524 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



Indian tribes. Other peoples also make repeated use of the eye 

 motive. However, it remains an eye with them even when repeated- 

 ly used in a meander or scrolled design. In northwest coast Indian 

 designs, however, the eye may represent joints, such as the elbow or 

 the knee ; it may represent the arm or leg, simply standing as a part 

 for the whole; or it may represent the entire animal in conjunction 

 with one or two other conventionalized features. The incised circle 

 and dot, or nucleated circle in flat relief occurs widely in North and 

 South America, but is used in a different way among different tribes. 

 The Eskimo and the tribes of the upper plateau apparently use it in 

 a purely decorative way without any symbolical or representative 

 value. On pottery from South America and the West Indies, the 

 circle and dot element becomes the eye, or it may stand for some 

 particular kind of eye and thus represent a bird or a snake or the 

 entire reptilian family. 



Art areas. — The character of decorative primitive art is capable of 

 geographic treatment. Art of a given kind characterizes a given 

 region, with borders sometimes fairly definite, sometimes merging 

 into the art designs and motives of adjoining regions by minute de- 

 grees of transition. Each tribe has art not exactly duplicated by 

 that of any other. Even isolated villages within the tribal area 

 develop marked divergences in design clearly intelligible to those 

 who know. 



Art areas, however, usually include several tribes occupying a geo- 

 graphical unit. The Eskimo constitute an art area, also a culture 

 area, although they are not a single tribe. Linguistically the entire 

 Arctic is a single area in the sense that the language spoken by an 

 Eskimo in Canada may be understood by a north Siberian aborigine 

 even though not an Eskimo. In ceramic and other art developments 

 cropping out of a perfected pottery technique, we find eastern Siouan, 

 Muskhogean, Caddoan, Timucuan, Calusan, and other tribal stocks 

 sharing one art area, connected with West Indian and northern 

 Colombian tribal designs. Likewise in the wooded sections of the 

 Great Lakes and of the upper Mississippi Valley we may speak of a 

 great art area shared by diverse linguistic and tribal stocks. 



The general use of the swastika or almost all symbolism in the 

 form of variants of the cross has a different application, and differ- 

 ent meanings attached as we proceed from country to country and 

 tribe to tribe. The use of the spiral is so widespread as to be of no 

 significance in itself, although the technic employed in its execution 

 may betray the maker. The spiral, common alike to painted designs 

 on pueblo pottery in the Southwest and to etched designs on bamboo 

 or wood in Polynesia or in lower Melanesia, can everywhere in the 

 three areas be distinguished as to the maker by the crudity or excel- 

 lence of workmanship. The spiral and associated double-curve 



