20 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 76 



COMPOSITE DESIGNS 



The composite pictures are representations of two animals com- 

 bined. The custom of uniting different animals as a unit is sometimes 

 found among the more advanced tribes of Mexico and Central 

 America, but is rare or unknown among the North American Indians. 

 As examples of these composite pictures may be mentioned quadrupeds 

 represented with a human head and nondescript animals with the 

 body of an antelope and tail of a fish, or tails of twin fishes added to a 

 turtle body. These composite pictures illustrate to the Indian mind 

 their folk-lore or mythology and may represent mythological beings 

 or legends now forgotten which were current at the time they were 

 made. It may be possible by renewed research to find survivals of 

 these stories in the folk-tales of kindred peoples and thus determine 

 what personages these composites were intended to represent ; but at 

 present we can do no more than recognize that the Mimbres Valley 

 pottery bears evidences of a rich mythology or folk-lore that has 

 disappeared. Fishes and quadrupeds are the most common of the 

 composite forms. 



Two of the best examples of a composite animal in the collection 

 now being described are shown in figures i and 14; in figure 37 the 

 wing and its feathers, also the tail feathers, are conventionalized, 

 while the head and body of the bird are wonderfully realistic. 



Attention may be called to the tendency to conventionalize certain 

 organs, as wings and feathers of birds, even when the figure of the 

 bird is realistic. This may be an index of the change from realism 

 to symbolism which in Sikyatki pottery has gone so far as to reduce 

 the whole figure to a symbol. 



COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MIMBRES DESIGNS 



Geographically the valley of the Mimbres lies between high lands 

 on the east and north and the Casas Grandes Valley on the south. 

 As the physiography of these neighboring areas is different and 

 pottery designs unlike each other, it may be well to devote a few lines 

 to comparative studies. The northern and western neighbors of the 

 aborigines of the Mimbres were those of the Gila Valley and its 

 tributaries ; on the south the Mimbres Valley merges into that of 

 northern Chihuahua. It is natural that the distribution of ancient 

 pueblo and other pottery in our Southwest should follow rivers or 

 streams of water whose banks are natural trails. The presence of 

 water, also a desideratum for an agricultural population, may be 

 considered in a general treatment of migration of people. 



