SCULPTURES. 



The former Indians of California were unquestionably superior work- 

 ers in stone, and often finished their weapons and utensils made of that 

 material with care, but they cannot, as a people, be regarded as sculptors in 

 the ordinary acceptance of the term. Yet we find that they had made a 

 beginning in ornamental art, the further development of which was prob- 

 ably prevented by the intrusion of the white race. Both north and south 

 of the Californians, sculpture early attained its highest development on the 

 continent. Thus on the Columbia River and northward on the coast we 

 find tribes, here and there, who were, and in some instances still are, skillful 

 workers in stone, bone, and wood, and also sculptors of considerable ability. 

 The results attained were in great part the imitation of natural forms, but 

 with these were combined the grotesque, and a peculiar style of grouping, 

 which is often expressive of savage humor, with a symmetry of design 

 and execution that could hardly be attained without long experience in 

 the art. At the south, in Mexico and Central America, we also find a 

 similar barbaric art, in very many respects agreeing in its forms with that 

 of the north ; but here, associated with a comparatively high plastic art, we 

 have massive work in stone, and the sculptors not only taking isolated 

 portions of the human body for their model, but often treating their subject 

 in a conventional manner, and generally surrounding the chief objects in 

 their design with a profusion of ornamentation which, though detracting from 

 the force of their work, is evidence of the high stage they had reached in its 

 mechanical execution. The Californians were without knowledge of the 

 plastic art, and therefore, like their northern neighbors, could not derive 

 ideas from that ; but like them they were provided with soft or easily 

 worked stone, and it is in a variety of serpentine, capable of a high polish, 



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