Evening Star Newspaper, January 19, 1930, Page 81

» THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. _.C..;JVANUARY 19, 1930. If America Hadn't Been BY EMILY C. DAVIS. UPPOSE Columbus had not kissed the Queen’s hand and sailed. Suppose America had never been discovered by white men. Just suppose. Let the archeologists guess at what might have happened if the Indians had been allowed to work out America’s destiny. American civilization might now be centered in the Iriquois, one of the barbarian groups far northward of the centers of culture that had already arisen in the tropics long before 1492. Prehistoric America had Indian tribes which may be compared to the intellectual, artistic Greeks. It had powerful, aggressive tribes like the conquering Romans. And it had cruder tribes in the north like the barbarian tribes of northern Europe. > ‘The drama in which these Indian groups were playing their roles was cut short when the white men came adventuring and conquering into the New World. Consequently the third act of the great American drama will never be completed except in imagination. UNTIL now it has scarcely been worth while to speculate, because there were few clues. But knowledge of prehistoric America is ad- vancing steadily as a result of excavations into old Indian sites. It begins to be possible to reconstruct the early acts of the drama and even to guess at a plausible ending. The sfiggestion that ancient America appears to parallel ancient Europe rather remarkably was made recently by Dr. A. V. Kidder, arche- ologist of Phillips Academy, Andover, and direc- vor of archeological researches for the Carne- gie Institution of Washington. Dr. Kidder points out that the Mayan Indians who lived in Central America and Yucatan developed there the finest culture in America, very much as the Greek was the highest culture of Eu- rope. These Mayas, starting as a primitive group several thousand years before Christ, estab- lished a resplendent civilization. By the first century A. D. they were building impressive stone temples and government buildings, around which the thatched huts of the people spread out in great cities. Indian artists adorned the white limestone and stucco buildings with beau- tiful sculptures and paintings, and engineers built wide stone highways. The scientists were clever enough as astron- omers and mathematicians to devise a calendar system better than the Roman calendar and almost as precise as our own. Their scholars worked out a system of writing in pictures and symbols so that dates and other important records could be painted or carved, Squads of workmen were kept busy cutting dates into tall stone monuments, for the Mayas believed strongly in keeping permanent records. All this was done without any imported assistance from Europe, Asia or North America. ORTH of the Mayas, in the highlands of Mexico, were other Indian groups who built fine stone cities, and among these Dr. Kidder singles out the Aztecs, whom he compares to the Romans. About the time of the Middle Ages in Europe the Greek-like Mayas had risen to their height and had begun to degenerate, whils the Aztecs were absorbing from the luck- less Mayas much of their hard-won culture, #s the Romans borrowed Greek art and ele- gance. When the Spaniards came to Mexico in the sixtcenth century the Aztecs were the masters of the land who met Cortez, but who were soon reduced to laborers, forced to carry their own gold to ships which sailed to fill the Spanish treasury. The Spaniards burned Aztec books, destroyed temples and silenced forever priests and scholars who alone held the keys to the learning of centuries. And this is some- what as if Roman civilization had been cut off sharply at the close of the republican period, Dr. Kidder suggests. The parallel is that republican Rome suc- ceeded in conquering provinces and multiply- ing its slaves and prisoners. But the van- quished people were not brought into the Ro- man organization as self-respecting colonials until the empire. So the Aztecs had extended their sway over many neighboring Indian tribes in Mexico. But they had not made the sub- jugated people a part of a unified empire when their progress was cut off. If they had organ- ized their subjects they might have beaten back the small band of Spanish adventurers. As it was, however, the Spaniards found it easy enough to make allies of the tribes who hated their Aztec masters, and to overrun southern America. The parallel between Europe and America may be carried further. In Europe the course of migratibn and the spread of knowledge and conquest turned northward from the centers of civilization about the Mediterranean to bar- barian Gaul and Britain. The simpler north- ern tribes of Europe took over as much of the knowledge of the declining Greek and Roman world as they could, They held their heritage and transmitted it. . In America the picture is not so clear, but Dr. Kidder and some other archeologists in- cline to the opinion that the same northward wave of culture was under way in the New World. The theory implies that the people who are the center of a civilization pass on many of their ideas to people who are living on their borders. When the central civilization fails the fringe people are able to preserve the inventions and knowledge. 'HERE is evidence that some of the ideas += from tropical America did spread north- ward. This does not mean that the Mayas or the Aztecs ever conducted a campaign of con- quest among the distant “barbarians” as the Romans did. What is more certain is that in the days of Mayan and Aztec glory there were traders who came up from the South bringing goods for exchange. sem3 Discovered A painting by the modern Mexican artist, Isidro Martinez, showing the court of Montezuma, the civilized Aztec Emperor over- thrown by Cortez. Science Can Now Muake Interesting Specula- tions on What the Newwo World Culture of Today Would Be Had the Indians Been Allowed to Work Out Their Civtlization - Free From Any European Explorers’ Influence. There was an impressive amount of this trading throughout the wilderness of the Americas. Indian mounds in the Mississippi Valley, for example, have yielded articles made of materials that must have come from hun- dreds, even thousands of miles distant. When we know that mound builder chiefs in Ohio wore beads made of marine shells from the Mississippi gulf region, breastplates made of copper from the Great Lakes, obsidian knife blades from the Rockies, glittery decorations of mica from the Appalachian highlands, it is plausible enough to assume that Mexican idcas and goods would be carried afar. Evidemce of the Mexican trade in northern America is to be seen only in obscure, frag- mentary glimpses. But the clues are increas- ing and overlapping so that they can scarcely be ignored. Considering these clues, Henry B. Collins, jr., of the United States National Museum, agrees with Dr. Kidder's theory that the barbaric north borrowed heavily from the more advanced south. In the Indian mound settlement at Etowah, Ga., have been found mysterious copper plates decorated with human figures too much like the art of Middle America for the resemblance to be ignored. They are a puzzle, but they fit into a picture of the northward spread of American culture. On the copper plates are engraved the figures of warriors or chiefs wearing costumes such as Aztec or Mayan dig- nitaries would wear. It can scarcely be acci- dental. IN the Southeastern States have been found pottery and shell objects decorated with rat- tlesnakes wearing horns or feathers on their heads. Now, there were snakes aplenty in the woodland of the North, but to represent this particular kind of snake with this unusual headdress implies almost surely that the thought was borrowed from Mexico, where the Feathered Serpent was a favorite deity. The great city of Chichen Itza in Yucatan was itself dedicated to the Feathered Serpent. In Ohio there are two strange earthen mounds which stretch in winding pattern to form great snakes, and these unique mounds are sometimes cited as showing that serpent worship spread northward from Mexico. Ani- mal forms are represented by earthen mounds elsewhere in the United States, but never a serpent. There is a link between Mexico and the States still more fundamental, Mr. Collins sug- gests, and that is the mounds themselves. Through two-thirds of the United States are scattered thousands of earthen hills piled up many centuries ago by Indians as burial hills for honored dead, or as high foundations for wooden temples or lookouts. Natural hills would not do. The mounds were built in chosen spots, and were the religious and cere- monial centers of settlements. OF course, the mound-building idea was not solely an American invention. Mounds were raised by early tribes in other distant This sketch, drawn from Chafilplain’: own description of his battle with the Iroquois, shows that the Indians had organizution, culture and advanced conceptions of government., parts of the world, in Mesopotamia, for e=m- ample, and in Egypt. But Mr. Collins points out that in America the mound-building cus- tom would reasonably appear to have had a single origin and to have spread from that. In Middle America the Mayas and perhaps their primitive ancestors began building great stone mounds or pyramids and on these high places they put their stone altars and later their impressive temples. A great cone of earth covered with. lava blocks is one of the notable features of Mex- ican antiquity. This mound, on which once stood an altar, was recognized for what it is only within the past decade, for it was hidden beneath grass and brush. Study of the fig- urines and pottery buried about the base and in the layers of soil and lava that had accumu- lated have led to an estimate that the mound is several thousand years older than the Chris- tian era. In other words, it appears that the Indians of Mexico were building great places as far back as that. In the Southwest, contact with the people farther south brought ornaments to the Pueblo settlements and that most important innova- tion, eorn. It is supposed that corn was first domesticated in the highlands of Mexico, by crossing of th: plant teocentli with some unknown wild plant. With this important event, several thousgnd years before Christ, America became a cereal-growing country, v.ith a standard crop to be planted, guarded and harvested. Perhaps that early start with corn gave Mexico the opportunity to progress and par- tially explains its remarkable early achieve- ments. The seed corn spread from tribe to tribe, and in the course of time reached the Northern limits suitable to its growth—again the northward swing of progress. HEN the white men reached America, they found the Mayas a broken race and the mound builders only a remnant. The Eskimos in the Far North had had their day of being’ fine artists and ambitious workers and had set- tled down to a lower level. Was the Indian’ world burnt out? . Mr. Collins suggests that the Iroquois in the Northeast were likely candidates to have car-’ ried on the heritage. The Iroquois appear to have worked their way northward from Soutn- eastern United States, for they show many similarities to Southern customs and until recent times were represented in the South by the Cherokee, who spoke a relatedelanguage. - Like the Mayas and Aztecs, the Iroquois had advanced conceptions of government, and they could provide leaders; for, too late, they or- ganized the Iroquois League of Nations. They might, if given time, have become the bar-: barians on the Northern fringe who would - have taken up the Southern culture and built on it. But perhaps the time for the Northern bar- barians to become important was a good way off in America when the white discoverers - abruptly ended the drama. Before the Iroquois _ could become so powerful the Aztecs might - have been expected to salvage more of thev Mayan culture and to organize their subject tribes for more ambitious conquest. And in South America the Incas of Peru meanwhile - had built up to its height an organization of many tribes which might have become a com- ° tinental force if time and circumstances had allowed. Aztecs, Incas, Irqquois! If they had met in friendly trade or 1a battle there would have been stirring events in America! (Copyright, 1930.)