AMERICAN INDIANS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 138, 10 May 1930, Page 10

AMERICAN INDIANS.

MANY CLEVER INVENTORS. The Huxley memorial lecture of the Royal Anthropological Institute was delivered recently in tho lectureroom of the Royal Society at Burlington House by Baron Eriand NordensKiold on “The American Indian as an Inventor.” The Huxley memorial medal was presented to Baron Nordenskiold. Professor J. L. AJLyres, tho president ot the institute, presided. The lecturer gave many examples of inventions and discoveries that must necessarily have been of original Indian conception, seeing tnat they were unknown in the old world before the discovery of America (says the London Times). Among such fie mentioned tho use of poisonous manioc for food, tobacco and tobacco pipes, the rubber ball, rubber syringe, and the hammock; quinine, curare and other poisons; the use of cayenne pepper in the preparation of a poison gas employed in siege warfare; the welding ot copper; various musical instruments; calculating by means of knotted strings by the decimal system, and so forth. Tho lecturer then proceeded to show that certain other discoveries must have been independently made in America. He began by emphasising the important part flayed by adaptation ot extreme conditions ot environment, and particularly dw-elt on the substitutes for stone that in a certain region appeared to have led to the invention of an extremely primitive kind of ceramics. Certain Indians who did not possess clay vessels, and whose method of heating water had been by immersing red-hot stones, had, when no stones were at hand, used for that purpose lumps of burnt clay. Some of these clay balls had been turned into rude attempts at clay vessels. In America it was’ possible to follow the development < f several inventions from their most primitive stage to their most complex, from which it might be concluded that these inventions niust have been independently made in America. Among such inventions were those of bronze, the handle-holed axe, the metal tweezers, and the signalling gong. Just where, he asked, did foreign influence come into play 8 Was it when the first attempts were made, or when improvements were being achieved—or must we suppose that these inventions had always been controlled from the old world ? He emphasised the importance of studying inventions, that, in an entire continent, were found only within a small and restricted area, and as examples of this he cited tho pump in Colombia (at the time of the discovery of America) and the chain among a small Stone-Age-living tribe in Alatto Grosso. He further pointed out the importance of studying minor inventions made by Indians in post-Colum-bian times, in connection with objects that they had come to know from their contact with the whites or Hie In conclusion, he said that we were in possession or a multitude of direct proofs showing that the Indians had achieved a great number of independent inventions and discoveries. There were many indications that these .11ventions and discoveries were ai more numerous than we at present knew. In the course of the lecture he repeatedly emphasised that what was said did not constitute any conclusive evidence that there might not have been some pre-Columbian intercourse between the cultures of the old and tho new world.