Mississippi valley are evidences of another similar culture group, probably also of diverse stocks because some of them were allied to, or were part of, the stocks found there when the whites came. The same general conditions prevailed farther east, and a centre of development was rapidly forming in New York when it was destroyed by our coming. One of the most widespread stocks, the Shoshonean or Uto-Aztecan, is composite, containing within it tribes of the highest culture and tribes of the least culture, tribes that were peaceful and tribes that were warlike. It is evident then that _culture was no evidence of relationship_ or the reverse among the Amerind people. By some powerful influence and long association they had, whatever their origin, been moulded into one race. “Where had they come from?” “How did they come to be so much alike?” “Why did their highest development take place down by the Isthmus instead of by the Great Lakes or in the fertile valley of the Mississippi?” These are pertinent questions. Attempts have been made to answer them by importing different people from different parts of the world and their recent culture with them. But the more the Amerinds are studied, the more homogeneous do we find them and the more isolated from Old-World influences. Culture, as mentioned, was not confined to one stock; it permeated through unrelated stocks. The languages too are totally different from all others. Thus the more the matter is investigated, the more closely are we confined to the Western Hemisphere for the origin of the Amerind people, _as we know them_. Toward Panama, that is below the City of Mexico, a kind of civilisation was attained, and there we find was the densest population on the continent. Culture never develops in a game country with a sparse population, and there is, therefore, an intimate connection between a crowded population and “culture” or “civilisation.” It may be broadly asserted, I think, that _civilisation is crowding_; it is man’s effort at self-preservation. Where the game-supply is exhausted or insufficient and subsistence must be wholly or largely wrested from the soil, there will be found the culture centres, the hothouses of art and science, from which a filtration occurs into all the contiguous regions and peoples. On this continent the chief centre of culture was the narrowest part; the population was packed there as in the narrow end of a funnel, leaving the whole broad top thinly peopled. The question immediately arises: “Why was this so?” It is evident at a glance that there was some preponderating, irresistible influence which compelled the inhabitants to draw into these narrow, restricted regions, there to act and react one tribe on another, and this influence was constantly at work moulding them all. If the continent had been peopled within any comparatively recent time, it is not reasonable to suppose that the tribes would willingly have huddled together far down in the most limited area.