hafts of his tools and weapons with representations of familiar objects
of the chase, but is also accredited with carving, on his mace or baton,
symbolic emblems expressing the rank and official duties of the owner.
The analogous practice of the Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands at
the present day shows that there is nothing inconsistent with primitive
thought in the symbolic, significance assigned to some of the carved
batons; and, if so, we have there examples of imitative art employed in
a way which involved the germ of ideographic graving or picture-writing.
The mere fact of pictorial imitation implies the interpretation of its
representations. Eskimo implements are to be seen in various
collections, as at Copenhagen and Stockholm, in the British Museum, in
those of San Francisco and the Smithsonian Institution at Washington,
ornamented with representations of adventures incident to their habits
of life. An Arctic collection, presented by Captain Beechy to the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, furnishes interesting illustrations of the
skill of the Eskimo draughtsman. The carvings and linear drawings
represent, for the most part, incidents in the life of the polar hunter;
and this is so effectively done that, as Captain Beechy says: “By
comparing one with another, a little history was obtained which gave us
a better insight into their habits than could be elicited from any signs
or intimations.”[88] Mr. W. H. Dall figures in his _Alaska and its
Resources_, analogous examples of Innuit or Western Eskimo art; and in
an interesting communication by Dr J. W. Hoffman to the Anthropological
Society of Washington, on Eskimo pictographs as compared with those of
other American aborigines, he figures and interprets similar
examples.[89] One of these, copied from an ivory bow used in making
fire, which he examined in the Museum of the Alaska Commercial Company
of San Francisco, depicts three incidents in the Innuit hunter’s
experience. In one, the hunter supplicates the _Shaman_, or native
medicine-man, for success in the chase; another group represents the
results of the chase; while the third records the incidents of an
unsuccessful appeal to another shaman. Another graving from the same
locality embodies the incidents of success and failure in a prolonged
hunting expedition. In their interpretation, Dr. Hoffman was assisted by
a Kadiack half-breed who happened to visit San Francisco at the time. A
design of the same class copied from a piece of walrus ivory, carved by
a Kiatégamut Indian of Southern Alaska, records a successful feat of the
shaman in curing two patients. He is represented in the act of
exorcising the demons, who are seen just cast out from the men restored
to health by his agency. From the interpretations thus given, it may be
inferred that such drawings as those described by Captain Beechy
represent in nearly every case actual incidents. The hunter celebrates
his return from a successful chase, his experience in the attempt to
propitiate the supernatural powers on his behalf, or any other notable
event, by recording the impressive incidents on the handle of his
hunting knife or his ivory bow, or even in some cases on a tablet of
walrus ivory; just as the enthusiastic sportsman will at times enter in
his journal the special occurrences of the fox-hunt, or the more
adventurous feats of deer-stalking, or commission an artist to
perpetuate them on canvas. Incidents of exceptional skill or daring are
no doubt recalled, and listened to with eager interest by the home
circle in the Arctic snow-hut; and are confirmed in their most thrilling
details by appeals to such graven records.
The more durable material employed alike by the ancient cave-dwellers of
Europe and by the modern Innuit and Eskimo, has secured their
preservation in a form best calculated to command attention. But similar
graphic representations of incidents and ideas are common to various
tribes of North American Indians. Throughout the wide region of the old
Algonkin tribes rock-carvings, such as that of the famous Dighton Bock,
abound. The same are no less frequent in the South-West from New Mexico
to California; while similar pictographs are executed by the Ojibways in
less durable fashion on their grave-posts, or even on strips of
birch-bark. In like fashion, the Crees and Blackfeet of the Canadian
North-West adorn their buffalo-skin tents with incidents of war and the
chase, and blazon on their buffalo robes their personal feats of daring,
and the discomfiture of their foes. In this way, the aboriginal
draughtsman is seen in his pictorial devices to aim at the like result
with that achieved by the old minstrel chronicler or the courtly herald.
Of the ornamented handles of implements recovered from the abodes of the
ancient cave-dwellers of Europe, the most notable examples are far in
advance of any Eskimo carvings. One of those, from the cave at Laugerie
Basse, has been repeatedly engraved. It is fashioned from a piece of
reindeer’s horn. The carver has so modified his design, and availed
himself of the natural contour of his material, as to adapt it admirably
to its purpose as the handle of a poignard. It was apparently intended
to include both handle and blade; but probably broke in the process of
manufacture, and was flung aside unfinished. The design is a spirited
adaptation to the special requirements. The horns are thrown back on the
neck, the fore legs doubled up, and the hind legs stretched out, as if
in the act of leaping. Another finely finished example of a
dagger-handle, from Montastrue, Peccadeau de l’Isle, figured by
Professor de Quatrefages in his _Hommes fossiles_, also represents the
deer with its horns thrown back; but from its fractured condition the
position of the limbs can only be surmised to have corresponded to the
example from Laugerie Basse. With those may be classed such carvings as
the pike, so characteristically represented on a tooth of the cave-bear,
recovered from a refuse heap in the cave of Durntly in the Western
Pyrenees, and other similar sports of primitive artistic skill.
Such carvings had no other aim, we may presume, than the decoration of a
favourite weapon, or the beguiling of a leisure hour. But they show the
fruits of skill, and the observation of a practised eye, by the
ingenious workmen whose drawings and etchings merit our careful study.
Considerable taste and still more ingenuity are exhibited by many of the
American aborigines, in their decorative carvings, and the ornamentation
both of their weapons and dress. The characteristics of Eskimo art have
been noted. The Thlinkets of Alaska, lying on their western border,
manifest a like skill, making ladles and spoons from the horns of the
deer, the mountain sheep, and goat, and carving them with elaborate
ingenuity. They also work in walrus ivory, fashioning their bodkins,
combs, and personal ornaments with varied ornamentation; decorate their
knife-handles of bone, their paddles, and other implements; and carve
grotesque masks, with much inventive ingenuity in the variety of the
design, though scarcely in a style of high art. But it is interesting to
note the different phases of this imitative faculty. Some tribes, such
as the Algonkins, confine their art mainly to literal reproductions of
natural objects; while others, such as the Chimpseyans or Babeens, the
Tawatins, and the Clalam Indians of Vancouver Island, have developed a
conventional style of art, often exhibiting much ingenious fancy in its
grotesque ornamentation. This is specially apparent in the claystone
pipes of the Chimpseyans, in carving which they rival the ingenious
Haidahs of the Queen Charlotte Islands in exuberance of detail. But
while the art has become conventional, where it is not displaced by
imitations of the novel objects brought under their notice in their
intercourse with Europeans its combinations are in most cases referable
to native myths.
In many of the elaborately carved Chimpseyan pipes, their special
purpose seems to be lost sight of in the whimsical profusion of
ornament, embracing every native or foreign object that has chanced to
attract the notice of the sculptor. Nevertheless, it may help us to do
justice to the true aim of the Indian artist, if we call to remembrance
how much of Christian symbolism was embodied in many a mediæval
sculpturing of what, to the unsympathetic observer, seem now only
conventional vines and lilies, or a mere fanciful grouping of dragons
and snakes, with apples, figs, grapes, and thorns. This has to be kept
in view while noting in the pipe sculptures human figures in strangest
varieties of posture, intertwined with zoomorphic devices, in which the
bear and the frog have a prominent place; and, as will be seen, a mythic
significance. It is no less suggestive to note, alike in the Chimpseyan
and in the Tawatin and Haidah carvings, curious analogies to the
sculptures of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America. This resemblance has
been noticed, independently, by many observers.
Marchand, a French navigator who visited the Queen Charlotte Islands in
1791, after having recently seen the Mexican sculpture and paintings,
formed the opinion that the Haidah works of art could be distinctly
traced to Aztec origin.[90] He remarks of their paintings and carvings:
“The taste for ornament prevails in all the works of their hands; their
canoes, their chests, and different little articles of furniture in use
among them, are covered with figures which might be taken for a species
of hieroglyphics; fishes and other animals, heads of men, and various
whimsical designs, are mingled and confounded in order to compose a
subject. It undoubtedly will not be expected that these figures should
be perfectly regular and the proportions in them exactly observed, for
here every man is a painter and sculptor; yet they are not deficient in
a sort of elegance and perfection.”
The imitative faculty thus manifested so generally among a people still
in the condition of savage life, shows itself no less strikingly in the
modern claystone carvings of objects of foreign introduction. The
collection formed by the United States Exploring Expedition, and largely
augmented since, includes numerous carvings in which representations of
log and frame houses, forts, boats, horses, and fire-arms, are
introduced; and where cords, pulleys, anchors, and other details copied
from the shipping which frequent the coasts, furnish evidence of a
practised eye, and considerable powers of imitation. To the unfamiliar
observer, the result presents, in many cases, a very arbitrary and even
incongruous jumble of miscellaneous details. But, most probably, the
native designer had, in every case, a special meaning, and even some
specific incident in view.
The interest awakened by such manifestations of observant accuracy and
artistic skill among savage tribes is not diminished by the fact that in
nearly all other respects they are devoid of culture. Notwithstanding
the absence in most of them of the very rudiments of civilisation,
experience proves that among the tribes to the west of the Rocky
Mountains distinguished by artistic capacity, there is an aptitude for
industrious and settled habits, the want of which is so noticeable in
the nomad tribes of the prairies. Their linear patterns are often
singularly graceful; and they employ colour lavishly, and with some
degree of taste, in decorating their masks, boats, and dwellings. This
is specially noticeable among the Haidahs, in the different dialects of
whose language we find not only names for nearly all the primary
colours, but also the word _kigunijago_, “a picture.” The symbolical and
mythological significance of many of their carvings is indisputable;
while the affinities, traceable at times to the ornamentation most
characteristic of the architectural remains in the principal seats of
native American civilisation in Central America, confer on them a
peculiar interest and value.
The curiously conventional style of ornamentation of the Haidahs of
Queen Charlotte Islands is lavishly expended on their idols, or
manitous, carved in black argillaceous stone, and on their
council-houses and lodges. In front of each Haidah dwelling stands an
ornamented column, formed of the trunk of a tree, large enough, in many
cases, to admit of the doorway being cut through it. These columns, or
“totem-poles” as they have been called, are, in some cases, sixty or
seventy feet high, elaborately carved with the symbols or totems of
their owners. The height of the pole indicates the rank of the inmate,
and any attempt at undue assumption in this respect is jealously
resented by rival chiefs. The symbols of their four clans—the eagle,
beaver, dog-fish, and black duck,—are represented in conventional style
on the carved house-pole, along with their individual or family totems.
In some cases boxes are attached to the poles containing the remains of
their dead. Dr. Hoffman, whose previous studies in native symbolism and
ideography specially prepared him for the intelligent observation of
such monuments, has furnished an interpretation of their most familiar
devices. “When the posts are the property of some individual, the
personal totemic sign is carved at the top. Other animate and grotesque
figures follow in rapid succession, down to the base, so that unless one
is familiar with the mythology and folk-lore of the tribe, the subject
would be utterly unintelligible. A drawing was made of one post with
only seven pronounced carvings, but which related to three distinct
myths. The bear, in the act of devouring a hunter, or tearing out his
heart, is met with on many of the posts, and appears to form an
interesting theme for the native artists. The story connected with this
is as follows:—Toivats, an Indian, had occasion to visit the lodge of
the King of the Bears, but found him out. The latter’s wife, however,
was at home, and Toivats made love to her. Upon the return of the Bear,
everything seemed to be in confusion. He charged his wife with
infidelity, which she denied. The Bear pretended to be satisfied, but
his suspicions caused him to watch his wife very closely, and he soon
found that her visits away from the lodge for wood and water occurred
each day at precisely the same hour. Then the Bear tied a magic thread
to her dress, and when his wife again left the lodge, he followed the
magic thread, and soon came upon his wife, finding her in the arms of
Toivats. The Bear was so enraged at this that he tore out the heart of
the destroyer of his happiness.”[91] Dr. Hoffman found this myth, with
the corresponding carvings in walrus ivory, among the Thlinkit Indians,
who, as he conceives, obtained both the story and the design for their
ivory carvings from the Haidahs. This appears to receive confirmation
from the peculiar style of art common to both.
But the decorations of the Haidah lodge-poles admit at times of a much
more homely interpretation. Mr. James G. Swan, the author of an article
on “The Haidah Indians,” in Vol. XXI. of the _Smithsonian Contributions
to Knowledge_, in a communication to the _West Shore_, an Oregon
journal, thus describes an Indian lodge and house-pole which attracted
his notice, owing to its carved figures, in round hat and other European
costume, surmounting the two corner-posts of the lodge. He accordingly
made a careful drawing of the whole, which, as he says, “is interesting
as illustrative of the grim humour of an Indian in trying to be avenged
for what he considered an act of injustice a number of years ago. Bear
Skin, a somewhat noted Haidah chief, belonging to Skidegate village,
Queen Charlotte Islands, was in Victoria, when for some offence he was
fined and imprisoned by Judge Pemberton, the police magistrate. Bear
Skin felt very much insulted; and in order to get even with the
magistrate he carved the two figures, which are said to be good
likenesses of the Judge, who in this dual capacity mounts guard at each
corner of the front of the chiefs residence. The gigantic face on the
front of the house, and the two bears on the two mortuary columns, seem
to be grinning with fiendish delight, while the raven on top of one of
the columns has cocked his eye so as to have a fair look at the effigies
beneath him. Bear Skin is dead, but the images still remain. It has been
suggested that they be removed to Victoria, and be placed over the
entrance to the police barracks, to keep watch and ward like Gog and
Magog at the gates of old London city.” But, on the other hand, a
symbolical meaning appears to be most frequently embodied in the Haidah
devices; of which Mr. Swan reproduces various illustrations, accompanied
with native interpretations of them. One drawing, for example,
represents a grouping of conventional patterns such as are common on the
Haidah blankets of goats’ hair, and in which the untutored student can
discern little more than confused scroll-work, with here and there an
enormous eye, rows of teeth, and a symmetrical repetition of the design
on either side of the central device. Yet, according to Kitelswa, the
native Haidah interpreter, “it represents cirrus clouds, or, as sailors
term them, ‘mares’ tails and ‘mackerel sky,’ the sure precursors of a
change of weather. The centre figure is T’kul, the wind spirit. On the
right and left are his feet, which are indicated by long streaming
clouds; above are his wings, and on each side are the different winds,
each designated by an eye, and represented by the patches of cirrus
clouds. When T’kul determines which wind is to blow, he gives the word
and the other winds retire. The change in the weather is usually
followed by rain, which is indicated by the tears which stream from the
eyes of T’kul.” The difficulty with which the inexperienced observer has
to contend, in any attempt to interpret such native conventional art,
finds apt illustration in Mr. Swan’s account of an elaborately
sculptured lodge-pole of which he made a drawing at Kioosta village, on
Graham Island, one of the Queen Charlotte group. When describing it in
minute detail, he says: “I could make out all the figures but the
butterfly, which I thought at first was an elephant with its trunk
coiled up; but on inquiry of old Edinso, the chief who was conveying me
in his canoe from Massett to Skidegate, he told me it was a butterfly,
and pointed out one which had just lit near by on a flower.” The same
characteristics have already been referred to in describing the
claystone carvings of the Chimpseyans. They also mark the Haidah
sculptures executed in the soft argillaceous slate which abounds in
their vicinity. But the Haidahs work with no less ability in other
materials; and were familiar of old with the native copper, which is
brought from some still unascertained locality, it is believed, in
Alaska. The collections of the Geological Survey at Ottawa include some
of their beautifully wrought copper daggers and a massive and finely
finished copper neck-collar. They have now learned to work with equal
skill in iron. Their bracelets, rings, and ear ornaments of gold and
silver; their copper shields and richly carved emblematic weapons, bows
and arrows, iron daggers and war knives; as well as their wooden and
horn dishes, spoons, masks, and toys, are eagerly sought after. The
carvings on them, when properly explained, are of great interest; for
every device has a meaning, and each illustrates a story or a legend,
readily understood by the Indian, but by no means willingly interpreted
to strangers.
A knowledge of the myths of the Haidahs and other coast tribes is
indispensable to any interpretation of their carvings; and to those,
accordingly, Dr. Hoffman has directed his attention. “A very common
object,” as he says, “found carved upon various household vessels,
handles of wooden spoons, etc., is the head of a human being in the act
of eating a toad; or, as it frequently occurs, the toad placed a short
distance below the mouth. This refers to the evil spirit, supposed to
live in the wooded country, who has great power of committing evil by
means of poison, supposed to be extracted from the toad”; but, as Dr.
Hoffman adds, it is a difficult matter to get an Indian to acknowledge
the common belief in the mythic being, even when aware that the inquirer
is in possession of the main facts.
The interpretations thus furnished by a careful study of the carvings of
the Haidahs and other artistic native tribes of British Columbia, and
the evidence of a specific meaning and application discoverable in their
most conventional designs, have a significant hearing on the study of
analogous productions of the cave-men of Europe’s palæolithic dawn. The
manifestations of an active imitative faculty and some degree of
artistic skill, among different rude native tribes of this continent,
present some striking parallels to the æsthetic aptitudes of the
primeval draughtsmen and carvers of Europe. There are, moreover,
undoubted resemblances in style and mode of representation of the
objects, as depicted on some of the ancient and the modern bone and
ivory carvings and drawings of the two continents; but the latter
exhibit no evidence of progress. The Innuit and Eskimo designs do,
indeed, more nearly approximate to those of the primitive draughtsmen
than other aboriginal efforts; but their inferiority in all respects is
equally striking and indisputable.
The evidence of artistic ability in the native races both of Central and
Southern America is abundant; nor is the northern continent lacking in
its specially artistic race. But the achievements of the ancient Mayas,
Peruvians, or Mound-Builders, are of very recent date, compared with the
palæolithic, or even the neolithic productions of Europe. It need not,
therefore, excite our wonder to find American antiquaries welcoming a
disclosure, only too strikingly analogous to the famous mammoth drawing
of the La Madeleine cave. There recently issued from the American press
a tastefully printed volume, in which its author, Mr. H. C. Mercer,
gives an account of the discovery, near Doylestown, Pennsylvania, of a
“gorget stone” of soft shale, on which is graven what the author
describes as “unquestionably a picture of a combat between savages and
the hairy mammoth. The monster, angry, and with erect tail, approaches
the forest, in which through the pine-trunks are seen the wigwams of an
Indian village.” The sun, moon, and the forked lightning overhead,
complete a design which could scarcely deserve serious notice, so
palpable is the evidence of the fabrication, were it not for the
unmistakable sincerity with which the author sets forth the narration,
and assures us that after the most careful inquiry “nothing has occurred
to shake his faith in the unimpeachable evidence of an honest
discovery.”[92] The figure of the mammoth has a suspiciously near
resemblance, in all but one respect, to the La Madeleine graving on
mammoth ivory. It charges its assailants with lowered trunk and erect
tail; but instead of presenting, as in the ancient cave-dweller’s
drawing, evidence of aptitude in the free use of the pencil or graving
tool, the scratchings on the Lenape Stone are crude and inartistic, even
if tried by the rudest standard of Indian art. It may, perhaps, be worth
noting that—if the design has not been purposely reversed in order to
evade comparison with the genuine European example,—it is a left-handed
drawing. The forgery of palæolithic implements has become a systematic
branch of manufacture in Europe; and the “Grave Creek Stone,” the “Ohio
Holy Stone,” and other similar productions of perverted American
ingenuity are familiar to us. It need not, therefore, excite any special
wonder to find a like activity in the production of fictitious examples
of pictorial art.