698* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



named it dry or powder painting." The pictures produced "are supposed 

 to be spiritually shadowed, so to say, or breathed upon by the gods or god- 

 animals they represent, during the appealing incantations or calls of the 

 rites. . . . Further light is thrown on this practice of the Zuni in making 

 use of these suppositively vivified paintings by their kindred practice of 

 painting not only fetiches of stone, etc., and sometimes of larger idols, then 

 of washing the paint off for use as above described, but also of poivder 

 painting in relief; that is, of modeling effigies in sand, sometimes huge in 

 size, of hero or animal gods, sacramental mountains, etc., powder painting 

 them in common with the rest of the pictures, and afterward removing the 

 paint for medicinal or further ceremonial use." 



But the clearest evidence is yielded by the Navajo Indians. Dr. 

 Washington Matthews in a contribution on "The Mountain 

 Chant, a Navajo Ceremony," says : 



" The men who do the greater part of the actual work of painting, under 

 the guidance of the chanter, have been initiated [four times], but need not 

 be skilled medicine men or even aspirants to the craft of the shaman. . . . 

 The pictures are drawn according to an exact system. The shaman is 

 frequently seen correcting the workmen and making them erase and revise 

 their work. In certain well-defined instances the ai'tist is allowed to 

 indulge his individual fancy. This is the case with the gaudy embroidered 

 pouches which the gods carry at the waist. Within reasonable bounds the 

 artist may give his god just as handsome a pouch as he wishes. Some parts 

 of the flgui'es, on the other hand, are measured by palms and spans, and 

 not a line of the sacred design can be varied," * 



Unquestionably then pictorial art in its first stages was occu- 

 pied with sacred subjects, and the priest, when not himself the 

 executant, was the director of the executants. 



The remains and records of early historic peoples yield evi- 

 dences having like implications. 



As shown already, there existed in America curious transitions 

 between worshiping the actual dead man and worshiping an eflBgy 



* Both great surprise and great satisfaction were given to me by these last sentences. 

 When setting forth evidence furnished by. the Egyptians, I was about to include a remem- 

 bered statement (though unable to give the authority), that there are Avall-paintings I 

 thinli in the tombs of the kings where a superior is represented as correcting the drawings 

 of subordinates, and was .ibout to suggest that, judging from the intimate relation between 

 the priesthood and the plastic arts, already iillustrated, this superior was probably a priest. 

 And here I suddenly came upon a verifying fact supplied by a still earlier stage of culture : 

 the priest is the director of pictorial representations when he is not the executant. Another 

 important verification is yielded by these sentences. The essential parts of the representa- 

 tion are sacred in matter, and rigidly fixed in manner ; but in certain non-essential, decora- 

 tive parts the working artist is allowed play for his imagination. This tends to confirm the 

 conclusion already dra^Ti respecting Greek art. For while in a Greek temple the mode of 

 representing the god was so fixed that change was sacrilege, the artist was allowed some 

 scope in designing and executing the peripheral parts of the structure. He could exercise 

 his imagination and skill on the sculptured figures of the pediment and metopes ; and here 

 his artistic genius developed. 



