286 ART IN SHELL OF THE ANCIENT AMERICANS. 



gorget which represents an eagle's bead in profile. The skill of the 

 ancient artist is shown to great advantage; nothing can be found, even 

 in the most elaborately carved pipes, equal to the treatment of this re- 

 markable head. To overcome the difficulty of cutting the tlinty and 

 massive shell was no small triumph for a jieople still in the stone age. 

 To conceive and execute such a graphic work is a still more marvelous 

 achievement.' The lines of the mandibles and protrudiog tongue are 

 strongly and correctly drawn. The eye and the markings of the head 

 are executed in smooth, deeply incised lines, and are conventionalized 

 in a manner peculiar to the American aborigines. 



THE SPIDER. 



Among insects the spider is perhaps best calculated to attract the 

 attention of the savage. The tarantula is in many respects a very 

 extraordinary creature, and is endowed with powers of the most 

 deadly nature, which naturally places it along with the rattlesnake 

 in tho category of creatures possessing supernatural attributes. Its 

 curiously constructed house with the hinged door and smoothly plas- 

 tered chamber must ever elicit the admiration of the beholder. But 

 the spider, which spins a web and projects in mid-air a gossamer struct- 

 ure of marvelous symmetry and beauty, and builds an ambush from 

 which to si)ring upon his prey, was probably one of the first instructors 

 of adolescent man, and must have seemed to him a very deity. It is 

 not strange, therefore, that the spider appeai-s in the myths of the 

 savages. With the great Shoshone family, according to Professor 

 Powell, the si)ider was the first weavt^r, and taught that important art 

 to the fathers. The Cherokees, in their legend of the origin of fire, 

 "represent a portion of it as having been brought with them and 

 sacredly guarded. Others say that after crossing wide waters they sent 

 back lor it to the Man of Fire froni whom a little was conveyed over 

 by a spider in his web."^ 



The spider occurs but rarely in aboriginal American art, occasionally 

 it seems, however, to have reached the dignity of religious considera- 

 tion and to have been adopted as a totemic device. Had a single 

 cxiiini)Ie only been found we would not be warranted in giving it a place 

 among- religious symbols. Four examples have come to my notice; 

 these are all engraved on shell gorgets and are illustrated in Plate LX. 

 Two are from Illinois, one from Missouri, and the other from Tennessee. ' 

 The example shown in Fig. 1 was obtained bj* Mr. Croswell from a 

 mound near New Madrid, Mo. It is described as a circular ornament, 



'Let any one who thinks lightly of such a work undertake, without machinery or 

 well-adapted appliances, to cut a groove or notch even, in a moderately compact 

 specimen of Busycon, and he will prohal>ly increase his good opinion of the skill and 

 patience of the ancient workman if he does nothing else. 



^E. 6. Sqnler: Serpent Symbol, page C9, quoting MSS. of J. H. Payne. 



'I am very much indebted to Prof. F. F. Hilder, of Saint Louis, for photographs of 

 three of these specimens as well as for much information in regard to their history. 



