The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

Now, let us look for a moment into the house-building intelligence and skill of some of the lower tribes of men. Out of the multitude of exhibits available I will limit myself to three, widely separated. In the first place, the habitations of the savage and barbaric tribes are usually the direct result of their own mental and moral deficiencies. The Eskimo is an exception, because his home and its location are dictated by the hard and fierce circumstances which dictate to him what he must do. Often he is compelled to move as his food supply moves. The Cliff-Dweller Indian of the arid regions of the Southwest was forced to cliff- dwell, in order to stave off extermination by his enemies. Under that spur he became a wonderful architect and engineer. For present purposes we are concerned with three savage tribes which might have been rich and prosperous agriculturists or herdsmen had they developed sufficient intelligence to see the wisdom of regular industry. Consider first the lowest of three primitive tribes that inhabit the extreme southern point of Patagonia, whose real estate holdings front on the Strait of Magellan. That region is treeless, rocky, windswept, cold and inhospitable. I can not imagine a place better fitted for an anarchist penal colony. North of it lie plains less rigorous, and by degrees less sterile, and finally there are lands quite habitable by cattle-and-crop-growing men. But those three tribes elect to stick to the worst spot in South America. The most primitive is the tribe of "canoe Indians" of Tierra del Fuego, which probably represents the lowest rung of the human ladder. Beside them the cave men of 30,000 years ago were kings and princes. Their only rivals seem to be the Poonans of Central Borneo, who, living in a hot country, make no houses or shelters of any kind, and have no clothing but a long strip of bark cloth around the loins.