Chapter XV: Art Chroniclings (1)

IMITATIVE SKILL—ARCHAIC EUROPEAN ART—CONVENTIONAL ORNAMENTATION
—IMITATIVE DESIGN—ANALOGIES IN RITES AND CUSTOMS—ALTAR
RECORDS—SMELTING THE ORES—WISCONSIN PRAIRIE LANDS—THE RACE OF
THE MOUNDS—MOUND CARVINGS—PORTRAIT-SCULPTURES—AMERICAN
ICONOGRAPHY—DEDUCTIONS—NON-INDIAN TYPE—OTHER EXAMPLES—
ANTIQUE ICONOGRAPHIC ART—PECULIAR IMITATIVE SKILL—ANIMALS
REPRESENTED—EXTENSIVE GEOGRAPHICAL RELATIONS—KNOWLEDGE OF
TROPICAL FAUNA—DEDUCTIONS—THE TOUCAN AND MANATEE—TRACES OF
MIGRATION—ASSUMED INDICATIONS—ANALOGOUS SCULPTURES—PERUVIAN
IMITATIVE SKILL—CARVED STONE MORTARS—NICOTIAN RELIGIOUS RITES
—INDIAN LEGENDS—THE RED PIPE-STONE QUARRY—THE LEAPING ROCK—
MANDAN TRADITIONS—SIOUX LEGEND OF THE PEACE PIPE—THE SACKED
COCA PLANT—KNISTENEAUX LEGEND OF THE DELUGE—INDICATIONS OF
FORMER MIGRATIONS—FAVOURITE MATERIAL—PWAHGUNEKA—CHIMPSEYAN
CUSTOMS—CHIMPSEYAN ART—BABEEN CARVING—THE MEDICINE PIPE-STEM
—INDIAN EXPIATORY SACRIFICES—NICOTIAN RITES OF DIVINATION.

In studying the elaborate sculptures of Central American architecture, one of the first of its peculiar characteristics to strike the eye is the predominance of representations of natural objects, alike in its decorative details and in the symbolism of its hieroglyphic tablets. The human form, the head, the heart, the skull, the hand and foot, along with familiar objects of animate and inanimate nature, supplied the readiest architectural devices, and the most suggestive signs for attributes and ideas. In the imitation involved in such a style of art, resemblances may be traced to the productions of many partially civilised nations both of ancient and modern times. But in reviewing the primitive art of the New World, whether pertaining to extinct nations, like the Mound-Builders of Ohio and the architects of Yucatan, or to Indian tribes still occupying their old hunting grounds, the critical observer can scarcely overlook many peculiar manifestations of imitative skill. Though by no means to be regarded as an exclusive distinction of the American races, this is a characteristic in which they present a striking contrast to the primitive races of Europe. Many of the implements and personal ornaments of the ante-Christian era of European art, designated the “Bronze Period,” are exceedingly graceful in form, and some of them highly ornamented, but there is rarely a trace of imitative design. So also, though the peculiar form of one primitive class of gold ornaments, found in the British Isles, has suggested a name derived from the calyx of a flower, which the cups of its rings seem in some degree to resemble, it is a mere fanciful analogy; for no example bears the slightest trace of ornament calculated to suggest that such similarity was present to the mind of the ancient goldsmith. Where incised or graven ornaments are wrought upon the flower-like forms, they are the same chevron, or herring-bone and saltire patterns, which occur on the rudest clay pottery, alike of northern Europe and of America: though executed on the finer gold work with considerable delicacy and taste.

The correspondence between the forms and ornamentation of the rudest classes of pottery of the Old and New World, appears, at first sight, remarkable; but it originates in the inartistic simplicity inseparable from all infantile art. The ornamentation is only an improvement on the accidents of manufacture. The first decorations of the aboriginal potters of Europe and America appear to have been an undesigned result of the twisted cords passed round the clay to retain its form before it was hardened in the fire. More complicated patterns were produced by plaited or knitted cords, or imitated in ruder fashion with the point of a bone-lance or bodkin. But it is only among the allophylian arts of Europe that such arbitrary patterns are perpetuated with improving taste and skill. The European vase and cinerary urn become more graceful in contour, and more delicate in material and construction, when they accompany the beautiful weapons and personal ornaments wrought in bronze. But no attempt is made to imitate leaf or flower, bird, beast, or any simple natural object; and when in the bronze work of the later Iron Period, imitative forms at length appear, they are chiefly the snake and dragon patterns, borrowed seemingly by Celtic and Teutonic wanderers, with the wild fancies of their mythology, from the eastern cradle-land of their birth.

This absence of every trace of imitation in the forms and decorations of the archaic art of northern Europe, is curious and noteworthy: for remarkable traces, already referred to, pertaining to its palæotechnic era, prove that it is by no means an invariable characteristic of primitive art. In the simplest forms of ancient weapons, implements, and pottery, mere utility was the aim. The rude savage, whether of Europe or America, had neither leisure nor thought to spare for decorative art. His æsthetic faculty had not begun to influence his constructive instincts. Art was the child of necessity, and borrowed its first adjuncts of adornment from the sources whence it had received its convenient but arbitrary forms. But the moment we get beyond this utilitarian stage, the contrast between the products of European and American art is exceedingly striking; and their value to the ethnologist and archæologist becomes great, from the insight they give into the aspects of mental expression, and the intellectual phases of social life, among unhistoric generations. The useful arts of the British allophylian progressed until they superinduced the decorative and fine arts. But the ornamentation was inventive, and not imitative; it was arbitrary, conventional, and singularly persistent in style. It wrought itself into all his external expressions of thought; and whatever his religious worship may have been, we look in vain for proofs of idolatry, among the innumerable relics which have been recovered from supposed Druidical fanes, or the older cromlechs and tumuli of the British Isles.[100] The very opposite characteristics meet the eye the moment we turn to the primitive arts of the New World. There, indications of imitative design meet us on every hand. The rude tribes of the North-west, though living in the simplest condition of savage life, not only copy the familiar animal and vegetable forms with which they are surrounded: but represent, with ingenious skill, novel objects of European art introduced to their notice. Even their plaited and woven grass and quill-work assume a pictorial aspect; and the pottery is not only ornamented with patterns derived from flowers and other natural objects, but more elaborated examples are occasionally moulded into the forms of animals. Still more is this the case with the tubes, masks, personal ornaments, and, above all, the pipe-heads, alike of the Mound-Builders, and of living races. Nor does it stop with such miniature productions of art. The same imitative faculty reappears in the great earthworks of Wisconsin and Ohio: where the artist has wrought out representations of natural objects on a colossal scale.

The chronicles recorded by such means are invaluable. The walls of Central American ruins are covered with voiceless hieroglyphics; and the costly folios of Lord Kingsborough’s _Mexican Antiquities_ have placed at the command of the scholars of both hemispheres the dubious ideography of native historians. But the artistic representations preserved alike in the bas-reliefs and statues of Palenque, or in the characteristic pipe-sculpture of the Ohio mounds, are as significant and easy of interpretation as those on the Ramesian tablets of Abbosimbul in Nubia, which demonstrate the existence, in the era of Rameses, of Semitic and Ethiopian races, with ethnical diversities as clearly defined as now.

Among the characteristics of ancient and modern nations discernible in peculiar rites and customs, or disclosed in their arts, there are some that indicate widely-diffused hereditary influences, and so furnish a clew to remote affinities of race. The practice of circumcision, for example, which prevails both in Asia and Africa, wherever the influence of Semitic nations can be traced, strikingly illustrates the value of such indices. Another ancient custom, that of systematic cranial distortion, was common to nations of both hemispheres, and is proved by the evidence of ancient sculpture to have been in use at the period of highest architectural art in Central America. The Indian war-trophy of the scalp, and its singular counterpart, the peace-pipe, are also significant usages of the New World; though the former appears to have been equally common among ancient Asiatic nations. Herodotus refers to scalping as one of the most characteristic war-customs of the Scythians, and to their hanging the scalp-trophies to the warrior’s bridle-rein. Hence the ἀποσκυθίζειν of Euripides, quoted by Rawlinson, when remarking on the resemblance of such ancient customs to those of the Red Indians. The correspondence is worthy of note, in connection with others afterwards referred to, as possibly indicative of something more than a mere American counterpart to Egyptian and Oriental accumulations of trophies of the slain—the skulls, the hands, the ears, or even the foreskins,—repeatedly referred to in the Old Testament Scriptures, and recorded with minute detail on the paintings of Egypt, and the sculptures of Nimroud and Khorsabad. But no such analogies throw light on the singular usage of the peace-pipe. The ethnical relations which it indicates belong exclusively to the New World, where it seems to perpetuate a significant symbolism derived from an extinct native civilisation. As such, it is worthy of study by the American ethnologist, as the most curious of the many practices connected with the use of the strange nicotian stimulant. The pipe appears to have been associated with solemn religious rites and civic ceremonials, both in ancient and modern times. It bore a prominent part in the worship of the old Mound-Builders; and still retains its place among the paraphernalia of the inspired medicine-man or priest, and the most sacred credentials of the ambassador or war-chief.

The implements designed for the use of tobacco or other narcotic herbs, occupy a prominent place among the works of art of which the sacrificial mounds are the principal depositories. In accordance with the almost universal custom of barbarous and semi-civilised nations, the Mound-Builders devoted to their dead whatever had been most prized in life, or was deemed valuable for some talismanic charm. Hence the Mississippi mounds, and the ancient tombs of Mexico and Peru, disclose the same kind of evidence of the past as Wilkinson has deduced from the catacombs of Egypt, or Dennis from the sepulchres of Etruria. But in addition to this, the remarkable religious rites of the American Mound-Builders have preserved not only their altars, but the offerings laid upon them. The perishable garments of the dead have necessarily disappeared; and of instruments or utensils of wood or other combustible materials it is vain to expect a trace, where even metal has melted, and the stone been calcined in the blaze of sacrificial fires; but articles of copper and stone, of fictile ware, and even of shell, ivory, and bone, have escaped the destructive flame, and withstood the action of time. In such enduring characters inscriptions are legibly graven upon the altars of the Mound-Builders. Let us try to translate their records into the language of modern thought.

What such relics record in reference to metallurgy has already been seen. The Mound-Builders were acquainted with several of the metals. They had both the silver and lead of Iowa and Wisconsin in use. Implements and personal ornaments of copper abound on their altars; and the mechanical combination of silver with the native copper of which those are made, indicates that they derived their supplies from Lake Superior, where alone the metals have hitherto been found in the singular mechanico-chemical combination of crystals of silver in a copper matrix. Their sacrificial fires have in some cases fused the metallic offerings on the altars into a mass of molten metal, so that the Mound-Builders had thus presented to them this all-important lesson of metallurgy. Mr. F. S. Perkins, of Burlington, Wisconsin, whose collection of native copper implements numbers upwards of sixty specimens, has arrived at the conclusion that some of those from the ancient mounds have been cast in moulds; and Mr. J. W. Foster concurs in the belief that the Mound-Builders had learned to smelt the ores.[101] This still requires further proof. At Cincinnati, I saw in the collection of Mr. Cleneay, a choice specimen of a copper axe, found on the banks of Hog Creek, a tributary of the Great Miami. It measures fifteen inches long, and weighs 5 lb. 5½ oz.; but though well-proportioned, and finished with unusual care, it is entirely the work of the hammer. Only in one case, of an axe from the Lockport Mound, have I seen indications which seem to suggest a process of casting. But specimens of accidentally melted copper repeatedly occur; and Mr. Jas. B. Skinner, of Cincinnati, showed me a melted mass of pure silver, of 4 lb. weight, found lying on a heap of charcoal, in cutting through the embankment surrounding a large mound at Marietta. Nothing further was needed than the practical sagacity by which similar accidents have been turned to account, to lead the Mound-Builders one step beyond this, to the use of the crucible and the mould. It would not, therefore, surprise me to find partial traces of the use of both. Their imitative skill, and ability in modelling, had already taught them the use of the mould when working in clay. But they had, at best, a very rudimentary knowledge of metallurgy; they do not appear to have acquired, by barter or otherwise, any specimens of the alloyed metals; and only mechanically combined their copper with silver. Hematite, though prized by them, was used simply as a stone. They were familiar with silver, and shaped it into many personal ornaments. The sulphuret of lead was also known to them; and was turned to account both for use and ornamentation.

Thus far, then, it appears that the Mound-Builders shared in the metallurgic wealth of the great copper region. We are reminded, accordingly, that the broad undulating prairie-lands of Wisconsin, with their remarkable symbolic earthworks, lie directly between the shores of Lake Superior and the region occupied by the Mound-Builders. The monuments of the latter abound with examples of their builders’ arts; and are surrounded with varied proofs of settled occupation, civic and religious structures, and permanent defensive military works. Throughout Wisconsin, on the contrary, the symbolic mounds stand alone, and have hitherto been found, with a few rare exceptions, to contain no relics. Neither earthworks adapted to religious rites, nor military defences, attest that that region was occupied by a numerous population, such as its many natural advantages fitted it to sustain. Hence the conjecture that the mineral country on the southern shores of the Great Lake was the recognised source of supply for the whole population north of the Gulf of Mexico; and that different tribes throughout the vast basin of the Mississippi and its tributaries were wont to send working parties thither, as to a region common to all. Such an idea accords with the further conjecture that the symbolic mounds of Wisconsin may be memorials of sacred rites, or pledges of neutrality among nations from the various tributaries of the great river, as they annually met on this border-land of the common metallic storehouse. It is obvious that the Mound-Builders were a highly religious people. Their superstitious rites were of frequent occurrence, and accompanied with costly sacrifices; while in the numerous symbolic mounds of Wisconsin, labour alone is the sacrifice, and the external form preserves the one idea at which their builders aimed.

So far, this theory of a sacred neutral ground and common mineral region is conjectural. Nevertheless, it involves certain facts to be borne in view for comparison with others of a diverse kind. In the once densely peopled regions of Ohio and Illinois, where the works of the Mound-Builders abound, the river-valleys were occupied by an ingenious and industrious agricultural population: who, if not aggressive and war-like, employed their constructive skill on extensive works for military defence. Whencesoever the danger existed that they had thus to apprehend and guard against, there is no trace of its localisation within the region lying immediately to the south of Lake Superior, through which their path lay to the great copper country. More probably offensive and defensive warfare was carried on between tribes or states of the Mound Race settled on different tributaries of the same great water-system. But the growing civilisation of the nations of the Mississippi valley was also exposed to the aggression of barbarian tribes of the North-west; for if the Mound-Builders differed in culture and race from the progenitors of the modern Red Indian, some of their arts and customs render it probable that the latter were not unknown to them.

So far, then, we connect the race of the Mounds with the shores of Lake Superior, and thus trace out for them a relation to regions of the North. But the objects wrought by their artistic skill reveal no less certainly their familiarity with animals of southern and even tropical latitudes; and the materials employed in their manufactures include mica of the Alleghanies, the obsidian of Mexico, and jade and porphyry derived probably from the same region, or from others still farther south. Such facts warn us against any hastily constructed hypothesis of migrations for a people to whom the resources of so many dissimilar regions were partially known. We see in them, however, proofs of an extensive traffic; and may assume, as at least exceedingly probable, the existence of widely extended relations among that singular race. It is not to be inferred from the use of terms specifically applied to modern trade, that they are intended to suggest the possession of a currency and exchanges, of banking agencies, or manufacturing corporations. But, without confounding the traces of a rudimentary civilisation with characteristics of its mature development, there are proofs sufficient to justify the inference that the Mound-Builders traded with the copper of Lake Superior for objects of necessity and luxury brought from widely-separated regions of the continent. Such exchanges may have been effected by many intermediate agencies, rather than by any direct traffic. But the river system of the Mississippi has furnished to the later forest tribes facilities for interchange under far less favourable circumstances; and such a systematic trade among an ingenious and settled people may have materially contributed to the progress of civilisation in the populous valleys of the Ohio.

Turning next to the carvings in stone recovered from the mounds, they include objects of singular interest, some of which, at least, fully merit the designation of works of art. Compared, indeed, with the sculptures in porphyry and the great Calendar Stone of Mexico; the elaborate façades and columned terraces of Uxmal, Zayi, and Kabah; and the colossal statues, basso-relievos and hieroglyphics of Copan and Palenque: the art of the Mound-Builders, which expended its highest efforts on the decoration of a tube, or the sculpture of a pipe-bowl, may appear insignificant enough. But the imagination is apt to be impressed by mere size, and requires to be reminded of the superior excellence of a Greek medal or a Roman gem to all the colossal grandeur of an Egyptian Memnon. The architecture and sculpture of Central America preserve to us the highest intellectual efforts of the New World, and are animated by a historical significance which cannot be overestimated. Nevertheless, examples among the miniature works of art of the Ohio Valley admit of comparison with them in some essential elements of artistic skill. Apart, indeed, from the significance of the hieroglyphics with which the colossal statues of Copan are graven, they might rank with the monstrous creations of Hindu art; whereas some of the objects taken from altars of “Mound City” furnish specimens of imitative design and portrait-sculpture full of character and individuality.

The simplicity, variety, and minute expression in many of the miniature mound-sculptures, their delicacy of execution and imitative skill, render them just objects of interest. But foremost in every trait of value for the elucidation of the history or characteristics of their workers, are the human heads, which, when the accuracy of many of the miniature sculptures of animals is considered, it can scarcely be doubted, perpetuate faithful representations of the ancient people by whom they were executed. Equally well-authenticated portraiture of Umbrian, Pelasgian, or other mythical races of Europe would be invaluable to the ethnologist. It would solve some of the knottiest problems of his science, better than all the obscure disquisitions to which the aboriginal population of Greece and Italy has given rise. American ethnologists, accordingly, have not failed to turn such iconographic evidence to even more account than legitimate induction will sustain, in support of their favourite argument for an indigenous unity of the whole ancient and modern races of the New World.

By means of such artistic relics we can determine the physical characteristics of the Mound-Builders, and of contemporary tribes or nations known to them. We also learn the character of fauna, native and foreign to the region occupied by them, with which they were familiar. I have had an opportunity of carefully inspecting the valuable collection of mound-sculptures in the possession of Dr. E. H. Davis of New York.[102] In some cases, perhaps, their artistic merits have been overrated. Nevertheless the minute accuracy with which many of the objects of natural history have been copied is remarkable; and confirms the reliance to be placed on the ethnical portraiture perpetuated in their representations of the human head.

Of these invaluable examples of ancient American iconography, one (Fig. 77) has attracted special notice, not only as the most beautiful head of the series, but from its supposed correspondence to the type of the modern North American Indian. The workmanship of this head is described by its discoverers as “unsurpassed by any specimen of ancient American art which has fallen under the notice of the authors, not excepting the best productions of Mexico and Peru.”[103] In the well-executed illustration which accompanies these remarks, the Red Indian features are unmistakably represented; nor has this failed to receive abundant attention, and to have ascribed to it even more than its due importance. Mr. Francis Pulszky, the learned Hungarian, thus comments on it in his _Iconographic Researches on Human Races and their Art_:—“A most characteristic, we may say artistically beautiful head, the workmanship of these unknown Mound-Builders, dug up and published by Squier, exhibits the peculiar Indian features so faithfully, and with such sculptural perfection, that we cannot withhold our admiration from their artistic proficiency. It proves three things: 1st, That these Mound-Builders were American Indian in type; 2d, That time (age ante-Columbian, but otherwise unknown,) has not changed the type of this indigenous group of races; and 3d, That the Mound-Builders were probably acquainted with no other men but themselves.”[104] Such are the sweeping deductions drawn from premises supplied by a single example of mound-sculpture: or rather by the depiction of it in Messrs. Squier and Davis’s volume; for after a careful examination of the original, its ethnic characteristics appear to me to be mainly due to the pencil of the draughtsman, who has, no doubt undesignedly, given to his drawing much more of the typical Indian features than are traceable in the original. Of this Figs. 77 and 78 are more accurate copies; and from these it will be seen that the nose, instead of having the salient Roman arch there represented, is perfectly straight, and is neither very prominent nor dilated.

The mouth, though protuberant, is small; the lips are thin; instead of the characteristic ponderous maxillary region of the true Indian, the chin and the upper lip are both short; and the lower jaw, without any marked width between the condyles, is small, and tapers gradually towards the chin. Perhaps it is owing to this smallness of the lower portion of the head and face, that it was supposed to represent a female. But such an idea is not suggested by any marked characteristic either in the features or head-dress. The cheek-bones, though high, are by no means so prominent as in the original engraving. Indeed, the projection is almost entirely in front, giving a tumid cheek immediately under the eye. I doubt if any competent observer, ignorant of the history of this relic, would assign it to an Indian type.

It is apparent, therefore, that the inferences drawn from the representation of a single example of mound-sculpture are based on inaccurate premises. But even supposing the head to reproduce the features of the modern Indian: it would by no means prove the three propositions deduced from its discovery; since it is not the only specimen of sculptured portraiture discovered in the mounds, and we look in vain in other examples for these points of Indian physiognomy which would first attract the eye of the imitative modeller or sculptor. The salient and dilated nose, prominent cheek-bones, massive jaw, and large mouth, may be assigned as the most noticeable characteristics; but all or nearly all of those are wanting in most of the other sculptured heads or masks. The character of these may be seen in the head engraved here (Fig. 79), derived from the same rich depository opened in “Mound City.” It is cut in a compact yellowish stone. The nose is nearly in a line with the forehead, excepting at the point, which projects in a manner certainly by no means characteristic of Indian features; and though the lips protrude, they are delicate, and the mouth is small. The ears in both are large, and in the latter are perforated with four small holes around their upper edges. In this case, from the delicacy of the features, it is suggested with greater probability than in the former example, that it has been designed after a female model. Another head,[105] executed in the same material, is much altered by fire. It has not, like the previous examples, been designed for a pipe-head, but is broken off from a complete human figure, or other larger piece of carving. It is much inferior as a work of art, and indeed approaches the grotesque or caricature. Nevertheless, it has considerable character in its expression; and no one familiar with the Indian cast of countenance would readily assign either to it or the previous specimen of mound-sculpture any aim at such representation, if unaware of the circumstances of their discovery. In this, as in others of the heads, the face is tattooed, and the ears have been perforated; and from the strongly attached oxide of copper, there can be little doubt that they were decorated with rings or pendants of that metal. Other portrait sculptures and terra-cottas, either found in the mounds, or discovered within the region where they chiefly abound, are figured in the works of Squier, Schoolcraft, Lapham, Foster, Jones, and in the American Ethnological Society’s Transactions. The majority of them are inferior as works of art to those already described. But if they possess any value as indications of the physiognomical type of ancient American races, they tend to confirm the idea of a prevailing diversity instead of a uniformity of cranial form and features.

The discovery of a sculptured head betraying traces of Indian features, among many of a different type, corresponds to another interesting fact, that animals foreign to the region, and even to the North American continent, are figured in the mound-sculptures. It presents a parallel to well-known examples of Etruscan vases moulded in the form of negroes’ heads; and of Greek pottery painted with the same characteristic features and woolly hair. Specimens of both are preserved among the collections of the British Museum, and furnish interesting evidence, alike of the permanency of the negro type, and of the familiarity both of Greek and Etruscan artists with the African features, long prior to the Christian era. Similar examples of foreign portraiture have attracted attention on the older monuments of Egypt, and among the basso-relievos of the tomb of Darius Hystaspes at Persepolis: supplying interesting illustrations of imitative art employed in the perpetuation of ethnic peculiarities of physiognomy. Supposing, therefore, the Mound-Builders to have been a settled population, as distinct from a contemporaneous Indian race as the classic nations of antiquity differed from the barbarian tribes beyond the Alps and the Rhine: it is no more surprising to trace the genuine Indian features in mound-sculptures, than to discover those of the Dacian or the Gaul on the column of Trajan. It proves that the Mound-Builders were familiar with the American Indian type, but nothing more. The evidence indeed tends very distinctly to suggest that they were not of the same type; since the majority of sculptured human heads hitherto recovered from their ancient depositories do not reproduce the Indian features.

The physical type of the Mound-Builders will again come under consideration in a subsequent chapter; but it is interesting meanwhile to observe that even in the characteristics of this portrait-sculpture distinctive qualities appear. The imitative faculty manifests itself in expressive varieties of style, in modern Indian art. Some tribes, such as the Algonquins, confine themselves to literal reproductions of natural objects, while others, such as the Babeens, indulge in a grotesque and ingeniously diversified play of fancy. But the intellectual development implied in individual portraiture goes beyond this, and is rare indeed among nations in the earlier stages of civilisation. Even among the civilised Mexicans, imitations of the human face and figure appear to have seldom passed beyond the grotesque; and although the sculptors of Central America and Yucatan manifested an artistic power which accords with the civilisation of a lettered people: yet in the majority of their statues and reliefs, we see the subordination of the human form and features to the symbolism of their mythology, or to mere decorative requirements. It thus seems that, amid the general prevalence of an aptitude for imitative art, alike among the ancient and modern nations of the American continent, the Mound-Builders, though working within a narrow range, developed a power of appreciating its minuter delicacies such as is only traceable elsewhere among the choicest sculptures of Uxmal and Palenque.

To this imitative skill we owe other works which have an important significance in relation to ethnological problems affecting the ancient population of the New World. Reference has already been made to the curious collection of stone pipes, recovered from one of the smaller tumuli of “Mound City.” They included some of the sculptured human heads; but the bowls of most of them were carved into figures of beasts, birds, and reptiles. On these the ancient sculptors appear to have lavished their artistic skill with a degree of care bestowed on none other of the less perishable works, from which alone we can now judge of their intellectual development. “Not only,” as Messrs. Squier and Davis observe, “are the features of the various objects represented faithfully, but their peculiarities and habits are in some degree exhibited. The otter is shown in a characteristic attitude, holding a fish in his mouth; the heron also holds a fish; and the hawk grasps a small bird in its talons, which it tears with its beak. The panther, the bear, the wolf, the beaver, the otter, the squirrel, the racoon, the hawk, the heron, crow, swallow, buzzard, the paroquet, toucan, and other indigenous and southern birds; the turtle, the frog, toad, rattlesnake, etc., are recognised at first glance”;[106] and in addition to those, the jaguar or panther, the cougar, the elk, the opossum, the alligator, and numerous land and water birds, including several varieties of the owls, herons, and other species, have all been recognised among more recent disclosures. Many of those are represented in characteristic attitudes, and with much skill and fidelity of portraiture. The exuberant fancy of the ancient sculptors also displays itself at times in humorous masks, and incongruous devices, such as a goose’s head cut in a hard black stone, which on looking to the back becomes a human skull. Some of those works appear to have been executed, like the sportive sketches of the modern artist, with no other object than the carver’s own gratification.

Unfinished carvings show the process by which they were wrought. A toad, in a characteristic attitude, but only roughly shaped out, “very well exhibits the mode of workmanship. While the general surface appears covered with striæ running in every direction, as if produced by rubbing, the folds and lines are clearly cut with some sort of graver. The marks of the implement, chipping out portions a fourth of an inch in length, are too distinct to admit the slightest doubt that a cutting tool was used in the work.” Again, in another pipe-head, blocked out into the form of a bird, “the lines indicating the feathers, grooves of the beak, and other more delicate features, are cut or graved on the surface at a single stroke. Some pointed tool appears to have been used, and the marks are visible where it has occasionally slipped beyond the control of the engraver. Indeed, the whole appearance of the specimen indicates that the work was done rapidly by an experienced hand, and that the various parts were brought forward simultaneously. The freedom of the strokes could only result from long practice; and we may infer that the manufacture of pipes had a distinct place in the industrial organisation of the Mound-Builders.” But this, though full of interest, need not surprise us, since the art of the arrow-maker, which required both skill and experience, was pursued among the forest-tribes as a special craft; nor is that of the pipe-maker even now wholly abandoned.

So far, therefore, we are enabled by such means to look back into that remote past. We see the industrious sculptor at his task; and holding silent converse with him over his favourite works, we learn somewhat of his own physical aspect, of the range of his geographical experience, his mental capacity and intellectual development. The pottery of the mounds, in like manner, adds to our knowledge of the art and civilisation of the age in which it was produced. But, next in importance to the evidence thus furnished, the miniature sculptures of the mounds derive their chief value from indications they supply of the extent and nature of the geographical relations of their owners. By the fidelity of the representations of so great a variety of subjects copied from animal life, they furnish evidence of a knowledge in the Mississippi Valley of fauna peculiar not only to southern but to tropical latitudes, extending beyond the Isthmus into the southern continent: and suggestive either of arts derived from a foreign source, and intercourse maintained with regions where the civilisation of ancient America attained its highest development; or else indicating migration into the northern continent of the race of the ancient graves of Central and Southern America, bringing with them the arts of the tropics, and models derived from animals familiar to their fathers in the parent-land of the race.

Of one of the most interesting of those exotic models, the _Lamantin_ or _Manatee_, seven sculptured figures have been taken from the mounds of Ohio. This phytophagous cetacean, which, when full-grown, measures from fifteen to twenty feet in length, is found only in tropical waters. Species haunt the estuaries and large rivers of Central and intertropical South America; as also those of both the eastern and western sides of tropical Africa: and sometimes ascend the rivers to a great distance from the sea. Examples were seen by Humboldt in the Rio Meta, a branch of the Orinoco, one thousand miles above its mouth. They are also found among the Antilles, and on the coast of the Florida peninsula. The most characteristic details in their form which chiefly attracted attention when the Manatee was first brought under the notice of Europeans, are faithfully reproduced in the Mound sculptures. Fancy helped to exaggerate the peculiarities of this strange animal to the earliest European voyagers, and from them it received the name of the Siren. But its most remarkable feature is the fore paw, occupying the usual place of the cetacean fin, but bearing so close a resemblance to a human hand that the name Manatee is generally supposed to have been conferred on it by the first Spanish explorers on this account.[107] It is ranked according to ecclesiastical natural history as a fish; and its flesh is in special request at St. Christopher’s, Guadaloupe, Martinique, and in various South American localities, during Lent. Its form is therefore familiar to the natives of South America, and was once equally well known to those of the Antilles, and probably to the ancient coastmen of the Gulf. But we must account by other means for the discovery of accurate representations of it among the sculptures of the far-inland Ohio mounds; and the same remark applies to the jaguar or panther, the cougar, the toucan; to the buzzard possibly, and also to the paroquet. The majority of those animals are not known in the United States; some of them are totally unknown within any part of the North American continent. Others may be classed with the paroquet, which, though essentially a southern bird, and common around the Gulf, does occasionally make its appearance inland; and so might become known to the untravelled Mound-Builder in his northern home.

The importance of such evidence that the ancient dwellers in the Scioto Valley had some knowledge of tropical animals, and even of those confined exclusively to the southern continent, has not escaped the notice of the explorers of the mounds. It has even induced them to hesitate in assigning the name of the toucan to sculptures concerning the design of which there could be no other reasonable ground for doubt. Referring to the manatee sculptures, they remark: “These singular relics have a direct bearing upon some of the questions connected with the origin of the mounds. They are undistinguishable, so far as material and workmanship are concerned, from an entire class of remains found in them, and are evidently the work of the same hands with the other effigies of beasts and birds; and yet they faithfully represent animals found (and only in small numbers), a thousand miles distant upon the shores of Florida, or—if the birds seemingly belonging to the zygodactylous order be really designed to represent the toucan,—found only in the tropical regions of South America. Either the same race, possessing throughout a like style of workmanship, and deriving their materials from a common source, existed contemporaneously over the whole range of intervening territory, and maintained a constant intercommunication; or else there was at some period a migration from the south, bringing with it characteristic remains of the land from which it emanated. The sculptures of the manatees are too exact to have been the production of those who were not well acquainted with the animal and its habits.” Of the representations of the toucan, the accompanying woodcut (Fig. 81) will furnish a sufficient illustration. It is imitated with considerable accuracy, though inferior to some of the finest specimens of mound sculpture. The most important deviation from correctness of detail is, that it has three toes instead of two before, although the two are correctly represented behind. It is stooping its head to take food from a rudely outlined human hand; and as it is known that the brilliant plumage of the toucan leads to its being frequently tamed by the natives of Guiana and Brazil, this tends not only to confirm the idea of its representation by the sculptures in question: but to suggest that the Mound-Builders may have had aviaries, like those in which the Aztec caciques assembled birds of splendid plumage and beautiful form from every part of their Mexican empire.

Unless we assume such a lapse of time as may suffice for important changes in the climate and fauna of the Ohio Valley, the evidence thus far adduced suggests the inference either that the whole extensive regions thus indicated were occupied at some remote period by a common race; or we must recognise in such indications of familiarity with the natural history of the tropics, and even of the southern continent, proof that that very people, who derived all their metal from the great northern regions of Lake Superior, had themselves migrated from southern latitudes rich in metallic ores.

Various considerations tend to favour the idea of such a migration, rather than the maintenance of intercommunication and exchange, among a people of the same race, throughout regions so extensive and so geographically distinct. If the Mound-Builders had some of the arts and models, not only of Central but of Southern America: they also employed in their ingenious manufactures pearls and shells of the Gulf of Florida; obsidian from Mexico; mica believed to have been brought from the Alleghanies; jade, such as that described by Humboldt among the rare materials of ancient manufacture in Chili; the lead of Wisconsin; and the copper, and probably the silver, of Ontonagon and the Keweenaw peninsula. The fact indeed that some of their most elaborate carvings represent birds and quadrupeds belonging to latitudes so far to the south, naturally tends to suggest the idea of a central region where arts were cultivated to an extent unknown in the Mississippi Valley; and that those objects, manufactured where such models are furnished by the native fauna, remain only as evidences of ancient intercourse maintained between these latitudes and the localities where now alone such are known to abound. But in opposition to this, full value must be given to the fact that neither the relics, nor the customs which they illustrate, pertain exclusively to southern latitudes; nor are such found to predominate among the singular evidences of ancient and more matured civilisation which abound in Central and Southern America. The varied nature of the materials employed in the arts of the Mound-Builders, we must also remember, indicates a wide range of relations; though it cannot be assumed that these were maintained in every case by direct intercourse.

The earlier students of American archæology, like the older school of British antiquaries, gave full scope to a system of theorising which built up comprehensive ethnological schemes on the very smallest premises; but in the more judicious caution of later writers there is a tendency to run to the opposite extreme. Perhaps Messrs. Squier and Davis indulge at times in an exaggerated estimate of the merits of the remarkable works of art discovered and published as the result of their joint labours; but subsequent critics have either unduly depreciated them, or solved the difficulties attendant on such discoveries, by ascribing their manufacture to an undetermined foreign source. Mr. Schoolcraft specially manifested a disposition to underrate the artistic ability discernible in some of them; while Mr. Haven, who fully admits their skilful execution, derives from that very fact the evidence of foreign manufacture. After describing the weapons, pottery, and personal ornaments obtained from the mounds, the latter writer adds, “and, with these were found sculptured figures of animals and the human head, in the form of pipes, wrought with great delicacy and spirit from some of the hardest stones. The last-named are relics that imply a very considerable degree of art; and if believed to be the work of the people with whose remains they are found, would tend greatly to increase the wonder that the art of sculpture among them was not manifested in other objects and places. The fact that nearly all the finer specimens of workmanship represent birds, or land and marine animals belonging to a different latitude; while the pearls, the knives of obsidian, the marine shells, and the copper equally testify to a distant, though not extra-continental origin, may, however, exclude these from being received as proofs of local industry and skill.”[108]

A reconsideration of the list already given of animals sculptured by the ancient pipe-makers, cannot fail to satisfy the inquirer that it is an over-statement of the case to say that nearly all belong to a different latitude. The real interest and difficulty of the question lie in the fact of discovering, along with so many sculptured figures of animals pertaining to the locality, others represented with equal spirit and fidelity, though belonging to diverse latitudes. To those familiar with early Scandinavian and British antiquities, such an assignment of the mound sculptures to a foreign origin, on account of their models being in part derived from distant sources, must appear a needless assumption which only shifts without lessening the difficulty. On the sculptured standing stones of Scotland—belonging apparently to the closing era of Paganism, and the first introduction of Christianity there,—may be seen the tiger or leopard, the ape, the camel, the serpent, and as supposed by some, the elephant and walrus, along with other representations or symbols, borrowed, not like the models of the Mound-Builders, from a locality so near as to admit of the theory of direct commercial intercourse, or recent migration, but from remote districts of Asia, or from Africa. The most noticeable difference between the imitations of foreign fauna on the Scottish monuments, and in the ancient American sculptures, is that the former occasionally betray, as might be expected, the conventional characteristics of a traditional type; while the latter, if they furnish evidence of migration, would in so far tend to prove it more recent, and to a locality not so distant as to preclude all renewal of intercourse with the ancestral birth-land. Traces of the same reproduction of unfamiliar objects are, indeed, apparent in the mound sculptures. The objects least truthfully represented, in some cases, are animals foreign to the region where alone such works of art have been found. But the South American toucan of the mound sculptor, figured on a previous page, is certainly not inferior to the accompanying specimens of the Peruvian modeller’s imitative skill, wrought on a vessel of black ware (Fig. 82), now in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland: though it will be remembered that the latter are the work of an artist to whom the original may be presumed to have been familiar. Several of the animals engraved in the _Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley_ fall far short of the fidelity of imitation ascribed to them in the accompanying text: but the characteristic individuality of others displays remarkable imitative power. The lugubrious expression given to more than one of the toads is full of humour; and some of the ruder human heads may be described as portrait-sketches in the style of _Punch_. But after making every requisite deduction from the exaggerations of enthusiastic observers, abundant evidence of artistic skill and ingenuity remains to justify the wonder that a people capable of executing such works should have left no large monuments of their art. While, however, this affords no sufficient ground for transferring their origin to another region, we may still look with interest for the discovery of analogous productions in some of the great centres of native American civilisation.

With one or two stray exceptions, objects precisely similar to the mound sculptures have not hitherto been met with, beyond the valleys where other traces of the Mound-Builders abound; but the points of resemblance between the sculptured mound-pipes and numerous miniature stone mortars found in Peru are too striking to be overlooked. Of the two examples given here (Fig. 83), the one is a llama, from Huarmachaco, in Peru, in the collection of the Historical Society of New York. It is cut in a close-grained black stone, and measures four inches long. The other, of darkish brown schist, is from a drawing made by Mr. Thomas Ewbank, while in Peru. The greater number of those seen by him represent the llama and its congeners, the alpaca, guanoco, and vicuna. They are all hollowed precisely like the bowl of the sculptured mound-pipes, but have no lateral perforation or mouth-piece. Their probable use was as mortars, in which the Peruvians rubbed tobacco into powder, working it with a small pestle until it became heated with the friction, when it was taken as snuff. The transition from this practice to that of inhaling the burning fumes is simple; and the correspondence between the ancient Peruvian tobacco-mortar and the stone pipe of the Mound-Builder is worthy of note, when taken into consideration along with the imitations of birds of the southern continent found among the sculptures of the mounds. Dr. Tschudi describes four of the Peruvian mortars preserved at Vienna, carved in porphyry, basalt, and granite; and he adds: “How the ancient Peruvians, without the aid of iron tools, were able to carve stone so beautifully, is inconceivable.”

The absence of any but such miniature carvings in the northern mounds may also merit notice when viewed in connection with the ideas of religious worship suggested by the contents of the mound altars. Idolatry, in its most striking, and also in some of its most barbarous forms, prevailed, as we know, among the nations of the Mexican Valley, at the period of the Conquest. The monuments of Yucatan and Central America leave no room to doubt that the worship of such visible impersonations of Divine attributes as their sculptors could devise formed a prominent part of their religious services. Reference has also been made in a previous chapter to rudely modelled and sculptured idols, accompanying other ancient remains, in sepulchral deposits in Tennessee. Others have been found in the huacals of Chiriqui, on the Isthmus of Panama, along with numerous gold relics and many fine specimens of pottery. Those facts render it the more singular that, amid so many traces of imitative sculpture, no relics obviously designed as objects of worship have been dug up in the mounds, or found in such circumstances as to connect them with the religious practices of the Mound-Builders. But the remarkable characteristics of the elaborately sculptured pipes, and their obvious connection with services accompanying some of the rites of sacrifice or cremation, may indicate their having played an important part in the religious solemnities of the ancient race; and on this the arts and customs of modern tribes help to throw some curious light.

So far as we can now infer from evidence furnished by relics connected with the use of the tobacco-plant, it seems to have been as familiar to the ancient tribes of the North-west, and the aborigines of the Canadian forests, as to those of the American tropics, of which the _Nicotiana tabacum_ is a native. No such remarkable depositories indeed have been found to the north of the great lakes as those disclosed to the explorers of the tumuli in the Scioto Valley; but even now the tobacco-pipe monopolises the ingenious art of many tribes; and some of their most curious legends and superstitions are connected with the favourite national implement. Among them the dignity of time-honoured use has conferred on it a sacredness, which survives with much of its ancient force; and to this accordingly the student of American antiquities is justified in turning, as a link connecting the present with that ancient past. But it is worthy of note that the form of the mound-pipes differs essentially from the endless varieties of pattern wrought by Indian ingenuity. Some consideration, therefore, of the arts of the modern pipe-sculptor, and of native customs and traditions associated with the use of tobacco, is necessary, as a means of comparison between ancient and modern races of the New World.

In the Old World, the ideas connected with the tobacco-pipe are prosaic enough. The chibouk may, at times, be associated with the poetical reveries of the oriental daydreamer, and the hookah with pleasant fancies of the Anglo-Indian reposing in the shade of his bungalow; but its seductive antique mystery, and all its symbolic significance, pertain to the New World. Longfellow, accordingly, fitly opens his _Song of Hiawatha_ with the institution of “the peace-pipe.” The Master of Life descends on the mountains of the prairie, breaks a fragment from the red stone of the quarry, and, fashioning it with curious art into a pipe-head, he fills it with the bark of the red willow, chafes the forest into flame with the tempest of his breath, and kindling it, smokes the calumet as a signal to the nations. The tribes gather at the divine summons from river, lake, and prairie, to listen to the warnings and promises with which the Great Spirit seeks to guide them; and this done, and the warriors having buried their war-clubs, they smoke their first peace-pipe, and depart:—

“While the Master of Life, ascending,
Through the opening of cloud-curtains,
Through the doorways of the heaven,
Vanished from before their faces
In the smoke that rolled around him,
The pukwana of the peace-pipe!”

In this, as in other passages of his national epic, the American poet has embodied cherished legends of the New World: placing the opening scene of _Hiawatha_ on the heights of the red pipe-stone quarry of Coteau des Prairies, between the Minnesota and Missouri rivers.

On the summit of the ridge between these two tributaries of the Mississippi rises a bold cliff, beautifully marked with horizontal layers of light grey and rose or flesh-coloured quartz. From the base of this a level prairie of about half a mile in width runs parallel to it; and here it is that the famous red pipe-stone is procured, at a depth of from four to five feet from the surface, in a ravine at the head of the Pipe-stone Creek, a tributary of the Big Sioux River. Numerous excavations indicate the resort of Indian tribes to the locality. “That this place should have been visited,” says Catlin, “for centuries past by all the neighbouring tribes, who have hidden the war-club as they approached it, and stayed the cruelties of the scalping-knife, under the fear of the vengeance of the Great Spirit who overlooks it, will not seem strange or unnatural when their superstitions are known. That such has been the custom there is not a shadow of doubt, and that even so recently as to have been witnessed by hundreds and thousands of Indians of different tribes now living, and from many of whom I have personally drawn the information.”[109]