Part 4 (1/2)

Alike from the minute accuracy of many of the sculptures of animals, hereafter referred to, and from the correspondence to well known features of the modern Red Indian suggested by some of the human heads, these miniature portraits may be a.s.sumed, with every probability, to include faithful representations of the predominant physical features of the ancient people by whom they were executed.

Short, too, accepting the popular idea that they are faithful and recognizable copies from nature, remarks in the North Americans of Antiquity, p. 98, _ibid._, p. 187:

There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the mounds;” and again, ”The perfection of the animal representations furnish us the a.s.surance that their sculptures of the human face were equally true to nature.

Squier and Davis also appear to have had no doubt whatever of the capabilities of the Mound-Builders in the direction of human portraiture. They are not only able to discern in the sculptured heads niceties of expression sufficient for the discrimination of the s.e.xes, but, as well, to enable them to point out such as are undoubtedly ancient and the work of the Mound-Builders, and those of a more recent origin, the product of the present Indians. Their main criterion of origin is, apparently, that all of fine execution and finish were the work of the Mound sculptors, and those roughly done and ”immeasurably inferior to the relics of the mounds,” to use their own words, were the handicraft of the tribes found in the country by the whites. Conclusions so derived, it may strike some, are open to criticism, however well suited they may be to meet the necessities of preconceived theories.

After discussing in detail the methods of arranging the hair, the paint lines, and tattooing, the features of the human carvings, Squier and Davis arrive at the conclusion that the ”physiological characteristics of these heads do not differ essentially from those of the great American family.”

Of later writers some agree with Squier and Davis in believing the type ill.u.s.trated by these heads to be Indian; others agree rather with Wilson, who dissents from the view expressed by Squier and Davis, and, in conformity with the predilections visible throughout his work, is of the opinion that the Mound-Builders were of a distinct type from the North American Indian, and that ”the majority of sculptured human heads. .h.i.therto recovered from their ancient depositories do not reproduce the Indian features.” (Wilson's Prehistoric Man, vol. 1, p. 469.) Again, Wilson says that the diversity of type found among the human sculptures ”proves that the Mound-Builders were familiar with the American Indian type, but nothing more.”--_Ibid._, p. 469.

The varying type of physiognomy represented by these heads would better indicate that their resemblances are the result of accident rather than of intention. For the same reason that the sculptured animals of the same species display great differences of form and expression, according to the varying skill of the sculptors or the unexacting demands made by a rude condition of art, so the diversified character of the human faces is to be ascribed, not to the successful perpetuation in stone by a master hand of individual features, but simply to a want of skill on the part of the sculptor. The evidence afforded by the animal sculptures all tends to the conclusion that exact individual portraiture would have been impossible to the mound sculptor had the state of culture he lived in demanded it; the latter is altogether improbable. A glance at the above quotations will show that it is the a.s.sumed fidelity to nature of the animal carvings and their fine execution which has been relied upon in support of a similar claim for the human sculptures. As this claim is seen to have but slight basis in fact the main argument for a.s.serting the human sculptures to be faithful representations of physical features, and to embody exact racial characters falls to the ground, and it must be admitted as in the last degree improbable that the art of the mound sculptor was adequate for the task of accurate human portraiture.

To base important ethnologic deductions upon the evidence afforded by the human sculptures in the present state of our knowledge concerning them would seem to be utterly unscientific and misleading.

Copies of several of the heads as they appear in ”Ancient Monuments”

(pp. 244-247) are here subjoined to show the various types of physiognomy ill.u.s.trated by them:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 31. Fig. 32. Fig. 33. Human Carvings from the Mounds.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 34. Fig. 35. Human Carvings from the Mounds.]

Could the many other stone and terra-cotta sculptures of the human face which have been ascribed to the Mound-Builders be reproduced here it would be seen that the specimens ill.u.s.trated above are among the very best. In not a few, traces of the grotesque are distinctly visible, and there is little in their appearance to suggest that they had a different origin or contain a deeper meaning than similar productions found among present Indians. As each of the many carvings differ more or less from every other, it will at once be perceived that the advocates of different theories can readily find in the series abundant testimony in support of any and all a.s.sumptions they may choose to advance.

INDIAN AND MOUND-BUILDERS' ART COMPARED.

Turning from special ill.u.s.trations of the artistic skill of the Mound-Builders, brief attention may be paid to their art in its more general features, and as compared with art as found among our Indian tribes.

Among some of the latter the artistic instinct, while deriving its characteristic features, as among the Mound-Builders, from animated nature, exhibits a decided tendency towards the production of conventional forms, and often finds expression in creations of the most grotesque and imaginative character.

While this is true of some tribes it is by no means true of all, nor is it true of all the art products of even those tribes most given to conventional art. But even were it true in its broadest terms, it is more than doubtful if the significance of the fact has not been greatly overestimated. Some authors indeed seem to discern in the introduction of the grotesque element and the subst.i.tution of conventional designs of animals for a more natural portrayal, a difference sufficient to mark, not distinct eras of art culture merely, but different races with very different modes of art expression.

To trace the origin of art among primitive peoples, and to note the successive steps by which decorative art grew from its probable origin in the readily recognized adornments of nature and in the mere ”accidents of manufacture,” as they have been termed, would be not only interesting, but highly instructive. Such a study should afford us a clew to the origin and significance of conventional as contrasted with imitative art.