154 



ORNAMENT 



[b. a. b. 



tive may suggest some symbol or sacred 

 creature; thus a mere crooked line previ- 

 ously meaningless may l)ecome a serpent 

 with a whole train of superstitions at- 

 tached; or it may be made to stand for 

 lightning, the shaft of the gods; or it may 

 be assumed to represent a river about 

 which the fathers have fabricated a 

 myth. Ornament belonging to or de- 

 rived from religious and other symbolic 

 forms of art, however, is originally fully 

 burdened with associated ideas. The art 

 of a highly religious people is thus es- 

 pecially rich in ideographic elements, and 

 the character of these elements is in a 

 large measure determined by the nature 

 of the particular environment. An agri- 

 cultural people, for example, occupying 

 an arid region and devoting much atten- 

 tion to the ceremonial bringing of rain, 

 employs a great number of symbols rep- 

 resenting clouds, lightning, rain, water, 

 and water animals, and these are intro- 

 duced freely into its decorative art. A 

 maritime people, depending on the prod- 

 ucts of the sea for subsistence, embodies 

 in its mythology the creatures of the sea 

 and the birds and the beasts that prey 

 upon them, and sym])ols depicting these 

 have a prominent place in its ornamental 

 art. The dominant thought of a people 

 in other than the religious realm finds 

 expression in pictography and in this 

 form passes into ornament. It is observed 

 that warlike peoples, as the tribes of the 

 plains, devoted to military achievement, 

 are wont to embody in their art, in asso- 

 ciation "more or less intiniate with their 

 religious symbols, the signs and emblems 

 of daring deeds, and with some of these 

 tribes a system of military devices has 

 arisen which constitutes a primitive phase 

 of heraldry (q. v. ). These devices, ap- 

 plied to shields, costumes, and dwell- 

 ings, take their place in the decorative 

 arts of the people. 



Considerable diversity in the ideas as- 

 sociated with decoration arises from differ- 

 ences in the spheres of activity of the men 

 and the women. Delineative elements 

 having their origin in myth and cere- 

 mony, in military occupations and the 

 chase, and in pictography generally, are 

 largely the creations of the men; the ac- 

 tivities of the women are connected in a 

 great measure with the domestic estab- 

 lishment, and embellishments employed 

 in the strictly domestic arts consist in 

 large part of designs derived from non- 

 syndjolic sources or those which have as- 

 sociated meanings obtained traditionally, 

 or from dreams, or such as are invented 

 to please the fancy. However, articles 

 made by the women for the men, as 

 clothing and certain ceremonial objects, 

 may be embellished with subjects per- 

 taining to masculine activities. So differ- 

 ent is the point of view of the two sexes 



that designs identical in origin and ap- 

 pearance, used by the men and the 

 women respectively, have wholly dis- 

 tinct interpretations. It would seem 

 that where a marked difference exists 

 between the decorative work of the men 

 and the women, especially among the 

 more primitive tribes, that of the women 

 is less distinctly symbolic than that of 

 the men, less graphic in character, and 

 more fully dominated by simple esthetic 

 requirements. ' 



Generally speaking it may be said that 

 each tribe employs in its ornament a 

 group of elements or motives, ideographic 

 and nonideographic, more or less dis- 

 tinctly its own and variously derived, and 

 having characteristics determined largely 

 by the grade and kind of culture and the 

 nature of the immediate environment. 

 The ornament of one tribe acts upon that 

 of a neighboring tribe and is reacted 

 upon according to the degrees of tribal 

 intimacy and culture relationship, and 

 the motives with or without their associ- 

 ated significance pass from one to the 

 other, undergoing changes more or less 

 radical and giving rise to endless variants. 

 The ornamental art of any tribe is thus, 

 as a rule, highly composite in style and 

 significance, being derived through a 

 plexus of channels and conditioned at all 

 times by the particular environment. 



In view of these facts it behooves the 

 student of ornament to approach the sub- 

 jects of origin and significance with due 

 caution. He should remember that iden- 

 tical or closely analogous conventional 

 forms may have diverse origins, and that 

 the exact significance of a given ornament, 

 formal or graphic, must be sought, not 

 in analogous devices of other peoples and 

 not in explanations previously obtained, 

 but from the particular tribe, clan, soci- 

 ety, or individual found using it, and 

 that a search for ultimate meanings, if not 

 necessarily futile, is fraught with peculiar 

 difficulties. 



Consult Balfour, Evolution of Decora- 

 tive Art, 1893; Barrett in Am. Anthrop., 

 VII, no. 4, 1905; Beauchamp, Metallic 

 Ornaments of N. Y. Inds., 1903; Boas (1) 

 inPop. Sci. Mo., lxiii, no. 6, 1903, (2) in 

 Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., ix, 1897; Culin 

 in Bull. Free Mus. Univ. Pa., n, 235, 1900; 

 Cushing in Proc. Am. Philos. Soc, xxxv, 

 1896; Dixon in Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. 

 Hist., XVII, pt. 3, 1905; Emmons in Mem. 

 Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., in, Anthrop. ii, 

 pt. 2, 1903; Farrand, ibid., ii, Anthrop. 

 I, pt. 5, 1900; Haddon, Evolution in Art, 

 1895; Hamlin in Am. Architect, lix, no. 

 1160, 1898; Holmes (1) in 4th Rep. B. 

 A. E., 1886, (2) in Am. Anthrop., in, 

 no. 2, 1890, (3) in 6th Rep. B. A. E., 1888, 

 (4) in Am. Anthrop., v, no. 1, 1892; 

 Kroeber (1) in Am. Anthrop., n. s., in, 

 no. 2, 1901, (2) in Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. 



