Dl .« OR \ I l\ E MM 



1 25 



Yet, somewhal similar figures occur on the dresses of 



other tribes from whom no such symbolism has been 

 reported. This might be explained as brought about 

 by the other tribes borrowing the pattern from the 

 Teton ; but when many of these garments are examined, 

 we observe that often the U-shaped turn is made to 

 carry the beaded border around the hairy tail of the 

 deer left, or sewed, upon the skin from w r hich the gar- 

 ment was made. The tail tuft naturally falls just 

 below the yoke because the dresses are fashioned by 

 joining the tail ends of two skins by a yoke, or neck 

 piece. Hence, it seems more probable that the pattern 

 was developed as a mere matter of technique and that 

 later on the Teton read into it the symbolism of the 

 turtle, because of some fancied resemblance to that 

 animal and because of some special appropriateness. 



The preceding remarks apply exclusively to objects 

 in which the motive w r as chiefly decorative. There 

 was another kind of art in which the motive was mainly 

 religious, as the paintings upon the Blackfoot tipi, the 

 figures upon the ghost dance shirts of the Dakota, etc., 

 Such drawings, as with heraldry devices (p. 94) were 

 almost exclusively the work of men. Another sugges- 

 tive point is that this more serious art tends to be 

 realistic in contrast to the highly geometric form of 

 decorative art. 



In general, an objective study of this art suggests 

 that the realistic, decorative and other art seem to 

 have been greatly developed on the northeastern border 

 of the area, while the geometric was most accentuated 



