. Bulletin. Ethnology. Anthrop. Tap. No. 17] ALGONQUIN BIRCHBARK—SPECK 265 through the canopy of the leafy crown of the forest thrown upon the flat surfaces of objects lying Uttered about the camps. The Indians themselves are not obUvious to the shadowed silhouettes in the cease- less panorama of sun-strewn patterns. In their contemplations, such displays of beauty have upon occasion been noted and the impressions voiced in my presence. Yet the association of leaf silhouettes with the origin of bark surface decorations stUl remains only a possible, if not a futile, suggestion of explanation em
. Bulletin. Ethnology. Anthrop. Tap. No. 17] ALGONQUIN BIRCHBARK—SPECK 265 through the canopy of the leafy crown of the forest thrown upon the flat surfaces of objects lying Uttered about the camps. The Indians themselves are not obUvious to the shadowed silhouettes in the cease- less panorama of sun-strewn patterns. In their contemplations, such displays of beauty have upon occasion been noted and the impressions voiced in my presence. Yet the association of leaf silhouettes with the origin of bark surface decorations stUl remains only a possible, if not a futile, suggestion of explanation emanating from the reasoning habit of the student—an unprovable hypothesis until "nature pho-. tvo Figure 22.—Birchbark cut-out patterns for decorating containers, and designs taken from decorated objects (River Desert Band). a. Arch (pattern for border design below rim); 6, bear's bead; c, canoe; d, diamond; e, tree (balsam);/, berries; g, pond lily; ft, pond lily; i, j, flowers (imidentified). tography" shall disclose itself as a functioning concept of art'* in aboriginal Algonquin culture history, be it ancient or modern. The modest array of designs from this band upon which judgment has to be formed, permits an observation; namely that the integral floral or the forest landscape, as conceived in native eyes, is a char- acteristic. This seems to accord with the economic eminence of the great environing forest and its animal denizens expressed in totaUty (as in fig. 12,a; ,6, d,e;Zl, b, c,/, g; 34,/). And so pictographic art expresses here in symbols the ecology of a Canadian Algonkian group. >* Since the above was written I have examined the volume Reflections, by Mrs. Marian Thayer MacMQlan (N. Y., 1936, p. 55), in which an interpretation of the "double curve" motif is proposed. The author of this remarkable hypothesis suggests derivation of the curve patterns of the northern Indians from native observations of plant reflections along the ed
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