The awl and needle were made from various species of animal bones of the land and water. The larger awl used to perforate bark, in sewing together the sheathing of the northern canoe, made from the rind of the betula, was squared and brought to a tapering point. A very close grain and compact species of bone was employed for the fine lodge awl used for sewing dressed skins for garments. After this skin had been perforated, a thread of deer’s sinew was drawn through, from the eye of a slender bone needle. There was, besides this, a species of shuttle of bone, which was passed backwards and forwards, in introducing the bark woof of mats and bags; two kinds of articles, the work of which was commonly made from the scirpus læustris or larger bulrush. It was only necessary to exhibit the square and round awl, and gross and fine needle of steel, to supercede these primitive and rude modes of seamstress-work and weaving.
In an examination of Indian antiquarian articles, taken from the graves and mounds, there is some glimmering of the art of design. There is no other branch of art to which we can refer the numerous class of carved ornaments and amulets, or their skill in symbolical or representative drawing, evinced in their picture writing.
Amulets and neck, ear and head ornaments, constituted a very ancient and very important department in the arcanum of the Indian wardrobe. They were not only a part of the personal gear and decorations which our old British writers sometimes denote “braveries,” but they were connected with his superstitions, and were a part of the external system of his religion. The aboriginal man, who had never laid aside his oriental notions of necromancy, and believed firmly in witchcraft, wore them as charms. They were among the most cherished and valued articles he could possibly possess. They were sought with great avidity, at high prices, and, after having served their office of warding off evil, while he lived, they were deposited in his grave, at death. Bones, shells, carved stones, gems, claws and hoofs of animals, feathers of carnivorous birds, and above all the skin of the serpent, were cherished with the utmost care, and regarded with the most superstitious veneration. To be decked with suitable amulets was to him to be invested with a charmed life. They added to his feeling of security and satisfaction in his daily avocations, and gave him new courage in war.
But if such were the influence of pendants, shells, beads and other amulets or ornaments, inspired by children who saw and heard, what their parents prized, this influence took a deeper hold of their minds at and after the period the virile fast, when the power of dreams and visions was added to the sum of their experimental knowledge of divine things, so to call them. To fix it still stronger, the Indian system of medicine, which admits the power of necromancy, lent its aid. And thus, long before the period which the civilized code has fixed on, to determine man’s legal acts, the aboriginal man was fixed, grounded and educated in the doctrine of charms, talismans, and amulets.
To supply the native fabric in this particular branch, was more difficult. Christianity, in a large part of Europe, certainly all protestant Europe had, in 1600, religiously discarded all such, and kindred reliances on amulets, from its ritual and popular observances, where they had taken deep root during the dark ages; and hence the first English and Dutch voyagers and settlers who landed north of the capes of Florida, regarded the use of them as one of the strong evidences of the heathenishness of the tribes, and made light of their love of “beads and trinkets.” It was necessary, however, to the success of their traffic and commerce—the great object of early voyages, that this class of articles should be noticed; and they brought from the potteries and glass-houses of Europe various substitutes, in the shape of white, opaque, transparent, blue, black, and other variously colored beads, and of as many diverse forms as the genius of geometry could well devise. We see, what it is somewhat difficult as an inquiry of art otherwise to reach, that they also brought over a species of paste-mosaic, or curious oval and elongated beads of a kind of enamel or paste, skilfully arranged in layers of various colors, which, viewed at their poles, represented stars, radii, or other figures. These were highly prized by the natives, (ignorant as they were of the manner of making them,) and were worn instead of the native amulets. In place of their carved pipes of steatite, or clay pipes ornamented with the heads of birds, men, or animals, they supplied them with a somewhat corresponding heavy, plain, or fluted pipe-bowl, which was designed, like the native article, to receive a large wooden stem, such as we see among the remote interior tribes, at the present day. The jingling ornaments of native copper or deer hoofs, were replaced from European work-shops, by the article of brass, called “hawks-bells,” an article which, like that of wampum, still retains its place in the invoices of the Indian trade.
But by far the most attractive class of fabrics which the commerce of Europe supplied in exchange for their rich furs and peltries, was arm-bands, wrist-bands, ear-rings, gorgets, and other ornaments, both for the person and dress, of silver. This metal was esteemed, as it is at this day, above all others. Its color and purity led them to regard it as pre-eminently the noble metal, and its introduction at once superceded the cherished Nabikoagun Antique, and other forms of medals and gorgets made from compact sea-shells.
In this manner the introduction of European arts, one after another, speedily overturned and supplanted the ancient Indian arts, and transferred them, at the end of but a few generations, from useful objects to the class of antiquities. It is unnecessary to pursue the subject to the department of clothing, in which woollens, cottons, linens and ribbons, took the place of the dressed skins of animals and birds, and the inner barks of trees, &c. Such objects are no part of the antiquities to be studied here. They are wholly perishable, and if any thing is to be gleaned from their study in the unburied cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, where stone and marble offered objects of temporary resistance to currents of flowing lava, they offer no facts to guide the pen of the antiquarian here. The European and the Indian fabrics of the 16th century have alike submitted to the inevitable laws of decomposition; but were it otherwise, could we disinter from the Indian graves the first duffils, strouds, osnaburgs, and blankets, that were given to the race, they would only prove that the latter quickly laid aside the inferior when they could get the superior article. It would prove that guns and gunpowder, brass kettles and iron axes, had caused the manufacture of stone darts and clay kettles to be thrown aside and forgotten, and in like manner the labors of the spindle and loom had given the Indian, even before Columbus descended to his grave, a new wardrobe.
To denote what the Indian arts were, at the beginning of the 16th century, we must resort to their tombs, mounds, and general cemeteries. The melancholy tale that is told from the dust and bones of these sacred repositories is to be our teacher and schoolmaster. Its whispers are low and almost inaudible. There are pauses and lapses which it is difficult to make out. It requires great care—nice attention—examination and re-examination. We must not hastily compose the thread of the narrative. We must doubt and reject where doubt and rejection are proper. We must discriminate the various epochs of art from the objects disinterred. If objects of various ages lie in the same cemeteries we must not confound them. Carefully to labor, patiently to study, cautiously to conclude, is the province of the antiquarian; and if, after all, he has but little to offer, it is, perhaps, because there is but little to glean.