HUMAN SCULPTURES. 



The conclusion reached in the foregoing pages that the animal sculp- 

 tures are not "exactand faithful copies from nature," butare imitations 

 of a general rather than of a special character, such as comport better with 

 the state of art as developed among certain of the Indian tribes than 

 among a people that has achieved any notable advance in culture is im- 

 portant not only in its bearing on the questions previously noticed in 

 this paper, but ia its relation to another and highly interesting class of 

 sculptures. 



If a large proportion of the animal carvings are so lacking in artis- 

 tic accirracy as to make it possible to identify positively only the few 

 possessing the most strongly marked characters, how much faith is to 

 be placed in the ability of the Mound sculptor to fix in stone the features 

 and expressions of the human countenance, infinitely more difQcult sub- 

 ject for portrayal as this confessedly is? 



That Wilson regards the human sculptures as affording a basis for 



sound ethnological deductions is evident from the following paragraph, 



taken from Prehistoric Man, vol. 1, p. 461 : 



Alike from the mimito accuracy of mauy of the sculptures of animals, hereafter 

 refeiTed to, and from the correspondence to well known features of the modern Red 

 Indian suggested by some of the human heads, these miuature portraits may he as- 

 sumed, with every probability, to include faithful representatious of the predominant 

 physical features of the ancient people by whom they were executed. 



Short, too, accepting the popular idea that they are faithful and rec- 

 ognizable copies from nature, remarks in the North Americans of An- 

 tiquity, p. 98, ibid., p. 187 : 



There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into 

 perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images 

 exhumed from the mounds ; " and again, " The perfection of the animal representa- 

 tions furnish us the assurance that their sculi>tures of the human face were equally 

 true to nature. 



Squier and Davis also appear to have had no doubt whatever of the 

 capabilities of the MoundBuildersin the direction of human portraiture. 

 They are not only able to discern in the sculjjtured heads niceties of ex- 

 pression sufficient for the discrimination of the sexes, but, as well, to 

 enable them to iioint out such as are undoubtedly ancient and the work 

 of the Mound-Builders, and those of a more recent origin, the product 

 of the present Indians. Their main criterion of origin is, apparently, 

 that all of fine execution and finish were the work of the Mound sculp- 

 tors, and those roughly done and "immeasurably inferior to the relics of 

 the mounds," to use their own words, were the handicraft of the tribes 

 fouud in the country by the whites. Conclusions so derived, it may 

 strike some, are open to criticism, however well suited they may be to 

 meet the necessities of preconceived theories. 



After discussing in detail the methods of arranging the hair, the 

 paint lines, and tattooing, the features of the human carvings, Squier 

 160 



