BONE AND IVORY WORKERS.
BONE AND IVORY WORKERS—SUBSTITUTES FOR FLINT—PROOFS OF RELATIVE
AGE—DOMESTIC BONE IMPLEMENTS—RUDE PALÆOLITHIC ART—WHALEBONE
WORKERS—PRIMITIVE WORKING TOOLS—FISH-SPEARS AND HARPOONS—
ARTISTIC INGENUITY—DRAWING OF THE MAMMOTH—THE MADELAINE
ETCHINGS—RIGHT-HANDED WORKERS—DEERHORN QUARRY PICKS—
BONE-BRACER OR GUARD—BIRTHTIME OF THE FINE-ARTS—INNUIT CARVERS
OF ALASKA—TROGLODYTES OF CENTRAL FRANCE—POST-GLACIAL MAN—
SYMMETRICAL HEAD-FORM—INTELLECTUAL VIGOUR—EVIDENCE OF LATENT
POWERS—TAWATIN IVORY CARVING—LAKE-DWELLERS’ IMPLEMENTS—CAVE
IMPLEMENTS—ARTS OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDERS—CARIB SHELL-KNIVES—
ABORIGINES OF THE ANTILLES—CARIBS OF ST. DOMINGO—CAVE PICTURES
AND CARVINGS—PRIZED TROPICAL SHELLS—ANCIENT GRAVES OF
TENNESSEE—SHELL MANUFACTURES—HURON AND PETUN GRAVES—SACRED
SHELL-VESSELS—PRIMITIVE SHELL ORNAMENTS—AMERICAN SHELL MOUNDS
—A SHELL CURRENCY—IOQUA STANDARD OF VALUE.
The nearest type which we can now conceive of to the Drift-Folk of
Europe’s post-glacial era is the Esquimaux. It is even possible that,
like them, they may have occupied winter snow-huts; and only retreated
to their cave-dwellings during the brief heat of a semi-arctic summer.
Among a people so situated the industrial arts are called into utmost
requisition, alike for clothing and tools; and the simplest experience
of the hunter directs him to the produce of the chase for the most easy
supply of both. The pointed horn of the deer furnishes the ready-made
dagger, lance-head, and harpoon; the incisor tooth of the larger rodents
supplies a more delicately edged chisel than primitive art could devise;
and the very process of fracturing the bones of the larger mammalia in
order to obtain the prized marrow, produces the splinters and pointed
fragments which an easy manipulation converts into bodkins, hair-pins,
and needles. The ivory of walrus, narwhal, or elephant is more readily
wrought into many desirable forms, and is less liable to fracture, than
the intractable flint or stone; and all those materials are abundant in
the most rigorous winters, when flint and stone are sealed up under the
frozen soil. Tools and weapons of bone and ivory may therefore be
assumed to have preceded all but the rudest stone implements; and
although, owing to the indestructible nature of their material, it is
from the latter that our ideas of earliest post-glacial art are chiefly
derived, enough has been found in contemporary cave-deposits to confirm
this inference from the analogous hyperborean arts of our own day.
Flint, indeed, though so widely used as the primitive tool-maker’s
material, is unknown in many localities. We are familiar with regions at
the present time, where man not only subsists, but supplies himself with
implements and weapons adapted to his need, though neither flint nor
stone is available. This fact has been practically ignored in the
accepted terminology of the science. As now reduced to system, it
proceeds in retrospective order thus:—Historic, prehistoric, neolithic,
palæolithic, with a possible protolithic period of still older
geological epochs. An awkward misnomer inevitably results from this
assumption of stone as the sole basis of primitive art: as where the
archæologist speaks of palæolithic bone implements, or neolithic
pottery. I have therefore substituted here the more comprehensive terms
palæotechnic and neotechnic. They suffice equally for the classification
of implements and personal ornaments of flint, stone, bone, ivory, or
even of metal: as in the neotechnic gold and bronze work; and also for
those made from marine shells. Many of the latter have been recovered
under circumstances which establish their claim to be classed with other
examples of primitive art; and even find illustration among the rarer
disclosures of the ancient cave-drift. In the great Archipelago of the
Caribbean Sea, as well as in widely scattered islands of the Pacific
Ocean, the primeval stage of native art might indeed be more correctly
designated a shell period; for until their discovery by Europeans, the
large shells which the mollusca of the neighbouring oceans produce in
great abundance, furnished to the native artificers the most convenient
and easily wrought material. For the natives of the coral islands of the
Pacific especially, marine shells supplied the want not only of copper
and iron, but of flint and stone; and left them at little disadvantage
when compared, for example, with the Indians of the copper regions of
Lake Superior.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.—Bone Spatula, Keiss. FIG. 23.—Bone Comb,
Burghar. FIG. 24.—Bone Comb, Burghar.]
Alike in the ivory and bone carvings of the modern Esquimaux, and in the
rare but invaluable evidences of primitive art furnished by those of the
ancient Cave-Folk of the Dordogne and other oldest human dwellings, it
is seen how favourable such easily wrought material was to the
development of a mechanical skill and artistic ingenuity such as must
have lain dormant had the primitive artificers been wholly limited to
flint and stone. The same result is traceable, though in a less degree,
to the analogous material of the Islanders’ shell-period. But implements
and ornaments made of marine shells have a further interest from the
evidence they occasionally afford of distant traffic, or interchange of
foreign commodities.
Tools of horn, bone, and ivory possess a value of another kind. With
them, as on a common ground, the palæontologist and the archæologist
meet and determine the relative ages of the primitive artist and his
materials. In the Glamorganshire cavern at Paviland Dr. Buckland found
the skull of a mammoth, or other fossil proboscidian, and beside it the
remains of cylindrical rods and armlets made from its ivory. In the
famous Aurignac cave, on the northern slope of the Pyrenees, were arrows
and other implements of reindeer horn, a bodkin fashioned out of the
horn of the roedeer, and a tusk of the _ursus spelæus_, perforated and
carved in imitation of the head of a bird. The Dordogne caves in like
manner reveal the natives of Southern France in its old post-glacial
era, hunting the aurochs and reindeer, and fashioning their horns and
bones into lances, bodkins, needles, clubs, ceremonial or official
batons, and other implements of varied purpose and design. Among the
“prehistoric remains of Caithness,” which rewarded the explorations of
Mr. Samuel Laing in the mounds at Keiss, were numerous implements made
from the horns and bones of the reindeer, red-deer, ox, horse, and
whale. Some of them are of the rudest character; and all indicate a
condition of life akin to that of the tribes of the Labrador, or the
Alaska coast at the present day. Fig. 22 is a spatula roughly formed
from the bone of an ox; unless, as Mr. Joseph Anderson has suggested, it
be the first stage in the process of fabricating a comb, of the type
shown in Figs. 23, 24. The latter, found at Burghar, in Orkney, is a
precise counterpart of the long-handled combs still in use by the
Esquimaux for separating the sinew-threads, which supply them with one
important resource in making their clothing. Those relics point to times
when the fauna differed even more than the men of this era from those of
the present day. In the mounds of the Ohio Valley, on the other hand,
the bone implements and animal remains appear to be referable to
existing species; and so supply evidence in contradiction of the extreme
antiquity assigned by some to the mounds and their builders. One special
value of primitive tools of horn, bone, and ivory is thus manifest. They
embody glimpses of truth in relation to climate, native fauna, culinary
practices, and special objects of the chase; and to this easily worked
material we owe disclosures of an æsthetic faculty, and of artistic
capabilities pertaining to the Troglodytes of the Dordogne, to whom, but
for such evidence, might, and probably would have been assigned a rank
in humanity as far below the standard of the modern savage as the
Patagonian or Australian falls short of that of the average European of
our own day.
The artificial origin of many of the rudest of the worked drift-flints
has been challenged. But of the human workmanship of the large flint
implement found alongside of the bones of a fossil elephant in the
quaternary gravels of the London basin, near Gray’s Inn Lane; or of the
spear-heads which lay under similar fossil bones in the drift of the
valley of the Waveney, at Hoxne, in Suffolk, no doubt has ever been
suggested. Both were discovered upwards of a century before the idea of
man’s contemporaneous existence with the mammals of the drift had been
mooted; but if such specimens of his art are to be made the sole test of
human capacity in that primeval era, they might justify the idea of some
lower type even than the wretched Patagonian or Australian. But
contemporary cave deposits check our conclusions from such partial
evidence; and suggest that in those rudest specimens of palæolithic art
we have only the most indestructible relics of an epoch by no means
destitute of inventive ingenuity or artistic skill.
All the cave deposits referred to were accompanied with human remains.
In the Glamorganshire Cavern a female skeleton lay in close proximity to
the skull of the fossil elephas, embedded in a mass of argillaceous
loam. Adapting his deductions to the ruling idea which then guided the
author of the _Reliquiæ Diluvianæ_, Dr. Buckland refers to the
cylindrical rods and rings of ivory as “made from part of the
antediluvian tusks that lay in the same cave; and,” he adds, “as they
must have been cut to their present shape at a time when the ivory was
hard, and not crumbling to pieces as it is at present on the slightest
touch, we may from this circumstance assume to them a high antiquity.”
Dr. Buckland’s idea of the antiquity implied by such cave remains was
very different from what is now universally accepted. But it is not to
be overlooked that here, as in the Aurignac, and other sepulchral
caverns, the interment may belong to an epoch long subsequent to that of
the fossil mammals. The tusk of a mammoth from the Carse of Falkirk, now
in detached pieces in the museum of the University of Edinburgh, was
rescued from the lathe of an ivory-turner; and the fossil ivory of
Siberia is a regular article of commerce.
But in other examples of a like character we are left in no doubt. The
deer’s-horn harpoons of the whalers of Blair-Drummond Moss are
unquestionably contemporaneous with the fossil whales; and although the
implements are rude enough, they will class with harpoons and
fish-spears here described, some of which have been found associated
with works in bone and ivory of great ingenuity and skill. The Greenland
whale undoubtedly haunted the northern shores of Scotland within
historic times. Its bones occur in Scottish brochs and kitchen-middens;
and among the many traces of prehistoric arts and habits of life
disclosed by the contents of the Scottish subterranean dwellings, one of
the most interesting is a large drinking-cup fashioned from the vertebra
of a whale. It was found in a weem on the Isle of Eday, in Orkney, along
with a bone scoop, bone pins, combs, and other primitive relics,
including some of metal. The cup measures 4½ inches high; and, as shown
in Fig. 25, is a very simple adaptation of the natural form of the bone
by sawing off the protruding spinous processes.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.—Whale’s Vertebra Cup.]
The ancient workman had his knife, saw, adze, chisel, drill, and
scraper,—or plane, as we may term it,—all made of flint. The worn and
triturated edges of many of those flint-tools show abundant evidence of
their use in fashioning some hard substance. He had also his file, made
of grit-stone; of which various examples have been found in the caves.
They are generally styled whetstones; but their purpose was probably the
very same as that of a modern file. Some are of coarse-grained stone,
and others of a finer grit. Without some such tools it would have been
impossible to bring the more elaborate implements of bone and ivory to
the state of finish which they present. Among such, the harpoons and
fish-spears furnish a variety of types, diversified by the ingenuity of
the workman, and the necessities of his craft. Examples of such
primitive fishing implements of widely different eras are here grouped
together. The three-pronged fish-spear, Fig. 26, illustrates the art of
the Esquimaux fisherman: that living race of Arctic seas, which alike in
arts and in condition of life, realises for us in so many ways the men
of Europe’s post-glacial age. Alongside of it are a hook, or spear-head
of deer’s-horn, Fig. 27, and a barbed fish-spear of the same material,
Fig. 28, both the work of the ancient Lake-dwellers
[Illustration: FIG. 26-30.—Fish-spears and Harpoons.]
of Neuchâtel. They present interesting analogies to the most familiar
types of bone or ivory fish-spears of the French and English
post-glacial era, of which Figs. 29, 30 are examples from the Dordogne
Caves. Fig. 31, though worn and fractured, illustrates a form of the
cave harpoon-blade, barbed only on one side. It is from Kent’s Cavern,
where other, though less perfect, examples have been found. One of
these, figured by Mr. Evans,[44] is specially noticeable for its curved
form. Similar implements have repeatedly occurred in the cave-deposits,
as in those of the Dordogne, and at Bruniquel, where also serrated
flints or saws were found in unusual abundance. Fig. 36, from the cave
of La Madelaine, is a good example of the unilateral fish-spear, much
superior in workmanship to the similar implement of the modern Fuegian,
shown in Fig. 33, and well adapted to the wants of a river-fisherman.
But the form of the Kent’s Cavern type rather suggests that it was one
of the blades of a large two-pronged, or three-pronged spear, similar to
examples still in use among the Esquimaux:
[Illustration: FIG. 31.—Harpoon, Kent’s Cavern.]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.—Bone Spear-head, Dordogne Caves.]
[Illustration: FIG. 33.—Fuegian Harpoon.]
of which one, now in the museum of the University of Toronto, shown in
Fig. 26, illustrates the probable design of the curved blades. In the
caves of the Dordogne and Garonne valleys repeated discoveries of bone
needles, in association with the barbed fish-spear, have been noted.
They are objects of delicate manipulation, the value of which is proved
by the occurrence of examples accidentally broken, and drilled with a
new eye. The caves of the Dordogne pertained, even in the remote era of
the mammoth or reindeer periods, to a race of inland hunters and
fishermen to whom such a harpoon would have been cumbrous, if not wholly
unsuited to their requirements. But the Kent’s Hole Troglodyte had
probably more formidable prey to encounter, and so adapted the
implements of the chase to his special requirements. Of the bilateral
barbed fish-spear, a good, though imperfect example is shown, the
natural size, in Fig. 32, from Laugerie Basse, in the Dordogne. Another,
Fig. 34, was found imbedded in the red cave-earth of Kent’s Cavern,
underneath a bed of black earth, containing flint-flakes and bones of
extinct mammals, over which the stalagmitic flooring had accumulated to
a thickness of a foot and a half. Similar implements have been recovered
from other Dordogne Caves. Fig. 35, from La Madelaine, is a variation of
the latter type, in which the barbs are disposed alternately on either
side.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.—Fish-spear, Kent’s Cavern.]
[Illustration: FIG. 35.—Fish-spear with bilateral barbs, La Madelaine.]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.—Fish-spear with unilateral barbs, La
Madelaine.]
It is alike interesting and highly suggestive of the characteristics of
man as a rational being, thus to find his ingenuity, when stimulated by
similar necessities, begetting closely analogous results in ages
separated by intervals so vast that we vainly strive to measure them by
any standards of historical chronology. But the ingenuity manifested in
the construction of his fishing and hunting gear very inadequately
reveals to us the aptitudes of the men of the drift or the cave periods.
In those remote epochs, as now, man was an intelligent being, gratifying
his taste in many ways by works often involving great labour, and
leading to no other practical results than many labours of the carver
and house-decorator, the painter, sculptor, and engraver of our own day.
Among the works of art, for example, of the cave-men of the Dordogne,
contemporary with the mammoth and the reindeer of Central France,
various incised drawings of animals, executed both on bone and slate,
apparently with a flint stylus or graver, have excited an unusual
interest. They include representations of the fossil horse, as on a
carved baton, or mace, Fig. 37; of the reindeer, in groups, and engaged
in combat; of the ox, fish of different kinds, flowers, ornamental
patterns, and some ruder attempts at the human form. Carvings in bone
and ivory illustrate the same ingenious mimetic art. But the most
remarkable of all is the portraiture of the mammoth, Fig. 38, outlined
on a plate of ivory, and to all appearance drawn from the life. It
represents the extinct elephant, sketched with great freedom and even
artistic skill; and not only compares favourably with the best specimens
of modern savage delineation, but exhibits so much freedom of handling
as to look more like the sketch of an artist skilled in the use of his
pencil. I can recall no example of savage art exhibiting such freedom;
and none but an experienced draughtsman could execute with pencil or
etching-needle anything approaching to the expression and character
given by means of a few lines, executed with no laboured effort, but
evidently dashed off by one who had full confidence in his powers.
[Illustration: FIG. 37.—Carved Baton, or Mace (1/3).]
This most ancient example of imitative art was found in the Madelaine
Cave, on the river Vézère, by M. Lartet, when in company with M.
Verneuil and Dr. Falconer. The circumstances of the discovery,
therefore, no less than the character of the explorers, place its
genuineness beyond suspicion. Its worth is great as a piece of
contemporary portraiture of an animal known to us only by its fossil
remains. But this sinks into insignificance in comparison with its value
as a gauge of the intellectual capacity of the men of the reindeer age
of central Europe. Many of their carvings ornament the horn or ivory
handles of implements and weapons; but the etching referred to was
manifestly executed with no other aim than the gratification of the
artistic taste of the draughtsman, and resembles the free sketches
thrown off by an artist in an idle hour.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.—The Mammoth, engraved on ivory.]
But there is another point worthy of notice here, the interest of which
is greatly increased by the undoubted antiquity of the relic. This
palæographic tablet is a right-handed drawing; and the same may be
affirmed of the group of reindeer, and of others of the Madelaine
etchings. They are executed in profile, looking to the left, as any
right-handed draughtsman naturally does, unless he has some special
reason for deviating from the direction which the facility of his pencil
suggests.
The question of right-handedness, as a natural or acquired practice
peculiar to man, has a special interest when viewed in relation to his
innate instincts or attributes in the remote dawn of human intelligence
thus anew brought to light. The universality of right-handedness as a
characteristic of man has been assumed, partly on the concurrent
evidence of language, which shows the general habit of using one hand in
preference to another. But the prevalence of the use of the right hand
among savage nations is still a mere assumption. The statistics have yet
to be collected, and are by no means readily accessible. Any evidence of
the prevalence of right-handedness among a people still in the primitive
stage of stone implements must be exceedingly vague. In the rude
manipulations of a purely savage life, with the imperfection of the
tools and the general absence of combined operations, the distinction in
the use of one hand rather than the other is of little importance. In
digging roots, climbing rocks or trees, in the rude operations of the
primitive boat-maker or hut-builder, in hunting, flaying, cooking, or
most other of the operations pertaining not only to the hunter, but even
to the pastoral stage, there is little manifest motive for the use of
one hand more than the other; and on the supposition of either becoming
more generally serviceable, it would neither attract notice, nor
interfere in any degree with the arts of life, though some gave a
preference to the right hand, and others to the left. Hence the
difficulty of determining the prevalence of right-handedness among
savage nations. Its manifestations in the rude arts of the isolated
workman are obscure, and any uniformity of action becomes apparent only
in those combined operations which are comparatively rare in savage
life. Yet even in the languages of the Hawaiians, Fijians, Maoris and
Australians, terms are met with showing the preferential use of one
hand. In the rudest state of society, man as a tool-using animal has
this habit engendered in him; and as he progresses in civilisation, and
improves on his first rude weapons and implements, there must arise an
inevitable tendency to give the preference to one hand over the other,
not only in combined action, but from the necessity of adapting certain
tools to the hand.[45]
An interesting episode relating to this assumed speciality of man is
introduced in a communication by the Rev. W. Greenwell to the
Ethnological Society of London, on the opening of some ancient Norfolk
flint pits, popularly known as “Grime’s Graves.” In these were found not
only implements of flint, a hatchet of basalt, hammers, stones of
quartzite and other pebbles, and numerous clippings and cores of flint,
along with a bone-pin, and another implement of bone which Mr. Greenwell
supposes to have been used in detaching the flakes of flint for knives
and arrow-heads; but also a number of primitive deer-horn picks, which
had been used by the ancient quarrymen by whom the flint was thus
procured, and fashioned into tools.
The picks made from the antlers of the red-deer were constructed simply
by detaching the horn at a distance of about sixteen or seventeen inches
from the brow end, and then breaking off all but the large brow-tine,
with the help of fire and rude cutting implements of flint. They had
been used both as picks and hammers, the point of the brow-tine serving
for a pick, and the broad flat part opposite to it as a hammer for
breaking off and detaching the flint from the chalk; while excavations
through the solid chalk were effected by means of hatchets of basalt.
The marks of both tools were abundant on the walls of the galleries; and
many of the rude picks, including the two specially referred to, were
coated with an incrustation of chalk, bearing the impress of the
workmen’s fingers. Here, as in the Brixham cavern, an accident, which
brought the ancient operations to an abrupt close, sealed up the
evidence of them beyond reach of all obscuring interpolations, until
their discovery in recent years. In clearing out one of the subterranean
galleries excavated in the chalk, it was found that “the roof had given
way about the middle of the gallery, and blocked up the whole width of
it. On removing this, it was seen that the flint had been worked out in
three places at the end, forming three hollows, extending beyond the
chalk face of the end of the gallery.” In front of two of these hollows
lay two picks, corresponding to others found in various parts of the
shafts and galleries, made from the antler of the red-deer. But in this
case the writer notes that the handle of each was laid towards the mouth
of the gallery, the tines, which formed the blades of the tools,
pointing towards each other, “showing, in all probability, that they had
been used respectively by a right and a left-handed man. The day’s work
over, the men had laid down each his tool, ready for the next day’s
work; meanwhile the roof had fallen in, and the picks had never been
recovered,” until their reproduction in evidence of the supposed habits
of the right and left-handed workmen, by whom they were employed at the
close of that last day’s labour, in the prehistoric dawn.[46]
[Illustration: FIG. 39.—Scottish Stone Bracer.]
Mr. Evans, in discussing the use of certain perforated plates of stone
frequently found in British graves, adopts the idea that they were
bracers, or guards, to protect the left arm of the archer against the
recoil of the string in shooting with the bow. But, he adds, “unless
there was some error in observation, plates of this kind have been
occasionally found on the right arm”; and he refers to a skeleton
observed by Lord Londesborough, on the opening of a chambered barrow at
Driffield, the bones of the right arm of which were laid in a very
singular and beautiful armlet, made of some large animal’s bone, set
with two gold-headed bronze pins or rivets, most probably to attach it
to a strap which passed round the arm, and was secured by a small bronze
buckle found underneath the bones. This also Mr. Evans supposes to have
been the bracer, or guard of an archer; and he adds, “possibly this
ancient warrior was left-handed.” A Scottish example, from a large
tumulus on the shore of Broadford Bay, Isle of Skye, is here shown, Fig.
39. These plates, or guards, are most frequently made of a close-grained
green chlorite slate; and in various cases flint arrow-heads have been
noted among other contents of the same grave. But the cist in which the
supposed left-handed warrior lay contained a bronze dagger, some large
amber beads, and a drinking-cup; but no arrow-heads to confirm the idea
that he had been laid to rest with his bow beside him, and the guard
ready braced on his arm, like one of the seven hundred left-handed
Benjamites, every one of whom could sling stones at a hair’s breadth,
and not miss. Possibly the novel and richly finished armlet occupied its
proper place on the right arm as a personal decoration suited to the
rank of the wearer.
But bronze pins and daggers carry us into later times than those of the
Troglodytes of the Dordogne. Ancient though the Driffield barrow
unquestionably is according to ordinary chronology, it is a very recent
sepulchre compared with the catacombs of the French reindeer period, the
drawings from which undoubtedly suggest the right-handedness of the
draughtsmen who used the stylus and graver so dexterously in that
birthtime of the fine arts in transalpine Europe.
But similar traces of primitive art, assigned to a still earlier epoch,
have been recently reported from the vicinity of the Dardanelles. Mr.
Frank Calvert describes the discovery of numerous stone implements, some
of them of large size, and much worn, imbedded in drift two or three
hundred feet thick, underlying stratified rocks, as he believes, of the
miocene period. Flint implements are rare, and the most common material
is red or other coloured jasper. Among fossil bones, teeth, and shells
from the same formation, remains of the Dinotherium, and the shell of a
species of Melania pertaining to the miocene epoch, have been
identified; and Mr. Calvert writes to the _Levant Herald_:—“From the
face of a cliff composed of strata of that period, at a geological depth
of 800 feet, I have myself extracted a fragment of the joint of a bone
of either a dinotherium or a mastodon, on the convex side of which is
deeply incised the unmistakable figure of a horned quadruped, with
arched neck, lozenge-shaped chest, long body, straight forelegs, and
broad feet. There are also traces of seven or eight other figures,
which, together with the hind quarters of the first, are nearly
obliterated. The whole design encircles the exterior portion of the
fragment, which measures nine inches in diameter, and five in thickness.
I have also found, not far from the site of the engraved bone, in
different parts of the same cliff, a flint flake, and some bones of
animals fractured longitudinally, obviously by the hand of man, for the
purpose of extracting the marrow, according to the practice of all
primitive races.”[47]
These traces of primitive art Mr. Calvert recognises as “conclusive
proofs of the existence of man during the miocene period of the tertiary
age.” They at least furnish additional illustrations of his intellectual
activity, however remote the antiquity to which he is traced; and show
the same ideas of comparison which enter so largely, not only into
modern artistic design, but into much of the rhetoric and poetry of
later times.
Among living races the Innuit of Alaska, within three degrees of
Behring’s Strait, are skilful carvers in ivory. They chiefly use the
teeth of the Beluga, a small white whale common in their seas, and from
this they carve birds, fish, seals, deer, and other animals, as well as
bodkins, needles, awls, and other implements, with considerable skill.
They obtain the walrus tusks in barter from more northern tribes; and
from those they make fish-spears, harpoons, and other larger implements.
They also amuse themselves with graving, on plates of bone or ivory,
dances, hunting-scenes, and other familiar incidents. Of the latter, Mr.
W. H. Dall remarks, in his interesting narrative of _Alaska and its
Resources_: “These drawings are analogous to those discovered in France,
in the caves of Dordogne.”[48] They are so, in so far as both are
attempts at representing contemporary animal life by untutored man; but
the accompanying illustrations of Innuit art show how greatly the work
of the modern savage draughtsman falls short of that of the artist of
the Mammoth epoch of Europe.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.—Hunter’s Tally Deer’s-horn.]
Fortunately our knowledge of the men of that remote era is supplemented
by evidence of a still more direct kind. In 1868 the construction of a
railroad led to the removal of an extensive talus on the left bank of
the river Vézère, at Cro-Magnon, exposing a cave, or shallow recess in
the face of the rock, within which were found a succession of strata,
with traces of the action of fire, and including flint scrapers, bone
bodkins, arrow-points, and other implements, along with bones of the
_Elephas primigenius_, _Felis spelæa_, the reindeer, fossil-horse, and
ivory tablets and tynes of deer-horn, marked with a series of notches,
supposed to be hunters’ tallies recording the produce of the chase. One
of the latter, interesting as an illustration of these earliest efforts
at numerical notation, is shown in Fig. 40. But most valuable of all
were the human skeletons, including those of an old man, a woman, and
portions of others of two young men, and a child. Beside them lay nearly
three hundred marine shells, chiefly the _Littorina littorea_, some
perforated teeth, and—as if to determine the era of the Troglodytes of
Cro-Magnon,—several implements made of reindeer horn.
Evidence of a similar kind accumulates with the interest which it has
excited. To the south of the Alps the caverns of Baoussé Roussé have
yielded a singularly rich series of implements and personal ornaments of
flint, ivory, bone, and shell; and more important than all, a nearly
perfect human skeleton, brought to light in the Mentone Cave, with the
skull still decorated with its ornamental head-gear of perforated shells
(_Cyclonassa neritea_) and canine teeth of the _Cervus elaphus_,
originally strung, as is supposed, on a net for the hair. Across the
forehead lay a large bone hair pin, made of the radius of a stag, with
the natural condyle retained as its head.[49] The correspondence between
the Mentone skull and those of Cro-Magnon is considerable. Already,
therefore, sufficient remains of the ancient cave dwellers have been
recovered to enable us to form some definite idea of their physical
characteristics.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.—Skull of Old Man of Cro-Magnon—Profile.]
The Cro-Magnon men and women are large of stature. Their skulls, like
that of the Mentone Cave, are of a dolichocephalic type, and so far
accord with the Esquimaux, rather than with any Turanian head-form. But
it is important to note that in no other respect do they yield the
slightest countenance to the theory favoured by some, that the cave-men
of palæolithic Europe bore an affinity to the Esquimaux, and that in the
latter we have the living representatives of post-glacial, if not still
older man. If indeed the Cro-Magnon and Mentone skulls are, as they have
been assumed to be, those of contemporaries of the mammoth and reindeer
of Southern Europe, Dr. Pruner-Bey remarks of the race: “If we consider
that its three individuals had a cranial capacity much superior to the
average at the present day; that one of them was a female, and that
female crania are generally below the average of male crania in size;
and that nevertheless the cranial capacity of the Cro-Magnon woman
surpasses the average capacity of _male_ skulls of to-day, we are led to
regard the great size of the brain as one of the more remarkable
characters of the Cro-Magnon race. This cerebral volume seems to me even
to exceed that with which at the present day a stature equal to that of
our cave-folks would be associated: whether the skulls from the Belgium
caves are small, not only absolutely, but even relatively in the rather
small stature of the inhabitants of those caves.”[50] Along with this
ample cerebral development, the general form of the head is graceful and
symmetrical. Alike in the Cro-Magnon and Mentone examples the total
absence of prognathism is noted. An expressive, though strongly marked
orthognathic profile with ample forehead, prominent nose, moderately
developed superciliary ridges and maxillaries, and a well-formed chin,
all compare favourably, not only with the foremost savage races, but
with many civilised nations of modern times.
[Illustration: Skull of Old Man of Cro-Magnon.
FIG. 42.—Front View. FIG. 43.—Vertical View.]
Of the age of those Troglodytes of France, M. Lartet remarks: “The
presence of the remains of an enormous bear, of the mammoth, of the
great cave-lion, of the reindeer, the spermophile, etc., in the
hearth-beds, strengthens in every way the estimation of their antiquity;
and this can be rendered still more rigorously, if we base our argument
on the predominance of the horse here, in comparison with the reindeer,
on the form of the worked flints, and of the bone arrow and
dart-heads.”[51] This argument, however, overlooks the possibility of
the interments long after the accumulation of the hearth-beds with their
included relics. Assuming this cavern period of Central France as the
later subdivision of the palæolithic age of Europe, its drawings and
carvings represent the arts of a remote era, compared even with the
polished stone-hammers and chipped flints contemporary with the oldest
implements of bronze. It is obvious, therefore, that a comparison
between the rude worked flints of the cave-men of Southern France, and
the highly finished stone implements of the Bronze Period of Northern
Europe, is no true gauge of any intermediate progress or development.
The artist to whose pencil or graving-tool we owe the only authentic
portraiture of the mammoth, unquestionably possessed skill and
intellectual vigour adequate to the production of any stone implement or
personal ornament pertaining to the arts of Western Europe at the
commencement of its metallurgic period. In truth it is far easier to
produce evidences of deterioration than of progress, in instituting a
comparison between the contemporaries of the mammoth, and later
prehistoric races of Europe, or savage nations of modern centuries. They
had advanced, as M. Paul Broca says, “to the very threshold of
civilisation.” They possessed arts, industry, and apparently such a
degree of social organisation as their external circumstances admitted
of. But then, as at many subsequent periods, the elements of progress
were arrested at this stage, and the whole work of civilisation had to
be begun anew.
A careful study of the native arts of the American continent, in
subsequent chapters, will bring under our notice the intellectual
efforts of man in a purely savage state, and so help to a determination
of what is implied in certain partial manifestations of mimetic design.
This is the true corrective of any tendency to an undue estimate of the
general progress implied by such evidence. It will be seen that a rare
aptitude is shown among certain tribes for mimetic drawing and carving;
yet it is of limited application, and accompanied by little superiority
to surrounding tribes in the employment of the arts for the general
requirements of savage life. Even in such cases, however, it is an
evidence of latent powers, capable of development under favourable
circumstances. The Esquimaux have been stimulated by the necessities of
Arctic life to great ingenuity in the fashioning of their weapons, and
in all other appliances of the chase, on which their very existence
depends; but they are skilful, as a savage people, in the ornamental, as
well as the useful arts. Their skin and fur dresses are fashioned and
decorated with great taste; and many of their ivory and bone implements
are beautifully carved. There is in the Museum of the University of
Toronto a set of Esquimaux children’s toys, including miniature men,
dogs, sledges, and objects of the chase, all carved in ivory with
ingenious skill. The Thlinkets of Alaska, lying on the borders of the
true Esquimaux region, make ladles and spoons from the horns of the
deer, the mountain sheep, and the goat, which are special objects of the
chase, and carve them with elaborate ingenuity. Grotesque masks of wood,
paddles, knife handles of bone, bodkins, combs, and other personal
ornaments, chiefly of walrus ivory, are all carved with great variety of
design, though scarcely in a style of high art.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.—Tawatin Ivory Carving of Whale.]
Among the tribes lying immediately to the south, the Tawatin Indians of
British Columbia specially excel in ivory carving. Their personal
ornaments are lavishly decorated; and many of their carvings resemble in
so far the mammoth portraiture of the Madelaine artist, that they are
simply efforts of skill, having no other end in view than the pleasure
derived from their execution. It will be seen, however, in the
conventional representation of the whale, as shown in Fig. 44, how far
they fall short of the ancient workers in ivory in literal truthfulness
of delineation. In one respect indeed this piece of Tawatin carving
recalls a characteristic of early Christian art. Trifling as the
correspondence is, it is curious thus to find the modern Indian carver
of the Pacific coast giving to the monster of the deep the same barbed
tongue which forms the conventional attribute of the dragons and
leviathans of medieval Europe. But it is greatly more interesting to
note, not only the thoroughly native style of art of their more
elaborate carvings; but to recognise in many of them certain traits
which recall characteristics of the finished sculptures on the ruins of
Central America and Yucatan. This is strikingly shown in another of
their carvings, Fig. 45, where some of the points of resemblance help to
confirm other traces, hereafter indicated on different grounds, of early
intercourse, if not of a common relationship, between savage tribes of
the North-West, and ancient civilised nations of Central America and the
Mexican plateau.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.—Tawatin Ivory carving.]
In times still prehistoric, though apparently recent in comparison with
the mammoth or reindeer period of France, the works of the ancient
Lake-dwellers of Switzerland furnish illustrations of the application of
horn, bone, and ivory to many useful purposes for which the metals are
now considered as alone suitable. The site of the pfahlbauten at
Concise, on Lake Neuchâtel, has been peculiarly rich in the
illustrations it has yielded of implements in flint, stone, bone, horn,
and also in bronze. The skulls, horns, and bones, both of domesticated
animals, and of those procured in the chase, are also abundant; and
among the latter, the red deer and the wild boar appear to have
predominated as articles of food.
The Natural History Museum of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which owes its
existence to the indefatigable zeal of the lamented Professor Agassiz,
is enriched by a collection of remains of the ancient Swiss
Lake-dwellers, obtained under peculiarly favourable circumstances. The
father of the distinguished naturalist was for a period of fifteen years
the clergyman of Concise; and it chanced that the son revisited his
native canton at a time when the construction of a railway viaduct
across part of the neighbouring lake led to the discovery of numerous
traces of its ancient population. He was accordingly able to secure a
choice collection illustrative of aboriginal arts, including some
characteristic specimens of horn and bone implements, from which some
illustrative examples are here selected. Fig. 46 may be described as a
chisel made of a hog’s tooth inserted in a haft of deer’s-horn,
precisely after a fashion familiar to the Red Indian, of converting the
incisor of the beaver into a useful cutting tool. The same collection
includes knives, daggers, bodkins, or awls, made of bone or ivory, and
hafted in like manner with horn; as well as implements of flint and
stone hereafter referred to.[52]
[Illustration: FIG. 46.—Hog’s Tooth Chisel, Concise.]
Among the tools and personal ornaments wrought of mammoth ivory, which
Dean Buckland describes as found in the Goat Hole Cavern at Paviland, is
a skewer made of the metacarpal bone of a wolf, flattened at the edge at
one end, and terminated at the other by the natural rounded condyle of
the bone. Implements of this type are by no means rare. The original
disclosures of Kent’s Cavern included arrow and lance-heads, bodkins,
pins, hair-combs, netting-tools, and other implements, all made of bone.
Similar objects have been repeatedly found in Scottish weems and brochs,
and in the kitchen-middens of Britain, Denmark, and other European
accumulations of the like kind. Fig. 47 represents a group of such
objects, chiefly from one of the primitive subterranean dwellings, at
Skara, in Orkney. It includes a small perforated ivory pin, and a bodkin
made after the fashion of the Goat Hole wolf-bone implement from the
metatarsal bone of a small ox. Implements of this simple character are
common to the arts of many periods and states of society; and like the
flint and stone implements of nearly every age and country, help to
illustrate the tool-making instinct peculiar to man.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.—British Bone Implements.]
Isolated in the little island-worlds of the Pacific Ocean, man is found
again and again, in a condition which seems to involve all but absolute
privation of the materials on which his constructive faculty can
operate. The extensive archipelago interposed between the Society and
Gambier Islands and the Marquesas, consists exclusively of coral
islands. There the native arts are mostly of an inferior character;
though their small and slight canoes are propelled with great rapidity
by means of a paddle ingeniously formed with a curved blade. But every
idea of rudeness in their arts gives way to wonder and admiration on
discovering the limited materials at the command of the workmen. The
cocoa-palm furnishes supplies for matting and weaving, and the cassytha
stems and cocoa-nut fibre are plaited into ropes. A finer cord is made
of human hair; and bones of the turtle and the larger kinds of fish
supply the only material for fish-hooks and spears. There are no natural
productions on the islands harder than shell or coral; and from these
accordingly the native tools are made. Here, therefore, we see what
reason is capable of achieving in the development of ingenious arts,
amid a privation of nearly all that seems indispensable to the first
efforts at constructive skill. Compared with such inadequate means, the
flint, stone, horn, and bone of Europe’s stone-period seem little less
ample, than the contrast of her later metallurgic riches with the
resources of that primitive era.
Though the natives of the Antilles possessed some natural advantages
over the inhabitants of the volcanic and coral islands of the Pacific:
yet the abundance of large and easily-wrought shells invited their
application to many useful purposes; and accordingly when first visited
by the Spaniards, the large marine shells with which the neighbouring
seas abound, constituted an important source for the raw material of
their implements and manufactures. The great size, and the facility of
workmanship of the widely-diffused _pyrulæ_, _turbinella_, _strombi_,
and other shells, have indeed led to a similar application of them among
uncivilised races, wherever they abound. Of such, the Caribs made
knives, lances, and harpoons, as well as personal ornaments; while the
mollusc itself was sought for and prized as food. In Barbadoes the
_Strombus gigas_ still furnishes a favourite repast; and numerous
weapons and implements made from its shells have been dug up on the
island. The accompanying illustrations (Fig. 48) are selected from
specimens illustrative of the primitive manufactures of the Antilles
presented to me by Dr. Bovell. They were dug up with other relics, in
the island of Barbadoes, where traces of the aboriginal Carib blood
continued till very recently to mark a portion of the coloured
population. The Christy collection includes various examples of axes
believed to be of Carib workmanship, from Porto Rico, St. Juan, and St.
Thomas. They are worked in greenstone, mottled jade, green jasper, and a
hard light green slate, mostly in wedge-form. But the most
characteristic specimen of local art is an axe of coral rock, 7½ inches
long, semi-cylindrical, and tapering at both ends, which was found in
the cave of Cuevetas, twenty miles from Puerto del Principe, Cuba.
[Illustration: FIG. 48.—Carib Shell-Knives.]
The Carib aborigines of the Antilles furnish a striking example of what
the more active manifestations of moral degradation among a savage
people really imply. Compared with the gentle, passive Indians met by
the Spaniards on the first islands visited by European explorers, the
Caribs were a cruel and fierce race of cannibals, as hateful in all
their most salient characteristics as the New Zealanders or Fijians. Yet
time has proved, even under very unfavourable circumstances, that the
fierceness and aggressive cruelty of the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles
corresponded to the wild fury of the old viking rovers of Europe, and
gave proof of energy and stamina capable of sturdy endurance; while the
gentle and friendly Indians of the larger Antilles, without, in reality,
any superior moral attributes, but only the characteristics of a weak
and passive nature, have disappeared, leaving behind them scarcely a
memorial of their existence. The Caribs are the historic race of the
Antilles. Their chronicles derive vitality and endurance, like those of
ancient Europe, from the vicissitudes of war. Those show them as
restless aggressors; and though long since expelled from their ancient
insular possessions, they still appear on the southern mainland as the
people of an encroaching area; and the marches of their extending
frontier ring with the shouts of border warfare, as fierce, and to us
not greatly less substantial than the Wendish and Bulgarian warrings of
Henry the Fowler, and his German Markgräfs of well-nigh a thousand years
ago.
In 1851, Sir Robert Schomburgk communicated to the British Association
the results of recent ethnological researches in St. Domingo. In these
the observant traveller deplored the fact that of the millions of
natives who at its discovery peopled the island, not a single pure
descendant now exists, though he could trace in the Indios of mixed
blood the peculiar features and other physical characteristics of the
Indian still uneradicated. In the absence of a true native population,
Sir Robert Schomburgk remarks: “My researches were restricted to what
history and the few and poor monuments have transmitted to us of their
customs and manners. Their language lives only in the names of places,
trees, and fruits, but all combine in declaring that the people who
bestowed these names were identical with the Carib and Arawaak tribes of
Guiana. An excursion to the calcareous caverns of Pommier, about ten
leagues to the west of the city of Santo Domingo, afforded me the
examination of some picture-writings executed by the Indians after the
arrival of the Spaniards. These remarkable caves, which are in
themselves of high interest, are situated within the district over
which, at the landing of the Spaniards, the fair Indian Catalina reigned
as cacique.” To this district they were tempted by the news of rich
mines in its mountains. In 1496, a fortified tower was erected, called
originally San Aristobal; but so abundant was the precious metal, that
even the stones of the fortress contained it, and the workmen named it
the Golden Tower. But the lives of millions of the miserable natives
were sacrificed in recovering the gold from their mountain veins; and
then, the mines being exhausted, the country was abandoned to the
exuberance of tropical desolation, while the caverns which had
previously been devoted to religious rites, became places of retreat
from the Spaniard and his frightful bloodhounds. One of the smaller
caves still exhibits a highly interesting series of symbolic pictures,
which the Indians had traced on its white and smooth walls. Near the
entrance of a second cave, Sir R. Schomburgk discovered decorations of a
more enduring character carved on the rock, and of these he remarks:
“They belong to a remoter period, and prove much more skill and patience
than the simple figures painted with charcoal on the walls of the cave
near Pommier. The figures carved of stone, and worked without iron
tools, denote, if not civilisation, a quick conception and an
inexhaustible patience, to give to these hard substances the desired
forms.” From his examination of the tools and utensils still in use in
Guiana, Sir Robert doubted such to be the work of the Caribs; but he
admitted that they are only found where we have sure evidence of their
presence; and he under-estimated both the skill and patience shown by
many native artists equally poorly provided with tools.
Other relics of native art and history attracted the attention of the
traveller, and he specially dwelt with interest on a paved ring of
granite, upwards of 2200 feet in circumference, with a human figure
rudely-fashioned in granite occupying the centre. It stands in the
vicinity of San Juan de Maguana, in St. Domingo, which formed, at the
time of its first discovery, a distinct kingdom, governed by the cacique
Caonabo, the most fierce and powerful of the Carib chiefs, and an
irreconcilable enemy of the European invaders. It is called at the
present day, “El Cercado de los Indios,” but Sir Robert Schomburgk
questioned its being the work of the inhabitants of the island when
first visited by the Spaniards, and assigned it, along with figures
which he examined cut on rocks in the interior of Guiana, and the
sculptured figures of St. Domingo, to a people far superior in intellect
to those Columbus met with in Hispaniola. These he conceived to have
come from the northern part of Mexico, adjacent to the ancient district
of Huastecas, and to have been conquered and extirpated by their Carib
supplanters, prior to European colonists displacing them in their turn.
The roving Caribs supplied themselves with axes and clubs of jade,
greenstone, and others of the most prized materials of the mainland; but
they turned the easily wrought shells of the neighbouring seas to
account in much the same way as the natives of the coral islands of the
Pacific to whom any harder material is unknown. But while noting the
varied uses to which the shells of the Caribbean Sea were applied by the
natives of the archipelago, a greater interest attaches to the
indications of an ancient trade in these products of the Gulf of
Florida, carried on among widely-scattered tribes of North America, long
before its discovery by Columbus.
Abundant evidence proves that the large marine shells were regarded with
superstitious reverence, alike by the more civilised nations of the land
around the Gulf, and by others even so far north as beyond the shores of
the great Canadian Lakes. In the latter case it is not difficult to
account for the origin of such a feeling among tribes familiar only with
small native fresh-water shells. But in one of the singular migratory
scenes of the ancient Mexican paintings, copied from the Mendoza
Collection,[53] in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, a native, barefooted,
and dressed in a short spotted tunic reaching to his loins, bears in his
right hand a spear, toothed round the blade, it may be presumed with
points of obsidian, and in his left hand a large univalve shell. A
river, which he is passing, is indicated by a greenish stripe winding
obliquely across the drawing, and his track, as shown by alternate
footprints, has previously crossed the same stream. On this trail he is
followed by other figures nearly similarly dressed, but sandalled, and
bearing spears and large fans; while a second group approaches the river
by a different trail, and in an opposite direction to the shell-bearer.
Other details of this curious fragment of pictorial history are less
easily interpreted. An altar or a temple appears to be represented on
one side of the stream; and a highly-coloured circular figure on the
other, may be the epitomised symbol of some Achæan land or Sacred Elis
of the New World. But whatever be the interpretation of the ancient
hieroglyphic painting, its general correspondence with other migratory
depictions is undoubted; and it is worthy of note, that, in some
respects, the most prominent of all the figures is the one represented
fording the stream, and bearing a large tropical univalve in his hand.
The evidence thus afforded of an importance attached to the large
sea-shells of the Gulf of Mexico, among the most civilised of the
American nations settled on its shores, deserves notice in connection
with the discovery of the same marine products among relics pertaining
to Indian tribes upwards of three thousand miles distant from the native
habitat of the mollusca, and separated by hundreds of miles from the
nearest sea-coast.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.—Tennessee Idol.]
Tracing them along the northern route through the Mississippi and Ohio
valleys, these shells have been found in the ancient graves of
Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana, and northward to the regions of the
Great Lakes. Dr. Gerard Troost, in a communication to the American
Ethnological Society,[54] describes an interesting series of sepulchral
remains discovered in Tennessee. The crania were characterised by
remarkable artificial compression, as in an example figured by Dr.
Morton (plate 55, _Crania Americana_), and the graves abounded with
relics, “lares, trinkets, and utensils, all of a very rude construction,
and all formed of some natural product, none of metal.” From an
examination of those, Dr. Troost was led to the conclusion that the race
to whom they pertained came from some tropical country. Among their
stone implements obsidian abounded. Numerous beads were formed of
tropical marine shells of the genus _marginella_, ground so as to make a
perforation on the back, by means of which they could be strung together
for purposes of personal ornament. Plain beads were made from the
columellæ of the _Strombus gigas_; and such columellæ were found worked
to a uniform thickness, perforated through the centre, and in all stages
of manufacture, to that of perfected beads and links of the much-prized
_wampum_. Similar accumulations of shell beads in the great mounds of
the Ohio valley are referred to in a subsequent chapter; but another
relic has an additional value from the light it throws not only on early
native arts, but on ancient manners and modes of thought. Dr. Troost
describes and figures various rudely sculptured idols, from some of
which he was led to assume the existence of Phallic rites among the
ancient idolaters of Tennessee. The greater number of the idols were of
stone, but the one figured here (Fig. 49) has been modelled of clay and
pounded shells, and hardened in the fire. It represents a nude human
figure, kneeling, with the hands clasped in front; and when found, it
still occupied, as its primitive niche or sanctuary, a large tropical
shell (_Cassis flammea_), from which the interior whorls and columella
had been removed, with the exception of a small portion at the base, cut
off flat, so as to form its pedestal. The special application of this
example of the tropical cassides adds a peculiar interest to it, as
manifestly associated with the religious rites of the ancient race by
whom the spoils of southern seas were transported inland, and converted
to purposes of ornament and use.
The discovery of similar relics to the north of the Great Lakes is still
more calculated to excite interest; and, indeed, when first brought
under notice they gave rise to extravagant ethnological theories, based
on the assumption of their East Indian origin.[55] But though they
furnished no evidence of such far wanderings from the old East, they
throw considerable light on ancient migrations of native American races,
and illustrate the extent of traffic carried on between the north and
south, in ages prior to the displacement of the Red-man by the European.
Two large tropical shells, both specimens of the _Pyrula perversa_, have
been presented to the Canadian Institute at Toronto: not as examples of
the native conchology of the tropics, but as Indian relics pertaining to
the great northern chain of fresh-water lakes. The first was discovered
on opening a grave-mound at Nottawasaga, on the Georgian Bay, along with
a gorget made from the same kind of shell; the second was brought from
the Fishing Islands, near Cape Hurd, on Lake Huron. Thirteen other
examples from the Georgian Bay are in the Museum of Laval University;
and many more have come under my notice procured from grave-mounds and
sepulchral depositories in different parts of Western Canada. Recently,
in the summer of 1874, a large ossuary of the Tiontonones, or Petuns,
was accidentally opened at Lake Medad, in the county of Wentworth,
within which were found evidences of extensive sepulture, numerous clay
and stone pipes of curious workmanship, shell and stone implements, and
a number of the same tropical shells, both whole and in pieces, most of
which are now in the possession of Mr. B. E. Charlton of Hamilton,
Ontario. Similar ossuaries have been repeatedly opened in the Huron
Country, between Lake Simcoe and the Georgian Bay. In one pit, about
seven miles from Penetanguishene, three large conch-shells were found,
along with twenty-six copper kettles, a pipe, a copper bracelet, a
quantity of shell beads, and numerous other relics. The largest of the
shells, a specimen of the _Pyrula spirata_, weighed three pounds and a
quarter, and measured fourteen inches in length; but a piece had been
cut off this, as well as another of the large shells, probably for the
manufacture of some smaller ornament. In another cemetery in the same
district, among copper arrow-heads, bracelets, and ear-ornaments, pipes
of stone and clay, beads of porcelain, red pipe-stone, etc., sixteen of
the same prized tropical univalves lay round the bottom of the pit
arranged in groups of three or four together. From such shells the
sacred wampum, official gorgets, and other special decorations were
made; and the appearance of some of those found in northern graves
suggests that they may have been handed down through successive
generations as great medicines, before their final deposition, with
other rare and costly offerings, in honour of the dead.
The attractions offered by such products of tropical seas are by no
means limited to the untutored tastes of the American Indian. In India,
China, and Siam, the _Pyrum_, and other large and beautiful shells of
the Indian Ocean, are no less highly prized by the natives, not only as
an easily wrought material for implements and personal ornaments; but in
some cases, as vessels employed in their most sacred rites. A
sinistrorsal variety found on the coasts of Tranquebar and Ceylon, is
devoted by the Cingalese exclusively to such purposes. Reversed shells
of the species _Turbinella_, are held in like veneration in China, where
great prices are given for them; and are often curiously ornamented with
elaborate carvings, as shown on several fine specimens in the British
Museum. They are kept in the pagodas, and are not only employed by the
priests on special occasions in administering medicine to the sick; but
the vessel for holding the consecrated oil, with which the Emperor is
anointed at his coronation, is made from one of them.
Such analogies in the choice of materials, and in objects set apart for
the sacred rites of different nations, are full of interest in reference
to characteristics common to man in all ages, and in regions the most
remote. But when they are met with in the arts and customs of the same
continent, they point with greater probability to borrowed usages, and
often help the ethnologist to track the footprints of migrating nations
to their earlier homes. But the use of shells for personal ornaments has
been traced back, along with other evidence of the antiquity of man,
almost to what seems the primeval dawn. In the caves of southern France
and Italy, along with mammoth and reindeer bones and ivory, and in the
sepulchral deposits at Aurignac, lay shell necklaces or bracelets made
of the _Littorina littorea_, still abundant on the shores of the
Atlantic, along with perforated shells of the miocene period, evidently
gathered in a fossil state to be converted to purposes of personal
decoration. So also in a later, but still prehistoric age, the
megalithic tomb, brought to light, in 1838, under the Knock-Maraidhe
Cromlech in the Phœnix Park, Dublin, disclosed two male skeletons,
underneath the skulls of which lay a number of the common _Nerita
littoralis_, perforated, evidently for the purpose of being strung
together as neck ornaments. An ornamental bone-pin, with a knob carved
at each end, and a rude flint-knife, constituted the only other contents
of this primitive tomb which had been constructed with such costly toil.
Other British cists and cairns have disclosed similar relics of the
shell necklace and bracelet, made of the oyster, limpet, and cockle
shells, the contents of which supplied an important source of food. For
not only in the ancient kitchen-middens of northern Europe, but mingling
with more ancient cave deposits, as in Kent’s Cavern, lay heaps of the
shells of such edible molluscs, the refuse of the table of the old
cave-men, which shows one resource on which they depended for
subsistence. America, too, had its ancient shell and refuse heaps, as at
Cannon’s Point, St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where a vast mound of
oyster and mussel shells, intermingled here and there with a mediola or
helix, and with flint arrow-heads, stone axes, and fragments of pottery,
covers an area of not less than ten acres. But they abound upon all the
sea islands of the Southern States, and in many cases constitute regular
sepulchral mounds or shell cairns. One of these singular cairns on
Stalling’s Island, in the Savannah river, more than two hundred miles
from its mouth, is an elliptical mound measuring nearly three hundred
feet in length, and enclosing, along with human skeletons, bones of
large fish, deer, and other wild animals, accompanied with broken
pottery, arrow-heads, axes, flint-knives, and charred wood. On the
islands, and along the coast of Georgia and Florida, the inexhaustible
supplies of oysters, conches, and clams, furnished an abundant supply of
food. Around the Indian villages the shells accumulated in waste heaps;
and even now, at times, show the circular hollow where the native hut
had stood. With a mild climate, abundant game and indigenous fruits, in
addition to the inexhaustible spoils of the sea, the Southern Indians
had little temptation to roam; and the numerous shell-mounds and cairns
afford proof of their settled occupation of many localities. A large
drinking-cup, made of the conch-shell, was one of the special attributes
of the Indian cacique; and such cups are frequently found deposited
beside the buried skeleton.
Fresh-water shell heaps also abound; and Professor Jeffries Wyman made
those of East Florida the subject of an interesting paper in _The
American Naturalist_. Such memorials of the encampments of the
aborigines are historical records of the habits and customs of ancient
native tribes. The fresh-water mussels, which constituted an important
article of food, and also supplied the pearls which they prized for
decoration, enter largely into the contents of the heaps. Intermingled
with them are “numerous fragments of pottery, stone axes, chisels,
crushing-stones, awls, mortars, net-sinkers, arrow and spear points,
flint-knives, shell beads, soapstone ornaments, pipes, and the bones of
deer, buffalo, alligators, turtles, racoons, and other animals.”[56]
Many of the bones have been split, like those found in the ancient
mounds and caves of Europe, for the purpose of extracting the marrow;
and along with such evidences of culinary arts are piles of chipped
flint and stone, with broken or unfinished axes, spear and arrow-heads,
and other traces of the Indian tool-maker’s workshop. In all ways we
thus recognise, amid diversities of race, climate, and other external
circumstances, many minute analogies between the men of palæolithic and
neolithic ages of Europe, and those of the new world’s more recent
centuries, in regions apart from its singular centres of a native
civilisation.
But also the convenient form and beauty of various marine shells have
led to their use, not only as a substitute for the flint and stone of
other localities, or the unknown bronze and iron of later ages, but even
for the precious metals as the medium of a recognised currency, and this
from times of unknown antiquity, alike in the old world and in the new.
Of such substitutes for a metallic currency the _Cypræa moneta_ is the
most familiar. The cowrie shells used as currency are procured on the
coast of Congo, and in the Philippine and Maldive Islands. Of the
latter, indeed, they still constitute the chief article of export. At
what remote date, or at what early stage of rudimentary civilisation,
this singular representative shell-currency was introduced, it is
perhaps vain to inquire; but the extensive area over which it has long
been recognised proves its great antiquity. The Philippine Islands form,
in part, the eastern boundary of the Southern Pacific, and the Maldives
lie off the Malabar coast in the Indian Ocean; but their shells
circulate as currency not only through Southern Asia, but far into the
African continent.
Corresponding to this cowrie currency of Asia and Africa is the American
Ioqua, or _Dentalium_, a shell found chiefly at the entrance of the
Strait of De Fuca, and employed both for ornament and money. The
Chinooks and other Indians of the Northern Pacific coast wear long
strings of ioqua shells as necklaces and fringes to their robes. These
have a value assigned to them, increasing in proportion to their size,
which varies from about an inch and a half to upwards of two inches in
length. Mr. Paul Kane thus wrote to me: “A great trade is carried on
among all the tribes in the neighbourhood of Vancouver’s Island, through
the medium of these shells. Forty shells of the standard size, extending
a fathom’s length, are equal in value to a beaver’s skin; but if shells
can be found so far in excess of the ordinary standard that thirty-nine
are long enough to make the fathom, it is worth two beavers’ skins, and
so on, increasing in value one beaver skin for every shell less than the
first number.”
But as the New World has thus its disclosures and illustrations of
native arts and usages full of interest to the student of primeval man,
so also the first glimpse of a western hemisphere revealed its
aborigines already familiar with that distinctive evidence of reason,
the art of fire-making, earliest of all the practical sciences, and the
indispensable precursor of every higher art of civilisation.
-----
[44] _Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain_, Fig. 405, p. 460.
[45] For a detailed discussion of this subject in its general bearings,
_vide_ “_Right-handedness_,” _Canadian Journal, N.S._, vol. xiii. p.
193.
[46] _Journ. Ethnol. Soc., N. S._, vol. ii. p. 419.
[47] _Athenæum_, April 5, 1873.
[48] _Alaska and its Resources_, p. 237.
[49] _Découverte d’un Squellette humain de l’époque Paléolithique dans
les cavernes des Baoussé Roussé_, par Emile Rivière, p. 31.
[50] _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ._ VII. Account of the human bones found in the
cave of Cro-Magnon in Dordogne, by Dr. Pruner-Bey.
[51] _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ._ M. Louis Lartet, p. 70.
[52] For a more detailed account, _vide_ _Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._, vol.
vi. p. 376.
[53] Lord Kingsborough’s _Mexican Antiquities_, vol. i. plate 68.
[54] _Transactions_, _American Ethnological Society_, vol. i. pp.
355-365.
[55] _Inquiry into the Origin of the Antiquities of America_, p. 162.
[56] _Antiquities of the Southern Indians_, p. 200.