Part 22

Such carvings had no other aim, we may presume, than the decoration of a favourite weapon, or the beguiling of a leisure hour. But they show the fruits of skill, and the observation of a practised eye, by the ingenious workmen whose drawings and etchings merit our careful study. Considerable taste and still more ingenuity are exhibited by many of the American aborigines, in their decorative carvings, and the ornamentation both of their weapons and dress. The characteristics of Eskimo art have been noted. The Thlinkets of Alaska, lying on their western border, manifest a like skill, making ladles and spoons from the horns of the deer, the mountain sheep, and goat, and carving them with elaborate ingenuity. They also work in walrus ivory, fashioning their bodkins, combs, and personal ornaments with varied ornamentation; decorate their knife-handles of bone, their paddles, and other implements; and carve grotesque masks, with much inventive ingenuity in the variety of the design, though scarcely in a style of high art. But it is interesting to note the different phases of this imitative faculty. Some tribes, such as the Algonkins, confine their art mainly to literal reproductions of natural objects; while others, such as the Chimpseyans or Babeens, the Tawatins, and the Clalam Indians of Vancouver Island, have developed a conventional style of art, often exhibiting much ingenious fancy in its grotesque ornamentation. This is specially apparent in the claystone pipes of the Chimpseyans, in carving which they rival the ingenious Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands in exuberance of detail. But while the art has become conventional, where it is not displaced by imitations of the novel objects brought under their notice in their intercourse with Europeans its combinations are in most cases referable to native myths.

In many of the elaborately carved Chimpseyan pipes, their special purpose seems to be lost sight of in the whimsical profusion of ornament, embracing every native or foreign object that has chanced to attract the notice of the sculptor. Nevertheless, it may help us to do justice to the true aim of the Indian artist, if we call to remembrance how much of Christian symbolism was embodied in many a mediæval sculpturing of what, to the unsympathetic observer, seem now only conventional vines and lilies, or a mere fanciful grouping of dragons and snakes, with apples, figs, grapes, and thorns. This has to be kept in view while noting in the pipe sculptures human figures in strangest varieties of posture, intertwined with zoomorphic devices, in which the bear and the frog have a prominent place; and, as will be seen, a mythic significance. It is no less suggestive to note, alike in the Chimpseyan and in the Tawatin and Haidah carvings, curious analogies to the sculptures of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America. This resemblance has been noticed, independently, by many observers.

Marchand, a French navigator who visited the Queen Charlotte Islands in 1791, after having recently seen the Mexican sculpture and paintings, formed the opinion that the Haidah works of art could be distinctly traced to Aztec origin.[90] He remarks of their paintings and carvings: “The taste for ornament prevails in all the works of their hands; their canoes, their chests, and different little articles of furniture in use among them, are covered with figures which might be taken for a species of hieroglyphics; fishes and other animals, heads of men, and various whimsical designs, are mingled and confounded in order to compose a subject. It undoubtedly will not be expected that these figures should be perfectly regular and the proportions in them exactly observed, for here every man is a painter and sculptor; yet they are not deficient in a sort of elegance and perfection.”

The imitative faculty thus manifested so generally among a people still in the condition of savage life, shows itself no less strikingly in the modern claystone carvings of objects of foreign introduction. The collection formed by the United States Exploring Expedition, and largely augmented since, includes numerous carvings in which representations of log and frame houses, forts, boats, horses, and fire-arms, are introduced; and where cords, pulleys, anchors, and other details copied from the shipping which frequent the coasts, furnish evidence of a practised eye, and considerable powers of imitation. To the unfamiliar observer, the result presents, in many cases, a very arbitrary and even incongruous jumble of miscellaneous details. But, most probably, the native designer had, in every case, a special meaning, and even some specific incident in view.

The interest awakened by such manifestations of observant accuracy and artistic skill among savage tribes is not diminished by the fact that in nearly all other respects they are devoid of culture. Notwithstanding the absence in most of them of the very rudiments of civilisation, experience proves that among the tribes to the west of the Rocky Mountains distinguished by artistic capacity, there is an aptitude for industrious and settled habits, the want of which is so noticeable in the nomad tribes of the prairies. Their linear patterns are often singularly graceful; and they employ colour lavishly, and with some degree of taste, in decorating their masks, boats, and dwellings. This is specially noticeable among the Haidahs, in the different dialects of whose language we find not only names for nearly all the primary colours, but also the word _kigunijago_, “a picture.” The symbolical and mythological significance of many of their carvings is indisputable; while the affinities, traceable at times to the ornamentation most characteristic of the architectural remains in the principal seats of native American civilisation in Central America, confer on them a peculiar interest and value.

The curiously conventional style of ornamentation of the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte Islands is lavishly expended on their idols, or manitous, carved in black argillaceous stone, and on their council-houses and lodges. In front of each Haidah dwelling stands an ornamented column, formed of the trunk of a tree, large enough, in many cases, to admit of the doorway being cut through it. These columns, or “totem-poles” as they have been called, are, in some cases, sixty or seventy feet high, elaborately carved with the symbols or totems of their owners. The height of the pole indicates the rank of the inmate, and any attempt at undue assumption in this respect is jealously resented by rival chiefs. The symbols of their four clans—the eagle, beaver, dog-fish, and black duck,—are represented in conventional style on the carved house-pole, along with their individual or family totems. In some cases boxes are attached to the poles containing the remains of their dead. Dr. Hoffman, whose previous studies in native symbolism and ideography specially prepared him for the intelligent observation of such monuments, has furnished an interpretation of their most familiar devices. “When the posts are the property of some individual, the personal totemic sign is carved at the top. Other animate and grotesque figures follow in rapid succession, down to the base, so that unless one is familiar with the mythology and folk-lore of the tribe, the subject would be utterly unintelligible. A drawing was made of one post with only seven pronounced carvings, but which related to three distinct myths. The bear, in the act of devouring a hunter, or tearing out his heart, is met with on many of the posts, and appears to form an interesting theme for the native artists. The story connected with this is as follows:—Toivats, an Indian, had occasion to visit the lodge of the King of the Bears, but found him out. The latter’s wife, however, was at home, and Toivats made love to her. Upon the return of the Bear, everything seemed to be in confusion. He charged his wife with infidelity, which she denied. The Bear pretended to be satisfied, but his suspicions caused him to watch his wife very closely, and he soon found that her visits away from the lodge for wood and water occurred each day at precisely the same hour. Then the Bear tied a magic thread to her dress, and when his wife again left the lodge, he followed the magic thread, and soon came upon his wife, finding her in the arms of Toivats. The Bear was so enraged at this that he tore out the heart of the destroyer of his happiness.”[91] Dr. Hoffman found this myth, with the corresponding carvings in walrus ivory, among the Thlinkit Indians, who, as he conceives, obtained both the story and the design for their ivory carvings from the Haidahs. This appears to receive confirmation from the peculiar style of art common to both.

But the decorations of the Haidah lodge-poles admit at times of a much more homely interpretation. Mr. James G. Swan, the author of an article on “The Haidah Indians,” in Vol. XXI. of the _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, in a communication to the _West Shore_, an Oregon journal, thus describes an Indian lodge and house-pole which attracted his notice, owing to its carved figures, in round hat and other European costume, surmounting the two corner-posts of the lodge. He accordingly made a careful drawing of the whole, which, as he says, “is interesting as illustrative of the grim humour of an Indian in trying to be avenged for what he considered an act of injustice a number of years ago. Bear Skin, a somewhat noted Haidah chief, belonging to Skidegate village, Queen Charlotte Islands, was in Victoria, when for some offence he was fined and imprisoned by Judge Pemberton, the police magistrate. Bear Skin felt very much insulted; and in order to get even with the magistrate he carved the two figures, which are said to be good likenesses of the Judge, who in this dual capacity mounts guard at each corner of the front of the chiefs residence. The gigantic face on the front of the house, and the two bears on the two mortuary columns, seem to be grinning with fiendish delight, while the raven on top of one of the columns has cocked his eye so as to have a fair look at the effigies beneath him. Bear Skin is dead, but the images still remain. It has been suggested that they be removed to Victoria, and be placed over the entrance to the police barracks, to keep watch and ward like Gog and Magog at the gates of old London city.” But, on the other hand, a symbolical meaning appears to be most frequently embodied in the Haidah devices; of which Mr. Swan reproduces various illustrations, accompanied with native interpretations of them. One drawing, for example, represents a grouping of conventional patterns such as are common on the Haidah blankets of goats’ hair, and in which the untutored student can discern little more than confused scroll-work, with here and there an enormous eye, rows of teeth, and a symmetrical repetition of the design on either side of the central device. Yet, according to Kitelswa, the native Haidah interpreter, “it represents cirrus clouds, or, as sailors term them, ‘mares’ tails and ‘mackerel sky,’ the sure precursors of a change of weather. The centre figure is T’kul, the wind spirit. On the right and left are his feet, which are indicated by long streaming clouds; above are his wings, and on each side are the different winds, each designated by an eye, and represented by the patches of cirrus clouds. When T’kul determines which wind is to blow, he gives the word and the other winds retire. The change in the weather is usually followed by rain, which is indicated by the tears which stream from the eyes of T’kul.” The difficulty with which the inexperienced observer has to contend, in any attempt to interpret such native conventional art, finds apt illustration in Mr. Swan’s account of an elaborately sculptured lodge-pole of which he made a drawing at Kioosta village, on Graham Island, one of the Queen Charlotte group. When describing it in minute detail, he says: “I could make out all the figures but the butterfly, which I thought at first was an elephant with its trunk coiled up; but on inquiry of old Edinso, the chief who was conveying me in his canoe from Massett to Skidegate, he told me it was a butterfly, and pointed out one which had just lit near by on a flower.” The same characteristics have already been referred to in describing the claystone carvings of the Chimpseyans. They also mark the Haidah sculptures executed in the soft argillaceous slate which abounds in their vicinity. But the Haidahs work with no less ability in other materials; and were familiar of old with the native copper, which is brought from some still unascertained locality, it is believed, in Alaska. The collections of the Geological Survey at Ottawa include some of their beautifully wrought copper daggers and a massive and finely finished copper neck-collar. They have now learned to work with equal skill in iron. Their bracelets, rings, and ear ornaments of gold and silver; their copper shields and richly carved emblematic weapons, bows and arrows, iron daggers and war knives; as well as their wooden and horn dishes, spoons, masks, and toys, are eagerly sought after. The carvings on them, when properly explained, are of great interest; for every device has a meaning, and each illustrates a story or a legend, readily understood by the Indian, but by no means willingly interpreted to strangers.

A knowledge of the myths of the Haidahs and other coast tribes is indispensable to any interpretation of their carvings; and to those, accordingly, Dr. Hoffman has directed his attention. “A very common object,” as he says, “found carved upon various household vessels, handles of wooden spoons, etc., is the head of a human being in the act of eating a toad; or, as it frequently occurs, the toad placed a short distance below the mouth. This refers to the evil spirit, supposed to live in the wooded country, who has great power of committing evil by means of poison, supposed to be extracted from the toad”; but, as Dr. Hoffman adds, it is a difficult matter to get an Indian to acknowledge the common belief in the mythic being, even when aware that the inquirer is in possession of the main facts.

The interpretations thus furnished by a careful study of the carvings of the Haidahs and other artistic native tribes of British Columbia, and the evidence of a specific meaning and application discoverable in their most conventional designs, have a significant hearing on the study of analogous productions of the cave-men of Europe’s palæolithic dawn. The manifestations of an active imitative faculty and some degree of artistic skill, among different rude native tribes of this continent, present some striking parallels to the æsthetic aptitudes of the primeval draughtsmen and carvers of Europe. There are, moreover, undoubted resemblances in style and mode of representation of the objects, as depicted on some of the ancient and the modern bone and ivory carvings and drawings of the two continents; but the latter exhibit no evidence of progress. The Innuit and Eskimo designs do, indeed, more nearly approximate to those of the primitive draughtsmen than other aboriginal efforts; but their inferiority in all respects is equally striking and indisputable.

The evidence of artistic ability in the native races both of Central and Southern America is abundant; nor is the northern continent lacking in its specially artistic race. But the achievements of the ancient Mayas, Peruvians, or Mound-Builders, are of very recent date, compared with the palæolithic, or even the neolithic productions of Europe. It need not, therefore, excite our wonder to find American antiquaries welcoming a disclosure, only too strikingly analogous to the famous mammoth drawing of the La Madeleine cave. There recently issued from the American press a tastefully printed volume, in which its author, Mr. H. C. Mercer, gives an account of the discovery, near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, of a “gorget stone” of soft shale, on which is graven what the author describes as “unquestionably a picture of a combat between savages and the hairy mammoth. The monster, angry, and with erect tail, approaches the forest, in which through the pine-trunks are seen the wigwams of an Indian village.” The sun, moon, and the forked lightning overhead, complete a design which could scarcely deserve serious notice, so palpable is the evidence of the fabrication, were it not for the unmistakable sincerity with which the author sets forth the narration, and assures us that after the most careful inquiry “nothing has occurred to shake his faith in the unimpeachable evidence of an honest discovery.”[92] The figure of the mammoth has a suspiciously near resemblance, in all but one respect, to the La Madeleine graving on mammoth ivory. It charges its assailants with lowered trunk and erect tail; but instead of presenting, as in the ancient cave-dweller’s drawing, evidence of aptitude in the free use of the pencil or graving tool, the scratchings on the Lenape Stone are crude and inartistic, even if tried by the rudest standard of Indian art. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that—if the design has not been purposely reversed in order to evade comparison with the genuine European example,—it is a left-handed drawing. The forgery of palæolithic implements has become a systematic branch of manufacture in Europe; and the “Grave Creek Stone,” the “Ohio Holy Stone,” and other similar productions of perverted American ingenuity are familiar to us. It need not, therefore, excite any special wonder to find a like activity in the production of fictitious examples of pictorial art.

But North America has its own ancient artistic race, which, though claiming no such antiquity as that of Aquitaine, is, in the primary sense of the term, essentially prehistoric. Among the æsthetic productions of older races of the continent, the carvings and sculptures of the ancient Mound-Builders of Ohio not only admit of comparison with those of Europe’s primitive workers in bone and ivory, but even, in one respect, surpass them. For it is curious to observe that the palæolithic artists, whose carvings and drawings manifest such a capacity for appreciating the grace of animal form, and for reproducing with such truthfulness objects and scenes familiar to them in the chase, seem to have invariably failed, or at least shown a surprising lack of skill, in their attempts to delineate the human face and figure. Professor de Quatrefages notes of one such carving: “M. Massénat has brought from Laugerie Basse a fragment of reindeer’s horn, on which is graven a male aurochs fleeing before a man armed with a lance or javelin. The animal is magnificent; the man, on the contrary, is detestable, devoid alike of proportion and true portraiture.”[93] Some beautiful Mexican terra-cotta human masks have been preserved; and, amid the endless varieties of quaint and whimsical device in Peruvian pottery, singularly graceful portrait-vases occur. But, as a rule, even among the civilised Mexicans, imitations of the human face and figure seldom passed beyond the grotesque; and although the sculptors of Central America and Yucatan manifested an artistic power which accords with the civilisation of a lettered people, yet, in the majority of their statues and reliefs, the human form and features are subordinated to the symbolism of their mythology, or to mere decorative requirements. In the carvings of the old Mound-Builders, as in those of the vastly more ancient artists of palæolithic Europe, we have to deal with miniature works of art; but both include productions meriting the designation. The variety and expressiveness of many of the mound sculptures, their careful execution, and the evidence of imitative skill which they furnish, all combine to render them objects of interest. But foremost in every trait of value are the human heads. In view of the accuracy of many of the miniature sculptures of animals, it has been reasonably assumed that they perpetuate no less trustworthy representations of the workmen by whom they were carved. Equally well-executed examples of contemporary portraiture, recovered from palæolithic caves of Europe, would be prized above all other relics of its Mammoth or Reindeer period. Nevertheless, striking as is the character of the art of the Aligéwi, it differs only in degree of merit from that of many modern Indian races; and in some of the Algonkin stone-pipes the human figure is carved with well-proportioned symmetry. In such carvings, moreover, even when expended on the decoration of the pipe,—which was employed among so many native tribes in their most important ceremonial and religious observances,—there is rarely anything to suggest a higher aim of the artist than mere decoration. The same may be assumed of the ancient carvers, in such work as they expended on the hafts of the daggers found at Montastrue or Laugerie Basse. But when a carefully executed linear drawing occurs on a rough slab of schist, with its fractured edges left untrimmed, as is the case in examples from the caves of Les Eysies and Massat, the artist manifestly had some other purpose in view; and this I conceive to have been the earliest stage of ideography or picture-writing. He was communicating facts in detail by means of his pencil which his best attempts at verbal description would have failed to convey.