It is well known that a tribe may have peculiarities in speech, in manners, in arts, that distinguish it at once from its neighbors. The Haida carves slate as no other tribe does. The elegant blankets of mountain sheep wool from Chilcat are characteristic. The Hebrews tested the enemy with the word shibboleth, and found that he could only say sibboleth. A twist of the tongue in pronouncing a word is a small matter, but, small as it is, it may be perpetuated for ages.
Such a perpetuation of a tribal peculiarity has been aptly called an ethnic survival. Some of the advanced linguists of the present day are beginning to query whether the group of modern languages of the Aryan family are not examples of such ethnic survival; whether the differences between French and Italian and Spanish, Latin, Greek and Slavonic, are not due to the difficulty various ancient tribes found in learning to speak the same new and foreign language. To draw an example of ethnic survival from another field of science, consider the art of the French cave men. The archæologist finds in the caverns bones of various mammals, teeth of cave bear, and antlers of reindeer carved with animal figures. The art is good for a barbarous people, but it is certainly barbarian art. The range of designs is quite great: horses, bears, mammoths, reindeer, are among the figures. The people who did this work were an artistic people. To carve and represent animal forms was almost a mania with them. An ethnic impulse seems to have driven them on to such work, just as a similar impulse drives the Haida slate carver to-day; just as a similar impulse has driven the Bushman to cover the walls of his caves in South Africa with pictures whose boldness and fidelity are the amazement of all who see them.
We have, then, in the French cave dwellers a people who had a well defined art, and who, as art workers, were isolated and unlike all neighbors. An eminent English scientist believes that neither they nor their art are gone. There is a people who to-day lives much as a cave man of France lived so long ago, who hunts and fishes as he did, who dresses as he did, who builds houses in whose architecture some think they can see evidence of a cavern original, who above all still carves batons from ivory, and implements from bone, adorning them with skillfully cut figures of animals and scenes from the chase. This people is the Eskimo. If Dawkins' view is true, we have in the Eskimo carvings of to-day a true ethnic survival—an outcropping of the same passion which displayed itself in the mammoth carving of La Madelaine.
Scarcely anything in the range of American antiquities has caused more wonder and led to more discussion than the animal mounds of Wisconsin. We do not pretend to explain their purpose. Perhaps they were village guardians; perhaps tribal totems marking territorial limits; some may have been of use as game drives; some may even have served as fetich helpers in the hunt, like the prey gods of Zuñi. We may never know their full meaning. It is sufficient here for me to remind you what they are and where. They are nearly confined to a belt of moderate width stretching through Wisconsin and overlapping into Minnesota and Iowa. Within this area they occur by hundreds. Dr. Lapham published a great work on the effigy mounds in 1855, in which he gave the results of many accurate surveys and described many interesting localities. Since his time no one has paid so much attention to the effigies as Stephen D. Peet, editor of the American Antiquarian, whose articles have during this year been presented in book form. Mr. Peet has paid much attention to the kind of animals represented, and has, it seems to us, more nearly solved the question than any one else. He recognizes four classes of animals—land animals or quadruped mammals, always shown in profile; amphibians, always shown as sprawling, with all four feet represented; birds, recognized by their wings; and fishes, characterized by the absence of limbs of any kind. The land animals are subdivided into horned grazers and fur bearers. Of the many species he claims to find, it seems to us the most satisfactorily identified are the buffalo, moose, deer, or elk; the panther, bear, fox, wolf and squirrel; the lizard and turtle; the eagle, hawk, owl, goose and crane; and fishes. One or two man mounds are known, although most of those so-called are bird mounds—either the hawk or the owl. Sometimes, too, "composite mounds" are found. Nor are these mounds all that are found. Occasionally the same forms are found in intaglio, cut into the ground instead of being built above it, but just as carefully and artistically made. Notice, in addition to the form of these strange earth works, that they are so skillfully done that the attitude frequently suggests action or mood. Nor are they placed at random, but are more or less in harmony with their surroundings. Remember, too, their great number and their large size—a man 214 feet long, a beast 160 feet long, with a tail measuring 320 feet, a hawk 240 feet in expanse of wing.
They are unique. To be sure, there are in Ohio three effigies, in Georgia two, and in Dakota some bowlder mosaics in animal form. None of these, however, are like the Wisconsin type. The alligator and serpent of Ohio are different in location and structure from the Wisconsin mounds, and are of designs peculiar. The bird mound in the Newark circle is more like a Wisconsin effigy, but is associated with a type of works not found in the effigy region. The birds of Georgia are different in conception, in material, and in build. The mosaics of Dakota are simply outlines of loose bowlders.
It seems to us that the effigy builders of Wisconsin were a peculiar tribe, unlike their mound-building neighbors in Ohio or the South; that they were a people with a passion for representing animal figures. This passion worked itself out in these earth structures. That a single tribe should be thus isolated in so remarkable a custom is no more strange than that the Haida should carve slate or the Bushman draw his pictures on his cavern walls.
Who were the effigy builders? This is a question often asked and variously answered. Some writers would refer them to the Winnebagoes, or, if not to them directly, to some Dakota stock from which the Winnebagoes have descended.
Formerly I was a frequent visitor to the Sac and Fox Reservation in Iowa. About 400 of the tribe are left. To an unusual degree they retain the old dress, language, arts and dances. With them lived a few Winnebagoes. In general the lives of the two peoples are similar. Certain arts common to both of them particularly interested me. They are the making of sacks of barks and cords, and the weaving of bead bands for legs and arms, upon the ci-bo-hi-kan. Of the bark sacks there are several patterns, the simplest being made of splints of bark passing alternately over and under each other. Another kind, far more elaborate in construction, is before you. Yet more elaborate ones are made entirely of cords. The first of these I saw was in old Jennie Davenport's wikiup. It was of white and black cords, and the black ones were so manipulated as to form a pattern—a line of human figures stretching across the sack. Jennie would not sell it, as she said, "It is a Winnebago woman's sack; Fox woman not make that kind." I found afterward a large variety of these Winnebago sacks, and all were characterized by patterns of men, deer, turtles, or other animals. Not one Fox sack of such pattern was to be found, though many elaborate and beautiful geometrical designs were shown me.
The most beautiful work done on this reservation is the bead weaving on the ci-bo-hi-kan—woven work, not sewed, remember. In appearance the result is like the Iroquois wampum belts, but the management of the threads is dissimilar. The Sac and Fox patterns are frequently complex and beautiful, but always geometrical. We have seen hundreds of them, but none with life forms. The Winnebago belts, made in exactly the same way, frequently, if not always, present animals or birds or human beings.
This, it seems to us, is very curious. Here are people of two tribes living side by side, with the same mode of life and the same arts, but in their art designs so diverse. It is a case parallel to that of the old effigy builders, a people who have a passion for depicting animal forms—a passion not shared by their neighbors.