The curiously conventional style of ornamentation of the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte Islands is lavishly expended on their idols, or manitous, carved in black argillaceous stone, and on their council-houses and lodges. In front of each Haidah dwelling stands an ornamented column, formed of the trunk of a tree, large enough, in many cases, to admit of the doorway being cut through it. These columns, or “totem-poles” as they have been called, are, in some cases, sixty or seventy feet high, elaborately carved with the symbols or totems of their owners. The height of the pole indicates the rank of the inmate, and any attempt at undue assumption in this respect is jealously resented by rival chiefs. The symbols of their four clans—the eagle, beaver, dog-fish, and black duck,—are represented in conventional style on the carved house-pole, along with their individual or family totems. In some cases boxes are attached to the poles containing the remains of their dead. Dr. Hoffman, whose previous studies in native symbolism and ideography specially prepared him for the intelligent observation of such monuments, has furnished an interpretation of their most familiar devices. “When the posts are the property of some individual, the personal totemic sign is carved at the top. Other animate and grotesque figures follow in rapid succession, down to the base, so that unless one is familiar with the mythology and folk-lore of the tribe, the subject would be utterly unintelligible. A drawing was made of one post with only seven pronounced carvings, but which related to three distinct myths. The bear, in the act of devouring a hunter, or tearing out his heart, is met with on many of the posts, and appears to form an interesting theme for the native artists. The story connected with this is as follows:—Toivats, an Indian, had occasion to visit the lodge of the King of the Bears, but found him out. The latter’s wife, however, was at home, and Toivats made love to her. Upon the return of the Bear, everything seemed to be in confusion. He charged his wife with infidelity, which she denied. The Bear pretended to be satisfied, but his suspicions caused him to watch his wife very closely, and he soon found that her visits away from the lodge for wood and water occurred each day at precisely the same hour. Then the Bear tied a magic thread to her dress, and when his wife again left the lodge, he followed the magic thread, and soon came upon his wife, finding her in the arms of Toivats. The Bear was so enraged at this that he tore out the heart of the destroyer of his happiness.”[[91]] Dr. Hoffman found this myth, with the corresponding carvings in walrus ivory, among the Thlinkit Indians, who, as he conceives, obtained both the story and the design for their ivory carvings from the Haidahs. This appears to receive confirmation from the peculiar style of art common to both.
But the decorations of the Haidah lodge-poles admit at times of a much more homely interpretation. Mr. James G. Swan, the author of an article on “The Haidah Indians,” in Vol. XXI. of the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, in a communication to the West Shore, an Oregon journal, thus describes an Indian lodge and house-pole which attracted his notice, owing to its carved figures, in round hat and other European costume, surmounting the two corner-posts of the lodge. He accordingly made a careful drawing of the whole, which, as he says, “is interesting as illustrative of the grim humour of an Indian in trying to be avenged for what he considered an act of injustice a number of years ago. Bear Skin, a somewhat noted Haidah chief, belonging to Skidegate village, Queen Charlotte Islands, was in Victoria, when for some offence he was fined and imprisoned by Judge Pemberton, the police magistrate. Bear Skin felt very much insulted; and in order to get even with the magistrate he carved the two figures, which are said to be good likenesses of the Judge, who in this dual capacity mounts guard at each corner of the front of the chiefs residence. The gigantic face on the front of the house, and the two bears on the two mortuary columns, seem to be grinning with fiendish delight, while the raven on top of one of the columns has cocked his eye so as to have a fair look at the effigies beneath him. Bear Skin is dead, but the images still remain. It has been suggested that they be removed to Victoria, and be placed over the entrance to the police barracks, to keep watch and ward like Gog and Magog at the gates of old London city.” But, on the other hand, a symbolical meaning appears to be most frequently embodied in the Haidah devices; of which Mr. Swan reproduces various illustrations, accompanied with native interpretations of them. One drawing, for example, represents a grouping of conventional patterns such as are common on the Haidah blankets of goats’ hair, and in which the untutored student can discern little more than confused scroll-work, with here and there an enormous eye, rows of teeth, and a symmetrical repetition of the design on either side of the central device. Yet, according to Kitelswa, the native Haidah interpreter, “it represents cirrus clouds, or, as sailors term them, ‘mares’ tails and ‘mackerel sky,’ the sure precursors of a change of weather. The centre figure is T’kul, the wind spirit. On the right and left are his feet, which are indicated by long streaming clouds; above are his wings, and on each side are the different winds, each designated by an eye, and represented by the patches of cirrus clouds. When T’kul determines which wind is to blow, he gives the word and the other winds retire. The change in the weather is usually followed by rain, which is indicated by the tears which stream from the eyes of T’kul.” The difficulty with which the inexperienced observer has to contend, in any attempt to interpret such native conventional art, finds apt illustration in Mr. Swan’s account of an elaborately sculptured lodge-pole of which he made a drawing at Kioosta village, on Graham Island, one of the Queen Charlotte group. When describing it in minute detail, he says: “I could make out all the figures but the butterfly, which I thought at first was an elephant with its trunk coiled up; but on inquiry of old Edinso, the chief who was conveying me in his canoe from Massett to Skidegate, he told me it was a butterfly, and pointed out one which had just lit near by on a flower.” The same characteristics have already been referred to in describing the claystone carvings of the Chimpseyans. They also mark the Haidah sculptures executed in the soft argillaceous slate which abounds in their vicinity. But the Haidahs work with no less ability in other materials; and were familiar of old with the native copper, which is brought from some still unascertained locality, it is believed, in Alaska. The collections of the Geological Survey at Ottawa include some of their beautifully wrought copper daggers and a massive and finely finished copper neck-collar. They have now learned to work with equal skill in iron. Their bracelets, rings, and ear ornaments of gold and silver; their copper shields and richly carved emblematic weapons, bows and arrows, iron daggers and war knives; as well as their wooden and horn dishes, spoons, masks, and toys, are eagerly sought after. The carvings on them, when properly explained, are of great interest; for every device has a meaning, and each illustrates a story or a legend, readily understood by the Indian, but by no means willingly interpreted to strangers.
A knowledge of the myths of the Haidahs and other coast tribes is indispensable to any interpretation of their carvings; and to those, accordingly, Dr. Hoffman has directed his attention. “A very common object,” as he says, “found carved upon various household vessels, handles of wooden spoons, etc., is the head of a human being in the act of eating a toad; or, as it frequently occurs, the toad placed a short distance below the mouth. This refers to the evil spirit, supposed to live in the wooded country, who has great power of committing evil by means of poison, supposed to be extracted from the toad”; but, as Dr. Hoffman adds, it is a difficult matter to get an Indian to acknowledge the common belief in the mythic being, even when aware that the inquirer is in possession of the main facts.
The interpretations thus furnished by a careful study of the carvings of the Haidahs and other artistic native tribes of British Columbia, and the evidence of a specific meaning and application discoverable in their most conventional designs, have a significant hearing on the study of analogous productions of the cave-men of Europe’s palæolithic dawn. The manifestations of an active imitative faculty and some degree of artistic skill, among different rude native tribes of this continent, present some striking parallels to the æsthetic aptitudes of the primeval draughtsmen and carvers of Europe. There are, moreover, undoubted resemblances in style and mode of representation of the objects, as depicted on some of the ancient and the modern bone and ivory carvings and drawings of the two continents; but the latter exhibit no evidence of progress. The Innuit and Eskimo designs do, indeed, more nearly approximate to those of the primitive draughtsmen than other aboriginal efforts; but their inferiority in all respects is equally striking and indisputable.
The evidence of artistic ability in the native races both of Central and Southern America is abundant; nor is the northern continent lacking in its specially artistic race. But the achievements of the ancient Mayas, Peruvians, or Mound-Builders, are of very recent date, compared with the palæolithic, or even the neolithic productions of Europe. It need not, therefore, excite our wonder to find American antiquaries welcoming a disclosure, only too strikingly analogous to the famous mammoth drawing of the La Madeleine cave. There recently issued from the American press a tastefully printed volume, in which its author, Mr. H. C. Mercer, gives an account of the discovery, near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, of a “gorget stone” of soft shale, on which is graven what the author describes as “unquestionably a picture of a combat between savages and the hairy mammoth. The monster, angry, and with erect tail, approaches the forest, in which through the pine-trunks are seen the wigwams of an Indian village.” The sun, moon, and the forked lightning overhead, complete a design which could scarcely deserve serious notice, so palpable is the evidence of the fabrication, were it not for the unmistakable sincerity with which the author sets forth the narration, and assures us that after the most careful inquiry “nothing has occurred to shake his faith in the unimpeachable evidence of an honest discovery.”[[92]] The figure of the mammoth has a suspiciously near resemblance, in all but one respect, to the La Madeleine graving on mammoth ivory. It charges its assailants with lowered trunk and erect tail; but instead of presenting, as in the ancient cave-dweller’s drawing, evidence of aptitude in the free use of the pencil or graving tool, the scratchings on the Lenape Stone are crude and inartistic, even if tried by the rudest standard of Indian art. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that—if the design has not been purposely reversed in order to evade comparison with the genuine European example,—it is a left-handed drawing. The forgery of palæolithic implements has become a systematic branch of manufacture in Europe; and the “Grave Creek Stone,” the “Ohio Holy Stone,” and other similar productions of perverted American ingenuity are familiar to us. It need not, therefore, excite any special wonder to find a like activity in the production of fictitious examples of pictorial art.
But North America has its own ancient artistic race, which, though claiming no such antiquity as that of Aquitaine, is, in the primary sense of the term, essentially prehistoric. Among the æsthetic productions of older races of the continent, the carvings and sculptures of the ancient Mound-Builders of Ohio not only admit of comparison with those of Europe’s primitive workers in bone and ivory, but even, in one respect, surpass them. For it is curious to observe that the palæolithic artists, whose carvings and drawings manifest such a capacity for appreciating the grace of animal form, and for reproducing with such truthfulness objects and scenes familiar to them in the chase, seem to have invariably failed, or at least shown a surprising lack of skill, in their attempts to delineate the human face and figure. Professor de Quatrefages notes of one such carving: “M. Massénat has brought from Laugerie Basse a fragment of reindeer’s horn, on which is graven a male aurochs fleeing before a man armed with a lance or javelin. The animal is magnificent; the man, on the contrary, is detestable, devoid alike of proportion and true portraiture.”[[93]] Some beautiful Mexican terra-cotta human masks have been preserved; and, amid the endless varieties of quaint and whimsical device in Peruvian pottery, singularly graceful portrait-vases occur. But, as a rule, even among the civilised Mexicans, imitations of the human face and figure seldom passed beyond the grotesque; and although the sculptors of Central America and Yucatan manifested an artistic power which accords with the civilisation of a lettered people, yet, in the majority of their statues and reliefs, the human form and features are subordinated to the symbolism of their mythology, or to mere decorative requirements. In the carvings of the old Mound-Builders, as in those of the vastly more ancient artists of palæolithic Europe, we have to deal with miniature works of art; but both include productions meriting the designation. The variety and expressiveness of many of the mound sculptures, their careful execution, and the evidence of imitative skill which they furnish, all combine to render them objects of interest. But foremost in every trait of value are the human heads. In view of the accuracy of many of the miniature sculptures of animals, it has been reasonably assumed that they perpetuate no less trustworthy representations of the workmen by whom they were carved. Equally well-executed examples of contemporary portraiture, recovered from palæolithic caves of Europe, would be prized above all other relics of its Mammoth or Reindeer period. Nevertheless, striking as is the character of the art of the Aligéwi, it differs only in degree of merit from that of many modern Indian races; and in some of the Algonkin stone-pipes the human figure is carved with well-proportioned symmetry. In such carvings, moreover, even when expended on the decoration of the pipe,—which was employed among so many native tribes in their most important ceremonial and religious observances,—there is rarely anything to suggest a higher aim of the artist than mere decoration. The same may be assumed of the ancient carvers, in such work as they expended on the hafts of the daggers found at Montastrue or Laugerie Basse. But when a carefully executed linear drawing occurs on a rough slab of schist, with its fractured edges left untrimmed, as is the case in examples from the caves of Les Eysies and Massat, the artist manifestly had some other purpose in view; and this I conceive to have been the earliest stage of ideography or picture-writing. He was communicating facts in detail by means of his pencil which his best attempts at verbal description would have failed to convey.
Language is even now a very inadequate means of communicating to others specific ideas of form; and some of the most fluent lecturers in those departments of science, such as geology, biology, and anthropology, in which there is a frequent demand for the appreciation of details in form and structure, habitually resort to the chalk and blackboard. Students of my own earlier days will recall, as among their most pleasant memories, the facile pencil with which the gifted naturalist, Edward Forbes, seemed equally eloquent with hand and tongue; and no one who enjoyed the lucid demonstrations of Agassiz in the same fields of scientific research can think of him otherwise than with chalk in hand. To the uncultured, yet strangely gifted Troglodyte of the primeval dawn, language was still more inadequate for his requirements; and hence, as I imagine, the facile pencil was in frequent requisition for purposes of demonstration, with ever-growing skill to the practised hand. Professor de Quatrefages, who has enjoyed unusually favourable opportunities for the study of those productions, thus directs attention to their artistic merits: “The art of the draughtsman, or rather of the engraver, almost constantly applied to the representation of animals, was first tried on bone or horn. They have attempted it on stone. The burin must have been almost always a mere pointed flint. With this instrument, imperfect though it was, the Troglodytes of the Reindeer age succeeded by degrees in producing results altogether remarkable. The first lines are simple and more or less vague. At a later stage they become more defined, and acquire a singular firmness and precision; the principal lines become deeper; details, such as the fur and mane, are indicated by lighter lines, and even the shading is expressed by delicate hatching. But what is nearly always apparent is a sense of truthful realisation, and the exact copying of characteristics which enable us often to recognise not only the order, but the precise species, which the artist wished to represent. The bear, engraved on a piece of schist which was found by M. Garrigou in the lower cave at Massat, with the characteristic projecting forehead, can be no other than the cave-bear, the bones of which were recovered by that observer in the same place. When we compare the drawings and anatomical details of the Siberian mammoth with the engraving on ivory discovered by M. Lartet at La Madeleine, it is impossible to avoid recognising the Elephas primigenius which existed throughout the Glacial period, and which has been recovered entire in the frozen soil of Northern Asia. Oxen, wild goats, the stag, the antelope, the otter, the beaver, the horse, the aurochs, whales, certain species of fish, etc., have been found recognisable with the like certainty. The reindeer especially is frequently represented with remarkable skill. This may be seen by the engraving found near Thayingen, in Switzerland.”[[94]]
M. de Quatrefages is disposed to estimate the artistic merit of the carvings in ivory as even greater than that of the drawings or etchings. But specific form and contour are more easily realisable than their indication on a plane surface. To do full justice to the wonderful skill of the Troglodyte draughtsman, we must compare the most highly-finished paintings on Egyptian temples and tombs with the works of their sculptors; or even the perfect realisations of the Greek sculptors’ chisel, with drawings on the most beautiful Hellenic vases. The mastery of perspective, as shown in some of the works of those palæolithic artists is remarkable when compared, for example, with the Assyrian bas-reliefs; not to speak of the infantile efforts of the Chinese on their otherwise justly prized ceramic ware.
The potter’s art is at all times an interesting study to the archæologist. We owe to Etruscan and Hellenic fictile ware our sole knowledge of painting, contemporary with the most gifted masters of the sculptor’s art. But it is in the form, rather than the decoration, that the chief excellency of the art of the potter consists. It is one of the plastic arts. The clay in the hands of the skilled modeller is even more facile than the pencil of the draughtsman; and the distinction between the purely decorative sports of an exuberant fancy, and the purposed symbolism of the carver or painter, is nowhere more strikingly manifest than in the modellings of the ingenious worker in clay. But fictile art belongs, for the most part, to periods greatly more recent than that of the ancient Stone age. Not that the work of the primitive potter involved such laboriously accumulated skill as lay beyond reach of the palæolithic carver and draughtsman; for clay cylinders from the banks of the Euphrates, and the terra-cottas from the Nile valley, carry us back to times that long antedate definite history. But alike among the ancient cave-dwellers of Aquitaine, and the modern Eskimo, the prevailing conditions of an Arctic or semi-Arctic climate rendered clay, fuel, and other needful appliances so rarely available, that among the latter, their pots and lamps are fashioned for the most part of the Lapis ollaris, or potstone. But traces of the pottery of many periods and races abound, and furnish interesting materials for comparison. The aptitude of the potter’s clay for a display of skill, alike in modelling and in tracing on the surface imitative designs and ornamental patterns, renders the fictile ware of widely different eras a ready test of æsthetic feeling, as well as a trustworthy guide to the age and race of its artificers. To the ancient cave-men, to whose skill such carvings as the reindeer from Laugerie Basse, or Montastrue, are due, modelling in clay would have been as easy and natural as to the modern sculptor; and pottery, if well-burnt, when not exposed to violence, is little less durable than flint or stone. The rarity, or total absence, of pottery among the contents of the palæolithic caves accords with other indications of a rigorous climate. A piece of plain earthenware was, indeed, recovered from the Belgian cave of Trou de Frontal; and Sir W. Dawson, in his Fossil Men, calls attention to the discovery, recorded by Fournal and Christie, of fragments of pottery in the mud and breccia of caverns in the south of France, along with bones of man and animals, including those of the hyæna and rhinoceros. Those, however, whatever be their true epoch, are mere potsherds, valuable in so far as they indicate the practice of the potter’s art at such a time, but furnishing no illustration of skill in modelling.
The pottery found in graves of the Neolithic period is mostly so imperfectly burned, that, however abundant it may have been, it could scarcely leave a trace in the breccia, or river gravel, from which the larger number of relics of palæolithic man have been recovered. But the pottery and terra-cottas which abound on the sites of Indian villages in North America everywhere exhibit traces of imitative art, in the efforts at modelling the human form, and the more or less successful reproduction of familiar natural objects. Squier remarks in his “Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York,” that “upon the site of every Indian town, as also within all of the ancient enclosures, fragments of pottery occur in great abundance. It is rare, however, that any entire vessels are recovered. . . . In general there was no attempt at ornament; but sometimes the exteriors of the pots and vases were elaborately, if not tastefully, ornamented with dots and lines, which seem to have been formed in a very rude manner with a pointed stick or sharpened bone. Bones which appear to have been adapted for the purpose are often found.”[[95]] Ornamentation of a more artistic kind appears to have been most frequently reserved by the native workers in clay for their pipes, to which at times a sacred character was attached, and on which accordingly they lavished their highest skill as modellers and carvers. Some of the smaller articles of burnt clay, however, which Squier denominates terra-cottas, were probably fragments of domestic pottery similar to those hereafter described among the relics of the ancient Indian town of Hochelaga. One example of an ingeniously modelled pipe, found within an enclosure in Jefferson County, New York, is specially selected as a good illustration of Indian art. It is of fine red clay, smoothly moulded, with two serpents coiling round the bowl. “Bushels of fragments of pipes,” he adds, “have been found within the same enclosure.” A carved stone pipe, from a grave in Cayuga County, is described as fashioned in the form of a bird with eyes made of silver inserted in the head, and Mr. Squier notes of another specimen: “The most beautiful terra-cotta which I found in the State, and which in point of accuracy and delicacy of finish is unsurpassed by any similar article which I have seen of aboriginal origin, is the head of a fox. The engraving fails to convey the spirit of the original, which is composed of fine clay slightly burned. It seems to have been once attached to a body, or perhaps to a vessel of some kind. It closely resembles some of the terra-cottas from the mounds of the west and south-west. It was found upon the site of an ancient enclosure in Jefferson County, in the town of Ellisburg.” Again, in describing some similar relics from the site of an old Seneca village in Munroe County, he adds: “The spot is remarkable for the number and variety of its ancient relics. Vast quantities of these have been removed from time to time. Some of the miniature representations of animals found here are remarkable for their accuracy.”[[96]]