While the resemblances of most of the carvings, as indicated above, must
be admitted to be of a general and not of a special character, it does
not follow that their general type was the result of design.
Such an explanation of their general character and resemblances is,
indeed, entirely inconsistent with certain well-known facts regarding
the mental operations of primitive or semi-civilized man. To the mind of
primitive man abstract conceptions of things, while doubtless not
entirely wanting, are at best but vaguely defined. The experience of
numerous investigators attests how difficult it is, for instance, to
obtain from a savage the name of a class of animals in distinction from
a particular species of that class. Thus it is easy to obtain the names
of the several kinds of bears known to a savage, but his mind
obstinately refuses to entertain the idea of a bear genus or class. It
is doubtless true that this difficulty is in no small part due simply to
the confusion arising from the fact that the savage's method of
classification is different from that of his questioner. For, although
primitive man actually does classify all concrete things into groups,
the classification is of a very crude sort, and has for a basis a very
different train of ideas from those upon which modern science is
established--a fact which many investigators are prone to overlook.
Still there seems to be good ground for believing that the conception of
a bird, for instance, in the abstract as distinct from some particular
kind or species would never be entertained by a people no further
advanced in culture than their various relics prove the Mound-Builders
to have been. In his carving, therefore, of a hawk, a bear, a heron, or
a fish, it seems highly probable that the mound sculptor had in mind a
distinct species, as we understand the term. Hence his failure to
reproduce specific features in a recognizable way is to be attributed to
the fact that his skill was inadequate to transfer the exact image
present in his mind, and not to his intention to carve out a general
representative of the avian class.
To carry the imitative idea farther and to suggest, as has been done by
writers, that the carver of the Mound-Building epoch sat down to his
work with the animal or a model of it before him, as does the accurate
zoological artist of our own day, is wholly insupported by evidence
derivable from the carvings themselves, and is of too imaginative a
character to be entertained. By the above remarks as to the lack of
specific resemblances in the animal carvings it is not intended to deny
that some of them have been executed with a considerable degree of skill
and spirit as well as, within certain limitations heretofore expressed,
fidelity to nature. Taking them as a whole it can perhaps be asserted
that they have been carved with a skill considerably above the general
average of attainments in art of our Indian tribes, but not above the
best efforts of individual tribes.
That they will by no means bear the indiscriminate praise they have
received as works of art and as exact imitations of nature may be
asserted with all confidence.