iiENsiiAw.l CONVENTIONALISM IN ART. 165 



tbat the growth of the religious or mythologic sentiment has so far pre- 

 ceded or outgrown the development of art as to have had from the first 

 a dominating influence over it, and that the art of such tribes as most 

 strongly show its effect has never had what may be termed its natural 

 phase of develojiment, but has reached the conventional stage without 

 having passed through the intermediate imitative era. 



It is more natural to sui)i)ose, so far, at least as the North American 

 Indians are concerned, that the road to conventionalism has always led 

 through imitation. 



The argument, therefore, that because a tribe or people is less given 

 than another to conventional methods of art, it therefore must neces- 

 sarily be in a higher stage of culture, is entitled to much less weight 

 than it has sometimes received. Squier and Davis, for instance, refer- 

 ring to the Mound-Builders, state that "many of these {i. e., sculptures) 

 exhibit a close observaTice of nature such as we could only expect to 

 find among a people considerably advanced in the minor arts, and to 

 which the elaborate and laborious, but usually clumsy and ungraceful, 

 not to say unmeaning, productions of the savage can claim but a slight 

 approach." 



It is clearly not the intention of the above authors to claim an en- 

 tire absence of the grotesque method of treatment in specimens of the 

 Mound-Builder's art, since elsewhere they call attention to what appears 

 to be a caricature of the human face, as well as to the disproportionate 

 size of the heads of many of the animal carvings. Not only are the 

 heads of many of the carvings of disproportionate size, which, in in- 

 stances has the effect of actual distortion, but in not a few of the sculp- 

 tures nature, instead of being copied, has been trifled with and birds and 

 animals show peculiarities unknown to science and wlKch go far to prove 

 that the IMound-Builders, however else endowed, possessed lively imag- 

 inations and no little creative fancy. 



Decided traces of conventionalism also are to be found in many of 

 the animal carvings, and the method of indicating the wings and feath- 

 ers of birds, tiie scales of the serpent, &c., are almost precisely what is 

 to be observed in modern Indian productions of a similar kind. 



Few and faint as are these tendencies towards caricaturing and con- 

 ventionalizing as compared with what may be noted in the artistic pro- 

 ductions of the Haidahs, Chinooks,and other tribes of the Northwest, they 

 are yet sufficient to show that in these particulars no hard and fast line 

 can be drawn between the art of the Indian and of the Mound-Builder. 



As showing how narrow is the line that separates the conventional 

 and imitative methods of art, it is of interest to note that among 

 the Esquimaux the two stages of art are found flourishing side by 

 side. In their curious masks, carved into forms the most quaint and 

 grotesque, and in many of their carvings of animals, partaking as they 

 do of a half human, half animal character, we have abundant evidence 

 of what authors have characterized as savage taste in sculpture. But 



