622 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 187 



As evidenced by the exquisite finish and ornamental designs of so many 

 of the implements, weapons, and utensils I have described, the ancient key 

 dwellers excelled especially in the art of wood-carving. While their arts in 

 painting were also of an unusually highly developed character — as the work 

 of a primitive people — their artistic ability in relief-work was preeminently so. 

 This was further illustrated in a little wooden doll, representing a round-faced 

 woman wearing a sort of cloak or square tunic, that was found near the 

 southernmost shell-bench along the western side of the court, in Section 15. 

 Near this little figure was a superbly carved and finished statuette in dark- 

 colored, close-grained wood, of a mountain-lion or panther-god. . . . Nothing 

 thus far found in America so vividly calls to mind the best art of the ancient 

 Egyptians or Assyrians, as does this little statuette of the Lion-God, in which 

 it was evidently intended to represent a manlike being in the guise of a panther. 

 Alhough it is barely six inches in height, its dignity of pose may fairly be 

 termed "heroic," and its conventional lines are to the last degree masterly. 

 While the head and features — ears, eyes, nostrils and mouth — are most real- 

 istically treated, it is observable that not only the legs and feet, but also even 

 the paws, which rest so stoutly upon the thighs or knees of the sitting or 

 squatting figure, are cut off, unfinished ; bereft, as it were, of their talons. . . . 



To me the remains that were most significant of all discovered by us in the 

 depths of the muck, were the carved and painted wooden masks and animal 

 figureheads. The masks were exceptionally well modeled, usually in realistic 

 representation of human features, and were life-size; hollowed to fit the face, 

 and provided at either side, both above and below, with string-holes for at- 

 tachment thereto. Some of them were also bored at intervals along the top, 

 for the insertion of feathers or other ornaments, and others were accom- 

 panied by thick, gleaming white conch-shell eyes . . . that could be inserted or 

 removed at will, and which were concave — like the hollowed and polished eye- 

 pupils in the carving of the mountain-lion god — to increase their gleam. Of 

 these masks we found fourteen or fifteen fairly well-preserved specimens, be- 

 sides numerous others which were so decayed that, although not lost to study, 

 they could not be recovered. The animal figureheads, as I have called them, 

 were somewhat smaller than the heads of the creatures they represented. 

 Nearly all of them were formed in parts; that is, the head and face of each 

 was carved from a single block; while the ears and other accessory parts, and, 

 in case of the representation of birds, the wings, were formed from separate 

 pieces. Among these animal figureheads were those of the snouted leather- 

 back turtle, the alligator, the pelican, the fish-hawk and the owl ; the wolf, the 

 wild-cat, the bear and the deer. But curiously enough, the human masks and 

 these animal figureheads were associated in the finds, and by a study of the 

 conventional decorations or painted designs upon them, they were found to be 

 very closely related symbolically, as though for use together in dramaturgic 

 dances or ceremonials. On one or two occasions I found the masks and 

 figureheads actually bunched, just as they would have been had they thus 

 pertained to a single ceremonial and had been put away when not in use, 

 tied or suspended together. In case of the animal figureheads the movable 

 parts, such as the ears, wings, legs, etc., had in some instances been laid be- 

 side the representations of the faces and heads and wrapped up with them. 

 We found two of these figureheads — those of the wolf and deer — thus care- 

 fully wrapped in bark matting, but we could neither preserve this wrapping, 

 nor the strips of palmetto leaves or flags that formed an inner swathing around 

 them. The occurrence of these animal figureheads in juxtaposition to the 

 human masks which had so evidently been used ceremonially in connection 



