The conclusion reached in the foregoing pages that the animal sculptures
are not "exact and faithful copies from nature," but are imitations of a
general rather than of a special character, such as comport better with
the state of art as developed among certain of the Indian tribes than
among a people that has achieved any notable advance in culture is
important not only in its bearing on the questions previously noticed in
this paper, but in its relation to another and highly interesting class
of sculptures.
If a large proportion of the animal carvings are so lacking in artistic
accuracy as to make it possible to identify positively only the few
possessing the most strongly marked characters, how much faith is to be
placed in the ability of the Mound sculptor to fix in stone the features
and expressions of the human countenance, infinitely more difficult
subject for portrayal as this confessedly is?
That Wilson regards the human sculptures as affording a basis for sound
ethnological deductions is evident from the following paragraph, taken
from Prehistoric Man, vol. 1, p. 461:
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 assumed, 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 assurance 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 sexes,
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
illustrated 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
hitherto 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 assumed 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 asserting
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 illustrated by them:
[Illustration: Fig. 31. Fig. 32. Fig. 33. Human Carvings from the
Mounds.]
[Illustration: 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 illustrated 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 assumptions they may choose to advance.