strides the anthropologists are the only scholars who are at present equipped to carry on this sort of critical enterprise. As conditions are, however, we find that whereas in the study of the more primitive cultures the anthropologist may be thoroughly analytic and critical, when it comes to the study of the complex culture of his own group his critical powers fail him. This fact is in part owing to the circumstance that with respect to racial psychological endowment the anthropologist is insensitive to the temperature of his own intellectual bath, whereas in studying other sciences the contrast between his very different intellectual surroundings and that of the more simple peoples makes him very sensitive to the latter.

Specifically we should like to suggest that with respect to the problem of psychological racial endowment the assumptions involved are traceable directly to the domination of western (European) thought by animatistic cosmology rather than by observable phenomena. It is certainly plausible to connect the conception of mentality which underlies the doctrine of racial mental endowment with the general Oriento-Christian ideology of spirit and matter or spirit and flesh. Perhaps we may have to connect with other types of cultural tradition the intellectual attitudes which are characterized by the search for the nature of life in biology instead of the study of living things and their behavior, or force and matter in physics instead of the nature and action of inorganic objects, potentiality and determinants in genetics instead of combinations of specific interactions with stimuli objects and conditions. But in each case we are clearly dealing with powerful communal thought institutions and not with particular critical intellectual investigations of natural

events.

Furthermore, the study of the cultural background of the racial endowment and similar doctrines has its practical issue in counteracting the influence of authority. Probably without exception the anthropologists who are interested in the race problem rely for their psychological material upon the staid and renowned authorities whose views, howsoever firmly intrenched, may be so only because they fit into a cultural ideology system

and not because they are based upon the sound foundations of observable evidence and valid scientific logic. It is of especial importance to notice that the matter of cultural tradition has more serious consequence for scientific interpretation than personal emotional bias or errors in individual judgment. Because it is impossible for a scientist to be an expert in every field or even in many fields it appears therefore that when he needs to borrow facts and conceptions from neighboring disciplines it is helpful to distinguish between cultural or traditional ideas and genuine scientific descriptions, or at least to keep in mind the possibility of such a distinction. Certainly in the case of our present problem, when the force of tradition outweighs so heavily the observation of fact, the attention given to cultural factors cannot be without value in the final results.

INDIANA UNIVERSITY,

BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA.

TH

THE PRIMITIVE COPPER INDUSTRY

OF
AMERICA

BY GEORGE BRINTON PHILLIPS

HE account of the use of metal in pre-Columbian America as given by the old Spanish writers is meagre and vague, and it is only by an examination and analysis of the copper specimens found in our museums that we can obtain any accurate information. A copper age of primitive people was doubtless due to the proximity of native copper which was found in the soil as masses or nuggets, left by glacial action, or in the outcrop of native copper in the rocks. This substance, differing in its appearance and properties from the stone fragments chipped into shape, the roving Indian picked up and soon discovered that it could be flattened with a stone-a strange discovery.

Civilization, which with its flint knives and arrow heads had remained stagnant for thousands of years, now awoke after its long nap and the knowledge and use of this new substance which could be hammered into shape instead of being chipped, was the “Twilight of the Metal Industry" and later, when it was found fire would melt it, and the alloy bronze was discovered, it was the "Dawn of the Art of Metallurgy" with its unknown possibilities of Utility and Art.

The native mind was doubtless duly impressed with this new substance copper-with its strange properties; and nuggets when found were fashioned into some shape and so greatly prized that they were placed by the Indian's side at his burial. It is from these old graves or burial mounds that many objects of a primitive copper industry in America have been obtained, which reveal at least to some extent the civilization of the pre-Columbian era. At the discovery of America, the aborigines were undoubtedly in the "Stone Age" and this use of copper was probably a sporadic industry of the Neolithic tribes in the United States who never seemed to have become familiar with the melting and casting of the metal as was practised in Mexico.

These Indian burial mounds were abundant in the United States and hundreds of them have been levelled by careful archaeological explorers and the objects obtained from them accurately tagged and described.

These records of civilization of the American Indian have greatly increased during recent years and the metal and other objects will be found in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, The Peabody Museum of Cambridge, the Natural History Museum and the American Indian Collection of New York, the Smithsonian Museum at Washington and the Field Museum of Chicago, and a number of others. In addition to these extensive exhibits there are a number of private collections from local sites. An archaeologist of Wisconsin made a count some years ago of the copper implements collected in his own state in 1901, the number up to that date was thirty thousand, and since then has been yearly increased. It is believed many more such pre-Columbian specimens will be found as the forests are cleared and the land comes under cultivation. The number of copper objects in these various collections show that this primitive metal industry extended over a large territory now included in the States of Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Arkansas, Indiana, Illinois, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida, besides some of the Eastern and Middle States.

In the museums will be found collections of copper objects from the different states, including:

Tools, weapons, implements, ornaments and ceremonial objects.

Tools, represented by chisels, axheads, adzes, gouges, spuds, knife blades, awls and drills.

rods.

Weapons, include spear and arrow heads and swords.

Implements, pikes, punches, spiles, needles, pins, fish hooks, bars and

Ornaments, comprise head dresses, embossed plumes, breast plates, gorgets, crescents, pendants, ear plugs, bangles, beads, rings and buttons covered with copper.

Ceremonial objects, plates of hammered copper ornamented with figures or circles and bars, some perforated and embossed, others in reproussé.

The variety in types of some local implements suggest their employment for many years and may date back this primitive

industry centuries before the White Men arrived. This variation is especially found in the knife, the spear head and arrow point, the two latter are found bevelled, ridged, eyed, notched, toothed and barbed, sometimes with conical points, or flat and fitted for hafting.

A great deal of what is called "float copper" was carried by glacial action from the Michigan copper outcrop and deposited over the United States. The lines and grooves in the granite formation on the shores of Lake Superior show the glacial movement to have been from the Northeast to Southwest. Wisconsin lying in the line of movement received a generous supply of masses and nuggets of copper left in the soil when the glacier retreated, so that from Wisconsin have been obtained a great number of tools and implements as well as ornamental and ceremonial objects owing to the abundance of copper nuggets easily obtained, but where the supply was scarce its manufacture was more limited to ceremonial and objects of adornment. From mounds in Arkansas, Florida and Alabama some quite artistic objects have been found. A head plume of hammered copper representing a bird with conventional body and long wings and tail, from the Rose Mound, i burial in Arkansas, is shown in Pl. I. Gorgets, circular discs with the swastika emblem come from a burial mound in Alabama, Pl. I, and duck bill pendants with swastika cross from same locality. Pl. I. Reel shaped ceremonial objects of thin metal (apparently of no other practical use) from Alabama are shown in Pl. I; also a copper nugget hammered in a profile of an Indian from a pre-Columbian mound near Columbus, Ohio. A plate sheet copper about 10 ins. square ornamented with repoussé work in concentric circles and parallel bars and human profile was found in a mound in Florida. In some burial mounds skeletons were discovered with ear ornaments and bands on their heads and on the altars perforated plates, headdresses, pendants, gorgets and some adze blades. In one burial a plate of sheet copper was found covering a skull which it closely fitted. A mound in Florida yielded a breast plate of circular shape with an opening in the centre in which a precious stone had been placed. Adze blades and ear plugs of copper occur in burials with chipped