9 
This album is, therefore, a contribution to supply the demand that 
arose during the war. The specimens illustrated represent the earliest 
art of Canada. They are scattered in many collections from Victoria and 
San Francisco to London, Berlin, and Florence, as indicated in the legends 
and the list of collections given on page 18 et seq. Only some of them have 
been previously illustrated. 
The drawings, which in most of the plates represent the specimens 
one-half natural size, have been made by W. J. Wintemberg and O. E. 
Prud’homme, both of the Victoria Memorial Museum. Mr. Wintemberg 
acted as general assistant in the preparation of the legends, especially in 
the search for stray and obscure data. 
The three hundred and eighty-nine figures in the eighty-four plates of 
this publication illustrate many different specimens, each showing one or 
more motives, in some single cases many different motives. Each specimen 
or every motive on each specimen may inspire, or give rise to, a great many 
designs. This is illustrated by the prehistoric work itself; for instance, 
the clubs made of whale’s bone illustrated in Plates XXI-XXV. In these 
the motive is a bird’s head capped by a mask representing a bird’s head, 
and this single motive the prehistoric club makers have varied in all the 
different ways shown. 
The series of specimens illustrated is practically a complete exposition 
of the prehistoric art of Canada, although it does not include all the simplest 
and crudest art, but only what seemed likely to be of use to manufacturers. 
It includes also objects — such as arrow-points and pestles — which are gener- 
ally considered under other subjects than art in descriptions of prehistoric 
cultures of Canada. They are included here because they have beautiful forms, 
capable of inspiring useful shapes, designs, and trade-marks for manufactures. 
Prehistoric Canadian art objects are found in all parts of southern 
Canada, that is, in all the parts from which we have adequate collections 
of prehistoric objects. 
The prehistoric art of Canada, like the historic native art, may be 
classified at least into great groups. These correspond in a general way 
to the five great modern Indian culture areas of the country, which in 
turn coincide with five natural divisions, namely, the Pacific coast, 
the Interior plateau and Mackenzie basin, the Great Plains, the Eastern 
Woodlands, and the Arctic coast. 
The illustrations in the album have been arranged in groups corre- 
sponding to these areas, in the order above named. 
The Pacific coast is characterized by much fog and rain, and dense, 
dark forests of great trees, especially cedar. This area had an abundant sea- 
food supply including whales, seals, salmon, and shell fish. The Indians, at 
least recently, had a highly developed realistic and conventional art, largely 
representing animal forms. They were without pottery. The several tribes 
had a very highly developed social organization and financial system. 
The Indians of the Interior plateau and Mackenzie basin, at least 
recently, had a less realistic art, which was largely geometric and picto- 
graphic, highly conventionalized and symbolic, although occasional speci- 
mens seem to have been brought from the coast or made in imitation of 
the coast art. They were without pottery and had a less highly developed 
social organization and financial system than the coast tribes. 
