the virtues of which they were well acquainted. They made
for themselves heavy and clumsy pottery and utensils of
wood, they wove mats out of rushes for their houses, and
they made clothes from the skin of the deer, and
head-dresses from the bright feathers of birds. Of the
metals they knew, at the time of the discovery of America,
hardly anything. They made some use of copper, which they
chipped and hammered into rude tools and weapons. But
they knew nothing of melting the metals, and their
arrow-heads and spear-points were made, for the most
part, not of metals, but of stone. Like other Indians,
they showed great ingenuity in fashioning bark canoes of
wonderful lightness.

We must remember, however, that with nearly all the
aborigines of America, at least north of Mexico, the
attempt to utilize the materials and forces supplied by
nature had made only slight and painful progress. We are
apt to think that it was the mere laziness of the Indians
which prevented more rapid advance. It may be that we do
not realize their difficulties. When the white men first
came these rude peoples were so backward and so little
trained in using their faculties that any advance towards
art and industry was inevitably slow and difficult. This
was also true, no doubt, of the peoples who, long centuries
before, had been in the same degree of development in
Europe, and had begun the intricate tasks which a growth
towards civilization involved. The historian Robertson
describes in a vivid passage the backward state of the
savage tribes of America. 'The most simple operation,'