est United States, and
the Mississippi valley, there were other cultures of a less pronounced
nature worthy of mention. On the Pacific coast, in the region around
Santa Barbara, are the relics of a very ancient tribe of Indians who
had developed some skill in the making of pottery and exhibit other
forms of industrial life. Recently an ancient skeleton has been
discovered which seems to indicate a life of great antiquity.
Nevertheless, it is a lower state of civilization than those of the
larger centres already mentioned. Yet it is worthy of note that there
was here started a people who had adopted village habits and attained a
considerable degree of progress. Probably they were contemporary with
other people of the most ancient civilizations of America.

So far as the advancement of government is concerned, the Iroquois
Indians of Canada and New York showed considerable advancement. As
represented by Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, who made a careful study of the
Iroquois, their tribal divisions and their federation of tribes show an
advancement along {200} governmental lines extending beyond the mere
family or tribal life. Their social order showed civil progress, and
their industrial arts, in agriculture especially, were notable.

_Why Did the Civilization of America Fail?_--There is a popular theory
that the normal advancement of the Indian races of America was arrested
or destroyed by the coming of the Europeans. Undoubtedly the contact
of the higher civilization with the latter had much to do with the
hastening of the decay of the former. The civilizations were so widely
apart that it was not easy for the primitive or retarded race to adopt
the civilization of the more advanced. But when it is assumed that if
the Europeans had never come to the American continent, native tribes
and races would eventually, of their own initiative, develop a high
state of civilization, such an assumption is not well founded, because
at the time of the coming of the Europeans there was no great show of
progress. It seems as if no branch of the race could go forward very
far without being destroyed by more warlike tribes. Or, if let alone,
they seemed to develop a stationary civilization, reaching their limit,
beyond which they could not go. As the races of Europe by
specialization along certain lines became inadaptable to new conditions
and passed away to give place to others, so it appears that this was
characteristic of the civil