4 

 Occurrences of the Motive South of St. Lawrence River. 



PRIMARY AREA. GROUP I : PENOBSCOT, 



MALEC1TE, PASSAMAQUODDY, 



AND MIC MAC. 



Penobscot. 



The Penobscot Indians of Maine are about at the southern 

 boundary of the area of distribution. The double-curve with 

 them is the unit of design, embracing practically all their patterns 

 except a few realistic floral and a few geometrical ones. Fig. 4 

 shows a selected set fairly typical for this tribe. Here the field 

 of decoration includes clothing, birch bark articles, and handles 

 of utensils. The technique was formerly in moose hair embroidery 

 and painting, which were later replaced by beadwork. Etching 

 on the surface of birch bark and incising in wood and bone also 

 display the same designs. Gently rounding curves characterize 

 the Penobscot examples, which range from comparatively simple 

 forms to the most elaborate. Taken as a whole they show little 

 uniformity. 



They term the decorations in general beskivasawek "flower 

 or blossom," but do not attach any particular identity to form, 

 except to class the ovate leaves as willow leaves, and the spirals as 

 fern shoots and tendrils in the most haphazard way. There seems, 

 however, to have been in the past, if not now, judging from sur- 

 viving ideas, a slight tendency for the women to connect the 

 figures with medicinal plants, as though there might have been 

 some feeling of protective magic underlying their use as decora- 

 tions upon personal property. ''This feature, however, is not 

 by any means an emphatic one. 



Realistic floral figures, leaves, buds, blossoms, merge with 

 the curve types, as augments, and also appear separately as 

 design elements, though they remain secondary in importance 

 to the double-curve motive. 



The primary significance of the double-curve and scroll 

 figures among the Penobscot was a sort of political symbolism. 

 The double curves represented the bonds uniting the different 



