The place for the fingers to be worn is indicated by the line terminating in a loop.
The Indian accumulated no wealth except in things useful during his life. His ornaments were made from shells which in their natural shape are innumerable; from the skins of animals which require only skill to take and dress them; and from stone and copper, demanding only strength to procure and transport them. The value of an Indian ornament is in the skill, care and patience required in making it. Thus the wampum-bead became of intrinsic value, similar in that to gold and silver in civilization; the stone carefully wrought into the fashion of a pipe became the emblem of authority and the instrument of worship; and copper, slowly and toilfully delved and fashioned with the rudest of tools and appliances, became almost a fetich of superstition. So likewise the quill of the porcupine, worked into a design in embroidery with the most exquisite care, was an ornament fit for warriors and chiefs. But on the cradle or basket-nest for the expected or new-born child, upon the gown or woman’s dress of the favorite daughter, and upon the moccasins and trappings for the growing son, hand and head and heart were employed for months and even years.
The Dakotan bride, swayed by the yearning of expectant maternity, perhaps also by ambition to excel in the sole permitted mode of its display, adorned her lodge with ornamented cradles, each new one becoming in design more beautiful and intricate than the last, until her yearning was answered, when the cradles not needed were exchanged for horses and ornaments, which became the endowment of the new-born child.
Some note should be made of the sense of correspondence and contrast of colors which the Dakota, at least, exhibits; the rules which he originates and observes forming that which is called artistic taste. The Indian’s use of colors corresponds more nearly than that of most barbarians with that common in high civilization, except that he perceives so little distinction between blue and green that but one name generally suffices for both colors. It is remarkable that among the wilder and plains tribes of Dakotas dead colors in beads are preferred and arranged with good effect, and that among these, specially, the use of neutral tints is common. Probably both of these results were produced from the old and exclusive employment of clays for pigments—clays of almost all colors and shades being found in the country over which the Dakotas roamed.
The peculiarities of dress or undress would seem to have first struck the people of the eastern hemisphere as well adapted to pictorial representation. Singularly enough to modern ideas, the braccæ or trousers were to the Romans the symbol of barbarism, whereas now the absence of the garments, called even “indispensable,” has the same significance. Maj. C. R. Conder (d) gives this good lesson literally “a propos de bottes:”
A curious peculiarity of dress also serves to indicate the racial connection. In Cappadocia and in Anatolia the monuments represent figures with a boot or shoe curled up in front. An Assyrian representation of an Armenian merchant shows the same boot. Sir C. Wilson first compared it with the boot now worn by the peasantry of Asia Minor. Perrot compares it with the cavalry boot worn in Syria and with what we call a Turkish slipper. The Etruscans wore a similar shoe called calceus repandus by the Romans. On the monuments at Karnak the Hittites are represented wearing the same shoe, and although it is not of necessity a mark of race, it is still curious that this curly-toed boot was common to the various Turanian peoples of Syria, Asia Minor, Armenia, and Italy.
Fig. 1279. Weapons.
Schoolcraft (t) gives the characters on the left hand of Fig. 1279 as two Ojibwa war clubs, and the right-hand character in the same figure is represented in a Wyoming petroglyph as a bow.