CONCLUSION.
The first point that appears in the consideration of these designs and their interpretations is the animistic basis upon which they rest. The Indian has observed nature, and singled out those qualities and situations that are not only wonderful from his point of view, but greatly to be desired as means to his own ends. He then proceeds on the assumption that these originate in and are due to some hidden agency, from which it follows, that, if he can put himself in the place of one of the favored living creatures, he will in turn be the object upon which this hidden agency will act. If he can be the bird that rides the storm in safety, he will in turn ride successfully the analogous storms of his own sphere, and, like the child that in its own mind is the policeman when it thrusts a club into its waistband, he feels that he is the bird calling to the thunder when he sounds the bone whistle, and mutters his song-prayer. That this is true only of the great Indian or the devotee, speaking in relative terms, and that the mass of Indian-kind follow in blind imitation of the more sensitive few, may be true; but the phenomena, for all that, are none the less ethnic.
One characteristic of the foregoing protective designs is, that they are usually animal motives to the almost entire exclusion of plant and inanimate forms. While it is true that the phenomena of the heavens hold a prominent place in this art, such phenomena are often interpreted as results of the activity of animal-like beings, and consequently are so expressed in art. The conditions leading to such a result are doubtless many and intricate; but the tendency to ignore plant-forms in protective conceptions may be due to the inactive character of the more inanimate world. Inert things are not easily conceived of as guardians or protectors. On the other hand, the Indian may not see the logical necessity of carrying his view to the utmost bounds of the universe. Pots and kettles may have an animistic presence within themselves; but perhaps this does not appeal to the Indian, because the living creatures are so much nearer to him and the analogy between their lives and his is not difficult to perceive. The mystery in the animal forms that come and go, in the storm, and in the heavenly bodies, reaches the mind unaided; but the plant and mineral wonders require a more microscopic eye. That there was a time when the animals were as the people is the striking thought in many Indian myths, and this indicates a belief in the fundamental life-identity of all moving creatures.
There is, however, one interesting suggestion in the interpretation of protective powers. In all of these conceptions we find less appeal for the direct destruction of enemies than for a shielding protection to enable the man himself to be the destructive agent. His prayers are, that he may be swift and impossible to hit in order that he may strike down the victim.
Again, there are in every part of the preceding paper examples of the close association between powers, or at least power-symbols, that are from many points of view incongruous; as the mirror and the hoop, the spider, the thunder, and the elk. There is in these a tendency to coalesce into conceptions of larger wholes in which the power becomes more general, tending toward the definite abstraction of a power-unit, or identity of forces in nature. These larger conceptions, that are really much more complex than indicated in this brief paper, seem to represent a growth, or at least an accumulation of ideas, on the part of a people who have not felt the need of systematically unifying them, or expressing them as an objective unit.
Anthrop. Pap. A. M. N. H. Vol. I, Plate v.
Model of a Shield.
Shield-design on a Cape.
Plate vi.
Anthrop. Pap. A. M. N. H. Vol. I, Plate vii.
Model of a Shield.