File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17539257133).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo04amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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14 PRIMITIVE ART
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In many cases these pictographs become more geo- metrical in char- acter, so that they may be called or- namental designs. Such is the case, for instance, in a young woman's head - band made of buckskin (Case 12 d), painted representing lodges and stars in the red with designs the lower part upper. In some cases the whole form of the object is given a symbolic in- terpretation. Thus we find a stone war-axe (Case 12 e) representing the woodpecker. This design sym- bolizes the idea that the point of the axe is to be as powerful in piercing skulls as the beak of the wood- pecker is in piercing the bark of trees. The point of the axe represents the beak of the bird; the red dot on the rounded part of the stone, its eye; the handle, its body. In the pictographic art of this tribe, cer- tain motives have obtained a conventional meaning. Such is the case, for instance, with the triangles on the girl's head-band mentioned before, which always represent lodges. Crosses, like those on the drinking - tubes in Case 12 d, represent the crossings of trails; parallel lines represent ditches, and a circle with four equidistant rays symbolizes the sun. The pictographic art of these tribes tends to assume a geometrical character particularly on their woven bags and on their imbricated basketry. The merging of the pictographic and purely decorative elements may be observed very clearly in a bag (Case 12 d), on which

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