Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley Part 1

Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley.

by Henry W. Henshaw.

INTRODUCTORY.

The considerable degree of decorative and artistic skill attained by the so-called Mound-Builders, as evidenced by many of the relics that have been exhumed from the mounds, has not failed to arrest the attention of archaeologists. Among them, indeed, are found not a few who a.s.sert for the people conveniently designated as above a degree of artistic skill very far superior to that attained by the present race of Indians as they have been known to history. In fact, this very skill in artistic design, a.s.serted for the Mound-Builders, as indicated by the sculptures they have left, forms an important link in the chain of argument upon which is based the theory of their difference from and superiority to the North American Indian.

Eminent as is much of the authority which thus contends for an artistic ability on the part of the Mound-Builders far in advance of the attainments of the present Indian in the same line, the question is one admitting of argument; and if some of the best products of artistic handicraft of the present Indians be compared with objects of a similar nature taken from the mounds, it is more than doubtful if the artistic inferiority of the latter-day Indian can be substantiated. Deferring, however, for the present, any comparison between the artistic ability of the Mound-Builder and the modern Indian, attention may be turned to a cla.s.s of objects from the mounds, notable, indeed, for the skill with which they are wrought, but to be considered first in another way and for another purpose than mere artistic comparison.

As the term Mound-Builders will recur many times throughout this paper, and as the phrase has been objected to by some archaeologists on account of its indefiniteness, it may be well to state that it is employed here with its commonly accepted signification, viz: as applied to the people who formerly lived throughout the Mississippi Valley and raised the mounds of that region. It should also be clearly understood that by its use the writer is not to be considered as committing himself in any way to the theory that the Mound-Builders were of a different race from the North American Indian.

Among the more interesting objects left by the Mound-Builders, pipes occupy a prominent place. This is partly due to their number, pipes being among the more common articles unearthed by the labors of explorers, but more to the fact that in the construction of their pipes this people exhibited their greatest skill in the way of sculpture. In the minds of those who hold that the Mound-Builders were the ancestors of the present Indians, or, at least, that they were not necessarily of a different race, the superiority of their pipe sculpture over their other works of art excites no surprise, since, however prominent a place the pipe may have held in the affections of the Mound-Builders, it is certain that it has been an object of no less esteem and reverence among the Indians of history. Certainly no one inst.i.tution, for so it may be called, was more firmly fixed by long usage among the North American Indians, or more characteristic of them, than the pipe, with all its varied uses and significance.

Perhaps the most characteristic artistic feature displayed in the pipe sculpture of the Mound-Builders, as has been well pointed out by Wilson, in his Prehistoric Man, is the tendency exhibited toward the imitation of natural objects, especially birds and animals, a remark, it may be said in pa.s.sing, which applies with almost equal truth to the art productions generally of the present Indians throughout the length and breadth of North America. As some of these sculptured animals from the mounds have excited much interest in the minds of archaeologists, and have been made the basis of much speculation, their examination and proper identification becomes a matter of considerable importance. It will therefore be the main purpose of the present paper to examine critically the evidence offered in behalf of the identification of the more important of them. If it shall prove, as is believed to be the case, that serious mistakes of identification have been made, attention will be called to these and the manner pointed out in which certain theories have naturally enough resulted from the premises thus erroneously established.

It may be premised that the writer undertook the examination of the carvings with no theories of his own to propose in place of those hitherto advanced. In fact, their critical examination may almost be said to have been the result of accident. Having made the birds of the United States his study for several years, the writer glanced over the bird carvings in the most cursory manner, being curious to see what species were represented. The inaccurate identification of some of these by the authors of "The Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley" led to the examination of the series as a whole, and subsequently to the discussion they had received at the hands of various authors. The carvings are, therefore, here considered rather from the stand-point of the naturalist than the archaeologist. Believing that the question first in importance concerns their actual resemblances, substantially the same kind of critical study is applied to them which they would receive were they from the hands of a modern zoological artist. Such a course has obvious disadvantages, since it places the work of men who were in, at best, but a semi-civilized condition on a much higher plane than other facts would seem to justify. It may be urged, as the writer indeed believes, that the accuracy sufficient for the specific identification of these carvings is not to be expected of men in the state of culture the Mound-Builders are generally supposed to have attained. To which answer may be made that it is precisely on the supposition that the carvings were accurate copies from nature that the theories respecting them have been promulgated by archaeologists. On no other supposition could such theories have been advanced. So accurate indeed have they been deemed that they have been directly compared with the work of modern artists, as will be noticed hereafter. Hence the method here adopted in their study seems to be not only the best, but the only one likely to produce definite results.

If it be found that there are good reasons for p.r.o.nouncing the carvings not to be accurate copies from nature, and of a lower artistic standard than has been supposed, it will remain for the archaeologist to determine how far their unlikeness to the animals they have been supposed to represent can be attributed to shortcomings naturally pertaining to barbaric art. If he choose to a.s.sume that they were really intended as imitations, although in many particulars unlike the animals he wishes to believe them to represent, and that they are as close copies as can be expected from sculptors not possessed of skill adequate to carry out their rude conceptions, he will practically have abandoned the position taken by many prominent archaeologists with respect to the mound sculptors' skill, and will be forced to accord them a position on the plane of art not superior to the one occupied by the North American Indians. If it should prove that but a small minority of the carvings can be specifically identified, owing to inaccuracies and to their general resemblance, he may indeed go even further and conclude that they form a very unsafe basis for deductions that owe their very existence to a.s.sumed accurate imitation.

MANATEE.

In 1848 Squier and Davis published their great work on the Mounds of the Mississippi Valley. The skill and zeal with which these gentlemen prosecuted their researches in the field, and the ability and fidelity which mark the presentation of their results to the public are sufficiently attested by the fact that this volume has proved alike the mine from which subsequent writers have drawn their most important facts, and the chief inspiration for the vast amount of work in the same direction since undertaken.

On pages 251 and 252 of the above-mentioned work appear figures of an animal which is there called "Lamantin, Manitus, or Sea Cow,"

concerning which animal it is stated that "seven sculptured representations have been taken from the mounds." When first discovered, the authors continue, "it was supposed they were monstrous creations of fancy; but subsequent investigations and comparison have shown that they are faithful representations of one of the most singular animal productions of the world."

These authors appear to have been the first to note the supposed likeness of certain of the sculptured forms found in the mounds to animals living in remote regions. That they were not slow to perceive the ethnological interest and value of the discovery is shown by the fact that it was immediately adduced by them as affording a clew to the possible origin of the Mound-Builders. The importance they attached to the discovery and their interpretation of its significance will be apparent from the following quotation (p. 242):

Some of these sculptures have a value, so far as ethnological research is concerned, much higher than they can claim as mere works of art. This value is derived from the fact that they faithfully represent animals and birds peculiar to other lat.i.tudes, thus establis.h.i.+ng a migration, a very extensive intercommunication or a contemporaneous existence of the same race over a vast extent of country.

The idea thus suggested fell on fruitful ground, and each succeeding writer who has attempted to show that the Mound-Builders were of a race different from the North American Indian, or had other than an autochthonous origin, has not failed to lay especial stress upon the presence in the mounds of sculptures of the manatee, as well as of other strange beasts and birds, carved evidently by the same hands that portrayed many of our native fauna.

Except that the theories based upon the sculptures have by recent writers been annunciated more positively and given a wider range, they have been left almost precisely as set forth by the authors of the "Ancient Monuments," while absolutely nothing appears to have been brought to light since their time in the way of additional sculptured evidence of the same character. It is indeed a little curious to note the perfect unanimity with which most writers fall back upon the above authors as at once the source of the data they adduce in support of the several theories, and as their final, nay, their only, authority. Now and then one will be found to dissent from some particular bit of evidence as announced by Squier and Davis, or to give a somewhat different turn to the conclusions derivable from the testimony offered by them. But in the main the theories first announced by the authors of "Ancient Monuments," as the result of their study of the mound sculptures, are those that pa.s.s current to-day. Particular attention may be called to the deep and lasting impression made by the statements of these authors as to the great beauty and high standard of excellence exhibited by the mound sculptures. Since their time writers appear to be well satisfied to express their own admiration in the terms made use of by Squier and Davis. One might, indeed, almost suppose that recent writers have not dared to trust to the evidence afforded by the original carvings or their fac-similes, but have preferred to take the word of the authors of the "Ancient Monuments" for beauties which were perhaps hidden from their own eyes.

Following the lead of the authors of the "Ancient Monuments," also, with respect to theories of origin, these carvings of supposed foreign animals are offered as affording incontestible evidence that the Mound-Builders must have migrated from or have had intercourse, direct or indirect, with the regions known to harbor these animals. Were it not, indeed, for the evident artistic similarity between these carvings of supposed foreign animals and those of common domestic forms--a similarity which, as Squier and Davis remark, render them "indistinguishable, so far as material and workmans.h.i.+p are concerned, from an entire cla.s.s of remains found in the mounds"--the presence of most of them could readily be accounted for through the agency of trade, the far reaching nature of which, even among the wilder tribes, is well understood. Trade, for instance, in the case of an animal like the manatee, found no more than a thousand miles distant from the point where the sculpture was dug up, would offer a possible if not a probable solution of the matter. But independently of the fact that the practically identical character of all the carvings render the theory of trade quite untenable, the very pertinent question arises, why, if these supposed manatee pipes were derived by trade from other regions, have not similar carvings been found in those regions, as, for instance, in Florida and the Gulf States, a region of which the archaeology is fairly well known. Primitive man, as is the case with his civilized brother, trades usually out of his abundance; so that not seven, but many times seven, manatee pipes should be found at the center of trade. As it is, the known home of the manatee has furnished no carvings either of the manatee or of anything suggestive of it.

The possibility of the manatee having in past times possessed a wider range than at present seems to have been overlooked. But as a matter of fact the probability that the manatee ever ranged, in comparatively modern times at least, as far north as Ohio without leaving other traces of its presence than a few sculptured representations at the hands of an ancient people is too small to be entertained.

Nor is the supposition that the Mound-Builders held contemporaneous possession of the country embraced in the range of the animals whose effigies are supposed to have been exhumed from their graves worthy of serious discussion. If true, it would involve the contemporaneous occupancy by the Mound-Builders, not only of the Southern United States but of the region stretching into Southern Mexico, and even, according to the ideas of some authors, into Central and South America, an area which, it is needless to say, no known facts will for a moment justify us in supposing a people of one blood to have occupied contemporaneously.

a.s.suming, therefore, that the sculptures in question are the work of the Mound-Builders and are not derived from distant parts through the agency of trade, of which there would appear to be little doubt, and, a.s.suming that the sculptures represent the animals they have been supposed to represent--of which something remains to be said--the theory that the acquaintance of the Mound-Builders with these animals was made in a region far distant from the one to which they subsequently migrated would seem to be not unworthy of attention. It is necessary, however, before advancing theories to account for facts to first consider the facts themselves, and in this case to seek an answer to the question how far the identification of these carvings of supposed foreign animals is to be trusted. Before noticing in detail the carvings supposed by Squier and Davis to represent the manatee, it will be well to glance at the carvings of another animal figured by the same authors which, it is believed, has a close connection with them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 4.--Otter. From Ancient Monuments.]

Figure 4 is identified by the authors of the "Ancient Monuments" (Fig.

156) as an otter, and few naturalists will hesitate in p.r.o.nouncing it to be a very good likeness of that animal; the short broad ears, broad head and expanded snout, with the short, strong legs, would seem to belong unmistakably to the otter. Added to all these is the indication of its fish-catching habits. Having thus correctly identified this animal, and with it before them, it certainly reflects little credit upon the zoological knowledge of the authors and their powers of discrimination to refer the next figure (Ancient Monuments, Fig. 157) to the same animal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 5.--Otter of Squier and Davis.]

Of a totally different shape and physiognomy, if intended as an otter it certainly implies an amazing want of skill in its author. However it is a.s.suredly not an otter, but is doubtless an unfinished or rudely executed ground squirrel, of which animal it conveys in a general way a good idea, the characteristic att.i.tude of this little rodent, sitting up with paws extended in front, being well displayed. Carvings of small rodents in similar att.i.tudes are exhibited in Stevens's "Flint Chips,"

p. 428, Figs. 61 and 62. Stevens's Fig. 61 evidently represents the same animal as Fig. 157 of Squier and Davis, but is a better executed carving.

In ill.u.s.tration of the somewhat vague idea entertained by archaeologists as to what the manatee is like, it is of interest to note that the carving of a second otter with a fish in its mouth has been made to do duty as a manatee, although the latter animal is well known never to eat fish, but, on the contrary, to be strictly herbivorous. Thus Stevens gives figures of two carvings in his "Flint Chips," p. 429, Figs. 65 and 66, calling them manatees, and says: "In one particular, however, the sculptors of the mound-period committed an error. Although the lamantin is strictly herbivorous, feeding chiefly upon subaqueous plants and littoral herbs, yet upon one of the stone smoking-pipes, Fig. 66, this animal is represented with a fish in its mouth." Mr. Stevens apparently preferred to credit the mound sculptor with gross ignorance of the habits of the manatee, rather than to abate one jot or t.i.ttle of the claim possessed by the carving to be considered a representation of that animal. Stevens's fish-catching manatee is the same carving given by Dr.

Rau, in the Archaeological Collection of the United States National Museum, p. 47, Fig. 180, where it is correctly stated to be an otter.

This cut, which can scarcely be distinguished from one given by Stevens (Fig. 66), is here reproduced (Fig. 6), together with the second supposed manatee of the latter writer (Fig. 7).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 6.--Otter of Rau; Manatee of Stevens.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 7.--Manatee of Stevens.]

To afford a means of comparison, Fig. 154, from the "Ancient Monuments"

of Squier and Davis, is introduced (Fig. 8). The same figure is also to be found in Wilson's Prehistoric Man, vol. i, p. 476, Fig. 22. Another of the supposed lamantins, Fig. 9, is taken from Squier's article in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. ii, p. 188. A bad print of the same wood-cut appears as Fig. 153, p. 251, of the "Ancient Monuments."

It should be noted that the physiognomy of Fig. 6, above given, although unquestionably of an otter, agrees more closely with the several so-called manatees, which are represented without fishes, than with the fish-bearing otter, first mentioned, Fig. 4.

Fig. 6 thus serves as a connecting link in the series, uniting the unmistakable otter, with the fish in its mouth, to the more clumsily executed and less readily recognized carvings of the same animal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 8.--Lamantin or sea-cow of Squier and Davis.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 9.--Lamantin or sea-cow of Squier.]

It was doubtless the general resemblance which the several specimens of the otters and the so-called manatees bear to each other that led Stevens astray. They are by no means facsimiles one of the other. On the contrary, while no two are just alike, the differences are perhaps not greater than is to be expected when it is considered that they doubtless embody the conceptions of different artists, whose knowledge of the animal, as well as whose skill in carving, would naturally differ widely. Recognizing the general likeness, Stevens perhaps felt that what one was all were. In this, at least, he is probably correct, and the following reasons are deemed sufficient to show that, whether the several sculptures figured by one and another author are otters or not, as here maintained, they most a.s.suredly are not manatees. The most important character possessed by the sculptures, which is not found in the manatee, is an external ear. In this particular they all agree. Now, the manatee has not the slightest trace of a pinna or external ear, a small orifice, like a slit, representing that organ. To quote the precise language of Murie in the Proceedings of the London Zoological Society, vol. 8, p. 188: "In the absence of pinna, a small orifice, a line in diameter, into which a probe could be pa.s.sed, alone represents the external meatus." In the dried museum specimen this slit is wholly invisible, and even in the live or freshly killed animal it is by no means readily apparent. Keen observer of natural objects, as savage and barbaric man certainly is, it is going too far to suppose him capable of representing an earless animal--earless at least so far as the purposes of sculpture are concerned--with prominent ears. If, then, it can be a.s.sumed that these sculptures are to be relied upon as in the slightest degree imitative, it must be admitted that the presence of ears would alone suffice to show that they cannot have been intended to represent the manatee. But the feet shown in each and all of them present equally unquestionable evidence of their dissimilarity from the manatee. This animal has instead of a short, stout fore leg, terminating in flexible fingers or paws, as indicated in the several sculptures, a shapeless paddle-like flipper. The nails with which the flipper terminates are very small, and if shown at all in carving, which is wholly unlikely, as being too insignificant, they would be barely indicated and would present a very different appearance from the distinctly marked digits common to the several sculptures.

Noticing that one of the carvings has a differently shaped tail from the others, the authors of the "Ancient Monuments" attempt to reconcile the discrepancy as follows: "Only one of the sculptures exhibits a flat truncated tail; the others are round. There is however a variety of the lamantin (_Manitus Senigalensis_, Desm.) which has a round tail, and is distinguished as the "round-tailed manitus." (Ancient Monuments, p.

252.) The suggestion thus thrown out means, if it means anything, that the sculpture exhibiting a flat tail is the only one referable to the manatee of Florida and southward, the _M. America.n.u.s_, while those with round tails are to be identified with the so-called "Round-tailed Lamantin," the _M. Senegalensis_, which lives in the rivers of Senegambia and along the coast of Western Africa. It is to be regretted that the above authors did not go further and explain the manner in which they suppose the Mound-Builders became acquainted with an animal inhabiting the West African coast. Elastic as has proved to be the thread upon which hangs the migration theory, it would seem to be hardly capable of bearing the strain required for it to reach from the Mississippi Valley to Africa.

Had the authors been better acquainted with the anatomy of the manatees the above suggestion would never have been made, since the tails of the two forms are, so far as known, almost exactly alike. A rounded tail is, in fact, the first requisite of the genus _Manatus_, to which both the manatees alluded to belong, in distinction from the forked tail of the genus _Halicore_.

Whether the tails of the sculptured manatees be round or flat matters little, however, since they bear no resemblance to manatee tails, either of the round or flat tailed varieties, or, for that matter, to tails of any sort. In many of the animal carvings the head alone engaged the sculptor's attention, the body and members being omitted entirely, or else roughly blocked out; as, for instance, in the case of the squirrel given above, in which the hind parts are simply rounded off into convenient shape, with no attempt at their delineation. Somewhat the same method was evidently followed in the case of the supposed manatees, only after the pipe cavities had been excavated the block was shaped off in a manner best suited to serve the purpose of a handle. Without, however, attempting to inst.i.tute farther comparisons, two views of a real manatee are here subjoined, which are fac-similes of Murie's admirable photo-lithograph in Trans. London Zoological Society, vol. 8, 1872-'74. A very brief comparison of the supposed manatees, with a modern artistic representation of that animal, will show the irreconcilable differences between them better than any number of pages of written criticism.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 10.--Manatee (_Manatus America.n.u.s_, Cuv.).

Side view.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 11.--Manatee (_Manatus America.n.u.s_, Cuv.).

Front view.]

There would seem, then, to be no escape from the conclusion that the animal sculptures which have pa.s.sed current as manatees do not really resemble that animal, which is so extraordinary in all its aspects and so totally unlike any other of the animal creation as to render its identification in case it had really served as a subject for sculpture, easy and certain.

As the several sculptures bear a general likeness to each other and resemble with considerable closeness the otter, the well known fish-eating proclivities of this animal being shown in at least two of them, it seems highly probable that it is the otter that is rudely portrayed in all these sculptures.

The otter was a common resident of all the region occupied by the Mound-Builders, and must certainly have been well known to them.

Moreover, the otter is one of the animals which figures largely in the mythology and folk-lore of the natives of America, and has been adopted in many tribes as their totem. Hence, this animal would seem to be a peculiarly apt subject for embodiment in sculptured form. It matters very little, however, whether these sculptures were intended as otters or not, the main point in the present connection being that they cannot have been intended as manatees.

Before leaving the subject of the manatee, attention may be called to a curious fact in connection with the Cincinnati Tablet, "of which a wood-cut is given in The Ancient Monuments" (p. 275, Fig. 195). If the reverse side as there shown be compared with the same view as presented by Short in The North Americans of Antiquity, p. 45, or in MacLean's Mound-Builders, p. 107, a remarkable discrepancy between the two will be observed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 12.--Cincinnati Tablet. (Back.) From Squire and Davis.]