is, appear to have been a
people who were still advancing. Such as it was, their greatness was
apparently the product of their own ingenuity and not, like that of
the Mexicans, an inheritance from a greater past. The Haidas lacked the
relentless energy of the Iroquois and shared the comparatively gentle
character which prevailed among all the Indians along the Pacific Coast.
They were by no means weaklings, however. Commercially, for instance,
they seem to have been more advanced than any North American tribe
except those in the Mexican area. In architecture they stood equally
high. We are prone to think of the Mexicans as the best architects among
the aborigines, but when the white man came even the Aztecs were merely
imitating the work of their predecessors. The Haidas, on the contrary,
were showing real originality. They had no stone with which to build,
for their country is so densely forested that stone is rarely visible.
They were remarkably skillful, however, in hewing great beams from the
forest. With these they constructed houses whose carved totem poles and
graceful facades gave promise of an architecture of great beauty. Taking
into account the difficulties presented by a material which was not
durable and by tools which were nothing but bits of stone, we must
regard their totem poles and mural decorations as real contributions to
primitive architecture.

In addition to these three highest types of the red man there were many
others. Each, as we shall see, owed its peculiarities largely to the
physical surroundings in which it lived. Of course different tribes
possessed different degrees of innate ability, but the chief differences
in their habits and mode of life arose from the topography, the climate,
the plants, and the animals which formed the geographical setting of
their homes.

In previous chapters we have gained some idea of the topography of the
New World and of the climate in its relation to plants and animals. We
have also seen that climate has much to do with human energy. We have
not, however, gained a sufficiently clear idea of the distribution
of climatic energy. A map of the world showing how energy would be
distributed if it depended entirely upon climate clarifies the subject.
The dark shading of the map indicates those regions where energy is
highest. It is based upon measurements of the strength of scores
of individuals, upon the scholastic records of hundreds of college
students, upon t