "red paint" people of Maine and the now extinct Beothuk of Newfoundland? There is an answer if one could but find it.

In Florida are problems to satisfy the most persistent investigator. Cushing's marvelous San Marco culture has not yet been found with equal purity at any other site. From San Marco and elsewhere in Florida occasional specimens convey a strong suggestion of trans-Caribbean art; West Indian influences have been noted as far north as the Carolinas. Just when and how these exotic traits reached the southeastern United States remains to be determined.

More than one prehistoric culture is represented in Florida. The innumerable shell-heaps bordering the east and west coasts were not raised by the same people responsible for neighboring mounds. Crania from those mounds are predominantly brachycephalic; those from the shell-heaps, dolichocephalic. Comparable differences are noted between artifacts from the two types of structures. The mounds exhibit the higher culture of the two, but close observers detect a cultural variation in some, at least, of the shell accumulations. For example, stamp-decorated pottery has been found in the upper layers of certain east coast shell-heaps; plain ware only in the middle strata; and no pottery at all in the lowermost deposits. Stratigraphic evidence has been disclosed also on Weeden island, off the west coast, but no one has yet persevered long enough to untangle the threads of this complex archaeological problem. At coming of the Spaniards, the lower peninsula was dominated by Calusa Indians; they, too, raised shell-heaps.

Within the past few years interest has focused on the puzzling association, in Florida, of human artifacts with remains of Pleistocene mammals. From the meager data now available, this association may force some revision of time computations as they pertain to local geology but it cannot convincingly extend the human horizon. The occurrence does not admit of immediate explanation; it is not so simple as it seems. For one thing, the geology of Florida is too little understood; the effect of great natural disturbances, such as the hurricane of 1926, is still unmeasured. Palaeontologists are not accustomed to the lesser time intervals employed by anthropologists; neither group is wholly familiar with the field methods and reasoning processes of the other. When some hold that a discovery such as this proves man as old as the mammalian remains; when others contend that the artifacts do not differ sufficiently from protohistoric types to warrant such a conclusion, it is perfectly obvious that the problem calls for painstaking research over a number of years and the earnest cooperation of geologists, palaeontologists, and students of aboriginal life. Otherwise the real facts in the case—and these, after all, are what we seek—may be lost in the fog of conflicting opinion.

Whether we wish it or not, the question of early man in the western hemisphere is to force itself more determinedly into the anthropological foregound during the decade just at hand. Within the past few months direct association between Indian projectile points and the remains of extinct mammals have been reported from Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. No one may yet say what these discoveries promise; students qualified to express an opinion do not agree in their deductions. In these three instances, as in Florida, the fact of association will scarcely be questioned since the artifacts, firmly positioned, were seen and even photographed in situ by trustworthy observers. But the fact of original contemporaneity in each instance may be questioned for the present at least.

Problems of this sort may not be solved, nor dismissed, with a wave of the hand. Archaeologists, for instance, will find it far easier to believe that man dwelt in North America during late Pleistocene times and hunted now extinct bison with spear points of a given type than they will to believe the same type of projectile was also employed in the early Pleistocene, assuming man was then present. Man's body may not change perceptibly throughout a hundred generations but his handiwork will change. Because of the human factor involved, objects fashioned by man may not be employed absolutely as palaeontological material in the determination of geologic sequences. Nevertheless, most anthropologists would welcome convincing proof that the American continent was inhabited during the Glacial epoch for the very simple reason that such proof would largely explain the great diversity of native languages and cultures. Until convincing proof has been presented, however, representatives of the several branches of science directly interested must strive for more complete cooperation, insisting only that all possible factors bearing upon the subject be assembled and weighed in unbiased scales. In this connection, I presume also to suggest the urgent need for more detailed knowledge than we now possess of post-Glacial geology. No one may say where the Pleistocene ends and the Recent begins; no one may say that a given species, supposedly extinct in one region at a certain Interglacial period did not in fact survive for a considerable time in another district not reached by the ice.

For a hundred years Indian mounds and earthworks throughout the Mississippi valley have tempted inquiring minds. Fantastic theories of the last century have long since gone into the discard; facts of association and descriptive data are now demanded. The so-called Mound Builders were not a superior race, related to the Lost Tribes of Israel or to the mythical Atlanteans; neither were they a race of giants, later dispossessed by more aggressive tribes. Ancestors of historic Shawnee and Cherokee warriors built many of the mounds in Tennessee; the Shawnee and Creek are jointly credited with construction of the famous Etowah group in Georgia, a settlement supposedly visited by De Soto in 1540; Siouan tribes are thought to have erected at least some of the Ohio mounds. In any event there remains but little doubt that all the mounds and earthworks of the Mississippi valley were constructed by ancestors of those Indian tribes inhabiting the region at commencement of European exploration and settlement. It remains to identify the various mounds with the several tribes. Toward this end it would seem but the natural procedure first to excavate sites historically occupied by known groups; to employ the facts there disclosed in attempting to solve the secrets of other, older sites. This appears not to have been done in any appreciable degree.

In present-day Ohio, with its diversity of Mound Builder problems, the remarkable Hopewell and the dominant Fort Ancient cultures have recently been thoroughly studied and delineated. But the tribes responsible for those unlike remains are still unknown; they passed off the local stage before Europeans struggling for supremacy in the region, made possible the advent of those Indian peoples known to Ohio since colonial days. Algonquian groups, controlling for a time, were later expelled by Iroquoian warriors. Iroquoian remains have been found overlying those of Algonquian origin. But in northern Ohio, where historic Erie villages are identifiable and where the imprint of other Iroquoian influence should be most indelible, little investigative work has been undertaken.

In New York the record is clearer. The area occupied by each unit of the Iroquoian confederacy is fairly well established; its individual cultures have been circumscribed, at least in part. It has long been my hope that the fascinating Iroquois pipes and pottery, together with other equally distinctive artifacts, would exhibit group differences from which some close observer might eventually gage the pressure exerted by each Iroquoian unit upon those Algonquian peoples who formerly dwelt south of Lake Erie. But such comparative studies naturally belong to the future.

I have purposely cited these several examples by way of illustrating my conviction that the archaeology of no one area in the United States is yet thoroughly understood. We have prepared a general map but without topographic detail. Data that did not seem essential, or the existence of which did not occur, to most of our predecessors—men whose names are in eradicably associated with the formative period of the science in our country—are vital to current researches. In the last decade and a half our whole point of view has altered; we look now to the trees that form the forest rather than to the forest itself. When I began my studies at the National Museum 17 years ago I was urged to abandon my prime interest in the prehispanic Pueblo area on the ground that all which could be learned from that region had already been disclosed and published. But it had since become clear that those earlier investigations were not complete in themselves; that they may best serve as the foundation on which a more finished structure is yet to be erected.

So it is with nearly every other section of the United States where prehistoric Indian remains are present. Much has been accomplished but there is even more still to be done. Arikara groups supposedly built the low, conical mounds in western South Dakota but what affinity, if any, exists between them and similar mounds in the eastern part of the State; or in Wisconsin; or Illinois? And what is the real relationship between Mississippi Valley mounds and those that lie 150 miles north of the Canadian border?

The prehistory of the Southwest is better known today than that of any other culture area in the United States. And it should be, for the story there is more accessible, more easily read. Nevertheless, the line that shall mark the outer limits of Pueblo dispersion has not finally been drawn; the earliest Basket Makers are still strangers to us and their subsequent wanderings uncharted. Many interrelated, local puzzles are to be solved before students engaged with this fascinating region will be content to withdraw, satisfied that their interpretation of its prehistory is reasonably correct and complete.

Before 1540, and even later, the Apache and Navaho, possibly the Ute, collected heavy tribute from Pueblo villages in present day New Mexico and Arizona, yet the ancestry of these three tribes is still debatable; their ethnography largely unrecorded. Relatively little is known of cultural sequences in the Great Basin, from Colorado to California. Artifacts bearing indubitable evidence of contact with early Mexican tribes have been exhumed from Texas caves and mounds of the lower Mississippi valley but the trails on which aboriginal commerce crossed the Rio Grande in prehistoric times lie unmarked.

When all else fails, there remains that alluring theme: the origin and antiquity of the American Indian. Theory still points to Bering Strait as the gateway through which man first entered the New World. Superimposed cultures have been observed in the Aleutian islands and elsewhere, but no one, to my knowledge, has yet found in the Bering region artifacts that cannot be attributed to ancestors of the present Eskimo or Indian inhabitants. Explorations now under way in western Alaska may be expected to clarify, in some degree, the question of ancient immigrations and contra-movements. Probable trans-Bering influences; the apparent isolation of the Northwest coast culture; the seeming lack of relationships between Pacific coast tribes and those of the interior, all have an inseparable connection with this enigma of origin and distribution. If man reached Alaska and turned southward in Glacial times, material proof cannot forever escape trained observers. But while exploration continues, it might prove illuminating if careful examination were made in selected caves and rock shelters, at various strategic points between the Atlantic and Pacific.

We who are engaged with these problems of prehistory will not actually solve them, however much we may contribute to their ultimate solution. Meanwhile, the very evidence from which conclusions are finally to be drawn is left a prey to vandals and curio seekers. That is the tragedy of it all. Every mound pillaged, every cliff-dwelling despoiled, means just so much less with which the student has to work—just so many more pages torn from the record he seeks to interpret. With existing laws inoperative and rather lacking in public support, I fail to perceive any practicable means of checking this destruction. It will continue so long as pot hunters find a market for their plunder; so long as cliff dwellings and mounds remain to tempt the curious. It would seem that only by greater industry, concentration of effort, and closer cooperation between research organizations and their trained personnel can sufficiently reliable data be assembled from the major culture areas to answer every need of that historian who some day will write the prehistory of the United States.

As a contributory factor in the development of archaeology, most research institutions have learned that the scientific success of an expedition depends almost wholly upon the ability of its leader; that mere enthusiasm is one of the lesser qualifications for leadership. Consequently, field investigations today are generally better organized, better financed, and more ably directed than ever before. Deductions that seem to bear the mark of permanence have followed realization of the fact that prehistoric objects, however desirable for visual instruction, contribute far less to human knowledge than exact information as to the circumstances under which they were found. As a result of this advance, further progress may be anticipated.

A relative chronology for each culture area is one of the surpassing needs of archaeology in the United States today and, happily, our foremost investigators are earnestly cooperating to this end.

U. S. National Museum, Washington, D. C

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¹ Address of Neil M. Judd, retiring president, Anthropological Society of Washington, delivered Apr. 17, 1928. Reprinted from American Anthropologist, Vol. 31, No. 3, July—September 1929.

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