1902.] Dixon, Basketry Designs of California Indians. 29 



in use, for purposes of decoration and ornament, by savage 

 tribes in all parts of the world, have a significance and a well- 

 recognized meaning, has within the last few years been abun 

 dantly proved. The fact that such rigid and geometrical 

 figures were thus in reality significant, and were representa 

 tions of animals, plants, and other objects and phenomena, 

 led at once to discussions as to whether the designs in question 

 were in their origin realistic or decorative ; whether, to quote 

 from a recent admirable presentation of the whole question, 1 

 "original pictures were conventionalized into decorative sym 

 bolism," or whether "original ornament was expanded into 

 symbolic decoration." In the paper here referred to, Kroeber 

 concludes, starting from a study of Arapaho design, that we 

 are not justified in regarding these designs as the outcome of 

 either of these tendencies alone, but rather as a fusion of both. 

 It is contended, that, in the mind of primitive man, realism 

 and decoration are not differentiated, and that it is only with 

 increased cultural development that a gradual differentiation 

 of these two tendencies is brought about, until, in the end, 

 they may become almost if not quite distinct. In the case of 

 savages, moreover, the pictographic element may also come 

 in, and this, with other tendencies, serves to complicate 

 a situation already by no means simple. All of this, then, 

 leads us to the conclusion that any such phenomenon as art 

 is not to be ascribed in its origin to any single cause, but 

 rather to the interaction of a multiplicity of causes; the 

 relative importance of each as a factor varying in different 

 cases and with different peoples. 



We should, then, expect to find instances in which the 

 balance between the two opposing tendencies of "realistic 

 symbolism" and "decorative conventionalism" would not be 

 as perfect as in the case of the Arapaho, and examples 

 where the tendency either toward realism or decoration 

 would preponderate. While, in most cases, the basketry 

 designs from Washington and British Columbia, described by 

 Farrand, 2 are distinctly geometric, and conventionalized to 



1 A. L. Kroeber, Decorative Symbolism of the Arapaho (American Anthropologist, 

 N.S., Vol. Ill, pp. 308-337). 



* L. Farrand, Basketry Designs of the Salish Indians (Memoirs American Museum 

 of Natural History, Vol. II, pp. 391-399). 



