292  SMITHSONIAN    MISCELLANEOUS    COLLECTIONS  VOL.    96 
Laguna  in  Prince  William  Sound  have  revealed  no  evidence  of  this 
art  in  its  modern  form.  On  the  basis  of  the  present  evidence,  there- 
fore, we  would  be  justified  in  accepting  the  view  expressed  by  Boas 
that  the  geometric  ornamentation  of  the  southern  British  Columbia 
tribes  represents  a  survival  of  an  older  art  style  and  that  to  the  north- 
ward "  we  are  dealing  with  the  gradual  intrusion  of  ever  fuller  animal 
motives  into  a  well-established  conventionalized  art"  (Boas,  1937, 
p.  281). 
Although  it  is  thus  possible  to  point  to  certain  resemblances  between 
old  Eskimo  art  and  an  old  style  of  art  from  southern  British  Columbia 
and  Washington,  there  is  little  evidence  of  relationship  between  the 
former  and  the  highly  developed  modern  art  of  the  Northwest  Coast. 
It  is  true  that  the  Northwest  Coast  is  the  only  area  of  high  art  de- 
velopment near  Bering  Strait ;  and  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  modern 
Alaskan  Eskimos  have  undoubtedly  been  influenced  to  some  extent  by 
Northwest  Coast  culture  one  might  reasonably  suppose  that  the  elab- 
orate art  of  this  region  was  in  some  way  related  to  Old  Bering  Sea 
art.  But  when  we  analyze  the  two  styles,  we  see  that  they  have  so 
few  elements  in  common  and  are  so  different  in  spirit  and  apparently 
in  motivation  that  it  is  difificult  to  avoid  the  conclusion  that  they  repre- 
sent separate  growths.  Whether  these  growths  were  wholly  inde- 
pendent of  each  other  or  sprang  originally  from  a  common  source  in 
the  distant  past  is  a  problem  concerning  which  we  can  say  little  until 
archeological  data  for  the  Northwest  Coast  are  available.  It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  first  of  all  that  Old  Bering  Sea  art  is  geometric.  Its 
graceful  and  often  complex  designs  are  made  up  entirely  of  simple 
geometric  elements  :  straight  and  curving  lines,  dotted  or  broken  lines, 
spurs,  circles,  and  ovals,  which  only  secondarily  are  given  the  ap- 
pearance of  life  forms.  The  prevailing  tendency  is  to  cover  entire 
surfaces  with  delicate  and  harmonious  patterns  of  curving  lines 
and  elevated  circles  or  ellipses.  The  lines  serve  to  divide  the  surface 
into  fields  or  panels  and  at  the  same  time  to  unify  the  composition 
as  a  whole ;  the  circles  and  ovals,  with  their  appended  streamerlike 
spurs,  serve  to  center  the  design  and  to  fill  in  the  blank  spaces.  North- 
west Coast  art,  on  the  other  hand,  is  very  different  both  in  conception 
and  execution.  The  designs  are  elaborate  representations  of  animal 
forms,  distorted  and  combined  into  massive  patterns  which  have  a 
distinctly  symbolic  or  totemistic  significance,  and  in  which  geometric 
motives  play  only  a  negligible  part.  One  of  the  few  correspondences 
between  Northwest  Coast  and  Old  Bering  Sea  art  is  the  use  of  cross- 
hatched  surfaces,  which  are  common  in  the  former,  and  comparatively 
rare  in  the  latter  art.   The  most  obvious  resemblance,  the  significance 
