For nature brings not back the Mastodon,Nor we those times.
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,Nor we those times.
For nature brings not back the Mastodon,
Nor we those times.
Taste and fancy have now a thousand avenues at their command for the humour and satire which mingled, in quaint incongruity with the devout aspirations inwrought into mediæval architecture. With the revival of learning, and the introduction of the printing-press, came the Renaissance. Europe renounced mediæval art as “Gothic.” Classic, or what passed for classic art, ruled for the next three centuries. Architecture became more and more mechanical; while æsthetic taste sought elsewhere, and more especially in the novel arena of the printing-press, for avenues where it could sport in unrestrained freedom.
The ingenious skill of the palæolithic artists and tool-makers, who wrought in their rock-shelters and limestone caves, in that remote era when the climate along the northern slope of the Pyrenees resembled that of Labrador at the present day, has naturally awakened a lively interest. The rigour of the climate during a greatly prolonged winter prevented their obtaining stone or flint for purposes ofmanufacture. They wrought, accordingly, in bone, in mammoth ivory, and in the horn of the reindeer, fashioning from such materials their lances, fish-spears, knives, daggers, and bodkins; turning to account the deer’s tynes for tallies; and carving out of the larger bones what are assumed to have been maces or official batons, elaborately ornamented with symbolic devices designed for other purposes than mere decoration.
The Eskimo are recognised as presenting the nearest type to the cave-men of Europe’s Post-Glacial era. It is even possible that, like the natives of Labrador, the latter may have occupied winter snow-huts, and only resorted to their cave-shelters during the brief heat of a semi-arctic summer. This, however, is rendered doubtful by the occurrence of reindeer horns and bones of young fawns, along with others of such varying age as to indicate the presence of the hunter during nearly every season of the year. Among a people so situated the industrial arts are called into constant requisition, alike for clothing and tools; and the experience of the hunter directs him to the products of the chase for the easiest supply of both. The pointed horn of the deer furnished the ready-made dagger, lance head, and harpoon; the incisor tooth of the larger rodents supplied a more delicately edged chisel than primitive art could devise; and the very process of fracturing the bones of the larger mammalia, in order to obtain the prized marrow, produced the splinters and pointed fragments which an easy manipulation converted into daggers, bodkins, and needles. The ivory of walrus, narwhal, or elephant is readily wrought into many desirable forms, and is less liable to fracture than flint or stone; and all those materials are abundant in the most rigorous winters, when the latter are sealed up under the frozen soil. Implements of horn or bone may therefore be assumed to have preceded all but the rudest flint celts and hammer-stones or unwrought missiles; and although, owing to the nearly indestructible nature of their material, it is from the latter that our ideas of primeval tool-making are chiefly derived, enough has been recovered from contemporary cave deposits to confirm the analogy of their arts to those of the hyperborean workmen of the North American continent.
The necessity which, to a large extent, determined the material of the ancient workers in bone and ivory, was favourable to the development of the imitative faculty. The ingenious ivory and bone carvings of the Tawatins and other tribes of British Columbia, of the Thlinkets of Alaska, and the Eskimo, equally suffice, with the examples of European palæolithic art, to show how favourable such material was to the development of artistic feeling, which must have lain dormant had the artificers been limited to flint and stone. The same influence may be seen in operation in many stages of art: as in massive but bald Gothic structures, such as St. Machar’s Cathedral on the Dee, where the builders were limited to granite, while contemporary architecture in localities where good sandstone or limestone abounds is rich in elaborate details; and, where the soft and easily wrought Caen stone is available, runs to excess in the florid exuberance of its carvings.
The ingenious artist of the Palæolithic era not only ornamented the hafts of his tools and weapons with representations of familiar objects of the chase, but is also accredited with carving, on his mace or baton, symbolic emblems expressing the rank and official duties of the owner. The analogous practice of the Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands at the present day shows that there is nothing inconsistent with primitive thought in the symbolic, significance assigned to some of the carved batons; and, if so, we have there examples of imitative art employed in a way which involved the germ of ideographic graving or picture-writing. The mere fact of pictorial imitation implies the interpretation of its representations. Eskimo implements are to be seen in various collections, as at Copenhagen and Stockholm, in the British Museum, in those of San Francisco and the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, ornamented with representations of adventures incident to their habits of life. An Arctic collection, presented by Captain Beechy to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, furnishes interesting illustrations of the skill of the Eskimo draughtsman. The carvings and linear drawings represent, for the most part, incidents in the life of the polar hunter; and this is so effectively done that, as Captain Beechy says: “By comparing one with another,a little history was obtained which gave us a better insight into their habits than could be elicited from any signs or intimations.”[88]Mr. W. H. Dall figures in hisAlaska and its Resources, analogous examples of Innuit or Western Eskimo art; and in an interesting communication by Dr J. W. Hoffman to the Anthropological Society of Washington, on Eskimo pictographs as compared with those of other American aborigines, he figures and interprets similar examples.[89]One of these, copied from an ivory bow used in making fire, which he examined in the Museum of the Alaska Commercial Company of San Francisco, depicts three incidents in the Innuit hunter’s experience. In one, the hunter supplicates theShaman, or native medicine-man, for success in the chase; another group represents the results of the chase; while the third records the incidents of an unsuccessful appeal to another shaman. Another graving from the same locality embodies the incidents of success and failure in a prolonged hunting expedition. In their interpretation, Dr. Hoffman was assisted by a Kadiack half-breed who happened to visit San Francisco at the time. A design of the same class copied from a piece of walrus ivory, carved by a Kiatégamut Indian of Southern Alaska, records a successful feat of the shaman in curing two patients. He is represented in the act of exorcising the demons, who are seen just cast out from the men restored to health by his agency. From the interpretations thus given, it may be inferred that such drawings as those described by Captain Beechy represent in nearly every case actual incidents. The hunter celebrates his return from a successful chase, his experience in the attempt to propitiate the supernatural powers on his behalf, or any other notable event, by recording the impressive incidents on the handle of his hunting knife or his ivory bow, or even in some cases on a tablet of walrus ivory; just as the enthusiastic sportsman will at times enter in his journal the special occurrences of the fox-hunt, or the more adventurous feats of deer-stalking, or commission an artist to perpetuate them on canvas. Incidents of exceptional skill or daring are no doubt recalled, and listened to with eager interest by the homecircle in the Arctic snow-hut; and are confirmed in their most thrilling details by appeals to such graven records.
The more durable material employed alike by the ancient cave-dwellers of Europe and by the modern Innuit and Eskimo, has secured their preservation in a form best calculated to command attention. But similar graphic representations of incidents and ideas are common to various tribes of North American Indians. Throughout the wide region of the old Algonkin tribes rock-carvings, such as that of the famous Dighton Bock, abound. The same are no less frequent in the South-West from New Mexico to California; while similar pictographs are executed by the Ojibways in less durable fashion on their grave-posts, or even on strips of birch-bark. In like fashion, the Crees and Blackfeet of the Canadian North-West adorn their buffalo-skin tents with incidents of war and the chase, and blazon on their buffalo robes their personal feats of daring, and the discomfiture of their foes. In this way, the aboriginal draughtsman is seen in his pictorial devices to aim at the like result with that achieved by the old minstrel chronicler or the courtly herald.
Of the ornamented handles of implements recovered from the abodes of the ancient cave-dwellers of Europe, the most notable examples are far in advance of any Eskimo carvings. One of those, from the cave at Laugerie Basse, has been repeatedly engraved. It is fashioned from a piece of reindeer’s horn. The carver has so modified his design, and availed himself of the natural contour of his material, as to adapt it admirably to its purpose as the handle of a poignard. It was apparently intended to include both handle and blade; but probably broke in the process of manufacture, and was flung aside unfinished. The design is a spirited adaptation to the special requirements. The horns are thrown back on the neck, the fore legs doubled up, and the hind legs stretched out, as if in the act of leaping. Another finely finished example of a dagger-handle, from Montastrue, Peccadeau de l’Isle, figured by Professor de Quatrefages in hisHommes fossiles, also represents the deer with its horns thrown back; but from its fractured condition the position of the limbs can only be surmised to have corresponded to the example from Laugerie Basse. With those may be classed such carvings asthe pike, so characteristically represented on a tooth of the cave-bear, recovered from a refuse heap in the cave of Durntly in the Western Pyrenees, and other similar sports of primitive artistic skill.
Such carvings had no other aim, we may presume, than the decoration of a favourite weapon, or the beguiling of a leisure hour. But they show the fruits of skill, and the observation of a practised eye, by the ingenious workmen whose drawings and etchings merit our careful study. Considerable taste and still more ingenuity are exhibited by many of the American aborigines, in their decorative carvings, and the ornamentation both of their weapons and dress. The characteristics of Eskimo art have been noted. The Thlinkets of Alaska, lying on their western border, manifest a like skill, making ladles and spoons from the horns of the deer, the mountain sheep, and goat, and carving them with elaborate ingenuity. They also work in walrus ivory, fashioning their bodkins, combs, and personal ornaments with varied ornamentation; decorate their knife-handles of bone, their paddles, and other implements; and carve grotesque masks, with much inventive ingenuity in the variety of the design, though scarcely in a style of high art. But it is interesting to note the different phases of this imitative faculty. Some tribes, such as the Algonkins, confine their art mainly to literal reproductions of natural objects; while others, such as the Chimpseyans or Babeens, the Tawatins, and the Clalam Indians of Vancouver Island, have developed a conventional style of art, often exhibiting much ingenious fancy in its grotesque ornamentation. This is specially apparent in the claystone pipes of the Chimpseyans, in carving which they rival the ingenious Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands in exuberance of detail. But while the art has become conventional, where it is not displaced by imitations of the novel objects brought under their notice in their intercourse with Europeans its combinations are in most cases referable to native myths.
In many of the elaborately carved Chimpseyan pipes, their special purpose seems to be lost sight of in the whimsical profusion of ornament, embracing every native or foreign object that has chanced to attract the notice of the sculptor.Nevertheless, it may help us to do justice to the true aim of the Indian artist, if we call to remembrance how much of Christian symbolism was embodied in many a mediæval sculpturing of what, to the unsympathetic observer, seem now only conventional vines and lilies, or a mere fanciful grouping of dragons and snakes, with apples, figs, grapes, and thorns. This has to be kept in view while noting in the pipe sculptures human figures in strangest varieties of posture, intertwined with zoomorphic devices, in which the bear and the frog have a prominent place; and, as will be seen, a mythic significance. It is no less suggestive to note, alike in the Chimpseyan and in the Tawatin and Haidah carvings, curious analogies to the sculptures of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America. This resemblance has been noticed, independently, by many observers.
Marchand, a French navigator who visited the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1791, after having recently seen the Mexican sculpture and paintings, formed the opinion that the Haidah works of art could be distinctly traced to Aztec origin.[90]He remarks of their paintings and carvings: “The taste for ornament prevails in all the works of their hands; their canoes, their chests, and different little articles of furniture in use among them, are covered with figures which might be taken for a species of hieroglyphics; fishes and other animals, heads of men, and various whimsical designs, are mingled and confounded in order to compose a subject. It undoubtedly will not be expected that these figures should be perfectly regular and the proportions in them exactly observed, for here every man is a painter and sculptor; yet they are not deficient in a sort of elegance and perfection.”
The imitative faculty thus manifested so generally among a people still in the condition of savage life, shows itself no less strikingly in the modern claystone carvings of objects of foreign introduction. The collection formed by the United States Exploring Expedition, and largely augmented since, includes numerous carvings in which representations of log and frame houses, forts, boats, horses, and fire-arms, are introduced; and where cords, pulleys,anchors, and other details copied from the shipping which frequent the coasts, furnish evidence of a practised eye, and considerable powers of imitation. To the unfamiliar observer, the result presents, in many cases, a very arbitrary and even incongruous jumble of miscellaneous details. But, most probably, the native designer had, in every case, a special meaning, and even some specific incident in view.
The interest awakened by such manifestations of observant accuracy and artistic skill among savage tribes is not diminished by the fact that in nearly all other respects they are devoid of culture. Notwithstanding the absence in most of them of the very rudiments of civilisation, experience proves that among the tribes to the west of the Rocky Mountains distinguished by artistic capacity, there is an aptitude for industrious and settled habits, the want of which is so noticeable in the nomad tribes of the prairies. Their linear patterns are often singularly graceful; and they employ colour lavishly, and with some degree of taste, in decorating their masks, boats, and dwellings. This is specially noticeable among the Haidahs, in the different dialects of whose language we find not only names for nearly all the primary colours, but also the wordkigunijago, “a picture.” The symbolical and mythological significance of many of their carvings is indisputable; while the affinities, traceable at times to the ornamentation most characteristic of the architectural remains in the principal seats of native American civilisation in Central America, confer on them a peculiar interest and value.
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 inthis 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 theSmithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, in a communication to theWest 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 printedvolume, 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, surpassthem. 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 manymodern 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 theElephas primigeniuswhich 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 infantileefforts 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 theLapis 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 Belgiancave of Trou de Frontal; and Sir W. Dawson, in hisFossil 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 offine 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]
The descriptions thus furnished of the traces of aboriginal art in the State of New York closely correspond to the remains recovered on the sites of ancient Indian villages in Canada. A finely modelled clay-pipe, with a serpent twined round it, and holding a human head in its jaws, now in my possession, was dug up, along with numerous other clay-pipes, bone pins, and other relics, in Norfolk County, on the north shore of Lake Erie. I also possess casts of some ingeniously modelled clay-pipes found a few years since in an ossuary at Lake Medad, near Watertown, about ten miles west from Hamilton, Ontario. This no doubt marks the site of an ancient town of the Attiwendaronks, or Neuter Nation, who were finally conquered and driven out by the Iroquois in 1635, when the little remnant that survived was adopted into the Seneca nation. Mr. B. E. Charlton, who explored the Lake Medad ossuaries, after describing the human remains, along with large tropical shells, shell-beads and other relics, adds: “With these werefound antique pipes of stone and clay, many of them bearing extraordinary devices, figures of animals, and of human heads wearing the conical cap noticed on similar relics in Mexico and Peru.”[97]Similar discoveries rewarded the researches of Dr. Taché in the Huron ossuaries on the Georgian Bay, examples of which are now in the museum of Laval University.
On the site of the famous Indian town of Hochelaga, the precursor of the city of Montreal, detached fragments, in well-burnt clay, including modellings of the human head and neck, had been repeatedly found, before the recovery of larger portions of the Hochelaga pottery showed that projections modelled in this form within the mouths of their earthern pots or kettles were designed to admit of their suspension over the fire. Any projection within the mouth of the pot would have answered the purpose of protecting the cord or withe from the risk of burning; so that the moulding of it into the human form furnishes an illustration of the play of the imitative faculty under circumstances little calculated to call it forth.
The decoration of domestic pottery by the American Indian workers in clay is greatly developed among the more southern tribes. The ornamentation of a few prominent points, moulded more or less rudely into human or animal heads, gives place with them to the modelling of the vessel itself into animal forms, or to its decoration, chiefly with human or animal figures. Among the examples of native art in the National Museum at Washington are two large vases, remarkable for their elaborate workmanship, which were brought from Mexico, by General Alfred Gibbs. They are figured, along with other specimens of Mexican pottery and terra-cottas, in Mr. Charles Rau’s account of the Archæological Collection of the United States National Museum. They are there spoken of as “two large vases of exquisite workmanship,” and one of them is not only described as an admirable specimen of Mexican pottery, but it is added: “As far as the general outline is concerned, it might readily be taken for a vessel of Etruscan or Greek origin. The peculiar ornamentation, however, stamps it at once as a Mexican product of art:”[98]and, it may be added,in doing so, places it in very marked contrast to any example of Etruscan or Greek workmanship. Its modelling, both in general form and in all its curious zoomorphic details, is essentially barbarous, yet manifesting ingenious skill in the workmanship, and exuberant fancy in design. The influence of Mexican art extended northward; and its characteristics may be traced in much of the native pottery of the Southern States. But throughout Mexico, Central America, and the Isthmus, the modeller in clay appears to have revelled in feats of skill. Clay masks and caricatures, and heads of men and animals, in endless variety of dress and fashioning, abound. Utility is in many cases rendered altogether subsidiary to the sports of fancy. Musical instruments are made in the form of animals; and vases and earthenware vessels of every kind are modelled in imitation of vegetables, fruit, and shells, or decorated with familiar natural objects. This is still more apparent in Peruvian pottery, where an unrestrained exuberance of fancy sports with the pliant clay. Animal and vegetable forms are combined. Men and women are represented in their daily avocations, as porters, water-carriers, etc. Portrait-vases represent the human head, characterised at times by grace and beauty; but more frequently grotesquely caricatured. The human head surmounts the lithe body of the monkey, sporting in ape-like antics; melons and gourds have animal heads for spouts; while the duck, parrot, toucan, pelican, turkey, crane, land-turtle, lynx, otter, deer, llama, cayman, shark, toad, etc., are ingeniously reproduced, singly or in groups, as models for bottles, jars, or pitchers. The double or triple goblets, and two-necked bottles or jugs, acquire a fresh interest from resemblances traceable between some of them and others belonging to distant localities and remote ages. The Fijians, on the extreme western verge of the Polynesian archipelago, have already been referred to for their skill in the finished workmanship of their implements, and of their pottery, some of which suggest curious analogies to Peruvian types. But it is more interesting to note the apparent reproduction of Egyptian, Etruscan, and other antique forms in Peruvian fictile ware; and to recognise on the latter the Vitruvian scroll, the Grecian fret and other ancient classic and Assyrian patterns—not as evidence of common origin, but as originating independentlyfrom the ornamentation naturally produced in the work of the straw-plaiter and weaver. Still more curious are their analogies to ancient Asiatic art, as disclosed in a comparison with many of the objects recovered by Dr. Schliemann on Homeric sites. Among the relics which rewarded his exploration of the site of the classic Ilios, are examples of double-necked jugs, terra-cotta groups of goblets united as single vessels, along with others terminating with mouthpieces in the forms of human or animal heads; or modelled with such quaint ingenuity to represent the hippopotamus, horse, pig, hedgehog, mole, and other animals, that, were it not for the strange fauna selected for imitation, they would seem little out of place in any collection of Peruvian pottery.
The same exuberant sportiveness of the imitative faculty, so characteristic of the races of the New World, reappears in productions of the native metallurgists of Mexico and Central America. Casting, engraving, chasing, and carving in metal, were all practised by the Mexicans with a lavish expenditure of misspent labour. Ingenious toys, birds and beasts with moveable wings and limbs, fish with alternate scales of gold and silver, and personal ornaments in many fanciful forms, were wrought by the Mexican goldsmiths with such skill that the Spaniards acknowledged the superiority of the native workmanship over any product of European art. The ancient graves of the Isthmus of Panama have yielded immense numbers of gold relics of the same class, though inferior to the finest examples described above. They include beasts, birds, and fishes, frogs and other natural objects, wrought in gold with much skill and ingenuity. The frog is made with sockets for the eyes, an oval slit in front, and within each a detached ball of gold, executed apparently in a single casting. Balls of clay are also frequently found enclosed in detached chambers in the pottery of the Isthmus. Human figures wrought in gold, and monstrous or grotesque hybrids, with the head of the cayman, eagle, vulture, and other animals, attached to the human form, are also of frequent occurrence; though in this class of works the modelling of the human form is generally inferior to that of other animate designs. All of those curious relics are found in graves, which, judging from the condition of the human remains, are of great antiquity; if,indeed, they do not point to the central cradle and common source of Aztec and Peruvian art.
It is thus apparent that the imitative faculty, which manifests itself in very different degrees among diverse races, was widely diffused throughout the native tribes of the American continent. But, while a certain aptitude for art is seen to be prevalent among some of the rudest tribes, there were, no doubt, among all of them exceptional examples of artistic ability. There were the Jossakeeds and the Wabenos, skilled in picturing on bark and deer-skin; and the official annalists or “Wampum-keepers,” who perpetuated the national traditions. Among the arrow-makers were some famed for their dexterity in fashioning the hornstone or jasper into arrow heads; and, while the art of the potter proved no less easy to female hands than that of the baker, there were, doubtless, among them some few rarely-gifted modellers, whose skill in fashioning clay into favourite forms of imitative art won them a name among the ceramic artists of their tribe. Pabahmesad, the old Chippewa, of the Great Manitoulin Island, in Lake Huron, famed for his skill in pipe carving, has been referred to in illustrating the trade and manufacture of the Stone age.
The little remnant of the once-powerful Huron race now settled on the river St. Charles, near Quebec, expend their ingenious art on the manufacture of bark canoes, snow-shoes, la-crosse clubs, basket-work, and moccasins. In this they show much skill and dexterity; but among their most adroit workers in recent years was Zacharee Thelariolin, who claimed to be the last full-blood Indian belonging to the band. He manifested considerable ability as an artist, had an apt faculty for sketching from nature, and painted successfully in oil. A portrait of himself, in full Indian costume, now in the possession of Mr. Clint of Quebec, is a relic of much interest as the work of an untaught native Indian, in whom the hereditary imitative faculty thus manifested itself under circumstances little calculated to favour its development. He was sixty-six years of age when he executed this portrait. Had it been his fortune to attract the attention of some appreciative patron in early years he might have made a name for himself and his people.
Another curious and exceptional example of native artisticability may be noted here. The studio of Edmonia Lewis, the sculptor, has long been known to tourists visiting Rome. Her history is a curious one. Her father was a Negro, and her mother a Chippewa Indian. She was born at Greenbush, on the Hudson river, and reared among the Indians till the age of fourteen, both of her parents having died in her childhood. Her Indian name wasSuhkuhegarequa, or Wildfire; but she changed it to that by which she is now known on being admitted to the Moravian school at Oberlin, Ohio. After three years schooling she went to Boston, where, it is said, the sight of the fine statue of Franklin awoke in her the ambition to be a sculptor. She sought out William Lloyd Garrison, and in simple directness told him she wanted to do something like the statue of the printer-statesman. The great abolitionist befriended her. She received needful training in a local studio, started anatelierof her own, and when I saw her in Boston, in 1864, she was modelling a life-size statue emblematic of the emancipation of the race to which she, in part, belonged. Africa was impersonated, raising herself from a prostrate attitude, and, with her hand shading her eyes, was looking at the dawn. Soon after the sculptor went to Rome, and she has there executed works of considerable merit. Her most successful productions may be assumed to reflect the artistic aptitudes of her mother’s race. Her two best works in marble are “Hiawatha’s Wooing” and “Hiawatha’s Wedding.” A Boston critic, in reviewing her works, says: “She has always had remarkable power of manipulation, beginning with beads and wampum, and rising to clay. She has fine artistic feeling and talent, a sort of instinct for form and beauty demanding outward expression.”
The wide diffusion of this imitative faculty and feeling for form was no doubt stimulated by its employment for representative and symbolic purposes. The relation of imitative drawing to written language is equally manifest in the graven records of the Nile valley and the analogous inscriptions of Yucatan or Peru. Quipus, wampum, and all other mnemonic systems, dependent on the transmission of images and ideas from one generation to another, literally, by word of mouth, have within themselves no such germ of higher development as the picture-writing or sculpturing of the early Egyptians,from which all the alphabets of Europe have been evolved. The phonetic signs, inherited by us directly from the Romans, seem so simple, and yet are of such priceless value in their application, that it seems natural to think of the letters of Cadmus as a gift not less wonderful than speech; since, by their instrumentality, the wise of all ages speak to us still. Plutarch tells, in hisDe Iside et Osiride, that when Thoth, the god of letters, first appeared on the earth, the inhabitants of Egypt had no language, but only uttered the cries of animals. They had, at least, no language with which to speak to other generations; nor any common speech to supersede the confusion of tongues which characterised their great river valley, bordering on Asia, and forming the highway from Ethiopia to the Mediterranean Sea. The light thrown for us on the climate, the fauna, the people, and the whole social life of Europe’s Palæolithic era, by a few graphic delineations of its primitive artists, suffices to show how the northern Thoth may have manifested his advent among them.
The condition of the Indian tribes in the North-West, in British Columbia, and in the territories of the United States, abundantly illustrates the effect of a multiplicity of languages among nomad savages. The Blackfeet are in reality a political and not an ethnical confederation, with at least three distinct languages, and numerous dialects spoken among their dispersed tribes. The same condition is found among the Kiawakaskaia Indians, beyond the Rocky Mountains. In the confluence of the nomad hunters to common centres of trade, speech accordingly fails them for all purposes of intercommunication; and travellers and fur-traders have long been familiar with the growth of a common language at more than one of the chief meeting-places of diverse tribes and races on the Pacific coast. The Clatsop, in so far as it is native, is a dialect of the Cowlitz language; but, as now in use, it is one of the jargons or “trade languages” of the Pacific. But Fort Vancouver, long one of the largest trading-posts of the Hudson Bay Company, has been the special Babel where, out of the strangest confusion of tongues, a new language has been evolved.
The organisation of part of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains into the province of British Columbia is rapidly modifying the character of its native population. But inrecent years there were frequently to be found at Fort Vancouver upwards of two hundredvoyageurswith their Indian wives and families, in addition to the factors and clerks. Thither also resorted for trading purposes, Chinook, Nootka, Nisqually, Walla-walla, Klikatat, Kalapurgas, Klackamuss, Cowlitz, and other Indians. A discordant Babel of languages accordingly prevailed; and hence the growth of apatoisby which all could hold intercourse together. The principal native tribe of the locality is the Chinook, a branch of the Flathead Indians on the Columbia river. They speak a language rivalling that of the Hottentots in its seemingly inarticulate character. Some of its sounds, according to Dr. Charles Pickering, could scarcely be represented by any combination of known letters; and Paul Kane, who travelled as an artist among them, described it to me as consisting of harsh spluttering sounds proceeding from the throat, apparently unguided either by the tongue or lips. This language accordingly repelled every attempt at its mastery by others. The Cree is the native language most familiar to the traders, many of their wives being Cree women. Both French and English are spoken among themselves; while, in addition to the tribes already named, natives of the Sandwich Islands, Chinese, and other foreigners, add to the strange character and speech of this miscellaneous community. Out of all those elements the “Chinook jargon” or trade-language of the locality has fashioned itself.
Vocabularies of the Oregon or Chinook jargon have been repeatedly published since 1838, when the Rev. Samuel Parker made the first attempt to reduce it to writing. But it is necessarily in an unstable condition, with local variations and a changing vocabulary. The latestDictionary of the Chinook Jargon, or Trade Language of Oregon, is that of Mr. George Gibbs, published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1863, and includes nearly five hundred words. When studied in all its bearings, it is a singularly interesting example of the effort at the development of a means of intercommunication among such a strange gathering of heterogeneous races. In an analysis of the various sources of its vocabulary, Mr. Gibbs assigns about two-fifths of the words to the Chinook and Clatsop languages. But in this he includes one of the mostcharacteristic elements of the jargon. The representatives of so many widely dissimilar peoples, in their efforts at mutual communication, naturally resorted to diverse forms of imitation; foremost among which was onomatopœia. There are such mimetic words ashe-he, “laughter”;hoh-hoh, “to cough”;tish-tish, “to drive”;lip-lip, “to boil”;poh, “to blow out”;tik-tik, “a watch”;tin-linorting-ling, “a bell”;tum-tum, “the heart,” from its pulsation; and hence a number of modifications in which the heart is used as equivalent to mind or will, etc. Again, varying intonations are resorted to in order to express different shades of meaning, assey-yaw, “far off,” in which the first syllable is lengthened out according to the idea of greater or less distance indicated. Many of their words, as in all interjectional utterances, depend for their specific meaning on the intonations of the speaker. Such utterances play so small a part in our own speech, that we are apt to overlook the force of the interrogative, affirmative, and negative tones, and even the change of meaning that is often produced by the transfer of emphasis from one to another word.[99]But with such an imperfect means of intercommunication as the trade jargon, there is a constant motive not only to help out the meaning by expressive intonation, but also by signs or gesture-language. “A horse” for example, iskuatan; but “riding” or “on horseback” is expressed by accompanying the word with the gesture of two fingers placed astride over the other hand.Tenasis “little” or “a child,”—in the latter case, accompanied by the gesture suggestive of its size,—or it may mean “an infant,” by the first syllable being prolonged to indicate that it is very small. In addition to all this, words are borrowed from all sources; and the miscellaneous vocabulary is completed from English, French, Cree, Ojibway, Nootka, Chihalis, Nisqually, Kalapuy, and other tongues.
The late Paul Kane is my authority for some of the detailsof intonation and gesture-language. He brought back with him a valuable collection of studies of the different races in British North America; and, by means of the jargon, he learned in a short time to converse without difficulty with the chiefs of most of the tribes around Fort Vancouver. But as an artist he was in constant use of his pencil; and, as he told me, he frequently appealed to it, sketching himself, or at times putting his pencil and note-book into their hands, with considerable success in thus supplementing less definite signs. The gesture-language furnishes Cheyenne, Dakota, Apache, and other signs for “paint, colour, draw,” and “write”; the act of writing or drawing being expressed by holding up the palm of one hand and moving the forefinger of the other over it, as if drawing. The jargon has also its wordpent, “paint,” transformed to a verb by prefixing the wordmamook, “to do, to make”; and itstzum, “painting,” or “mixed colours”;mamooktzum, “to paint.” In the gesture-language of the Dakotas and Apaches the equivalent sign is primarily indicative of daubing the face with colour; but the tribes of the Pacific coast paint their masks, boats, and houses in diverse coloured devices, with some degree of taste. There is, therefore, reason to look for terms expressive of the art in any language in use among them; though the habitual employment of signs may in some cases check the evolution of phonetic equivalents. But among many tribes gesture-language has been systematised into universally recognised pictographs, and so developed into a native system of hieroglyphics.
Among the Algonkin, Lenape, Iroquois, and other northern tribes, and in the region comprising New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and other south-western territory, rock-carvings and pictographs abound. Wherever large surfaces of rock, or slabs of stone, offer a favourable opportunity for such records, they are found, at times executed with great elaboration of detail. But less durable records are in use, dependent on the materials most available to the scribe. The Algonkins and Iroquois ordinarily resort to birch-bark; the Crees, Blackfeet, and other prairie Indians, substitute the dressed skins of the buffalo; while, as already noted, the tribes on the Pacific coast, as well as the Innuit and Eskimo, employ deerhorn and ivory. In the South-West, in the Sierra Nevada and Southern California, thesculptured pictograph, after being incised on the surface of a rock, or the wall of a cave, is frequently finished by colouring in much the same way as was the custom with the ancient Egyptian chroniclers.
Among a series of reports to the Topographical Bureau, issued from the War Department at Washington, in 1850, is the journal of a military reconnaissance from Santa Fé, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country, by Lieutenant James K. Simpson of the Corps of Topographical Engineers. His narrative is accompanied with a map and illustrations of a remarkable series of inscriptions, engraved on the smooth surface of a rock called the Moro. They are of two classes, the native pictographs, and also numerous Spanish inscriptions and devices; one of which records the hasty visit of an old Spanish explorer to the Moro Rock in 1606. The route of Lieutenant Simpson lay up the valley of the Rio de Zuñi, where he met an old trader among the Navajos, who was waiting to offer his services as guide to a rock, upon the face of which were, according to his repeated assertions, “half an acre of inscriptions.” After travelling about eight miles, through a country diversified by cliffs of basalt and red and white sandstone, in every variety of bold and fantastic form, they came in sight of a quadrangular mass of white sandstone rock, from 200 feet to 250 feet in height. This was the Moro, or Inscription Rock, on ascending a low mound at the base of which, the journalist states, “sure enough here were inscriptions, and some of them very beautiful; and although, with those we afterwards examined on the south face of the rock, there could not be said to be half an acre of them, yet the hyperbole was not near so extravagant as I was prepared to find it.” The inscriptions, some in Spanish, and others in, Latin, apparently include examples nearly coeval with the conquest of this region, by Juan de Onate, in 1595; and from their historical interest they naturally received greater attention from the Topographical Corps than the Indian hieroglyphics. But the same locality was visited at a later date by surveyors appointed to ascertain the most practicable route for a railroad to the Pacific coast; and in a Report of explorations and surveys, published by the Senate of the United States in 1856, Lieutenant Whipple furnishes an interesting series of Indian hieroglyphicsor pictographs seen on his route. “The first of the Indian hieroglyphics,” he remarks, “were at Rocky Dell Creek, between the edge of the Llano Estacado and the Canadian. The stream flows through a gorge, upon one side of which a shelving sandstone rock forms a sort of cave. The roof is covered with paintings, some evidently ancient; and beneath are innumerable carvings of footprints, animals, and symmetrical lines.”[100]Examples of these are given; but of one series, the sketches of which had been lost, Lieutenant Whipple remarks: “This series, more than the others, seems to represent a chain of historical events, being embraced by serpentine lines. First is a rude sketch, resembling a ship with sails; then comes a horse with gay trappings, a man with a long speaking-trumpet being mounted upon him, while a little bare-legged Indian stands in wonder behind. Below this group are several singular-looking figures: men with the horns of an ox, with arms, hands, and fingers extended as if in astonishment, and with clawed feet. Following the curved line we come to the circle, enclosing a Spanish caballero, who extends his hands in amity to the naked Indian standing without. Next appears a group with an officer, and a priest bearing the emblem of Christianity.” The Pueblo Indians, who still worship the sun, recognised in those picturings records of the thoughts and deeds of their ancestors. They pointed to representations of Montezuma, whom they still expect to return, and who is regarded as a divine power; and recognised in the horned men a representation of the buffalo-dance, from time immemorial a national festival, at which they crowned themselves with horns and corn-shucks. The drawing is in all probability an historical record executed at a date not long subsequent to the first intrusion of the Spaniards.
Lieutenant Whipple next describes the carvings found at El Moro inscription rock where, he says, “Spanish adventurers and explorers, from as early a period as the first settlement of Plymouth, have been in the habit of recording their expeditions to and from Zuñi.” He refers for those to Captain Simpson’s report upon the Navajo expedition; but specimens of the Indian drawings are given, which, he says, “are evidentlymore ancient than the oldest of the Spanish inscriptions.”[101]The latter are, for the most part, regular literal records in the Spanish or Latin language, with names, and, in a few instances, the date of their engraving. But the European epigraphists appear at times to have borrowed the ideographic art of their Indian guides, from the way several of their inscriptions are accompanied with pictorial devices, or rebuses, somewhat after the native fashion of writing. One, for example, which readsPito Vaca ye Jarde, has also the symbol of theVaca, or “cow.” Another group, consisting of certain initials interwoven into a monogram, accompanied by an open hand with a double thumb, all enclosed in cartouche-fashion, is supposed by the transcriber to be, even more than the previous bit of pictorial symbolism, a pictured pun. “The characters,” he remarks, “in the double rectangle seem to be literally a sign-manual, and may possibly be symbolical of Francisco Manuel, though the double thumb would seem to indicate something more.” The Provincial Secretary, Donaciano Vigil, after noting for Lieutenant Simpson some data relative to the Spanish inscriptions, adds: “The other signs or characters are traditional remembrances, by means of which the Indians transmit historical accounts of all their remarkable successes. To discover (or interpret) these sets by themselves, is very difficult. Some of the Indians make trifling indications, which divulge, with a great deal of reserve, something of the history, to persons in whom they have entire confidence.”
On the summit of the cliff the ruins of a pueblo of bold native masonry formed a rectangle of 206 feet by 307 feet, around which lay an immense accumulation of broken pottery of novel and curious patterns. At Los Ojos Calientes, Lieutenant Simpson visited theestuffas, buildings one story high, called the churches of Montezuma. “On the walls were representations of plants, birds, and animals; the turkey, the deer, the wolf, the fox, and the dog, being plainly depicted; none of them, however, approaching to exactness except the deer, the outline of which showed certainly a good eye for proportion.” These are the work of the Jemez Indians, who worshipped the sun, moon, and fire;representations of which in circular form, and with zigzag barbed lines for lightning, also occur on the walls.[102]Lieutenant Simpson remarks that he asked a Jemez Indian “Whether they still worshipped the Sun, as God, with contrition of heart.” His reply was: “Why not? He governs the World!”
Dr. Hoffman figures and interprets a curious rock-painting, copied by him from a granite boulder at Tulare river, California. It covers an area of about twelve feet by eight; and the largest figure is about six feet in length, and appears to be the work of an advanced party of native explorers, intended for the guidance of those who followed on their trail.[103]Dr. Hoffman also furnishes some interesting illustrations of the reproduction of gesture-language in native pictographs preserved in the Museum of San Francisco. Certain symbols are in very general use. But the description of an Innuit drawing on a slat of wood, as interpreted by a native, partly in his own dialect, but largely supplemented by gestures, will best illustrate this development of a system of picture-writing among a savage people. A human figure directs his right hand to his own side, while, with his left, he points away from him. This is theEgo, the personal pronounI. Again, a simple tracing of the like figure, successively with a boat-paddle over his head; his right hand to the side of his head; one finger elevated; his hand stretched out in the direction indicated, with his harpoon, or his bow and arrow, expresses his various actions. A spot enclosed in a circle, and again a blank circle, mark the islands—inhabited or uninhabited,—to which he is bound. A canoe, with two persons in it, defines the number going and the mode of transport; a phoca, or other animal, indicates the prey; and the record closes with an outline of the house, or tent, towards which the canoe is directed. The whole is equivalent to a written memorandum left behind, to inform the members of his family that he has gone in his boat to a particular island, where he will pass the night,—the right hand to the side of the head being a symbol of sleep. From thence he will proceed to another island, where he purposes to catch a seal or sea-lion, and then he will return home. It is in no degree surprising to find that nearly the same symbols are in use bywidely different tribes; for, alike in their pictographs and gestures, they naturally aim at the most familiar and literal representations. The Eskimo and Alaskans represent death, in their drawings and bone carvings, by the symbol of a headless body, in nearly the same way as the Iroquois, the Algonkins, and the Blackfeet. To this is added the spear, the bow and arrow, or the gun, to indicate the mode of death by violence. The ordinary symbol of sepulchral memorial is the reversing of the totem and other objects pictured on the grave-post. A succession of lines in rows or columns is the simplest mode of primitive numeration, perpetuated among the Egyptians even so late as the Ptolemaic dynasty. It appears to have been in use among the cave-men of the Vézère in palæolithic times, and is common to all such records. But in the Eskimo and Indian pictographs the elevated hand, with one or more fingers extended, serves for numeration; and where the extended fingers and thumbs of both hands are represented on an exaggerated scale, it signifiesmultitude. The native gestures, drawings, and spoken languages, have indeed to be studied together to understand fully the processes resorted to for the expression and interchange of ideas.