Part 23

Language is even now a very inadequate means of communicating to others specific ideas of form; and some of the most fluent lecturers in those departments of science, such as geology, biology, and anthropology, in which there is a frequent demand for the appreciation of details in form and structure, habitually resort to the chalk and blackboard. Students of my own earlier days will recall, as among their most pleasant memories, the facile pencil with which the gifted naturalist, Edward Forbes, seemed equally eloquent with hand and tongue; and no one who enjoyed the lucid demonstrations of Agassiz in the same fields of scientific research can think of him otherwise than with chalk in hand. To the uncultured, yet strangely gifted Troglodyte of the primeval dawn, language was still more inadequate for his requirements; and hence, as I imagine, the facile pencil was in frequent requisition for purposes of demonstration, with ever-growing skill to the practised hand. Professor de Quatrefages, who has enjoyed unusually favourable opportunities for the study of those productions, thus directs attention to their artistic merits: “The art of the draughtsman, or rather of the engraver, almost constantly applied to the representation of animals, was first tried on bone or horn. They have attempted it on stone. The burin must have been almost always a mere pointed flint. With this instrument, imperfect though it was, the Troglodytes of the Reindeer age succeeded by degrees in producing results altogether remarkable. The first lines are simple and more or less vague. At a later stage they become more defined, and acquire a singular firmness and precision; the principal lines become deeper; details, such as the fur and mane, are indicated by lighter lines, and even the shading is expressed by delicate hatching. But what is nearly always apparent is a sense of truthful realisation, and the exact copying of characteristics which enable us often to recognise not only the order, but the precise species, which the artist wished to represent. The bear, engraved on a piece of schist which was found by M. Garrigou in the lower cave at Massat, with the characteristic projecting forehead, can be no other than the cave-bear, the bones of which were recovered by that observer in the same place. When we compare the drawings and anatomical details of the Siberian mammoth with the engraving on ivory discovered by M. Lartet at La Madeleine, it is impossible to avoid recognising the _Elephas primigenius_ which existed throughout the Glacial period, and which has been recovered entire in the frozen soil of Northern Asia. Oxen, wild goats, the stag, the antelope, the otter, the beaver, the horse, the aurochs, whales, certain species of fish, etc., have been found recognisable with the like certainty. The reindeer especially is frequently represented with remarkable skill. This may be seen by the engraving found near Thayingen, in Switzerland.”[94]

M. de Quatrefages is disposed to estimate the artistic merit of the carvings in ivory as even greater than that of the drawings or etchings. But specific form and contour are more easily realisable than their indication on a plane surface. To do full justice to the wonderful skill of the Troglodyte draughtsman, we must compare the most highly-finished paintings on Egyptian temples and tombs with the works of their sculptors; or even the perfect realisations of the Greek sculptors’ chisel, with drawings on the most beautiful Hellenic vases. The mastery of perspective, as shown in some of the works of those palæolithic artists is remarkable when compared, for example, with the Assyrian bas-reliefs; not to speak of the infantile efforts of the Chinese on their otherwise justly prized ceramic ware.

The potter’s art is at all times an interesting study to the archæologist. We owe to Etruscan and Hellenic fictile ware our sole knowledge of painting, contemporary with the most gifted masters of the sculptor’s art. But it is in the form, rather than the decoration, that the chief excellency of the art of the potter consists. It is one of the plastic arts. The clay in the hands of the skilled modeller is even more facile than the pencil of the draughtsman; and the distinction between the purely decorative sports of an exuberant fancy, and the purposed symbolism of the carver or painter, is nowhere more strikingly manifest than in the modellings of the ingenious worker in clay. But fictile art belongs, for the most part, to periods greatly more recent than that of the ancient Stone age. Not that the work of the primitive potter involved such laboriously accumulated skill as lay beyond reach of the palæolithic carver and draughtsman; for clay cylinders from the banks of the Euphrates, and the terra-cottas from the Nile valley, carry us back to times that long antedate definite history. But alike among the ancient cave-dwellers of Aquitaine, and the modern Eskimo, the prevailing conditions of an Arctic or semi-Arctic climate rendered clay, fuel, and other needful appliances so rarely available, that among the latter, their pots and lamps are fashioned for the most part of the _Lapis ollaris_, or potstone. But traces of the pottery of many periods and races abound, and furnish interesting materials for comparison. The aptitude of the potter’s clay for a display of skill, alike in modelling and in tracing on the surface imitative designs and ornamental patterns, renders the fictile ware of widely different eras a ready test of æsthetic feeling, as well as a trustworthy guide to the age and race of its artificers. To the ancient cave-men, to whose skill such carvings as the reindeer from Laugerie Basse, or Montastrue, are due, modelling in clay would have been as easy and natural as to the modern sculptor; and pottery, if well-burnt, when not exposed to violence, is little less durable than flint or stone. The rarity, or total absence, of pottery among the contents of the palæolithic caves accords with other indications of a rigorous climate. A piece of plain earthenware was, indeed, recovered from the Belgian cave of Trou de Frontal; and Sir W. Dawson, in his _Fossil Men_, calls attention to the discovery, recorded by Fournal and Christie, of fragments of pottery in the mud and breccia of caverns in the south of France, along with bones of man and animals, including those of the hyæna and rhinoceros. Those, however, whatever be their true epoch, are mere potsherds, valuable in so far as they indicate the practice of the potter’s art at such a time, but furnishing no illustration of skill in modelling.

The pottery found in graves of the Neolithic period is mostly so imperfectly burned, that, however abundant it may have been, it could scarcely leave a trace in the breccia, or river gravel, from which the larger number of relics of palæolithic man have been recovered. But the pottery and terra-cottas which abound on the sites of Indian villages in North America everywhere exhibit traces of imitative art, in the efforts at modelling the human form, and the more or less successful reproduction of familiar natural objects. Squier remarks in his “Aboriginal Monuments of the State of New York,” that “upon the site of every Indian town, as also within all of the ancient enclosures, fragments of pottery occur in great abundance. It is rare, however, that any entire vessels are recovered. . . . In general there was no attempt at ornament; but sometimes the exteriors of the pots and vases were elaborately, if not tastefully, ornamented with dots and lines, which seem to have been formed in a very rude manner with a pointed stick or sharpened bone. Bones which appear to have been adapted for the purpose are often found.”[95] Ornamentation of a more artistic kind appears to have been most frequently reserved by the native workers in clay for their pipes, to which at times a sacred character was attached, and on which accordingly they lavished their highest skill as modellers and carvers. Some of the smaller articles of burnt clay, however, which Squier denominates terra-cottas, were probably fragments of domestic pottery similar to those hereafter described among the relics of the ancient Indian town of Hochelaga. One example of an ingeniously modelled pipe, found within an enclosure in Jefferson County, New York, is specially selected as a good illustration of Indian art. It is of fine red clay, smoothly moulded, with two serpents coiling round the bowl. “Bushels of fragments of pipes,” he adds, “have been found within the same enclosure.” A carved stone pipe, from a grave in Cayuga County, is described as fashioned in the form of a bird with eyes made of silver inserted in the head, and Mr. Squier notes of another specimen: “The most beautiful terra-cotta which I found in the State, and which in point of accuracy and delicacy of finish is unsurpassed by any similar article which I have seen of aboriginal origin, is the head of a fox. The engraving fails to convey the spirit of the original, which is composed of fine clay slightly burned. It seems to have been once attached to a body, or perhaps to a vessel of some kind. It closely resembles some of the terra-cottas from the mounds of the west and south-west. It was found upon the site of an ancient enclosure in Jefferson County, in the town of Ellisburg.” Again, in describing some similar relics from the site of an old Seneca village in Munroe County, he adds: “The spot is remarkable for the number and variety of its ancient relics. Vast quantities of these have been removed from time to time. Some of the miniature representations of animals found here are remarkable for their accuracy.”[96]

The descriptions thus furnished of the traces of aboriginal art in the State of New York closely correspond to the remains recovered on the sites of ancient Indian villages in Canada. A finely modelled clay-pipe, with a serpent twined round it, and holding a human head in its jaws, now in my possession, was dug up, along with numerous other clay-pipes, bone pins, and other relics, in Norfolk County, on the north shore of Lake Erie. I also possess casts of some ingeniously modelled clay-pipes found a few years since in an ossuary at Lake Medad, near Watertown, about ten miles west from Hamilton, Ontario. This no doubt marks the site of an ancient town of the Attiwendaronks, or Neuter Nation, who were finally conquered and driven out by the Iroquois in 1635, when the little remnant that survived was adopted into the Seneca nation. Mr. B. E. Charlton, who explored the Lake Medad ossuaries, after describing the human remains, along with large tropical shells, shell-beads and other relics, adds: “With these were found antique pipes of stone and clay, many of them bearing extraordinary devices, figures of animals, and of human heads wearing the conical cap noticed on similar relics in Mexico and Peru.”[97] Similar discoveries rewarded the researches of Dr. Taché in the Huron ossuaries on the Georgian Bay, examples of which are now in the museum of Laval University.

On the site of the famous Indian town of Hochelaga, the precursor of the city of Montreal, detached fragments, in well-burnt clay, including modellings of the human head and neck, had been repeatedly found, before the recovery of larger portions of the Hochelaga pottery showed that projections modelled in this form within the mouths of their earthern pots or kettles were designed to admit of their suspension over the fire. Any projection within the mouth of the pot would have answered the purpose of protecting the cord or withe from the risk of burning; so that the moulding of it into the human form furnishes an illustration of the play of the imitative faculty under circumstances little calculated to call it forth.

The decoration of domestic pottery by the American Indian workers in clay is greatly developed among the more southern tribes. The ornamentation of a few prominent points, moulded more or less rudely into human or animal heads, gives place with them to the modelling of the vessel itself into animal forms, or to its decoration, chiefly with human or animal figures. Among the examples of native art in the National Museum at Washington are two large vases, remarkable for their elaborate workmanship, which were brought from Mexico, by General Alfred Gibbs. They are figured, along with other specimens of Mexican pottery and terra-cottas, in Mr. Charles Rau’s account of the Archæological Collection of the United States National Museum. They are there spoken of as “two large vases of exquisite workmanship,” and one of them is not only described as an admirable specimen of Mexican pottery, but it is added: “As far as the general outline is concerned, it might readily be taken for a vessel of Etruscan or Greek origin. The peculiar ornamentation, however, stamps it at once as a Mexican product of art:”[98] and, it may be added, in doing so, places it in very marked contrast to any example of Etruscan or Greek workmanship. Its modelling, both in general form and in all its curious zoomorphic details, is essentially barbarous, yet manifesting ingenious skill in the workmanship, and exuberant fancy in design. The influence of Mexican art extended northward; and its characteristics may be traced in much of the native pottery of the Southern States. But throughout Mexico, Central America, and the Isthmus, the modeller in clay appears to have revelled in feats of skill. Clay masks and caricatures, and heads of men and animals, in endless variety of dress and fashioning, abound. Utility is in many cases rendered altogether subsidiary to the sports of fancy. Musical instruments are made in the form of animals; and vases and earthenware vessels of every kind are modelled in imitation of vegetables, fruit, and shells, or decorated with familiar natural objects. This is still more apparent in Peruvian pottery, where an unrestrained exuberance of fancy sports with the pliant clay. Animal and vegetable forms are combined. Men and women are represented in their daily avocations, as porters, water-carriers, etc. Portrait-vases represent the human head, characterised at times by grace and beauty; but more frequently grotesquely caricatured. The human head surmounts the lithe body of the monkey, sporting in ape-like antics; melons and gourds have animal heads for spouts; while the duck, parrot, toucan, pelican, turkey, crane, land-turtle, lynx, otter, deer, llama, cayman, shark, toad, etc., are ingeniously reproduced, singly or in groups, as models for bottles, jars, or pitchers. The double or triple goblets, and two-necked bottles or jugs, acquire a fresh interest from resemblances traceable between some of them and others belonging to distant localities and remote ages. The Fijians, on the extreme western verge of the Polynesian archipelago, have already been referred to for their skill in the finished workmanship of their implements, and of their pottery, some of which suggest curious analogies to Peruvian types. But it is more interesting to note the apparent reproduction of Egyptian, Etruscan, and other antique forms in Peruvian fictile ware; and to recognise on the latter the Vitruvian scroll, the Grecian fret and other ancient classic and Assyrian patterns—not as evidence of common origin, but as originating independently from the ornamentation naturally produced in the work of the straw-plaiter and weaver. Still more curious are their analogies to ancient Asiatic art, as disclosed in a comparison with many of the objects recovered by Dr. Schliemann on Homeric sites. Among the relics which rewarded his exploration of the site of the classic Ilios, are examples of double-necked jugs, terra-cotta groups of goblets united as single vessels, along with others terminating with mouthpieces in the forms of human or animal heads; or modelled with such quaint ingenuity to represent the hippopotamus, horse, pig, hedgehog, mole, and other animals, that, were it not for the strange fauna selected for imitation, they would seem little out of place in any collection of Peruvian pottery.

The same exuberant sportiveness of the imitative faculty, so characteristic of the races of the New World, reappears in productions of the native metallurgists of Mexico and Central America. Casting, engraving, chasing, and carving in metal, were all practised by the Mexicans with a lavish expenditure of misspent labour. Ingenious toys, birds and beasts with moveable wings and limbs, fish with alternate scales of gold and silver, and personal ornaments in many fanciful forms, were wrought by the Mexican goldsmiths with such skill that the Spaniards acknowledged the superiority of the native workmanship over any product of European art. The ancient graves of the Isthmus of Panama have yielded immense numbers of gold relics of the same class, though inferior to the finest examples described above. They include beasts, birds, and fishes, frogs and other natural objects, wrought in gold with much skill and ingenuity. The frog is made with sockets for the eyes, an oval slit in front, and within each a detached ball of gold, executed apparently in a single casting. Balls of clay are also frequently found enclosed in detached chambers in the pottery of the Isthmus. Human figures wrought in gold, and monstrous or grotesque hybrids, with the head of the cayman, eagle, vulture, and other animals, attached to the human form, are also of frequent occurrence; though in this class of works the modelling of the human form is generally inferior to that of other animate designs. All of those curious relics are found in graves, which, judging from the condition of the human remains, are of great antiquity; if, indeed, they do not point to the central cradle and common source of Aztec and Peruvian art.

It is thus apparent that the imitative faculty, which manifests itself in very different degrees among diverse races, was widely diffused throughout the native tribes of the American continent. But, while a certain aptitude for art is seen to be prevalent among some of the rudest tribes, there were, no doubt, among all of them exceptional examples of artistic ability. There were the Jossakeeds and the Wabenos, skilled in picturing on bark and deer-skin; and the official annalists or “Wampum-keepers,” who perpetuated the national traditions. Among the arrow-makers were some famed for their dexterity in fashioning the hornstone or jasper into arrow heads; and, while the art of the potter proved no less easy to female hands than that of the baker, there were, doubtless, among them some few rarely-gifted modellers, whose skill in fashioning clay into favourite forms of imitative art won them a name among the ceramic artists of their tribe. Pabahmesad, the old Chippewa, of the Great Manitoulin Island, in Lake Huron, famed for his skill in pipe carving, has been referred to in illustrating the trade and manufacture of the Stone age.

The little remnant of the once-powerful Huron race now settled on the river St. Charles, near Quebec, expend their ingenious art on the manufacture of bark canoes, snow-shoes, la-crosse clubs, basket-work, and moccasins. In this they show much skill and dexterity; but among their most adroit workers in recent years was Zacharee Thelariolin, who claimed to be the last full-blood Indian belonging to the band. He manifested considerable ability as an artist, had an apt faculty for sketching from nature, and painted successfully in oil. A portrait of himself, in full Indian costume, now in the possession of Mr. Clint of Quebec, is a relic of much interest as the work of an untaught native Indian, in whom the hereditary imitative faculty thus manifested itself under circumstances little calculated to favour its development. He was sixty-six years of age when he executed this portrait. Had it been his fortune to attract the attention of some appreciative patron in early years he might have made a name for himself and his people.

Another curious and exceptional example of native artistic ability may be noted here. The studio of Edmonia Lewis, the sculptor, has long been known to tourists visiting Rome. Her history is a curious one. Her father was a Negro, and her mother a Chippewa Indian. She was born at Greenbush, on the Hudson river, and reared among the Indians till the age of fourteen, both of her parents having died in her childhood. Her Indian name was _Suhkuhegarequa_, or Wildfire; but she changed it to that by which she is now known on being admitted to the Moravian school at Oberlin, Ohio. After three years schooling she went to Boston, where, it is said, the sight of the fine statue of Franklin awoke in her the ambition to be a sculptor. She sought out William Lloyd Garrison, and in simple directness told him she wanted to do something like the statue of the printer-statesman. The great abolitionist befriended her. She received needful training in a local studio, started an _atelier_ of her own, and when I saw her in Boston, in 1864, she was modelling a life-size statue emblematic of the emancipation of the race to which she, in part, belonged. Africa was impersonated, raising herself from a prostrate attitude, and, with her hand shading her eyes, was looking at the dawn. Soon after the sculptor went to Rome, and she has there executed works of considerable merit. Her most successful productions may be assumed to reflect the artistic aptitudes of her mother’s race. Her two best works in marble are “Hiawatha’s Wooing” and “Hiawatha’s Wedding.” A Boston critic, in reviewing her works, says: “She has always had remarkable power of manipulation, beginning with beads and wampum, and rising to clay. She has fine artistic feeling and talent, a sort of instinct for form and beauty demanding outward expression.”

The wide diffusion of this imitative faculty and feeling for form was no doubt stimulated by its employment for representative and symbolic purposes. The relation of imitative drawing to written language is equally manifest in the graven records of the Nile valley and the analogous inscriptions of Yucatan or Peru. Quipus, wampum, and all other mnemonic systems, dependent on the transmission of images and ideas from one generation to another, literally, by word of mouth, have within themselves no such germ of higher development as the picture-writing or sculpturing of the early Egyptians, from which all the alphabets of Europe have been evolved. The phonetic signs, inherited by us directly from the Romans, seem so simple, and yet are of such priceless value in their application, that it seems natural to think of the letters of Cadmus as a gift not less wonderful than speech; since, by their instrumentality, the wise of all ages speak to us still. Plutarch tells, in his _De Iside et Osiride_, that when Thoth, the god of letters, first appeared on the earth, the inhabitants of Egypt had no language, but only uttered the cries of animals. They had, at least, no language with which to speak to other generations; nor any common speech to supersede the confusion of tongues which characterised their great river valley, bordering on Asia, and forming the highway from Ethiopia to the Mediterranean Sea. The light thrown for us on the climate, the fauna, the people, and the whole social life of Europe’s Palæolithic era, by a few graphic delineations of its primitive artists, suffices to show how the northern Thoth may have manifested his advent among them.