Aboriginal Art.
So multiplied are the resources of modern industry that desired forms are created at will, almost without regard to the material employed. It is not so in primitive art, to which for a brief space we will now turn so that our survey of form, though all too cursory, may be refreshed by a contrast of old with new. Let us begin with a glance at some of the aids with which man first provided himself, taking the gifts of nature just as they were offered. In large areas of the Southern States, and of Central America, the gourd for ages has been a common plant, and has long served many Indian tribes as a water pitcher. On sea-shores, where the gourd did not grow, conch-shells were used instead, their users breaking away the outer spines and the inner whorls, leaving within a space clean and clear. Both gourds and shells gave their forms to the clay vessels which succeeded them.
Gourd-shaped vessel from Arkansas.
“Pottery of the Ancient Pueblos.”
W. H. Holmes.
Gourd and derived forms. “Pottery of the Ancient Pueblos.”
W. H. Holmes.
Pomo basket. National Museum, Washington.
In Zuni land, says Mr. F. H. Cushing, the first vessels for water were sections of cane or tubes of wood. We may infer that the wooden tubes were copied from the cane stems. What at first was passively accepted as nature gave it, was afterward changed a little, and then was step by step changed much, so that at length there grew up processes of manufacture. There was, for example, in California a wealth of osiers, reeds, and roots well suited for making baskets; these at last were perfected as water-tight receptacles neither brittle like a shell nor liable to a gourd’s swift decay. Beginning probably in mere wattling, in the rude plaiting of mats and roofs, the weaver came gradually upon finer and stronger materials than at first, with equal pace rising to new delicacy of finish and beauty of design. At the National Museum in Washington, the Hudson collection of Indian baskets from California includes the finest specimen in the world, a Pomo basket. Its sixty stitches to the running inch were possible only through using the carex root, easily divided into threads at once slender and strong.[11]
[11] Many of the handsomest baskets at the National Museum, as well as baskets from other great collections, are illustrated, partly in color, in “Indian Basketry,” by Otis T. Mason, curator of the ethnological department of the National Museum. The publishers are Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.
Bilhoola basket of woven cedar bast. “Basket work of North American Aborigines.” Otis T. Mason.
It is interesting to observe the limitation imposed upon a primitive designer by the qualities of the leaf, shell, or cane in his hands, the way in which these qualities point him to the forms in which he may excel. Of this we have capital examples in the basket-work of the North American aborigines as described by Mr. Otis T. Mason, in the report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1883-84. He says: “Along the coast of British Columbia the great cedar (Thuja gigantea) grows in the greatest abundance, and its bast furnishes a textile material of the greatest value. Here in the use of this pliable material the savages seem for the first time to have thought of checker-weaving. Mats, wallets, and rectangular baskets are produced by the plainest crossing of alternate strands varying in width from a millimeter to an inch. Ornamentation is effected both by introducing different-colored strands and by varying the width of the warp or the woof threads. . . . It is not astonishing that a material so easily worked should have found its way so extensively in the industries of this stock of Indians. Neither should we wonder that the checker pattern in weaving should first appear on the west coast among the only peoples possessing a material adapted to this form of ornamentation.”
A square inch of the Bilhoola basket.
Referring to the water-bottles of the Pai Utes, Mr. Mason says: “This style can be made coarse or fine, according to the material and size of the coil and outer threads. If two twigs of uniform thickness are carried around, the stitch will be hatchy and open; but if one of the twigs is larger than the other, or if yucca or other fibre replace one of them and narrower sewing material be used, the texture will be much finer.” Baskets and rain-hats, as woven by Haidas and many other tribes, are waterproof when wet, owing to the closeness of their texture.
A free-hand scroll.
The same developed in a woven fabric.
“Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art.” W. H. Holmes.