98 
ART 
The art of the people was mainly decorative and is seen on pottery, 
pipes, and stone, bone, and antler artifacts. It is probable that perishable 
materials, such as skins, bark, and wood, were decorated with painted 
designs, 1 and that life forms were in some cases carved in wood; 2 but the 
people here seem to have found their chief channel for artistic expression 
in the decoration of their pots and pipes. 
The art is mainly geometric, with both curvilinear and rectilinear 
designs. There are a number of life forms carved in stone and antler 
and modelled in earthenware. 
The geometric elements used in the decoration of earthenware pots 
comprise: notches; round, half-round, oval, oviform, oblong, lenticular, 
triangular, crescentic, and crude or irregular depressions; vertical, diagonal, 
horizontal, and curved lines; circles; and ornamentation in relief. A few 
of the more simple elements occur on earthenware pipes and a few bone 
objects. 
Notches, which are the most simple decorative elements, occur on 
the edges of rim fragments of a few pots {See Plate II, figure 26) ; on the 
outer and inner angles of a large number of other rims, in many cases on 
both outer and inner angles; on a few shoulder fragments; on the stems 
of a few earthenware pipes; and on a few bone specimens {See Plate XIV, 
figures 28 and 32, and Plate XVII, figure 9). There are notch-like indenta- 
tions along the louver angle of the collar of many pots, some being round; 
oval {See Plate IV, figure 14, and Plate VII, figure 3) ; oviform (See Plate 
VIII, figure 2); oblong {See Plate VIII, figure 10); rectangular; and 
lenticular {See Plate IV, figure 19, Plate V, figure 12, Plate VI, figure 10, 
Plate VII, figure 7, Plate VIII, figures 19, 20, and Plate IX, figures 1, 18). 
Other indentations, which might be described as clavate, and which are 
somewhat like the lenticular ones, except that one of the ends is much 
wider and rounded, occur on the lower angles of a few rims. There are 
aico triangular indentations; rhomboid-ovate depressions occur on the lower 
angle of another rim. 
Notches of the kind seen in Plate III, figures 22, 31, 35, Plate IV, 
figures 8, 12, 18, Plate VII, figure 2, Plate VIII, figure 8, and Plate IX, 
figures 2, 5-7, occur on the lower angle of rims of many pots, in a few cases 
forming the sole decoration, but they are not seen on very narrow collars 
or on those with very narrow, angular lips. Similar indentations occur 
on pottery from sites of the same culture in Grenville, Stormont, and Glen- 
garry counties, Ontario; the site of Hochelaga (See Dawson, 3, Figure 16), 
and other sites near St. Regis and Lanoraie, Quebec; from a site in Jeffer- 
son county, New York (See Skinner, 4, Plate XXVIII) ; and from Vermont 
(See Perkins, 3, Plate XXXVI, figure 3). They are also seen on early 
Huron pottery from Victoria county (See Boyle, 4, Plate I, figures 10, 
11, 14, 18), and on pottery from sites near Seneca river, New York (See 
Beauchamp, 2, Figures 17, 57), but rarely on non-Iroquoian pottery, occur- 
•Although Cartier did not observe anything of the kind at Hochelaga, it is possible that, as among the Oneida, 
ae we learn from Van Curler, the people of this site painted “all sorts of beasts” on the fronts of the houses and that 
around the entrance of the grave houses they "painted dogs, and deer, and snakes, and other beasts” (Wilson, pp. 
92 , 93 ). 
Wan Curler speaks of a_“big wooden bird” over the entrance to the chief’s grave at Oneida castle, and on another 
page he mentions “three big wooden images, of cut wood, like men,” which stood above the gate of the castle. 
