Prehistoric man

by Sir Daniel Wilson

[96]	Topographical View of the Valley, Wilson’s New History of Mexico, p. 452.

[97]	Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico, b. i. chap. vi.

[98]

Dr. Latham speaks of the Moquis as a people that “no living writer seems to have seen.”—Varieties of Man, p. 394. But the above information communicated to me by Professor Newberry, is the result of his own personal observations. He showed me also specimens of their woven dresses, manifesting considerable skill, and exhibiting great taste in the arrangement of their bright colours. They have recently been greatly reduced by small-pox.

[99]	Montesino’s Mém. Antiquas MS., lib. ii. cap. 7; cited by Prescott.

CHAPTER XV.
ART CHRONICLINGS.

IMITATIVE SKILL—ARCHAIC EUROPEAN ART—CONVENTIONAL ORNAMENTATION—IMITATIVE DESIGN—ANALOGIES IN RITES AND CUSTOMS—ALTAR RECORDS—SMELTING THE ORES—WISCONSIN PRAIRIE LANDS—THE RACE OF THE MOUNDS—MOUND CARVINGS—PORTRAIT-SCULPTURES—AMERICAN ICONOGRAPHY—DEDUCTIONS—NON-INDIAN TYPE—OTHER EXAMPLES—ANTIQUE ICONOGRAPHIC ART—PECULIAR IMITATIVE SKILL—ANIMALS REPRESENTED—EXTENSIVE GEOGRAPHICAL RELATIONS—KNOWLEDGE OF TROPICAL FAUNA—DEDUCTIONS—THE TOUCAN AND MANATEE—TRACES OF MIGRATION—ASSUMED INDICATIONS—ANALOGOUS SCULPTURES—PERUVIAN IMITATIVE SKILL—CARVED STONE MORTARS—NICOTIAN RELIGIOUS RITES—INDIAN LEGENDS—THE RED PIPE-STONE QUARRY—THE LEAPING ROCK—MANDAN TRADITIONS—SIOUX LEGEND OF THE PEACE PIPE—THE SACKED COCA PLANT—KNISTENEAUX LEGEND OF THE DELUGE—INDICATIONS OF FORMER MIGRATIONS—FAVOURITE MATERIAL—PWAHGUNEKA—CHIMPSEYAN CUSTOMS—CHIMPSEYAN ART—BABEEN CARVING—THE MEDICINE PIPE-STEM—INDIAN EXPIATORY SACRIFICES—NICOTIAN RITES OF DIVINATION.

In studying the elaborate sculptures of Central American architecture, one of the first of its peculiar characteristics to strike the eye is the predominance of representations of natural objects, alike in its decorative details and in the symbolism of its hieroglyphic tablets. The human form, the head, the heart, the skull, the hand and foot, along with familiar objects of animate and inanimate nature, supplied the readiest architectural devices, and the most suggestive signs for attributes and ideas. In the imitation involved in such a style of art, resemblances may be traced to the productions of many partially civilised nations both of ancient and modern times. But in reviewing the primitive art of the New World, whether pertaining to extinct nations, like the Mound-Builders of Ohio and the architects of Yucatan, or to Indian tribes still occupying their old hunting grounds, the critical observer can scarcely overlook many peculiar manifestations of imitative skill. Though by no means to be regarded as an exclusive distinction of the American races, this is a characteristic in which they present a striking contrast to the primitive races of Europe. Many of the implements and personal ornaments of the ante-Christian era of European art, designated the “Bronze Period,” are exceedingly graceful in form, and some of them highly ornamented, but there is rarely a trace of imitative design. So also, though the peculiar form of one primitive class of gold ornaments, found in the British Isles, has suggested a name derived from the calyx of a flower, which the cups of its rings seem in some degree to resemble, it is a mere fanciful analogy; for no example bears the slightest trace of ornament calculated to suggest that such similarity was present to the mind of the ancient goldsmith. Where incised or graven ornaments are wrought upon the flower-like forms, they are the same chevron, or herring-bone and saltire patterns, which occur on the rudest clay pottery, alike of northern Europe and of America: though executed on the finer gold work with considerable delicacy and taste.

The correspondence between the forms and ornamentation of the rudest classes of pottery of the Old and New World, appears, at first sight, remarkable; but it originates in the inartistic simplicity inseparable from all infantile art. The ornamentation is only an improvement on the accidents of manufacture. The first decorations of the aboriginal potters of Europe and America appear to have been an undesigned result of the twisted cords passed round the clay to retain its form before it was hardened in the fire. More complicated patterns were produced by plaited or knitted cords, or imitated in ruder fashion with the point of a bone-lance or bodkin. But it is only among the allophylian arts of Europe that such arbitrary patterns are perpetuated with improving taste and skill. The European vase and cinerary urn become more graceful in contour, and more delicate in material and construction, when they accompany the beautiful weapons and personal ornaments wrought in bronze. But no attempt is made to imitate leaf or flower, bird, beast, or any simple natural object; and when in the bronze work of the later Iron Period, imitative forms at length appear, they are chiefly the snake and dragon patterns, borrowed seemingly by Celtic and Teutonic wanderers, with the wild fancies of their mythology, from the eastern cradle-land of their birth.

This absence of every trace of imitation in the forms and decorations of the archaic art of northern Europe, is curious and noteworthy: for remarkable traces, already referred to, pertaining to its palæotechnic era, prove that it is by no means an invariable characteristic of primitive art. In the simplest forms of ancient weapons, implements, and pottery, mere utility was the aim. The rude savage, whether of Europe or America, had neither leisure nor thought to spare for decorative art. His æsthetic faculty had not begun to influence his constructive instincts. Art was the child of necessity, and borrowed its first adjuncts of adornment from the sources whence it had received its convenient but arbitrary forms. But the moment we get beyond this utilitarian stage, the contrast between the products of European and American art is exceedingly striking; and their value to the ethnologist and archæologist becomes great, from the insight they give into the aspects of mental expression, and the intellectual phases of social life, among unhistoric generations. The useful arts of the British allophylian progressed until they superinduced the decorative and fine arts. But the ornamentation was inventive, and not imitative; it was arbitrary, conventional, and singularly persistent in style. It wrought itself into all his external expressions of thought; and whatever his religious worship may have been, we look in vain for proofs of idolatry, among the innumerable relics which have been recovered from supposed Druidical fanes, or the older cromlechs and tumuli of the British Isles.[^[100]] The very opposite characteristics meet the eye the moment we turn to the primitive arts of the New World. There, indications of imitative design meet us on every hand. The rude tribes of the North-west, though living in the simplest condition of savage life, not only copy the familiar animal and vegetable forms with which they are surrounded: but represent, with ingenious skill, novel objects of European art introduced to their notice. Even their plaited and woven grass and quill-work assume a pictorial aspect; and the pottery is not only ornamented with patterns derived from flowers and other natural objects, but more elaborated examples are occasionally moulded into the forms of animals. Still more is this the case with the tubes, masks, personal ornaments, and, above all, the pipe-heads, alike of the Mound-Builders, and of living races. Nor does it stop with such miniature productions of art. The same imitative faculty reappears in the great earthworks of Wisconsin and Ohio: where the artist has wrought out representations of natural objects on a colossal scale.

The chronicles recorded by such means are invaluable. The walls of Central American ruins are covered with voiceless hieroglyphics; and the costly folios of Lord Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities have placed at the command of the scholars of both hemispheres the dubious ideography of native historians. But the artistic representations preserved alike in the bas-reliefs and statues of Palenque, or in the characteristic pipe-sculpture of the Ohio mounds, are as significant and easy of interpretation as those on the Ramesian tablets of Abbosimbul in Nubia, which demonstrate the existence, in the era of Rameses, of Semitic and Ethiopian races, with ethnical diversities as clearly defined as now.