Part 3 (1/2)
PROBABLE TOTEMIC ORIGIN.
With reference to the origin of these animal sculptures many writers appear inclined to the view that they are purely decorative and ornamental in character, _i.e._, that they are attempts at close imitations of nature in the sense demanded by high art, and that they owe their origin to the artistic instinct alone. But there is much in their general appearance that suggests they may have been totemic in origin, and that whatever of ornamental character they may possess is of secondary importance.
With, perhaps, no exceptions, the North American tribes practiced totemism in one or other of its various forms, and, although it by no means follows that all the carving and etchings of birds or animals by these tribes are totems, yet it is undoubtedly true that the totemic idea is traceable in no small majority of their artistic representations, whatever their form. As rather favoring the idea of the totemic meaning of the carvings, it may be pointed out that a considerable number of the recognizable birds and animals are precisely the ones known to have been used as totems by many tribes of Indians.
The hawk, heron, woodp.e.c.k.e.r, crow, beaver, otter, wild cat, squirrel, rattlesnake, and others, have all figured largely in the totemic divisions of our North American Indians. Their sacred nature too would enable us to understand how naturally pipes would be selected as the medium for totemic representations. It is also known to be a custom among Indian tribes for individuals to carve out or etch their totems upon weapons and implements of the more important and highly prized cla.s.s, and a variety of ideas, superst.i.tious and other, are a.s.sociated with the usage; as, for instance, in the case of weapons of war or implements of the chase, to impart greater efficiency to them. The etching would also serve as a mark of owners.h.i.+p, especially where property of certain kinds was regarded as belonging to the tribe or gens and not to the individual. Often, indeed, in the latter case the individual used the totem of his gens instead of the symbol or mark for his own name.
As a theory to account for the number and character of these animal carvings the totemic theory is perhaps as tenable as any. The origin and significance of the carvings may, however, involve many different and distinct ideas. It is certain that it is a common practice of Indians to endeavor to perpetuate the image of any strange bird or beast, especially when seen away from home, and in order that it may be shown to his friends. As what are deemed the marvellous features of the animal are almost always greatly exaggerated, it is in this way that many of the astonis.h.i.+ng productions noticeable in savage art have originated.
Among the Esquimaux this habit is very prominent, and many individuals can show etchings or carvings of birds and animals exhibiting the most extraordinary characters, which they stoutly aver and doubtless have come to believe they have actually seen.
ANIMAL MOUNDS.
As having, for the purposes of the present paper, a close connection with the animal carvings, another cla.s.s of remains left by the Mound-Builders--the animal mounds--may next engage attention. As in the case of the carvings, the resemblance of particular mounds to the animals whose names they bear is a matter of considerable interest on account of the theories to which they have given rise.
The conclusion reached with respect to the carvings that it is safe to rely upon their identification only in the case of animals possessed of striking and unique characters or presenting unusual forms and proportions, applies with far greater force to the animal mounds.
Perhaps in none of the latter can specific resemblances be found sufficient for their precise determination. So general are the resemblances of one cla.s.s that it has been an open question among archaeologists whether they were intended to represent the bodies and arms of men, or the bodies and wings of birds. Other forms are sufficiently defined to admit of the statement that they are doubtless intended for animals, but without enabling so much as a reasonable guess to be made as to the kind. Of others again it can be a.s.serted that whatever significance they may have had to the race that built them, to the uninstructed eyes of modern investigators they are meaningless and are as likely to have been intended for inanimate as animate objects.
There are many examples among the animal shapes that possess peculiarities affording no hint of animals living or extinct, but which are strongly suggestive of the play of mythologic fancy or of conventional methods of representing totemic ideas. As in the case of the animal carvings, the latter suggestion is perhaps the one that best corresponds with their general character.
THE ”ELEPHANT” MOUND.
By far the most important of the animal mounds, from the nature of the deductions it has given rise to, is the so-called ”Elephant Mound,” of Wisconsin.
By its discovery and description the interesting question was raised as to the contemporaneousness of the Mound-Builder and the mastodon, an interest which is likely to be further enhanced by the more recent bringing to light in Iowa of two pipes carved in the semblance of the same animal, as well as a tablet showing two figures a.s.serted by some archaeologists to have been intended for the same animal.
Although both the mound and pipes have been referred in turn to the peccary, the tapir, and the armadillo, it is safe to exclude these animals from consideration. It is indeed perhaps more likely that the ancient inhabitants of the Upper Mississippi Valley were autoptically acquainted with the mastodon than with either of the above-named animals, owing to their southern habitat.
Referring to the possibility that the mastodon was known to the Mound-Builders, it is impossible to fix with any degree of precision the time of its disappearance from among living animals. Mastodon bones have been exhumed from peat beds in this country at a depth which, so far as is proved by the rate of deposition, implies that the animal may have been alive within five hundred years. The extinction of the mastodon, geologically speaking, was certainly a very recent event, and, as an antiquity of upwards of a thousand or more years has been a.s.signed to some of the mounds, it is entirely within the possibilities that this animal was living at the time these were thrown up, granting even that the time of their erection has been overestimated. It must be admitted, therefore, that there are no inherent absurdities in the belief that the Mound-Builders were acquainted with the mastodon. Granting that they may have been acquainted with the animal, the question arises, what proof is there that they actually were? The answer to this question made by certain archaeologists is--the Elephant Mound, of Wisconsin.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 27.--The Elephant Mound, Grant County, Wisconsin.]
Recalling the fact that among the animal mounds many nondescript shapes occur which cannot be identified at all, and as many others which have been called after the animals they appear to most nearly resemble, carry out their peculiarities only in the most vague and general way, it is a little difficult to understand the confidence with which this effigy has been a.s.serted to represent the mastodon; for the mound (a copy of which as figured in the Smithsonian Annual Report for 1872 is here given) can by no means be said to closely represent the shape, proportions, and peculiarities of the animal whose name it bears. In fact, it is true of this, as of so many other of the effigies, the ident.i.ty of which must be guessed, that the resemblance is of the most vague and general kind, the figure simulating the elephant no more closely than any one of a score or more mounds in Wisconsin, except in one important particular, viz, the head has a prolongation or snout-like appendage, which is its chief, in fact its only real, elephantine character. If this appendage is too long for the snout of any other known animal, it is certainly too short for the trunk of a mastodon. Still, so far as this one character goes, it is doubtless true that it is more suggestive of the mastodon than of any other animal. No hint is afforded of tusks, ears, or tail, and were it not for the snout the animal effigy might readily be called a bear, it nearly resembling in its general make-up many of the so-called bear mounds figured by Squier and Davis from this same county in Wisconsin.
The latter, too, are of the same gigantic size and proportions.
If it can safely be a.s.sumed that an animal effigy without tusks, without ears, and without a tail was really intended to represent a mastodon, it would be stretching imagination but a step farther to call all the large-bodied, heavy-limbed animal effigies. .h.i.therto named bears, mastodons, attributing the lack of trunks, as well as ears, tusks, and tails, to inattention to slight details on the part of the mound artist.
It is true that one bit of good, positive proof is worth many of a negative character. But here the one positive resemblance, the trunk of the supposed elephant, falls far short of an exact imitation, and, as the other features necessary to a good likeness of a mastodon are wholly wanting, is not this an instance where the negative proof should be held sufficient to largely outweigh the positive?
In connection with this question the fact should not be overlooked that, among the great number of animal effigies in Wisconsin and elsewhere, this is the only one which even thus remotely suggests the mastodon. As the Mound Builders were in the habit of repeating the same animal form again and again, not only in the same but in widely distant localities, why, if this was really intended for a mastodon, are there no others like it? It cannot be doubted that the size and extraordinary features of this monster among mammals would have prevented it being overlooked by the Mound-Builders when so many animals of inferior interest engaged their attention. The fact that the mound is a nondescript, with no others resembling it, certainly lessens the probability that it was an intentional representation of the mastodon, and increases the likelihood that its slight resemblance was accidental; a slide of earth from the head, for instance, might readily be interpreted by the modern artist as a trunk, and thus the head be made to a.s.sume a shape in his sketch not intended by the original maker. As is well known, no task is more difficult for the artist than to transfer to paper an exact copy of such a subject. Especially hard is it for the artist to avoid unconsciously magnifying or toning down peculiarities according to his own conceptions of what was originally intended, when, as is often the case, time and the elements have combined to render shape and outlines obscure.
Archaeologic treatises are full of warning lessons of this kind, and the interpretations given to ancient works of art by the erring pencil of the modern artist are responsible for many an ingenious theory which the original would never have suggested. It may well be that future investigations will show that the one peculiarity which distinguishes the so-called Elephant Mound from its fellows is really susceptible of a much more commonplace explanation than has. .h.i.therto been given it.
Even if such explanation be not forthcoming, the ”Elephant Mound” of Wisconsin should be supplemented by a very considerable amount of corroborative testimony before being accepted as proof positive of the acquaintance of the Mound-Builders with the mastodon.
As regards likeness to the mastodon, the pipes before alluded to, copies of which as given in Barber's articles on Mound Pipes in American Naturalist for April, 1882, Figs. 17 and 18, are here presented, while not entirely above criticism, are much nearer what they have been supposed to be than the mound just mentioned.