HUMAN SCULPTURES.


The conclusion reached in the foregoing pages that the animal sculptures
are not "exact and faithful copies from nature," but are imitations of a
general rather than of a special character, such as comport better with
the state of art as developed among certain of the Indian tribes than
among a people that has achieved any notable advance in culture is
important not only in its bearing on the questions previously noticed in
this paper, but in its relation to another and highly interesting class
of sculptures.

If a large proportion of the animal carvings are so lacking in artistic
accuracy as to make it possible to identify positively only the few
possessing the most strongly marked characters, how much faith is to be
placed in the ability of the Mound sculptor to fix in stone the features
and expressions of the human countenance, infinitely more difficult
subject for portrayal as this confessedly is?

That Wilson regards the human sculptures as affording a basis for sound
ethnological deductions is evident from the following paragraph, taken
from Prehistoric Man, vol. 1, p. 461:

Alike from the minute accuracy of many of the sculptures of
animals, hereafter referred to, and from the correspondence to well
known features of the modern Red Indian suggested by some of the
human heads, these miniature portraits may be assumed, with every