Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744Fewkes, Jesse Walter
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Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744
Plate CXLVIII, _a_, shows the spiral ornament worn down to its lowest
terms, with no hint of the feather appendage, but its likeness in
outline to those designs where the feather occurs leads me to
introduce it in connection with those in which the feather is more
prominent. Figure _b_ of the same plate represents a spiral figure
with a bird form at the inner end, and a bundle of tail-feathers at
the outer extremity. On this design there is likewise a figure of the
dragon-fly and several unknown emblems. Figure _c_ has at one
extremity a trifid appendage, recalling a feather ornament on the head
of a bird shown in plate CXXXVIII, _a_. Figure _d_ has no
conventionalized feather decoration, but the curved line terminates
with a triangle. Its signification is unknown to me. For several
reasons the design in _e_ reminds me of a bird; it is accompanied by
three crosses, which are almost invariably found in connection with
bird figures, and at the inner end there is attached a breath feather.
This end of the figure is supposed to be the head, as will appear by
later comparative studies. The bird form is masked in _f_, but the
feather designs are prominent. This bowl is exceptional in having an
encircling band broken at two points, one of the components of which
is red, the other black.
Feather designs are conspicuous in plate CXLIX, _a_, _b_, in the
former of which curved incised lines are successfully used. In _c_,
however, is found the best example of the use of incised work as an
aid in pottery decoration, for in this specimen there are semicircles,
and rings with four triangles, straight lines, and circles. The
symbolism of the whole figure has eluded analysis. Figure _d_ has no
feather symbols, but _e_ may later be reduced to a circle with
feathers. The only symbols in the design shown in _f_ which are at all
recognizable are the two zigzag figures which may have been intended
to represent snakes, lightning, or tadpoles.
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