© 1994 - Tara Prindle
unless otherwise cited.
A comprehensive knowledge of the natural world is evident in Native American
art of the prehistoric and early historic periods. Traditionally, the raw materials used for craft
were also important sources for food, medicine or their preparation. Before European contact, some of the
materials available to Natives of southern New England were metals & minerals of the earth -
stone & clay, the fiber and juice from wild plants, the wood, bark & roots from innumerable trees, the fur, hair, quills, feathers, teeth,
bones, antlers, fur & animal hides, and litterally anything else found in the natural
environment of pre-17th century New England. With the invasion of Europeans also came a wave of
new raw materials, flora and fauna: glass beads & other products, ceramic
glazes, metal alloys & tools, imported textiles, and by-products associated with animal
domestication such as cloth, looms, & commercial dyes and pigments. With the inundation of
European people came foreign animals and plants - often so invasive and adaptable to the
new environment that indigenous colonies are choked out to extinction.
European contact caused many traditional Native American crafts to
diminish in production - sometimes because Natives could no longer obtain the right raw materials,
and sometimes because people had to put their energies elsewhere to survive. But since European contact,
Native Americans have developed new art forms, many of which build upon older traditions, using
modified materials or techniques taken from Europeans.
Incorporation of post-contact materials, such as metal, glass, commercial dyes and
cloth, as well as acquisition of new European craft techniques, inspired new types of art, such
as metal work and splint basketry. However some traditional art forms such as porcupine and
moose hair embroidery were modified.
Recently, European markets for Native American art have developed
into huge international industries, jewelry, sculpture, pottery, splint basketry --
but it seems with each generation there are
fewer and fewer children interested in the knowledge of their parents - some types of
traditional forms of art are disappearing.
About 1650 a Native elder in New England complained that "a long time ago, they
[the Indians] had wise men, which in a grave manner taught the people
knowledge; but they are dead, and their wisdome is buried with them, and now
men live a giddy life, in ignorance, till they are white headed, and though ripe
in years, yet then they go without wisdome to their graves. (Handbook of North American Indians, vol.15, 1978).
Prehistoric Native American art was produced from materials of the natural
environment, often expressed as the embellishment of utilitarian items. Although made from
materials of the earth, this art was much more than a mere product of nature. The artisans
consciously intended to arrange something that did not naturally-occur in their environment.
In some cases the introduction of European tools and
materials facilitated the production of traditional art forms, but at the same time transformed
traditional meanings.
To be more than utilitarian, an item is invested with meaning that goes beyond its
everyday use. Embellished objects provide information about the artist or the society to which
he belongs. Many so-called 'utilitarian' objects such as ball-headed war clubs inlaid with
wampum, are invested with so much symbolic meaning such as political prestige or power,
that the object becomes less utilitarian to a Native American. An item may be embellished to
this point no longer functions in its original or traditional context.
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Text and Graphics
© 1994 - Tara Prindle unless otherwise cited. |