_Unidentified Animal._—It is difficult to tell exactly what animal
was intended to be represented by that shown in plate 5, figure 2.
Its head and mouth are not those of any of the horned animals already
considered, although it has some anatomical features recalling a
mountain sheep. The extension back of the body has a remote likeness
to a fish, but may be a bird or simply a conventional design. The
geometrical figure covering the side of the body bears some likeness
to one depicted on a bird, as shown in plate 3, figure 1. The same
geometrical figure sometimes also occurs separated from any animal form
in Sikyatki pottery.[42]
The bowl is ten inches in diameter, five inches in depth, and the
figures are painted red on a white ground.
_Unidentified Animal._—One of the most remarkable of many figures on
bowls from Oldtown in the collection of Mr. E. D. Osborn is shown
in figures 27, 29 (p. 38). Three colors enter into the decoration
of this bowl, black, white, and brown, and there are two types of
ornamentation, one zoic, the other geometric. The bowl itself was much
broken when found, but not so mutilated as to hide the main designs.
The zoic figures represent animals with square bodies, four legs, ears,
head, and tail like a young antelope. There is no design on the side
of the body, but in its place four broad parallel bands extend from
the belly across the bowl. Each group of parallel lines changes its
direction, widening in their course or near the ends where they enlarge
for the accompanying figure. The markings on the necks of these figures
suggest those on fawns.
The elaborate geometric figure composed of a scroll and comma-like dot
and eye is a highly conventionalized symbol, possibly of some animal,
as a bird’s head, common on Casas Grandes pottery.
There is a bowl on exhibition in the Chamber of Commerce at Deming
with a picture of a quadruped resembling a deer, but the base is so
fractured in killing that it is difficult to determine the shape of the
body or its decoration.
_Unidentified Animal._—One of the most instructive figures of the
collection appears in duplicate on a large food bowl (pl. 5, fig. 1).
This vessel is black and white in color and measures fifteen inches
in diameter by six inches deep. The two designs occur on the two
sides of the interior of the bowl, the middle of which is left without
decoration.
The body of this creature is elongated and tapers backward, being
continued into a tail like that of the lizard. The head is long and the
snout pointed. Only two legs are represented, and these are situated
far back on the body near the point of the origin of the tail from the
body. A lozenge-shaped symbol forms the geometrical design on the side.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.—Unidentified animal. Oldtown Ruin. (Osborn
collection.)]
The presence of only two legs in this figure would seem to indicate
that a bird was intended, but no bird has a tail like this figure; and
the prehistoric potters of the Mimbres certainly knew how to draw a
bird much better than this would imply. The exceptional features of
this drawing, doubtless intentional, belong neither to flesh, fish, nor
fowl, rendering its identification doubtful.