538 AUTNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 30 



use black color as a filler in line cuts to bring out the sharpness in 

 their silhouette designs. The same effect is obtained by Papuans 

 and Melanesians through the use of white kaolin. 



Limitations imposed on the primitive artist by the materials with 

 which he works and the technic which he must employ are potent in 

 shaping the style of art. 



Geometric art of the Plains tribes.- — ^ISluch of the decorative technic 

 of the Plains tribes consists of bead embroidery, an outgrowth of 

 the former widespread use of split quills of the porcupine. The 

 most beautiful examples in the National Museum of the use of por- 

 cupine quills in embroidery are in the few remaining specimens of 

 the Catlin collection obtained by George Catlin from several uni- 

 dentified tribes in 1838. The decorative designs embroidered either 

 in beads or with porcupine quills are geometric and consist of tri- 

 angles and rectangles in varied arrangement of figures and colors. 

 The use of the triangle has come to be a distinctive mark of the art 

 technic of the Plains tribes. Sometimes this triangle is acute and 

 again it is obtuse. When acute it is called a tipi design and fre- 

 quently has extended bars reaching beyond the apex. The obtuse 

 form has a rectangle inside recalling the stepped insert of the Pueblo 

 tribes. Parallel lines of beadwork are interpreted as trails; breaks 

 in the trail indicated by colored beads represent camping sites. 



There are considerable tribal differences in the patterns embroid- 

 ered as also in the painted designs applied for the most part to raw- 

 hide containers, as quivers, saddlebags or parfieches, work boxes, and 

 the like. The Sioux are distinguished by their use of the entire field 

 as a surface for applying the design. This is especially noticeable 

 in the embroidered beaded patterns on moccasins, bags, and pipe 

 bags. White beads or a cream-colored paint fill in the background, 

 setting off the angular designs. Tlie Arapaho, on the other hand, 

 use several small stripes of color covering but a small portion of 

 the whole area of the decorated object. The unique spurred acute 

 triangle design of the Coman,che is set off at the apex with curved 

 hornlike volutes. Plains designs embroidered or painted are both 

 realistic and abstract in their meaning. Purely animal forms are 

 not painted on rawhide or embroidered in beadwork or quills. Geo- 

 graphical features as lakes, mountain passes, rivers, and trails are 

 represented even to such details as trees, growing grass, and buffalo. 

 To be sure, an interpretation is required to appreciate such realism, 

 as buffalo, for instance, are represented by a series of dots boxed in 

 a rectangular figure. A mountain pass is the angle between two 

 bordering obtuse triangles. 



The Blackfeet are unique in that they attach no symbolism to their 

 designs which resemble those of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. 



