His contention was, to use his own words, that "no community
ever did or ever can emerge unassisted by external helps from a
state of utter barbarism into anything that can be called
civilization"; and that, in short, all imperfectly civilized,
barbarous, and savage races are but fallen descendants of races
more fully civilized. This view was urged with his usual
ingenuity and vigour, but the facts proved too strong for him:
they made it clear, first, that many races were without simple
possessions, instruments, and arts which never, probably, could
have been lost if once acquired--as, for example, pottery, the
bow for shooting, various domesticated animals, spinning, the
simplest principles of agriculture, household economy, and the
like; and, secondly, it was shown as a simple matter of fact
that various savage and barbarous tribes _had_ raised themselves
by a development of means which no one from outside could have
taught them; as in the cultivation and improvement of various
indigenous plants, such as the potato and Indian corn among the
Indians of North America; in the domestication of various
animals peculiar to their own regions, such as the llama among
the Indians of south America; in the making of sundry fabrics
out of materials and by processes not found among other nations,
such as the bark cloth of the Polynesians; and in the
development of weapons peculiar to sundry localities, but known
in no others, such as the boomerang in Australia.
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