Symbolism in Penobscot art / by Frank G. Speck.

  • Frank Speck
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Symbolism in Penobscot art / by Frank G. Speck. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    INTRODUCTION The decorative designs of the Penobscot of Maine afford an interest- ing illustration of how art motives, existing over a wide area, have be- come modified into a local type and then pass through several stages of symbolic interpretation. Outwardly, the design content of Penobscot art shows at. least two categories. The first is the group of curve motives which has been previously treated very generally in a paper published by the Geological Survey of Canada.! These curve motives, which are obviously aboriginal, correspond in their fundamentals with designs occurring in painting on skin garments, and in beadwork, and embroid- ery among the Montagnais and Naskapi of the Labrador Peninsula, and some of the Cree and Ojibway of the Hudson Bay region. The second group comprises the much more widely diffused realistic floral figures which pervade the art of the whole northern forest area. <A modern European origin has been suspected for these and announced by _several writers.” The whole question, however, now deserves more atten- tion, in view of the accumulation of material and the better opportunity of tracing the antiquity and the distribution of the motives. Accordingly, the author proposes to revive the discussion and to ‘present additional material, from still unpublished Penobscot notes, bearing on the subject along the lines pursued in the report previously referred to. 3 TyPEs oF DESIGN Penobscot art is rich in the elaboration of a few elementary motives employed ostensibly for mere decoration, but carrying a realistic plant interpretation and symbolism. The decorative designs of this tribe are only part of a series shared alike, according to investigations made thus far, by the neighboring Micmac, Malecite, and Passamaquoddy, and the more distant Montagnais and Naskapi, and, evenin some general features, by the Iroquois and eastern Ojibway. Some few objects with identical figures have been collected from the Cree, Winnebago, and even the Blackfoot, and again, in the Mississippi Valley area among the Central Algonkian. On the whole, however, the decorative designs of the North- eastern Algonkian, from the Penobscot east to the Micmac, are in stylistic 1Speck, Frank G., ‘‘The Double-Curve Motive in Northeastern Algonkian Art’’ (Memoir 42, Geological Survey of Canada. Ottawa, 1914.) 2Most of them, however, are inclined to express themselves with reserve on the question of origin and history of the floral designs in the east. Wissler, whose interest in design derivations has always been keen, recorded his opinion of the double-curve and floral designs of the northeast, as arising from freehand work upon birchbark and skins; art processes to which he concedes a native, not a European derivation, The American Indian (New York, 1917), 85-87.
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