"accidents of manufacture," as they have been termed, would be not only
interesting, but highly instructive. Such a study should afford us a
clew to the origin and significance of conventional as contrasted with
imitative art.

The natural process of the evolution of art would seem to be from the
purely imitative to the conventional, the tendency being for artistic
expression of a partially or wholly imaginative character to supplant or
supplement the imitative form only in obedience to external influences,
especially those of a religious or superstitious kind. In this
connection it is interesting to note that even among tribes of the
Northwest, the Haidahs, for instance, whose carvings or paintings of
birds and animals are almost invariably treated in a manner so highly
conventional or are so distorted and caricatured as to be nearly or
quite unrecognizable, it is still some natural object, as a well known
bird or animal, that underlies and gives primary shape to the design.
However highly conventionalized or grotesque in appearance such artistic
productions may be, evidences of an underlying imitative design may
always be detected; proof, seemingly, that the conventional is a later
stage of art superimposed upon the more natural by the requirements of
mythologic fancies.

As it is with any particular example of savage artistic fancy, so is it
with the art of certain tribes as a whole. Nor does it seem possible
that the growth of the religions or mythologic sentiment has so far
preceded or outgrown the development of art as to have had from the
first a dominating influence over it, and that the art of such tribes as
most strongly show its effect has never had what may be termed its
natural phase of development, but has reached the conventional stage
without having passed through the intermediate imitative era.