Note 779 — Chapter XII · —Continents And Their Peninsulas

To the anthropo-geographer, the significant fact is that all the higher phases of native civilization are confined to the Pacific slope group of Indians, which includes the Mexican and Isthmian tribes. From the elongated center of advanced culture stretching from the Bolivian highlands northward to the Anahuac Plateau, the same type shades off by easy transitions through northern Mexico and the Pueblo country, vanishes among the lower intrusive stocks of Oregon and California, only to reappear among the Haidas and Tlingits of British Columbia and Alaska, whose cultural achievements show affinity to those of the Mayas in Yucatan.779 Dall found certain distinguishing customs or characteristics spread north and south along the western slope of the continent in a natural geographical line of migration. They included labretifery, tattooing the chin of adult women, certain uses of masks, a certain style of conventionalizing natural objects, the use of conventional signs as hieroglyphics, a peculiar facility in carving wood and stone, a similarity of angular designs on their pottery and basketry, and of artistic representations connected with their common religious or mythological ideas. Many singular forms of carvings and the method of superimposing figures of animals one upon another in their totem poles are found from Alaska to Panama, except in California. These distinguishing features of an incipient culture are found nowhere else in North America, even sporadically. Dall therefore concludes that "they have been impressed upon the American aboriginal world from without," and on the ground of affinities, attributes their origin to Oceanica.780