BULL. 301 



ART 



95 



tectural promise, and suggest the possibil- 

 ities of higher development and final es- 

 thetic control, as in the great architectu- 

 ral styles of the Old World, {^ee ArcJii- 

 tectiire, Dry-painting, Habitations. ) 



(2) Theartof sculpture, which includes 

 also carving, had its birth, no doubt, in 

 the fashioning of implements, utensils, 

 ornaments, and sacred objects; and em- 

 bellishments, symbolic and esthetic, 

 which were at first entirely subordinate, 

 were gradually introduced as culture ad- 

 vanced, and among some of the north- 

 ern tribes acquired great prominence. 

 The sculpture elaborations consist of life 

 elements, such as men and beasts, exe- 

 cuted in relief and in the round, and hav- 

 ing an esthetic as well as a religious func- 

 tion. This strong sculptural tendency is 

 well illustrated by the stone pipes, orna- 

 ments, and images of the mound-builders 

 of the "Mississippi valley, the carvings of 

 the pile-dwellers of Florida, the masks, 

 utensils, and totem poles of the N. W. 

 coast tribes, and the spirited ivory carv- 

 ings of the Eskimo. Sculpture, the fine 

 art, is but a higher phase of these ele- 

 mentary manifestations of the esthetic. 

 (See Sculpture and Carving.) 



(3) The plastic art was practised with 

 much skill by all the more advanced 

 American tribes. North of Mexico the 

 potter's art had made exceptional progress 

 in two great specialization areas — the 

 Pueblo country of the S. W. and the 

 Mississippi valley — and symbolic ele- 

 ments, derived mainly from the animal 

 kingdom, were freely introduced, not 

 only as modifications of the fundamental 

 shapes of vases, but as embellishments 

 variously and tastefully applied. The 

 supervision of taste extended also to the 

 simple forms of vases, the outlines being 

 in many cases highly pleasing even to 

 persons of culture. (See Pottery. ) 



(4) Closely allied with the plastic art is 

 the metallurgic art, which had made 

 sufficient progress among the tribes n. of 

 Mexico to display traces of the strong 

 aboriginal bent for the esthetic. From 

 the mounds of Ohio, especially from the 

 Chillicothe district, many implements, 

 ornaments, and symbolic objects of cop- 

 per have been ol:)tained, certain highly 

 conventional ornamental figures in sheet- 

 copper being especially noteworthy. 

 From mounds of the Etowah group, in 

 Georgia, numerous repousse images exe- 

 cuted in sheet-copper have been recovered 

 which, as illustrations of artistic as well 

 as of mechanical achievement, take prece- 

 dence over most other aboriginal works 

 N. of Mexico. (See Copper, Metal-work.) 



(5) The textile art, which for present 

 purposes may be regarded as including, 

 besides weaving proper, the arts of bas- 

 ketry, needlework, bead work, quillwork, 



featherwork, etc., as practised by the 

 northern tribes, abounds in both sym- 

 bolic and jturely decorative elements of 

 emliellishment. The former have their 

 origin, as in the other arts, in mythology, 

 and the latter arise mainly from the tech- 

 nical features of the art itself. No branch 

 of art practised by the primitive tribes 

 calls so constantly for the exercise of taste 

 as does this, and probably none has con- 

 tributed so greatly to the development of 

 the purely geometric phases of decorative 

 art. Illustrations may be found in the 

 weaving of the Pueblo and Navaho tribes 

 of the arid region and the Chilkat of the 

 N. W., in the basketry of numerous tribes 

 of the far W. and S. W., and in the bead- 

 work, (luillwork, embroidery, and feather- 

 work of tribes of the great plains, the up- 

 per Mississippi valley, and the region of 

 the great lakes. (See Basketry, Beadwork, 

 Featherwork, Needlework, Quillwork, Weav- 

 ing. ) 



{ 6 ) Primitive phases of the art of paint- 

 ing and other related branches, such as 

 engraving and tattooing, appear in the 

 handiwork of all of the northern tribes. 

 Colors were employed in decorating the 

 human body, in embellishing manufac- 

 tured articles of all kinds, and in ideo- 

 graphic delineations on bark, skins, rock 

 surfaces, etc. A branch of njuch impor- 

 tance was, and is, the decoration of earth- 

 enware, as among the Pueblo tribes; and 

 allied to this was thepaintingof masks and 

 other carvings, as among the Haida and 

 Kwakiutlof the N. W., and the painting of 

 skins, as among the Plains tribes. In only 

 a few cases had considerable progress been 

 made in pictorial art; perspective, lightand 

 shade, and portraiture were unknown. 

 Engraving and stamping were favorite 

 means of decorating pottery among the 

 ancient tribes of e. United States, and 

 tattooing was common among many 

 tribes. {See Adornment, Dry-painting, En- 

 graving, Painting, Pictographs, Pottery, 

 Tattooing. ) 



Besides those branches of art in which 

 taste manifests itself in elaborations of 

 color, form, proportion, and arrangement 

 there are other arts coming less within 

 the rangeof the practical and having a cor- 

 respondingly greater proportion of the 

 symbolic and esthetic elements, namely, 

 music, poetry, and drama. All of these 

 have their root deep down in the substrata 

 of human culture, and they take a promi- 

 nent place in the ceremonial and esthetic 

 life of the primitive tribesmen. (See Dra- 

 matic representations, Mnsic, Poetry. ) 



For papers dealing with the primitive 

 art of the northern tribes, see various re- 

 ports of the Bureau of American Ethnol- 

 ogy, the LT. S. National Museum, and the 

 Smithsonian Institution; publications of 

 the Peabody Museum, the American Mu- 



