INDIAN AND MOUND-BUILDERS' ART COMPARED. 



Turuing from special illustrations of the artistic skill of tbe Mound- 

 Builders, brief attention may be paid to their art in its more general 

 features, and as comi)ared with art as found among our Indian tribes. 



Among some of the latter the artistic instinct, while deriving its 

 characteristic features, as among the Mound-Builders, from animated 

 nature, exhibits a decided tendency towards the production of conven- 

 tional forms, and often finds expression in creations of the mostgrotesque 

 and imaginative character. 



While this is true of some tribes it is by no means true of all, nor is 

 it true of all the art products of even those tribes most given to con- 

 ventional art. But even were it true in its broadest terms, it is more 

 than doubtful if the significance of the fact has not been greatly over- 

 estimated. Some authors indeed seem to discern in the introduction of 

 the grotesque element aud the substitution of conventional designs of 

 animals for a more natural portrayal, a ditierence sutficient to mark, 

 not distinct eras of art culture merely, but difierent races with very 

 ditt'ereut modes of art expression. 



To trace the origin of art among primitive peoples, and to note the 

 successive steps by which decorative art grew from its probable origin 

 in the rendily recognized adornments of nature and in the mere "acci- 

 dents of mauufacture," as they have been termed, would be not only 

 interesting but highly instructive. Such a studj^ should afford us a 

 clew to the origin and significance of conventional as contrasted with 

 imitative art. 



The natural process of the evolution of art would seem to be from 

 the purely imitative to the conventional, the tendency being for artistic 

 exi)ression of a partially or wholly imaginative character to sui)plant 

 or supplement the imitative form only in obedience to external influ- 

 ences, especially those of a religious or superstitious kind. In this con- 

 nection it is interesting to note that even among tribes of the Northwest, 

 the Haidahs, for instance, whose carvings or paintings of birds and 

 animals are almost invariably treated in a manner so highly conven- 

 tional or are so distorted and caricatured as to be nearly or quite 

 unrecognizable, it is still some natural object, as a well known bird or 

 animal, that underlies and gives primary shape to the design. How- 

 ever highly conveutionalized or grotesque in ap])earance such artistic 

 productions may be, evidences of an underlying imitative design may 

 always be detected ; proof, seemingly, that the conventional is a later 

 stage of art superimjjosed upon the more natural by the requirements of 

 mythologic fancies. 



As it is with any particular example of savage artistic fancy, so is it 

 with the art of certain tribes aa a whole. Nor does it seem possible 

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