THE shaping of objects in clay, wood, or stone, or other material, known as carving, modelling, etc., constitutes sculpture. Some form of these methods was in use in very primitive times for the production of weapons or tools of wood, bone, or stone. But the greatest schools of sculpture were basketry and pottery, for in the practice of these arts a sense of form and proportion could not be dispensed with. Thus sculpture finds its birth in several arts, but particularly in basketry, stone-shaping, and pottery. Taken all in all, the Mayas of Yucatan seem to have been the greatest artists and sculptors, and as we travel northward from there the skill in art gradually diminishes till, on passing the old Aztec realm, it drops off rapidly. Far to the northward the “Moundbuilders” exhibited a moderate skill and in some objects a similarity to Mexican work, and still farther to the north-westward the Haidas, Kwakiutls, etc., in their totem poles, canoes, etc., show not only a singular proficiency in carving in wood, but also similarities to some of the Mexican work.
Presented to University of Michigan by E. H. Harriman. Height, 11 ft. 2 in.; width, 3 ft.; thickness, 12 to 15 in.; one piece of spruce. Painted in several colours. Photograph by Professor Cole, University of Michigan
Masks, pipes, rattles, and other ceremonial paraphernalia gave the Amerind sculptor much to do. It must not be supposed, though, that all members of a tribe possessed the sculptor’s power. There was as much variation as we now find among ourselves. It is not everyone of our people who can model a statue, or even carve the rudest shape imitating man. So it was with the Amerind. He had his arrow-makers, his skilful potters, his great carvers, who were employed by the less skilful to do their work. To-day, among the Amerinds of the North-west coast, there are specialists who carve the totem poles, and obtain high prices. The totem poles and house-posts are often elaborate, being covered almost from top to bottom with figures of totemic animals. The carving is often on a large scale, as the totem poles are frequently more than fifty feet in height. They are planted several feet in the ground, then there are several feet plain, and from that on to near the top they may be covered with carving, while surmounting the whole is a figure—bird, fish, or bear, or other animal—of large proportions. These poles stand in front of the house,[143] and are an indication of the clan or clans to which the person or persons who erected it belong. The Haidas and the Tlinkits specially excel in totem poles. The execution of the figures is often extremely good in a barbaric way. Besides the carved poles there are often the carved columns or posts inside the houses. These posts serve to support the two great rafters on which the jack-rafters rest, and are often elaborate. At a deserted village in south-east Alaska (Cape Fox), I saw two of these columns, each representing a huge bird, the wings being split out of cedar, quite thin, and attached to the post with a diagonally forward direction, the rest of the bird being erect and facing the room, the posts being within about six feet of the rear of the structure. Its tail was carved out of the post in a sort of bas-relief the remainder of the post being squared up both below and above, and on the sides of the figure, except where the head was. The latter had a huge beak, of the carnivorous type. On the breast was a singular round face. The whole was brightly painted in reds, yellows, and blacks. The accompanying figure represents another of the house-posts of this village which is now at Michigan University. It was similarly painted. The carving of these tribes is done almost entirely in wood, so that had they disappeared a century or so before our coming there would have been found scarcely a trace of their work. In like manner the work of the tribes of the Mississippi valley may have disappeared—that is, supposing that they carved in wood, which is probable. There is a great similarity between the carving of the Haida and the Tlinkit totem poles, yet these tribes are of different stocks. An animal resembling a frog seems to be very common as a totem in both stocks. Human figures are also carved on the poles, and strange heads are frequent.
The Haidas have become famous for their gigantic canoes carved from single logs and elaborately decorated.[144] The other Amerinds of this region also dig out fine boats from the huge logs they obtain so easily in the forest, but there are none equal to those of the Haida, who, indeed, require specially good boats for navigating the waters around their island, Queen Charlotte’s. They are the best carvers of all the tribes now living north of Mexico. Their work is grotesque, corresponding with the singular mythology of the artists and their inability to render accurately the forms they see about them. Combinations of human and animal forms are often seen, such as the panther-man found by Swan in this region—a crouching figure with an attempt at a panther’s head and forelegs, with the hind legs human. One of the most remarkable of all the Haida works from an artistic point of view is the group called the “Bear-mother,”[145] now in the National Museum at Washington, and made by Skaowskeav, one of the tribe. It apparently shows European influence. The lines are more flowing and soft than the ordinary Amerind method of execution, and the conception is more in range with European ideas. This may be accidental, however, and merely in the line of the sculptor’s development. The material is slate. The subject is a child at the breast of the “Bear-mother.” The story of the bear-mother, as told by J. G. Swan, is that “a number of Indian squaws were in the woods gathering berries when one of them, the daughter of a chief, spoke in terms of ridicule of the whole bear species. The bears descended on them and killed all but the chief’s daughter, whom the king of the bears took to wife. She bore him a child, half human and half bear. The carving represents the agony of the mother in suckling this rough and uncouth offspring.” From an art standpoint, one failure in the execution of this conception is that the child does not suggest sufficiently its half-bear character. Nevertheless, it is an extraordinary work for an Amerind.
All the Amerinds of the North-west coast carve wooden masks, but here again, the Haidas excel, though the Tlinkits are not far behind. It is the same with the other work, boxes, rattles, etc. Some of the bowls, hollowed from a single piece of wood, and carved on the exterior with their strange figures, and polished, have a decided artistic merit. The Innuit also make wooden masks, but they are crude when compared with those of Queen Charlotte Island, or the mainland in that vicinity. One feature of all these North-west masks, specially noted by Dall,[146] which resembles Mexican carvings, is the protruding tongue touching an animal. The protruding tongue is an index of life if firmly held forth, according to Squier, while if it is loose and dangling at one side it signifies death or captivity. Dall concludes that the touch of the tongue symbolises the “transmission of spiritual qualities or powers.” In the totem poles this protruding tongue touching an animal is common, while frequently the tongue protrudes without touching any other person or thing. A totem represents the guardian spirit of the individual or clan, and therefore the closer the association with it the better; hence the idea of placing the tongue upon it.
“A person,” says Boas, “may have the general crest of his clan and, besides, use as his personal crest such guardian spirits as he has acquired. This accounts partly for the great multiplicity of combinations of crests which we observe on the carvings of these people.... The crest is used for ornamenting objects belonging to a member of the clan; they are carved on columns intended to perpetuate the memory of a deceased relative, painted on the house front or carved on a column which is placed in front of the house, and are also shown as masks in festivals of the clan.”[147] Some of the grave monuments of the Kwakiutls, the Chimmesyans, the Tlinkits, and others of the region are ambitious carvings and represent considerable labour on the part of the sculptor. One grave I saw at Cape Fox was presided over by two huge wooden bears, the whole sheltered by a neat roof on posts and surrounded by a balustrade. The animals must have been at least four and a half feet high. Boas describes a grave-monument bird carved out of cedar bark, which is six feet high and about twelve feet from tip to tip of the extended wings. This bird is upright like the one carved on the house-post mentioned above, and, like that, has on its stomach the carved representation of a face. This bird’s wings were originally painted black to represent feathers, but this decoration has worn off. It is now in the American Museum. The Kwakiutls also have carved some statues in wood representing chiefs in a state of nature. These are extremely crude, but are superior to much of the Moundbuilder work as shown in the pipes and other carvings that have been preserved, and not greatly behind the Mexican. Double-headed birds and animals figure prominently among the carvings and drawings of the North-west coast tribes, such as the double-headed “thunder-bird,” the double-headed snake, etc. Boas obtained one of the latter among the Kwakiutls which he describes as having a head at each end and a human head in the middle. It is forty-two inches in length and about six inches wide. It is “worn in front of the stomach and secured with cords passing around the waist.” The fabulous animal this affair represents has “the power to assume the shape of a fish. To eat it and even to touch or to see it is sure death, as all the joints of the unfortunate one become dislocated, the head being turned backward. But to those who enjoy supernatural help it may bring power.”[148] These North-west tribes seem to love to carve, and decorate almost everything that will admit of it in this manner. In the vicinity of Fort Rupert there are on the beach a number of rock carvings. These represent faces of sea monsters, and also some of them human faces.
Amongst the Eskimos carving is limited, generally, to a sort of engraving on bone and ivory, except in the matter of masks, which are rudely shaped out of wood without any of the elaborate finish that is observed in the work of Amerinds farther south. The wood they have had to work with is not the kind that promotes carving, and ivory is a rather difficult material to shape. Nevertheless, they occasionally, form some attractive little heads from it, to adorn the end of a harpoon line or something of that sort. They also shape their drill bows and other implements to some extent and decorate them with neat engraving. Some of these decorations are very pleasing, and exhibit the same taste for symmetrical ornamentation that is found throughout the continent. When they attempt to represent form they are generally successful in giving it the proper character with less of the childish grotesqueness that is seen in most Amerind work. How much the long intercourse with Europeans on whalers has modified the art efforts of the Eskimo it is not possible to judge. Murdoch[149] gives illustrations of seals and whales shaped by the Point Barrow Eskimo, but aside from the character of the animal being generally fairly well rendered, there is little that is artistically interesting in the work. What I mean by character is that you can generally tell what is intended by an Eskimo carving, which is not always the case with the sculptured efforts of other Amerinds, though the finish may be better. Boas gives illustrations of the carved work of the Central Eskimo,[150] which show the same characteristics as the Western.
The Far Northern tribes, as a rule, are inferior to the other Amerinds, in sculptural work, yet the Eskimo, mechanically, were, in many respects, apparently in advance of all others. They possessed the lamp, the only stock on the continent who did, but, after all, this shows only the adaptability that saved them from destruction. In a world without fuel and with plenty of seal oil, they would never have survived if they had not invented a way to secure heat from the oil. The Amerind of the forested regions had no need for a lamp. The possession of the lamp, therefore, is no indication of higher mental powers, but of a more severe environment. Nor, on the other hand, is the limited amount of their carving an indication on their part of inferior mental endowment. It is, again, the result of circumstances, as pointed out above. In a region without suitable material or climate for extensive carving, they did not carve, that is all. Place them for a few generations in the region of the Haidas, and they would begin to develop many different habits and traits.
On the Atlantic coast, few specimens of sculpture have, thus far, been found, nor has any carving of consequence been disclosed. In New Jersey some rude heads in stone have come to light, but such finds are rare. As the bounds of the Mississippi valley are entered, however, the art remains immediately increase in importance, but not to the exaggerated extent claimed by many writers. The carvings and sculptures of the Mississippi valley are, like all Amerind products in this line, crude, and there is no warrant for the claims that the occupants of the region were not “Indians,” so far as these remains testify. The most striking work found up to the present is that of the head-shaped vases from Pecan Point, Arkansas, but as I have pointed out before,[151] these vases were not modelled free-hand, but were the result of a process, are in fact death-masks, built into the vases. While it was a clever thing to accomplish these in that way, yet it is a mechanical method, and has little to do with artistic skill. Thomas Wilson says of these vases that they “divide themselves into two distinct groups. The specimens forming the first group are death-masks, as becomes more and more evident the more the objects are studied; the other group, while of the same general form as the first, the human head being represented, has the face and features wrought upon it free-hand, as in sculpturing, without the aid of mould or cast.”[152] It may be added that the second group is far inferior to the first, and is quite in line with the rest of the remains of this district.
The tobacco pipes of the region were lauded as perfect examples of the sculptor’s art, but if one gives them critical examination, it is at once plain that they are not out of the Amerind line, and, what is more, that as specimens of sculpture they are pretty bad, because it is difficult to decide just what they represent. Even the Eskimo give their work character enough to distinguish it, yet the Moundbuilder did much of his carving so poorly that there has been frequent diversity of opinion as to what it was intended to depict. Henshaw took up the matter, and has shown that the degree of excellence of representation in the carving of the Moundbuilder pipes, so long extolled, has been overrated.
The tobacco pipe, bearing, as it did, a peculiar relation to the sacred paraphernalia and ceremonies of the Amerinds, received much attention from them and was frequently elaborate, from the Amerind standpoint, in its details. The earliest form of pipe was a straight tube seen in Mexican carvings and also found in various parts of North America. In the Eastern United States one is found which is designated as the “Monitor.” I suppose this name came from a resemblance to the famous first turret man-of-war, the United States ship Monitor. The base of these pipes was slightly curved downwards, the bowl rising from about the centre of the platform, on the convex side. Many of these show marks of steel tools.[153] Squier and Davis, who published their work in 1848, discerned wonderful artistic skill in the Moundbuilder pipes, and they discovered an intimate acquaintance between the Moundbuilder artists and far-off tropical birds and animals, probably because in those days it was thought that an “Indian” was absolutely incapable of producing anything. Especially was great stress laid by Squier and Davis upon certain pipes said to delineate the manatee. Theories of origin and migration were founded on this supposed knowledge, and other writers accepting these deductions founded yet other theories upon them; and they were all wrong. The trouble seems to lie in the fact that the archæologists of some years ago not only were not naturalists, but they were not accurate and drew their conclusions from insufficient data. The attitude of the archæologist of to-day is exceedingly cautious, and before pronouncing a pipe carving a manatee, or any other animal, he would surely institute cautious and careful comparisons. This Messrs. Squier and Davis seem not to have done, nor did any of their followers or successors, being content, as Henshaw points out, to accept Squier and Davis’s statement as absolute. Henshaw demolishes their claims and shows that no manatee is represented and that all the pipe carvings are of birds and animals that had their range in the country of the Moundbuilders or not far from its borders. What they called a toucan he identifies as a crow, or raven, and in this decision several other ornithologists fully agree. The nasal features are plainly shown, and the “general contour of the bill is truly corvine.” See figure page 161. Thus is this supposed tropical acquaintance easily disposed of and the crow, certainly not a rare bird in that locality, substituted. A turkey buzzard is shown to be a hawk, and other foreign types claimed by Squier and Davis are disproved with ease. Out of forty-five carvings on pipes figured by them only five, by Henshaw’s tests, are correctly named. Some carvings, which they were unable to identify, Henshaw places without any effort. As for the so-called manatees, he believes they were intended for otter. The manatee is an earless animal with many peculiar features which do not appear in the Moundbuilder carvings, while ears do appear. This is what I mean by not giving “character” to carvings. It is a matter, largely, of perception. The Eskimo appears to have this perception developed to a considerable degree, and when he delineates an animal he knows he marks strongly its peculiar features, whatever else he may do. The element of imagination also comes in, for Amerinds often produce drawings or carvings of animals they think they have seen, or as they appeared to them in a sudden and fleeting glimpse, or vision.
Only two of the “elephant” pipes have been found and both by the same person. There is a doubt as to their genuineness. Even if genuine they are far from depicting the mastodon
It was a lack of ability to reproduce accurately the lines and character of any object which caused some of the Moundbuilder pipes intended to represent the common otter to look like something else. As a matter of fact, these Moundbuilder pipe carvings, about which so much that is unwarranted has been written, are not superior to the carvings of the Haidas, or other stocks, and indeed, if anything, are not equal to them. They certainly do not compare for a moment with most of the work of the Mexican tribes. A further important conclusion of Henshaw’s is that “there is no reason for believing that the masks and sculptures of human faces are more correct likenesses than are the animal carvings,”[154] which is exactly in accord with my own opinion, not only as concerns the work of the Moundbuilders, but of every other Amerind tribe. They were not sculptors of a kind that could reproduce a likeness to an individual. Their work was always general; they seldom drew or painted from the object, as an artist or sculptor of our race does, but they accomplished their result by memory, imagination, and “rule of thumb.” The surprise of the Europeans at finding anything at all in the art line, coupled with a wide ignorance on art matters, has awarded all the Amerind carvings and sculptures, as is well illustrated in the Moundbuilder case, a false degree of excellence. The Amerinds of the Mississippi valley probably also carved wood, but their work in this material has, of course, long ago decayed. They worked other things, like shell, and some of the shell carvings are strikingly like Aztec drawings. In this shellwork there are a great many discs and gorgets, engraved with figures of spiders, rattlesnakes, birds, geometrical designs, and representations of the human figure. There are also rude shell masks of the human face, but these are primitive in the extreme. It must be borne in mind that this region was occupied for long ages, and by many different tribes, so that the work found is probably from different sources, though all Amerind. A class of singularly shaped stones is found in the Mississippi valley and northward, mainly north of the Ohio, to which the name “bird-stones” has been applied because of their resemblance to avian forms. No satisfactory explanation of their use has been advanced.[155]
A number of stone statues of the human figure have been unearthed from Georgia to Tennessee, varying in height from three or four inches to something over twenty. They are all of the crudest description, and so far as any resemblance to the type of man who made them is concerned are absolutely valueless. They are undoubtedly human forms, that is all; not another characteristic, except sex, indicated by breasts, is presented. They are mostly in a squatting posture and on one or two there seems to be a suggestion of the hair dressed behind. Effigy bottles of earthenware from Tennessee are similarly crude and primitive. There is little, therefore, in the whole Mississippi valley or on the Atlantic coast, in the line of carving or sculpture, that could not have been executed by Amerinds that have been known to our race, many of them living in the same localities where the art remains have been found. The superlative rank awarded Moundbuilder art is unwarranted.
Directing our attention now to still another region, we find in the South-west a vast deal that is absorbingly interesting. Fortunately the people were, many of them, still there when the first Spaniards came into the country in 1540, so that we have data to prevent the attributing the works found there to some mysterious race. It has been attempted in the case of the “Cliff-dwellers,” but the investigations of competent ethnologists have effectually settled that matter, and checked the romantic tendency except in the case of a few who will not learn. The ethnographic condition of the South-west since we have known it probably represents also what prevailed in the Mississippi region, that is, a number of different stocks existing in different stages of culture, distributed in patches, not uniformly.
All of them pitched their camps or built their houses as expediency dictated, and when cause arose to render them dissatisfied with their site, whether cliff-house, village, or camp, they moved to a more desirable place, leaving behind what they could not easily carry, as well as their houses. Thus in the course of a long time the area presented the appearance from the numerous remains of having a larger population than was really the case; though I may add that I believe the population was at one time somewhat greater than has usually been admitted by the best ethnologists. These various stocks carried on their daily avocations, and when the results were in some indestructible material, many of them were preserved to us, which, taken in connection with the productions of the modern tribes, give an excellent and correct impression of the life and occupations of the inhabitants extending far back into the past.
The Shoshonean is one of the stocks still extant in that and more northerly regions, and spreads far south to the lakes of Mexico. It exists to-day in several stages, the Mexican or Nahuatl, the Moki or Hopi, and the numerous bands of Utes.[156] Other stocks probably had equal variation in culture within their ranks, this variation being sometimes due to the absorption, as in the case of the Navajos, of a more cultured tribe. Many of these tribes did no carving whatever, and the region of our South-west is poor in this sort of remains. The Pueblos, while possessing other artistic talents of a high order, do not seem to have done much in the line of carving. They execute the ordinary fetiches with little or no shape, and they also produce a kind of small doll for the children and some that are used in ceremonies, figure page 178, but all these, and all the masks in ceremonies, are fearful things to look upon, bearing little or no resemblance to anything human; shapeless, botched up masses of hideousness, usually not carved or modelled, but built up out of various stuffs. Some of them model effigies in earthenware, but these attempts do not amount to much. I have never seen any wood carving, from this region, worth mentioning. A. M. Stephen made a sketch of two figures in wood with small knots or horns called the Alosaka, which I copied, but they are primitive to the last degree. These figures were about four feet high, and were of cottonwood, apparently very old. Figures above. They were discovered by accident in a cave near the ruins of Awatuwi and removed. When the loss was learned by the Moki they requested the return of the images, which was granted, and they have not been seen since, nor does anyone outside of the custodians, or at least no white man, know where they are. Around the Moki towns I saw not a single attempt at rock carving, nor do I remember in extensive journeys over the South-western region ever seeing any relief carving whatever. Rock scratchings, erroneously termed “etchings” by many writers on these subjects, I have seen in great abundance, but not an attempt at sculpture worth noticing. There may, however, in some of the villages, be carvings nevertheless. Governor Prince found at a ruin near Cochiti a number of rudely formed stone figures of human shape. Nearby there are two panthers carved life size in the tufa which forms the surface rock of the locality. They “lie side by side,” says Bandelier, “representing the animals as crouching with tails extended, and their heads pointing to the east.”[157] Their length is six feet, one third of this being tail. The height is two feet and the breadth across the shoulders fourteen inches, and across the rump seventeen inches. They are about twenty-two inches apart. Around them is an irregular pentagonal enclosure, “made of large blocks, flags, and slabs of volcanic rock, some of which are set in the ground like posts, while the majority are piled on each other so as to connect the upright pillars.... When I last saw the monument it looked like a diminutive and dilapidated Stonehenge.”[158] Another pair of similar panthers occurs at not a great distance off at a place now called the Potrero de los Idolos. The size is about the same as the others. “One of them is completely destroyed by treasure hunters, who loosened both from the rock by a blast of powder, and then heaved the ponderous blocks out by means of crowbars. After breaking one of the figures to pieces they satisfied themselves that nothing was buried underneath.... The imperfections of the sculpture are very apparent; were it not for the statements of the Indians, who positively assert that the intention of the makers was to represent a puma, it would be considered to be a gigantic lizard.”[159]
The metates or mealing stones, abundant in modern and ancient villages, and which in the Far South are elaborately carved oftentimes, are, in the South-west, so far as I have observed in the field and in reports of investigators, never decorated in the faintest degree. Articles, also, of various kinds that among the Haidas or Tlinkits would be covered with carving, have here not a vestige of it. Nor is there any carving about the house timbers or the stones that enter into the wall construction, places where the Aztecs, and especially the Mayas, lavished their skill. The Mokis make little clay images which they fire for the children, but they are without merit. Nor do the Navajo, the Pima, the Apache, Yuma, or any of the other stocks attempt anything in the direction of carving, so that it seems safe to say that the South-west has not produced any carving worthy of note, either in modern or ancient times. The ruins so far as known are as barren of carved articles as the modern occupied houses.
Proceeding southward, however, when we approach the vicinity of the City of Mexico, examples of carving appear, and it is quickly evident that the Aztecs gave great attention to this form of art. One of the most remarkable specimens is the so-called Calendar Stone dug up under the present city, and now in the Mexican National Museum. It has been called a sacrificial stone, but Bandelier thinks it may have served rather as the base for another stone, holding the rope of a captive doomed to the “gladiatorial” sacrifice. For my part I incline to the opinion that it is an astronomical affair. The date carved on the top is the 13th Acatl or A.D. 1479 of our time, according to the accepted calculations. In the centre is a head, supposed to represent the sun, and around it are twenty figures, standing for the twenty days of the Mexican month. Then come eight divisions by what appear to be arrow-heads, four being extended farther toward the centre than the others and also curled up at the ends or flukes, and one of these four ending in an elaborate sort of bow-knot ornament which covers a wide space at what is now the lower edge as it stands. Each of the eight divisions is again divided by a kind of crown which is smaller than the smaller arrow-heads, and then there is a still further subdivision made by a dot, on a line with the base of the crown. This gives thirty-two points, or exactly the number of points on our mariner’s compass card, so that this carving can be “boxed” as any compass card can be. The N., E., and W., are more prominent than any other points but the S., which has the decoration referred to. Then come the N.E., S.E., S.W., and N.W., with each set of intermediate points diminishing in importance.[160] It looks as if our ancient Aztecs had found a mariner’s compass washed ashore and perpetuated it by thus carving it with mythological significance.[161] Stranger things than this have occurred among Amerinds. But I prefer to believe that the Aztec astronomer worked out the points of the compass for himself, for these directions exist of course in every land independent of the compass, and the moment the Amerind began to work in astronomy he was forced to recognise the thirty-two natural directions that were open to him. No doubt the Mayan and Mexican observatories were somewhat similar to that of the Shah Jahan at Jeypore in India, where circular stones of different sizes formed a part of the observing apparatus. The Mayan and Mexican astronomical knowledge was probably equal to any extant in the fourteenth century.
Another type of Mexican carving is seen in the statue of Teoyaomiqui, the god of war and death, of which the two faces are different. Bandelier believes this to be a statue of the war-god Huitzilopochtli.
Another remarkable statue given mention by Bandelier is the “Indio Triste.” This is a squatting figure of an Amerind executed with more simplicity than is usual with Amerind work in this region. Bandelier considers it a torch-bearer, a supposition borne out by evidence he advances, and also by the arrangement of the hands and arms, which are brought out forward of the chest as if clasping something in the empty space between the fingers. This statue is forty inches high and two feet wide. A comparatively small number of Aztec sculptures have been found. Almost all were destroyed or buried by the zeal of the early priests. Under the City of Mexico and in other places there are probably many lying intact, and some day they may come to the light. “The art of sculpture in aboriginal Mexico,” says Bandelier, “while considerably above that of the Northern Village-Indians, is still not superior to the remarkable carvings on ivory and wood of the tribes of the North-west Coast and often bears a marked resemblance to them.”[162]
Proceeding on southward, the next great group of carvings is that ascribed to the Mayas, and extending, in a general way, from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to the borders of Honduras and somewhat beyond. The people formerly occupying this area were extremely active in the line of carving, and there are preserved to us tablets, figures in bass-relief, statues, monoliths, and other stone- and wood-work that, taken together, easily bring this people in the very front place among Amerind artists. Their buildings were most elaborately ornamented with carving in stone, or wood, and with modelling in stucco, and there were many tablets bearing carved inscriptions. One of the most famous of these tablets adorned a beautiful building called in modern times “The Temple of the Cross.”[163] It stands at Palenque. The tablet was affixed to the rear wall of an inner chamber, termed by Europeans the “Adoratorio,” and was in three sections, the total dimensions of which were ten feet eight inches wide, by six feet four inches high. One section of this tablet remained in place at the time of Charnay’s last visit, one was in Las Playas, and the other, the third, is in the Smithsonian Institution. At each extreme end of the whole composition was a mass of the calculiform writing; next came two figures separated by a peculiar design in the centre, which somewhat resembles a cross, and it was this design that gave the name to the tablet. While the execution is remarkable it is nevertheless primitive, and similar to other Amerind art in quality and conception. It is a high development of Amerindian sculptural ideas. Another similar tablet exists in the so-called “Temple of the Sun.” A cast of this was made by Charnay and a photograph from this cast is given in figure on page 185.[164]
At Copan twenty-three stelæ, or monolithic monuments, elaborately carved with human figures and hieroglyphs, have been found. Each had in front a sculptured block designated as an altar. Their average height is twelve feet, and their breadth and their thickness each about three feet. Stelæ and so called idols have been exhumed around Lake Nicaragua, but all remains grow less important towards the south except in Chiriqui, as well as towards the north. Indeed, here in Yucatan seems to have sprung the living fountain that watered all the desolation of the Western world.
The stelæ at Copan are some of the most artistic and altogether remarkable sculptures found on the continent. They are highly decorative, and the execution of the intricate designs with the poor stone tools at their command is extraordinary. But all the productions of the Mayas pass easily beyond those of any other stock on this continent. Some of the conventionalised animal heads used as gargoyles are exceedingly well done and so also are several works called “singing-girls” (see figures pages 19 and 79). There are no geometric patterns at Copan, and the designs and execution are of a high order, yet at the same time thoroughly Amerindian. The rattlesnake enters into many of the designs and is represented by itself frequently. It was an animal of great importance to all Amerinds from the thirty-eighth parallel down. Charnay gives an illustration of what he calls votive stones, that are apparently the representation of the rattle of the revered reptile. The segments are clearly indicated and altogether the design seems to me unmistakable. The region of the South-west and Mexico is also the richest in species of any part of America, no less than “eight out of a total of seventeen species occurring at or near the boundary between the United States and the Mexican Republic.” In southern Arizona seven different species are found. “Their centre of distribution appears to be the tableland of Mexico with its extension northward into the south-western United States.”[165]