Fig. 400. (S. 1–1.) Unfinished bird-stone. Collection of Emily Fletcher, Westford, Massachusetts.
Fig. 401. (S. 2–3.) Unfinished bird-stone. Phillips Academy collection.
It is significant that the Plains tribes and all the natives who did not construct mounds or earthworks, natives that had not reached the stage of barbarism but were still savages, made no effigies of consequence. The effigies carved in catlinite, and observed among tribes west of the Mississippi during the historic period, seem to have been inspired by a knowledge of the superior arts of the white people. We find that while the roving tribes of the Plains painted various battle and hunting scenes on their tents and shields, yet they were inferior in art as compared with the Pueblo, the Cliff-Dweller, or the Mound-Building peoples. It is also significant, and I shall speak of it at greater length in my Conclusions, that the native American was so little influenced in his art by some life-forms. I have never seen an effigy of a mountain, a tree, a plant, or a flower. The modern Ojibwa Indians design flowers in their bead-work. The ancient Ojibwa did not. The native American did not seem to have been impressed by plant-life or inanimate objects. Occasionally, he scratched a trail or a tipi on an ornament, and some of the pictographs in various portions of the United States show wigwams, trails, etc. But while there are numerous examples of carvings in stone, shell, and bone of animals, birds, fish, and reptile life, we search in vain for carvings of the other things I have mentioned. The highest art is found where the largest villages, or the most numerous mounds or cliff-houses, were located. In small mound groups, or areas where the population was not sedentary, the art is very crude. Throughout the areas where the culture is highest, notably Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois, we find these large mound groups referred to, all of which proves that the people lived long enough in one place to develop an art.
Fig. 402. (S. 1–1.) Central Ontario, Canada. Provincial Museum collection.
This art we see in the carved effigies. To study them in detail requires more space than is available in this volume. The Nomenclature Committee placed all effigies under one head—“Resemblances to known forms.” Under that general head I have placed:
I. The bird-stone in its various forms.
(A) Plain bird-stones. (B) With ears or eyes, or with expanding wings.
The classification made is rendered difficult because there are effigies in bone, shell, clay, and stone, not to omit copper. Such effigies as were drilled and used as pipes are described under the chapter devoted to pipes. The bone effigies are included in the chapter devoted to shell and bone, while copper is separately treated. Yet there remains, after treating more or less completely of these various divisions, a large class of stone objects which are not pipes, or tools, or dishes, and which I have thought best to include by themselves. The largest division in effigies is the so-called bird- or saddle-stone which is found between the following lines: Davenport, Iowa, to central Minnesota, east to New Brunswick, south to the Atlantic Coast, and thence south down the coast to Washington, thence west to Davenport. Few bird-stones occur south of Kentucky, west of Davenport, or north of St. Paul. The other effigies are of multitudinous kinds and are widely scattered throughout the United States.