Page:The American Indian.djvu/119

Rh twined strands with thin strips of colored materials to produce the designs. In the inland salmon area, coil baskets are decorated by imbrication, which is also an ingenious overlay, and for that reason was most likely derived from twine overlay. The basketry of the Tlingit gives a different type of decoration, chiefly in the use of bands of overlay, but these are a secondary part of the art of the North Pacific area to which we shall return later.

Another important art center is to be found among the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest where we see an exuberant development of pottery designs and blanket decorations. Archæological collections show that, if anything, there has been a deterioration in pottery decoration during the historic period but, on the other hand, there seems to have been a marked development in blanket designs. We are clear that Navajo textiles have passed through a development of this kind, for the old specimens are almost entirely striped. While Navajo weaving is supposed to be of recent origin, it is obvious that the designs were not copied from European techniques, but from aboriginal American models. Further, we have some textile remains from cliff ruins in which striped decorations are the rule and the same tendency is shown in Hopi and Zuñi weaving. A few exceptional specimens have come to notice that bear designs of another character, particularly those from the Gila River; but these are toward the south and may therefore be intrusive.

However, our most important problem in this area is to be found in pottery decoration. If we consider modern Pueblo pottery only, we find that its designs are largely geometric in appearance, although a strong realistic tendency is also plainly evident. Even many of the highly conventionalized geometric forms prove to be symbols of mountains, clouds, thunder, rain, etc., while among them appear unmistakable drawings of plants and animals. Yet, taking modern pottery as a whole, the geometrical character of the designs seems to predominate. In the discussions of southwestern chronology, we shall see that the more widely diffused and, older type of pottery is decidedly geometric in character. Thus, two of