(U.S.N.M. colls.)
BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY FORTY-SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT PLATE 28
Top: Manche de poignard en ivoire, avec sculpture représentant un renne. Montastruc (Peccadeau de l'Isle; in de Quatrefages (A.), Hommes fossiles, Paris, 1884, p. 50)
Left: Two beautiful knives of fossil mammoth ivory lately made by a Seward Peninsula Eskimo. (Gift to the U.S.N.M. by A. H., 1926.)
Right: Two old ceremonial Mexican obsidian knives.
I had further the good fortune to secure, through the kindness of Reverend Baldwin, two handsome and remarkable knives from fossil mammoth ivory. These knives were said to have been made recently by the Eskimo of the Seward Peninsula. They are shown in Plate 28. They each bear on the handle a nicely carved crouching animal figure. With them are shown, somewhat more reduced, two probably ceremonial knives from Old Mexico; and also the handle of a late palaeolithic poignard from France, illustrated by De Quatrefages.[58] Regarding the latter form we read the following in Mortillet:[59] "D'autres poignées de poignard, faites dans des données pratiques et artistiques analogues, ont été recueillies dans diverses collections. Les plus remarquables sont deux poignées en ivoire trouvées par Peccadeau de l'Isle, à Bruniquel. L'une se rattachait à la lame, comme dans la pièce précédente, par le train de derrière; l'autre, au contraire, par la tête." Knives with similar crouching animal figures on the handle are being made by the King Islanders.
Here, evidently, is one more interesting problem for the archeologists.
The art shown by these objects, the conventionalization, and especially the decorations, appear to show affinity on one hand to deeper eastern Asia and on the other to those of the American northwest coast and even lower. This may prove to mean much or little. The fact that these specimens establish beyond question is that at one time and up to a few hundreds of years ago there existed in the lands of the northern Bering Sea native art superior to that existing there later and at the present, and comparable with the best native Siberian or American.