The decorative art of the Dakota has been treated in a preceding paper, in which brief mention was made of religious art, or that art in which there was a definite, unmistakable motive on the part of the artist to represent mythical or philosophical ideas. In this more serious art, a large number of designs may be characterized as “protective designs,” because their presence or possession is in part a protection. The idea in a protective design seems to be a symbolical appeal to the source or concrete manifestation of a protective power. It is not easy to get the point of view and the spirit of the faith that make these designs significant, but from the detailed explanations of them some general idea can be formed. The descriptions given in this paper are based upon the statements of Indians, in most cases the executers of the designs. The attitude of the reader toward such a study as this is often that of concluding that the points of view set forth by a writer are universal in the tribe. This leads to a great deal of superficial criticism. In the opinion of the writer, any rejection of such study because one or two or several Indians deny all knowledge of some or all of the specific native accounts upon which conclusions are based, is absurd. We might as well test the artistic sense of a city by calling in one or two persons from the street. As a case in point, the reader is referred to the remarks of J. Owen Dorsey on the authenticity of Bushotter’s Double Woman.[1] A great deal of the information received from Indians relative to religion is largely individual, and every ethnological field-worker must take the best of his material from the brightest men of a tribe. The object of this study has been to bring together ideas expressed by various individuals more or less eminent among their people, because all of these individual conceptions seem to have much in common. The data were secured by the writer when on Museum expeditions to the Teton and Yankton divisions of the Dakota.
[1]
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Dorsey (Eleventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 480). |
The circular shield was distributed over a large part of North America. A conspicuous part of the arms of Mexican warriors was “the round, small ‘target’ worn by the ‘brave’ on his left arm, and made of canes netted together and interwoven with cotton ‘twofold,’ covered on the outside with gilded boards and with feathers, and so strong that a hard cross-bow shot could alone penetrate them;”[2] but “merely ornamental shields [were also] used and carried by warriors and chiefs on festive occasions only.”[3]
According to the same author, in Pre-Columbian times some of the Pueblo Indians used a thick disk of buffalo-hide as a shield. On the Plains, from the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan, the circular shield of buffalo-hide was, until the extinction of the buffalo, a part of the regalia of every warrior. These shields usually bore symbolic designs. In many cases the designs were painted upon the rawhide itself, and protected by a buckskin cover; while in other cases the designs were painted upon the cover. Practically no shields of buffalo-hide are to be found in the hands of the surviving Dakota; but in social and religious ceremonies, models or shield-covers of buckskin or cloth, upon which are painted the designs formerly placed on shields, are often used. For purposes of study the writer secured such models of shields, with explanations of the designs and with other shield-lore, from persons who formerly owned buffalo-hide shields.
When the enemies of the Dakota were armed with native weapons, the shield had some value in itself, because few arrows could get through it, and it was of sufficient strength to ward off a blow from a club or an axe; but even at that time the designs and medicine objects tied to the shield seem to have been regarded as of greater importance than the mechanical properties of the shield itself. It was the power represented by the design to which the owner of the shield looked for protection. Naturally, with the introduction of fire-arms, shields ceased to have a real protective value; but their designs were still looked upon as capable of affording protection against evil. According to the statements of some old men who still have faith in protective designs, the ancient shield manifested its power upon the mind of the enemy by influencing them to shoot at the shield rather than at the exposed parts of the body of its bearer. But when fire-arms were introduced, experience demonstrated that the shield was no longer a desirable object in battle, because the same influence that drew arrows to it drew bullets also, and in this case with fatal results. From this they concluded that guns represented a mystic power superior to that of shield-designs, but that the latter were still efficacious, except where so overpowered.
This explanation is interesting, because these men seem to have grasped the idea that the shield, being a conspicuous object, would attract the attention and thus the aim of the enemy; but they confused this psychological explanation of the observed facts with a mystic conception that the magic power of the design upon the shield was the cause or force that reached out and lay hold of the attention of the enemy. Yet the introduction of fire-arms did not relegate the shield to oblivion; and shield-designs are still cherished by men of the olden time, because they represent a kind of individual totem or protective power.
The following descriptions of shield-designs are given with the interpretations of their owners.
A shield-cover decorated with feathers, bearing a design used by a chief on ceremonial occasions, and said by him to be the copy of a shield carried in his youth, is shown in Plate v