1896.] ^'^'♦' [Gushing. 



tokens an attempt on the part of the primitive artist to repre.sent tlie 

 ideals, the perfect ancestral types or spiritual archetypes, of the animals 

 portrayed — for it is supposed, as is told in the numberless beast-tales of his 

 people, that the present animals, descendants of these great and perfect 

 ancestors, have been changed by their own deeds, their disobedience of 

 the gods, their strifes and what not, and that thus their countenances are 

 distorted or besmirched, and fixed so in token of their rashness or mis- 

 fortunes in creation time. So this kind of conventionalization represents 

 myth, as well as art ; both, developing and interacting uninterruptedly 

 throughout a very long period of progress in a given organic environ- 

 ment. If this be true of the style of the art, it is doubly true of its sym- 

 bolic specialization. For it has been seen that in case of the figures of 

 timid creatures — game-animals, like the figurehead of the deer, the carv- 

 ings of the rabbit and other creatures of the kind — all were character- 

 ized by a crescent-shaped device on their foreheads. Thus, this conven- 

 tional mark was not merely that of an individual representative of the 

 species, but it was, so to say, a generic mark, representative of several 

 species of the same general kind. This is further shown by the fact 

 that another special kind of marking was equally characteristic of animals 

 of prey — of the wildcat, the panther, the bear and llieir kind. In the carv- 

 ings of each one of these fierce creatures, the outlines of the eyes were not 

 only sharply pointed in front but in each case terminated behind in three 

 sharp triangular lines or marks pointing backwardly, and giving to the 

 face of the animal figure a peculiarly crafty, yet sinister look. That this 

 too was a generic mark, is still further indicated by the fact that it oc- 

 curred also upon one of the human masks corresponding to the figure- 

 head of one of these fierce creatures. Now in this generic kind of mark- 

 ing we have not only a still higher art development, but also a very 

 much higher mythic development betokened, since it indicates that these 

 ancient peoples regarded the game-animals as of one great family or de- 

 scent, and the prej'^-animals as of another great class or lienage, and that 

 they w'ere thus, in a way, naturalists of no mean order. 



The interest of the significance of this particular sign of the eye as 

 pertaining to or symbolizing prey-beings, is enhanced greatly by the 

 further fact that upon many of the exquisitely finished and highly con- 

 ventionalized carvings of the heads of these kinds of beasts (and of the 

 faces of warriors or men wearing masks animistically corresponding to 

 them as well) that are found so frequently in the mounds of the Missis- 

 sippi Valley, of Tennessee and even of Ohio, precisely the same conven- 

 tional marking or barbing of the eye — as though it were set in the figure of 

 a. stemmed and barbed arrow-point to make it "piercing" — is observable. 

 Thus, through a study of the conventional treatment of such figures here 

 in the keys of lower Florida, we not only arrive at an understanding of a 

 new meaning of these figures or lines around the eyes of maskoids and 

 head-carvings found in the far away north (namely, that they represent 

 animals of prey or their human counterparts), but we also see that the same 



