322 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. VOL. XXXIV. 
erable number of cases may be found in which designs that have de- 
veloped from technical motives receive a realistic significance. 
From a wider point of view, the secondary development of motives 
and their re-interpretation as realistic designs have been claimed by 
Heinrich Schurtz* and by Professor Hamlin? in a discussion of the 
development of architectural decorative designs. The secondary 
character of symbolic interpretation has also been set forth by A. L. 
Kroeber,’ Clark Wissler,? and by myself.¢ 
We have therefore at the present time three distinct theories 
regarding the development of decorative design: First, the theory of 
the realistic origin of conventional motives; second, that of the tech- 
nical origin of conventional motives; and, third, the theory that the 
explanations of conventional motives are essentially secondary in 
character, and due to a later association of the existing decorative 
~forms with realistic forms. 
I shall discuss in the following pages the decorative designs of 
Alaskan needlecases, largely from the region between the mouth of 
the Yukon River and the western part of Norton Sound, which seem 
to throw considerable hght upon the history of decorative design, 
and illustrate the applicability of these various theories. 
Among the carvings of Alaskan Eskimo we find a very large num- 
ber of needlecases of peculiar form. They are of the characteristic 
tubular type of the Eskimo needlecase, in which the needle is inserted 
in a strip of skin pulled into a tube, which protects the needle 
against breakage. ‘The peculiar type to which I here refer has, on 
the whole, a tube shghtly bulging in the middle, and expanding into 
two wings or flanges at the upper end. It is characteristic of almost 
all these specimens that at a short distance below the flanges there are 
two small knobs on opposite sides of the tube. In some cases these 
are well marked, while in other cases they are so diminutive that they 
can not be seen at all, although they can be felt when moving the 
finger gently over the surface of the tube. They must be considered 
as one of the characteristic features of this type, which is so well 
defined, and whose distribution is so restricted that there can not be 
the slightest doubt as to the unity of its origin. 
These needlecases have also a characteristic Jacanation. On the 
whole, there is a tendency to set off a shghtly concave surface, which 
extends along the faces of the tube, between the flanges and farther - 
down. This concave face may be observed on many of the needle- 
4 Urgeschichte der Kultur, p. 540. 
6The American Architect and Building News, 1898. 
¢ Decorative symbolism of the Arapaho, Am. Anthr., n. s. III, p. 329. 
@Decorative Art of the Sioux Indians, Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., XVIII, 
1904, pp. 231 et seq. 
€The Decorative Art of the North American Indians, Pop. Science Monthly, 
19038, pp. 481 et seq.- 
