Fig. 360.—Bird-shaped cup: Tusayan.—1/2.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
Two great groups of ceramic products have now been presented—the coiled ware and the white decorated ware. These groups belong to the first great period of pueblo art in clay. Their chronological identity is sometimes questioned, the coiled ware to all appearances being the more archaic. It is simple in form and rude in finish, is without painted ornament, and was relegated to the more ordinary uses. These and other features give countenance to the theory of greater antiquity; but the intimate association of the two groups in nearly every locality indicates close identity in time. It cannot be said that the other classes of ware found within the same province belong to different times or to distinct races, but they are widely separated in many important characters from the two leading groups. They exhibit greater variety of form, less constraint in decoration, and greatly improved technique, points tending to prove advance in culture, and, presumably, in time.
The more closely the ceramic art of the ancient peoples is studied the more decidedly it appears that it was profoundly influenced by the textile arts, and especially by basketry. The latter art was practiced from remote antiquity, and within historic times the manufacture of baskets has been the most important industry of the tribes of the Pacific slope of temperate North America. Ceramic shapes, wherever found within this region, coincide closely with textile outlines, and the geometric ornamentation can be traced to textile prototypes originating in the technical peculiarities of construction.
Another point brought out by the preceding studies follows naturally the foregoing statement. There are in the pueblo country no primitive forms of earthenware. This may lead to the inference that the pueblo tribes migrated from other regions in which the earlier stages of the art had existed, but taken in connection with the lack of individuality in the potter's art, and its evident dependence upon the textile art, it leads decidedly to the conclusion that art in clay was acquired by these tribes in comparatively recent times. The ancient pueblos practised the art of basketry, but clearly remained ignorant of the plastic art, until by some accident of environment it was introduced or discovered. Under the influence of the sister art, pottery at once took a high stand. During the first stages, however, it was a servile art, reproducing the forms and decorations of basketry. The true plastic characters of clay remained practically undiscovered, and is only now, under the influence of the European, dawning upon the conservative mind of the inhabitant of the plateaus.
Besides basketry, it is probable that the early pueblos made use of gourds and of tissue vessels, traces of their influence occurring quite frequently, but there is no indication whatever of the presence of carvings in shell, wood, and stone.
I do not wish in this place to dwell upon the details of pueblo ornament. A single example will serve to illustrate the origin and character of the leading decorative conceptions. Glancing through the series of vases illustrated under painted ware, we find that ninety-four out of one hundred designs are meanders, or are based upon the meander. Beginning with the simple waved or broken line we pass up through all grades of increasing complexity to chains of curvilinear and rectilinear meanders in which the links are highly individualized, being composed of a sigmoid line, terminating in reversed hooks; but in no case do we reach a loop in the curved forms or an intersection in the angular forms. The typical intersecting Greek fret does not therefore occur, nor, I may add, is it found anywhere in native American art.
The constructional characters of the art in which these linear forms developed, although they encouraged geometrical elaboration, forbade intersections or crossings of a line upon itself, and the genius of the decorator had never freed itself from this bondage. The forms imposed upon decoration by the textile art are necessarily geometric and rectilinear, and their employment in other and less conventional arts, has been too limited to destroy or even greatly modify these characters.
The study of Pueblo art embodied in the preceding pages tells the simple story of the evolution of art—and especially of decorative art—in a period when the expanding mind of primitive man, still held in the firm grasp of instinctive and traditional methods—the bonds of nature—was steadily working out its æsthetic destiny.