The Gradual Transmission of Separate Cultural Elements

IV. The Gradual Transmission of Separate Cultural Elements

     To the present time, then, there is no positive proof of the wholesale transplantation of peoples or of cultures into the Gulf area of the United States from Mexico, Central America, or the West Indies. Until new discoveries are made bearing upon this question we must be satisfied with supposing the influences of the northern and southern regions upon each ether to have been confined to that gradual radiation of single elements which is constantly taking place where peoples are in contact. Specific effects of such a radiation certainly exist in the south-north distribution of corn and the "milpa culture"

(16) connected with it, as also in the south-north distribution of tobacco and probably other cultivated plants. It is to be noted that one of the words applied to the potato and similar tuberous roots by the peoples of the West Indies and the Southeast were the same.

(17) Again, it seem, difficult to, believe that the customs of frontal head deformation found on the north and the south sides of the Gulf of Mexico originated entirely independently of each other. Some years ago Professor Holmes called attention to certain apparent Caribbean influences in designs found upon pottery in the pastern Gulf area

(18), and numbers of students have believed that the incised decorations on shell and copper objects in the Mississippi region boar a resemblance to lexicon patterns too close to be accidental. Yet, after a lengthy comparison of three features of northern and southern culture, namely "pyramids and ocher features of material culture," "religious ideas connected with the serpent," and "similarities in symbolism and art" Dr. Spinden finds little upon which to base a satisfactory claim of transmission by direct contact. Speaking of the last of these he says, "we may see in these designs the result of a slow exfiltration, with many relays, of ideas originating among the Maya, if you will, but not passing from them directly to the ancient peoples of the Mississippi Valley. There are no trustworthy evidences of trade relations between the Mexicans and Mound-builders, nor is there any sure indication of fundamental unity of culture at any time in the distant past."

(19) Nevertheless the evidence of corn is by itself sufficient to prove that "exfiltration* from south is north did take place, and the amount and extent. of this still offers interesting problems far investigation.

Conclusions

     1. Proof of the direct influence of southern cultures upon the culture of the Indians north of the Gulf of Mexico or of transplantation of peoples there from the south is as yet wanting.

    2. Them are evidences of more intimate contact between the Indians of the Southeast and the Pueblos than between the former and Mexico.

     3. Single cultural elements are known to have been introduced from the south but for only a few of these is the evidence entirely satisfactory.

     In spite of the small number of proved cases of transmission theme is good reason to believe that the cultures of the southeastern United Slates as well as that of the .Southwest constituted marginal areas in that succession of semi-civilizations extending through Mexico and Central America to the Andean region of South America.

     Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, D. C.

JOHN R. SWANTON.

Notes

(1) Brinton, in Historical Magazine, 2d series, 1867, I, pp. 16-18.
(2) American Anthropologist (N. S.), Vol. XVII, no. 1, pp. 17-40.
(3) Le Page du Pratz, Historic de La Louisiane, Paris 1758, III, 62-70.
(4) De la Vente, letter of 1704, in Compte Rendu Cong. Internal.
Amer., 15th sess., I, 37.
(5) Le Page du Pratz, op. cit.
(6) A few pieces of Pueblo ware have been found; a fragment kind from southwestern Missorná fell into the hands of Mr. W. E. Myer, collaborator in the Bureau Ethnology. West of the Mississippi, probably in the Caddo country the army of De Soto "found some turkoises, and shawls of cotton, which the Indians gave them to understand, by signs, were brought from the direction of the sunset. "Narratives of De Soto, ed. Bourne, I. p. 181. New York, 1904.
(7) Bull. 55. Bureau of Am. Ethnology, p . 52 . The Caddohadacho country is known to have been the principal source of supply for the tribes about who evidently passed the material on to the Pueblos.
(8) Bartram, Travels, London, 1792, p. 225.
(9) See John Lee Williams, The Territory of Florida, 1837, p. 242.
(10) Documentos Inéditos, V. pp. 536-7-Madrid, 1866.
(l1) See Morley in Bull. 57, Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 2-7. Washington, 1915.
(12) Twenty-fifth Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Eeth., pp. 178-9-Ancl. Notes and Monographs (Heye Mus. Pinh.), Cuber before Columbs, Part, I, Vol. . II .
(13) Bull. 73, Bur. Am. Ethnol., pp. 27-31.
(14) Procedings Am. Philosoph. Society, XVIII, p. 478.
(15) Fewkes in Twenty-fifth Ann. Rep., loc. cit.
(16) O. F. Cook, in Smithsonian Report for 1919, pp. 307-326.
(17) Journ. Wash,. Acad. Sic., Vol. VI, pp. 136-7.
(18) American Anthropologist, (N. S. ), VII, pp. 71-79.
(19) Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and
Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. VI, p. 247; Cambridge, 1913.

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Southern Contacts of the Indians North of the Gulf of Mexico, 1924

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