Page:The American Indian.djvu/115

Rh Another significant point is that the extensive use of realistic figures in cloth occurs only where weaving is highly developed, as in Peru and Mexico. When we examine examples of such decorations as are preserved in our museum collections, we note that even so, these figures are greatly distorted to make their contours coincide with the fixed lines of weaving. Further, it is also in these same localities that pottery decorations become more realistic, suggesting that some allowance must be made for the degrees of complexity in the culture of the weavers. It may be that the simple designs upon New England pottery are about all that can be expected from such a crude cultural setting. Yet, we must conclude that in the earlier stages of their historical developments in the New World both textiles and pottery were decorated with geometric designs and that the use of realistic figures came later. This is somewhat at variance with a current theory of art genesis which considers geometric art to be mere conventionalizations of earlier realistic figures. We have already noted how the weaving technique itself conventionalized all figures and have recognized other factors producing conventional effects, but the cultural conditions in the New World do not seem consistent with the above theory of design origin. The total distribution of the several types of design points clearly to a development from the simplest geometrical textile designs to the realistic textile figures.

Like many other culture traits, designs tend to fall into geographical groups. While the boundaries to such areas cannot always be drawn with great precision, their centers can be located without much difficulty. We have noted that California seemed to be the center of the highest attainments in basket-making, and it so happens that this is also the great center for basketry designs. As indicated on the map (Fig. 17) the basketry area includes the great plateau region extending from well up into British Columbia southward to the non-Pueblo tribes of Arizona and New Mexico. Here we saw that two kinds of technique were in use, coil and woven