The two styles are fundamentally distinct. The former is symbolic, the latter formal. The symbolic art has a certain degree of realism and is full of meaning. The formal art has, at most, pattern names and no especially marked significance. We shall discuss the symbolic art first. Its essential characteristics are an almost absolute disregard of the principles of perspective, emphasis of significant symbols and an arrangement dictated by the form of the decorative field. While the Eskimo of Arctic America, the Chukchee and Koryak of Siberia, the Negroes and many other people use carvings in the round which serve no practical ends, but are made for the sake of representing a figure,—man, animal, or supernatural being,—almost all the work of the Indian artist of the region that we are considering serves at the same time a useful end. When making simple totemic figures, the artist is free to shape his subjects without adapting them to the forms of utensils, but owing to their large size, he is limited by the cylindrical form of the trunk of the tree from which they are carved. The native artist is almost always restrained by the shape of the object to which the decoration is applied. [Illustration: Fig. 154. Tlingit helmet.] [Illustration: Fig. 155. Mask representing dying warrior, Tlingit.] The technical perfection of carvings and paintings, the exactness and daring of composition and lines prove that realistic representations are not beyond the powers of the artist. This may also be demonstrated by a few exquisite examples of realistic carvings. The helmet shown in fig. 154 is decorated with the head of an old man affected with partial paralysis. Undoubtedly this specimen must be considered a portrait head. Nose, eyes, mouth and the general expression, are highly characteristic. In a mask (fig. 155) representing a dying warrior, the artist has shown faithfully the wide lower jaw, the pentagonal face, and the strong nose of the Indian. The relaxing muscles of mouth and tongue, the drooping eyelids, and the motionless eyeballs, mark the agonies of death. Plate IX represents a recent carving, a human figure of rare excellence. Posture and drapery are free of all the formal characteristics of North West coast style. Only the treatment of the eye and the facial painting betray its ethnic origin. Here belongs also the realistic head previously referred to, made by the Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island (fig. 156), which is used in a ceremony and intended to deceive the spectators who are made to believe that it is the head of a decapitated dancer.[101] [101] The selection of North West Coast art given by Herbert Kühn (Die Kunst der Primitiven, pp. 100, 104, Plates 48, 50, 51 are characteristic only of realistic representations. Only Plates 47, 49 and part of 52 are stylistically typical). [Illustration: PLATE IX. Carved Figure, British Columbia.]