Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/115

Rh among some savage tribes. In these-writings by figures, the fact that the man or animal represented is under the influence of an evil lot is indicated by an arrow directed from the mouth toward the heart. A sign of this kind is considered equivalent to a real possession of the animal or person represented.

We could hardly give more convincing proofs of the special significance attributed by the savage to drawing, regarded by him as an instrument of power over another; and while the examples which we have just brought together relate chiefly to man, we may assume logically that the same process—that is, a figured representation of animals—plays a like part in the struggle of the savage against his natural enemies. Other facts exist confirmatory of this hypothesis.

According to Mr. Tanner, the North American Indians, to assure success in their hunting expeditions, made rude drawings of the animal they were pursuing, and stabbed them in the region of the heart, under the conviction that they would thereby obtain power over the desired game. Taylor relates, according to an old observer among the Australians, that the natives, in one of their festival dances, construct a figure of the kangaroo with plants, in order that they may become masters of the real kangaroos of the forest. An Algonkin Indian, going out to kill an animal, hangs up a figure of it in his lodge; then, after giving it due warning, shoots an arrow at it. If the arrow hits, the animal will be killed. If a hunter, having touched a sorcerer's rod with his arrow, succeeded in hitting the track of the animal with the arrow, it would be stopped and held till the hunter could come up to it. The same object could be attained by drawing the figure of the animal on a piece of wood and addressing suitable prayers to the image.

Such was the function of drawing at its origin. An Indian song admirably explains this function, in the words "My drawing has made a god of me!" Faith could hardly be more vigorously expressed in the power of the art of drawing as an instrument by the aid of which primitive man obtained a supernatural power over his enemy or his game. Regarding the works of the cave men in the light of these facts, we perceive that the purpose that inspired them had few points in common with the sense of the beautiful or the tendency to imitation; and it is clear that if there existed in the mind of the primitive man a material relation between a being and its shadow or its image, that man thought that the same relation was preserved between the being and its image when transferred to any object whatever. The purpose to be reached was to possess the shadow of the coveted object, and the only means of accomplishing it was to fix upon something or another the silhouette of that shadow.