brush-fences, corrals, “pounds,” pitfalls, &c., advantage taken of a
natural cul-de-sac, &c. A great variety of traps, snares, &c., was
used (see Mason in Amer. Anthrop., 1899) and the dog was also of
great service with certain tribes, although no special variety of
hunting-dogs (except in a few cases) appears to have been developed.
The accessory implements for the chase (spear, bow and arrow,
harpoon, club, &c.) underwent great variation and specialization.
The throwing-stick appears in the north among the Eskimo and in
the south-west among the Pueblos. In the Muskogian area the
blow-gun is found, and its use extended also to some of the Iroquoian
tribes (Cherokee, &c.). In part of this area vegetable poisons were
used to capture fish. In the New England region torch-fishing at
night was in vogue. With the tribes of the Great Plains in particular
the hunt developed into a great social event, and often into a more
or less marked ceremonial or religious institution, with its own
appropriate preliminary and subsequential rites, songs, formulae,
taboos and fetishes, &c., as seen e.g. among certain tribes of the
Caddoan stock in very interesting fashion.
The art of transportation and navigation among the American aborigines north of Mexico has received special treatment from Mason (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1894) and Friederici, in his recent monograph Die Schiffahrt der Indianer (Stuttgart, 1907). On land some of the Indian tribes made use of the dog-sled and the toboggan in winter, while the dog-travois was early met with in the region of the Great Plains. The Eskimo made special use of the dog-sled, but never developed snow-shoes to the same extent as did the Athabaskan and Algonkian tribes; with the last and with the Iroquoian tribes came the perfection of the skin-shoe or moccasin. In the south and south-west appear sandals. In North America the cradle, as pointed out by Professor Mason (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1894), has undergone great variation in response to environmental suggestion. No wheeled vehicle and no use of an animal other than the dog for means of transportation is known among the aborigines north of Mexico, men, women and children, women especially, having been the chief burden-bearers. Among the types of boats in use are the seal-skin kayak and umiak (woman’s boat) of the Eskimo; the bull-boat or coracle (raw-hide over willow frame) of the Missouri and the buffalo-region; the dug-out of various forms and degrees of ornamentation in divers regions from Florida to the North Pacific coast; bark-canoes (birch, elm, pine, &c.) in the Algonkian, Iroquoian and Athabaskan areas, reaching a high development in the region of the Great Lakes; the peculiar bark-canoe of the Beothuks in the form of two half ellipses; the bark-canoe of the Kootenay (a similar type occurs on the Amur in north-eastern Asia), noteworthy as having both ends pointed under water; the plank-canoes of the Santa Barbara region; the basketry-boats (coritas) of the lower Colorado and in south central California; the balsas of tule rushes, &c., in use on the lakes and streams of California and Nevada. In various parts of the country log-rafts of a more or less crude sort were in use. No regular sail is reported from North America, although from time to time skins, blankets, &c., were used by several tribes for such purposes.
Since the appearance of Morgan’s monograph on the Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines (Washington, 1881) our knowledge of the subject has been materially increased by the studies and researches of Boas, Fewkes, Mindeleff, Dorsey, Matthews, Murdoch, Willoughby and others. The dwellings in use among the aborigines north of Mexico varied from the rude brush huts of the primitive Shoshonian tribes, and the still earlier caves, to the communal dwellings of the Iroquois and the Pueblos stocks of New Mexico and Arizona. The principal types are as follows:
Crude brush shelters and huts of the lowest Shoshonian tribes, the Apache (more elaborate), &c.; the hogan or earth-lodge of the Navaho, and the earth-lodges of certain Caddoan and Siouan tribes farther north, with similar structures even among the Aleuts of Alaska; the grass-lodge of the Caddoan tribes, still in use among the Wichita; the semi-subterranean earth-covered lodges of parts of California, &c.; the roofed pits of various styles in use in the colder north, &c.; the Eskimo snow-house and wooden karmak; the elaborately carved and painted wooden houses of Pacific coast region (Tlingit, Haida, Nootka, &c.), some of which were originally built on platforms and entered by log-ladders; the simple wooden house of northern California; the dome-shaped bark wigwams of the Winnebago and the conical ones of many of the Algonkian tribes; the skin tents or tipis of many of the Plains peoples; the mat tents of the Nez Percé, Kootenay, &c., and the mat houses of the South Atlantic region; the circular wigwam of bark or mats banked up at the base, of the Ohio-Mississippi valley; the palmetto-house of certain Louisiana Indians; the pile-dwellings of the ancient Floridians. Communal houses of divers types were found among the Mohegans, Iroquois, &c., but are especially illustrated by the so-called pueblos of the south-western United States, out of which grew probably the elaborate structures of ancient Mexico. Some tribes appear to have had simple and ruder summer dwellings and more elaborate or better constructed winter houses. The Eskimo have sometimes temporary hunting-lodges; the Comanches brush-shelters for summer and lodges of buffalo-skin for winter; with some tribes temporary dwellings were erected for the use of those cultivating the land. Many tribes had their “village-houses” for social purposes, like the kashim of the Eskimo. Special tipis or houses for shamans, “medicine-men,” &c., were common in many parts of North America. Secret societies had their own lodges and the so-called “men’s-house.” The houses of the North American Indians are the subject of a monograph by E. Sarfert (Arch. f. Anthr., 1908, pp. 119-215).
The art of fire-making was known to all the aborigines north of Mexico, two methods being widespread, that with flint and pyrites and that by reciprocating motion of wood on wood. For the latter several varieties of apparatus were in use, the simple two-stick apparatus was very common; the Eskimo have a four-part fire-drill and the Iroquois a weighted drill with spindle whorl. The skill displayed in fire-making by some Indians is very great, and the individual parts of the apparatus have in certain regions been highly specialized. The subject of fire-making apparatus and the kindred topic of illumination have been specially treated by Dr Walter Hough (Rep. U.S. Nat. Mus., 1890, pp. 531-587; Rep. Smiths. Inst., 1901–1902). The camp-fire, the torch and the Eskimo lamp represent the employment of fire for artificial light among the aborigines. Fire and smoke were used for signalling by the Plains tribes, &c., and fire-ceremonies form an important part (“new-fire,” “fire-dance”) of the ritual observances of not a few peoples, especially in the region from Florida to the Rio Grande. In metal-working there is up to the present no convincing evidence of the use of fire (heat only being employed to facilitate the cold-hammering processes by which the metals, copper, silver, gold and iron were manufactured into weapons, implements and ornaments) in metallurgy north of Mexico. The tools used were few and the processes simple, as Cushing (Amer. Anthrop., vol. vii., 1894) has proved by actual experiment. The only metal actually mined in large quantities was copper in the region of Lake Superior, whence came most of that employed in the east and south. In Alaska was a source of copper for the North Pacific coast. No special process of hardening copper other than by hammering was known to the Indians. The gold objects of most interest come from mounds in Florida and a few also from those in the Ohio valley. Galena was used to make simple ceremonial objects by the Indians of the Mississippi valley and the “mound-builders.”
The art of sculpture in wood, stone, bone and ivory is best represented by the wooden masks, utensils, house-carvings and totem-poles of the Indians of the North Pacific coast, the stone pipes, ornaments and images of various sorts of the “mound-builders” and other Indians of the Mississippi valley, the carvings of the people of the Floridian pile-dwellings, and the remarkable ivory carvings, sometimes minute, of the Eskimo. Noteworthy also are the slate-sculpture of the Haida, and the work in bone, ivory and deer and mountain goat horn of the British Columbian Indians. The Indians of the region south of the Great Lakes were expert in the manufacture of tobacco-pipes of great variety, among the most interesting being the Catlinite pipes of the Sioux of Minnesota, &c. Soapstone served some of the Eskimo to make lamps and some Indian tribes for other purposes. Pottery appears to have been unknown in certain regions, but flourished remarkably in the Mississippi valley and the Pueblos region of the south-west, where specialization in form and decoration occurred, and ceramic objects of all sorts were manufactured in abundance. The pottery of the Iroquoian and Algonkian tribes of the north-east was, as a rule, rather crude and undeveloped. In many places the relation of ceramic art to basketry is in evidence. Basketry, of which Professor O. T. Mason has recently made a detailed study in his Aboriginal American Basketry (Washington and New York, 1902, 1904), and related arts were carried on (especially by women) with great variety of form, decoration, material, &c., over a large portion of the continent. In North America basketry is “the primitive art,” and here “the Indian women have left the best witness of what they could do in handiwork and expression.” The most exquisite and artistic basketry in the world comes from an utterly uncivilized tribe in California. The relation of basketry to symbolism and religion is best observable among the Hopi or Moqui of Arizona. The appreciation of white men for the products of Indian skill and genius in basketry finds full expression in G. W. James’s Indian Basketry (1900). Weaving is exemplified in the goat’s hair blanket of the Chilkat Indians (Koluschan) of Alaska, and similar products; also in the manufactures of buffalo-hair, &c., of the Indians of the Great Plains and Mississippi valley and the textile art of a higher type known to the Pueblos tribes and by some of them taught to the Navaho. Famous are the “Navaho blankets,” less so the “Chilkat.”
Feather-work and the utilization of bird-skins and feathers for dresses, hats, ornaments, &c., are known from many parts of the continent. In the Arctic regions bird-skins with the feathers on were used to make dresses; the Algonkian tribes of Virginia, &c., had their bird-skin “blankets” and “turkey robes”; the tribes of the North Pacific coast used feathers for decorative purposes of many kinds, as did Indians in other regions also; feather head-dresses and ornaments were much in use among the Plains tribes, &c.; with the Pueblos Indians eagle and turkey feathers were important in ritual and ceremony; some of the tribes of the south-east made fans of turkey feathers. Beads made from various sorts of shell, rolled copper (“mound-builders,” &c.), seeds, ivory (Eskimo) and the teeth of various animals are pre-Columbian, like the turquoise-beads of the Pueblos, and they were put to a great variety
