Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/500

496 deeply influenced the neighboring Athapascan and Sonoran tribes, while at the same time the decoration of their basketry bears a close relation to that of Californian basketry. Although I do not know the interpretations of designs given by the Apache, Pima and Navajo, it seems probable that they have been influenced by the ideas current among the Pueblos. Among the Pueblos themselves—and in these I include the tribes of northern Mexico, such as the Huichol—there are well-marked local styles of technique and of decoration, and a general

similarity of interpretation. I think the marked prevalence of geographical interpretations found among the Salish tribes of British Columbia, the Shoshone and the Arapaho is another instance of distribution of a style of interpretation over an area including divers styles of art.

In a few cases it seems almost self-evident, from a consideration of the interpretations themselves, that they can not have developed from realistic forms. The multiplicity of Arapaho explanations for the triangles which I mentioned before suggest this. According to G. T. Emmons, the zigzag and the closely allied meander in Tlingit basketry have a variety of meanings. The zigzag may represent the