To denote the state of art among the aboriginal race, it is necessary
closely to examine such monuments of it, as exist. The word “monument”
is used to denote any remains of art. Such are their relics in the form
of worked shells and amulets, pottery, carved implements and utensils
of stone, and other antiquarian remains found in their mounds, graves,
fortifications, and other places of ancient occupancy in our latitudes.
Of architectural ruins in stone, which constitute so striking a portion
of aboriginal antiquities, in central and South America, particularly
in the ruins of their temples and teocalli, (the only form of such
architecture indeed, which survives,) we have no remains north of
the latitude of the mouth of the Mississippi, unless they shall be
disclosed in some of the large mounds yet unopened, or in portions of
the country north of such a line, which yet remains unexplored, west of
the extreme sources of the Red river and the Rio Del Norte.
From this inquiry, we may peremptorily exclude, all articles and
remains of metal (not gold, silver or native copper) and all sculpture
and inscriptions (not picture writing) which have been found and
commented on, with an air of wonder, in various places, but which are
one and all, undoubtedly of European, or to give the greatest scope
to conjecture, of trans-atlantic origin. Such are, to begin with the
highest object, the Grave creek inscription in apparently Celtiberic
characters, the stone with a rude inscription in Roman letters and
Arabic figures found in Onondaga county, and now deposited in the
Albany Academy; the amulets of coarse enamel colored pastes and glass,
of the imperfect fabric of the 15th and 16th centuries, found in Indian
graves; or old village and fort sites, together with the flattened
gun barrels, broken locks, artists’ tools and other articles of
iron, brass, or semi-vitrified earthenware, which are found over so
considerable an extent of country in western New-York. The latter are
undoubtedly, evidences of either earlier, or more systematic attempts
to settle, if not to found colonies, amongst the RED RACE from
abroad, than we are yet prepared fully to comprehend. But there need be
no question as to the general era and character of art to which they
belong; they are too clearly European in every instance to admit of
scruple.
The introduction of the fabrics of European art, among the tribes of
this continent, had the inevitable and speedy effect to destroy the
prior Indian arts. It is astonishing to find how soon the aborigines
of our latitudes, lost the art of making culinary vessels of clay; of
carving amulets and pipes out of steatites and other fissile mineral
bodies; of perforating, dissecting and forming sea shells into the
various shapes of wampum, gorgets, pendants, necklaces, belt and pouch
ornaments, and other ornamental fabrics. They no sooner obtained the
light brass, copper, iron, and tin kettle, than they laid aside the
more clumsy and frail AKEEK, or clay pot; their women relieved
from the labor of selecting and tempering the clays, and forming it
into pots and dishes, were advanced one step in the art of housewifery,
and took the first lesson in European civilization.
The maker of arrow and javelin heads, for this was a distinct art,
was superceded by the superior efficacy of fire arms; and his red
descendant at this day, as well as the gleaner of antiquities, is
alike at a loss to find, where the ancient artist in chert and
hornstone procured his materials of so suitable a quality and
fracture, and how he obtained the skill to chip and form them into
such delicate and appropriate patterns. The small and slender axe of
iron, with a steel edge, and pipe-head, at once took the place of the
crescent-shaped stone tomahawk, which had alone been appropriated to
war; while the larger half-axe, so called, supplanted the clumsy stone
AGAKWUT before employed rather as a gouge to detach coal
in the process of felling trees by fire, than an axe proper. By the
application of the common lathe and turning chisel, those species of
thick sea shells, which the natives had, with so much labor, converted
into seawan and wampum, were manufactured with such superior skill,
expedition and cheapness, (although this is an article which the
trader always held comparatively high) that the old Indian art of
the _wampum-maker_, sunk, like that of the _arrow-maker_, never to be
revived. But of all the exchanges made between civilized and savage
life, the gift of the steel-trap, in replacing the Indian trap of wood,
was the most eagerly sought, and highly prized by the hunter, although
it hastened the period of the destruction of the whole class of furred
animals, and thus in effect, brought to a speedy close the Indian
dominion.
Pottery was an art known universally among all the tribes from
Patagonia to the Arctic ocean, but was practised with very different
degrees of skill. The northern tribes who bordered on the great lakes,
and thence reached down to the Atlantic, made a rude article, which
just answered the simple purposes of the culinary art. The clay, or
argillaceous material used for it, was such as is common to diluvial
and tertiary soils. It was tempered with silex, in the form of pounded
quartz, or often quartz and field-spar, as it exists in granite, in
quite coarse particles. This mixture prevented shrinkage and cracks in
drying, and enabled the mass to withstand the application of heat—an
art which has resulted, and would very soon result, in any given case,
from experience. There were no legs to the Indian _akeek_, or pot. It
was designed to be used, to use a chemical phrase, as a sand-bath.
Being set on the ashes, a fire was built around it. It might also admit
of suspension, by a bark cord tied below the lip, which flared out
well, and thus could be attached to the ordinary Indian cooking-tackle,
namely; a long-legged tripod, tied at the top with bark.
There is no evidence in the structure of any of this species of
pottery, at least, in these latitudes, that it had been raised or
formed on a potter’s wheel. The fact that prepared clay placed on a
revolving horizontal circle, would rise, by the centrifugal force, if
resisted by the hand, or a potter’s stick or former, was not known to
these tribes; although it is admitted to be one of the oldest arts in
the world. Some skill was consequently required to form the mass and
shape the vessel, without machinery. It was essential to its utility,
and to prevent unequal shrinkage in drying, that the body should be
of uniform thickness; and this art was also, if we may judge from
fragments, and one or two entire vessels examined, very well attained.
It is believed that this art, in this quarter, was in the hands of
females; but every female or mistress of a lodge, was not adequate
to it. It must have been the business of a class of persons in each
village, who were professed potters. Tradition says that it was the
practice to mingle some blood in wetting and tempering the clay.
It was impossible that this art, so rude and laborious, and so
ill-suited to perform its offices when done, could survive and continue
to be practised for any length of time after the tribes had been made
acquainted with the products of the European potteries, rude as these
were comparatively speaking, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Architecture, as it existed in the north and west, was confined, we
may suppose, to earthen structures, crowned with wood, in the shape
of beams and posts. And it is only as it exhibited a knowledge of
geometry, in the combination of squares and circles, to constitute a
work of defence, that it is deserving of notice. The knowledge of the
pyramid and its durability, is one of the most ancient geometrical
discoveries in the world, and it is quite clear, in viewing the mounds
and teocalli of North America, that the aborigines possessed, or had
not forgotten it. In most of the works of defence, in the western
country, the circular pyramid, or mound of earth of various sizes,
formed a striking feature; whilst in relation to the mounds used for
religious ceremonies, as we must suppose the larger mounds to have
been, its completeness of plan and exact truncation, parallel to the
plain or basis, denotes the prevalence among them, of this ancient
architectural idea. We detect also, in a survey of the old works, the
square, the parallelogram, the circle, and the ellipsis. And these
figures were variously employed in the arrangement of masses of earth,
to produce a rampart and a moat.
The domestic economy required implements to perform the arts which we
express by the words sewing and weaving.
The awl and needle were made from various species of animal bones of
the land and water. The larger awl used to perforate bark, in sewing
together the sheathing of the northern canoe, made from the rind of
the betula, was squared and brought to a tapering point. A very close
grain and compact species of bone was employed for the fine lodge awl
used for sewing dressed skins for garments. After this skin had been
perforated, a thread of deer’s sinew was drawn through, from the eye of
a slender bone needle. There was, besides this, a species of shuttle
of bone, which was passed backwards and forwards, in introducing the
bark woof of mats and bags; two kinds of articles, the work of which
was commonly made from the scirpus læustris or larger bulrush. It was
only necessary to exhibit the square and round awl, and gross and
fine needle of steel, to supercede these primitive and rude modes of
_seamstress-work_ and _weaving_.
In an examination of Indian antiquarian articles, taken from the graves
and mounds, there is some glimmering of the art of design. There is no
other branch of art to which we can refer the numerous class of carved
ornaments and amulets, or their skill in symbolical or representative
drawing, evinced in their picture writing.
Amulets and neck, ear and head ornaments, constituted a very ancient
and very important department in the arcanum of the Indian wardrobe.
They were not only a part of the personal gear and decorations which
our old British writers sometimes denote “braveries,” but they were
connected with his superstitions, and were a part of the external
system of his religion. The aboriginal man, who had never laid aside
his oriental notions of necromancy, and believed firmly in witchcraft,
wore them as charms. They were among the most cherished and valued
articles he could possibly possess. They were sought with great
avidity, at high prices, and, after having served their office of
warding off evil, while he lived, they were deposited in his grave,
at death. Bones, shells, carved stones, gems, claws and hoofs of
animals, feathers of carnivorous birds, and above all the skin of the
serpent, were cherished with the utmost care, and regarded with the
most superstitious veneration. To be decked with suitable amulets was
to him to be invested with a charmed life. They added to his feeling
of security and satisfaction in his daily avocations, and gave him new
courage in war.
But if such were the influence of pendants, shells, beads and other
amulets or ornaments, inspired by children who saw and heard, what
their parents prized, this influence took a deeper hold of their minds
at and after the period the virile fast, when the power of dreams and
visions was added to the sum of their experimental knowledge of divine
things, so to call them. To fix it still stronger, the Indian system
of medicine, which admits the power of necromancy, lent its aid. And
thus, long before the period which the civilized code has fixed on, to
determine man’s legal acts, the aboriginal man was fixed, grounded and
educated in the doctrine of charms, talismans, and amulets.
To supply the native fabric in this particular branch, was more
difficult. Christianity, in a large part of Europe, certainly all
protestant Europe had, in 1600, religiously discarded all such, and
kindred reliances on amulets, from its ritual and popular observances,
where they had taken deep root during the dark ages; and hence the
first English and Dutch voyagers and settlers who landed north of
the capes of Florida, regarded the use of them as one of the strong
evidences of the heathenishness of the tribes, and made light of their
love of “beads and trinkets.” It was necessary, however, to the success
of their traffic and commerce—the great object of early voyages,
that this class of articles should be noticed; and they brought from
the potteries and glass-houses of Europe various substitutes, in the
shape of white, opaque, transparent, blue, black, and other variously
colored beads, and of as many diverse forms as the genius of geometry
could well devise. We see, what it is somewhat difficult as an inquiry
of art otherwise to reach, that they also brought over a species of
paste-mosaic, or curious oval and elongated beads of a kind of enamel
or paste, skilfully arranged in layers of various colors, which, viewed
at their poles, represented stars, radii, or other figures. These were
highly prized by the natives, (ignorant as they were of the manner of
making them,) and were worn instead of the native amulets. In place
of their carved pipes of steatite, or clay pipes ornamented with the
heads of birds, men, or animals, they supplied them with a somewhat
corresponding heavy, plain, or fluted pipe-bowl, which was designed,
like the native article, to receive a large wooden stem, such as we
see among the remote interior tribes, at the present day. The jingling
ornaments of native copper or deer hoofs, were replaced from European
work-shops, by the article of brass, called “hawks-bells,” an article
which, like that of wampum, still retains its place in the invoices of
the Indian trade.
But by far the most attractive class of fabrics which the commerce
of Europe supplied in exchange for their rich furs and peltries, was
arm-bands, wrist-bands, ear-rings, gorgets, and other ornaments, both
for the person and dress, of silver. This metal was esteemed, as it is
at this day, above all others. Its color and purity led them to regard
it as pre-eminently _the_ noble metal, and its introduction at once
superceded the cherished Nabikoagun Antique, and other forms of medals
and gorgets made from compact sea-shells.
In this manner the introduction of European arts, one after another,
speedily overturned and supplanted the ancient Indian arts, and
transferred them, at the end of but a few generations, from useful
objects to the class of antiquities. It is unnecessary to pursue the
subject to the department of clothing, in which woollens, cottons,
linens and ribbons, took the place of the dressed skins of animals and
birds, and the inner barks of trees, &c. Such objects are no part of
the antiquities to be studied here. They are wholly perishable, and
if any thing is to be gleaned from their study in the unburied cities
of Pompeii and Herculaneum, where stone and marble offered objects of
temporary resistance to currents of flowing lava, they offer no facts
to guide the pen of the antiquarian here. The European and the Indian
fabrics of the 16th century have alike submitted to the inevitable laws
of decomposition; but were it otherwise, could we disinter from the
Indian graves the first duffils, strouds, osnaburgs, and blankets, that
were given to the race, they would only prove that the latter quickly
laid aside the inferior when they could get the superior article. It
would prove that guns and gunpowder, brass kettles and iron axes, had
caused the manufacture of stone darts and clay kettles to be thrown
aside and forgotten, and in like manner the labors of the spindle and
loom had given the Indian, even before Columbus descended to his grave,
a new wardrobe.
To denote what the Indian arts were, at the beginning of the 16th
century, we must resort to their tombs, mounds, and general cemeteries.
The melancholy tale that is told from the dust and bones of these
sacred repositories is to be our teacher and schoolmaster. Its
whispers are low and almost inaudible. There are pauses and lapses
which it is difficult to make out. It requires great care—nice
attention—examination and re-examination. We must not hastily compose
the thread of the narrative. We must doubt and reject where doubt
and rejection are proper. We must discriminate the various epochs of
art from the objects disinterred. If objects of various ages lie in
the same cemeteries we must not confound them. Carefully to labor,
patiently to study, cautiously to conclude, is the province of the
antiquarian; and if, after all, he has but little to offer, it is,
perhaps, because there is but little to glean.