Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley | Page 5

Figs.
61 and 62. Stevens's Fig. 61 evidently represents the same animal as
Fig. 157 of Squier and Davis, but is a better executed carving.
In illustration of the somewhat vague idea entertained by archæologists
as to what the manatee is like, it is of interest to note that the carving of
a second otter with a fish in its mouth has been made to do duty as a
manatee, although the latter animal is well known never to eat fish, but,
on the contrary, to be strictly herbivorous. Thus Stevens gives figures

of two carvings in his "Flint Chips," p. 429, Figs. 65 and 66, calling
them manatees, and says: "In one particular, however, the sculptors of
the mound-period committed an error. Although the lamantin is strictly
herbivorous, feeding chiefly upon subaqueous plants and littoral herbs,
yet upon one of the stone smoking-pipes, Fig. 66, this animal is
represented with a fish in its mouth." Mr. Stevens apparently preferred
to credit the mound sculptor with gross ignorance of the habits of the
manatee, rather than to abate one jot or tittle of the claim possessed by
the carving to be considered a representation of that animal. Stevens's
fish-catching manatee is the same carving given by Dr. Rau, in the
Archæological Collection of the United States National Museum, p. 47,
Fig. 180, where it is correctly stated to be an otter. This cut, which can
scarcely be distinguished from one given by Stevens (Fig. 66), is here
reproduced (Fig. 6), together with the second supposed manatee of the
latter writer (Fig. 7).
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Otter of Rau; Manatee of Stevens.]
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Manatee of Stevens.]
To afford a means of comparison, Fig. 154, from the "Ancient
Monuments" of Squier and Davis, is introduced (Fig. 8). The same
figure is also to be found in Wilson's Prehistoric Man, vol. i, p. 476, Fig.
22. Another of the supposed lamantins, Fig. 9, is taken from Squier's
article in the Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. ii,
p. 188. A bad print of the same wood-cut appears as Fig. 153, p. 251, of
the "Ancient Monuments."
It should be noted that the physiognomy of Fig. 6, above given,
although unquestionably of an otter, agrees more closely with the
several so-called manatees, which are represented without fishes, than
with the fish-bearing otter, first mentioned, Fig. 4.
Fig. 6 thus serves as a connecting link in the series, uniting the
unmistakable otter, with the fish in its mouth, to the more clumsily
executed and less readily recognized carvings of the same animal.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Lamantin or sea-cow of Squier and Davis.]

[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Lamantin or sea-cow of Squier.]
It was doubtless the general resemblance which the several specimens
of the otters and the so-called manatees bear to each other that led
Stevens astray. They are by no means facsimiles one of the other. On
the contrary, while no two are just alike, the differences are perhaps not
greater than is to be expected when it is considered that they doubtless
embody the conceptions of different artists, whose knowledge of the
animal, as well as whose skill in carving, would naturally differ widely.
Recognizing the general likeness, Stevens perhaps felt that what one
was all were. In this, at least, he is probably correct, and the following
reasons are deemed sufficient to show that, whether the several
sculptures figured by one and another author are otters or not, as here
maintained, they most assuredly are not manatees. The most important
character possessed by the sculptures, which is not found in the
manatee, is an external ear. In this particular they all agree. Now, the
manatee has not the slightest trace of a pinna or external ear, a small
orifice, like a slit, representing that organ. To quote the precise
language of Murie in the Proceedings of the London Zoological Society,
vol. 8, p. 188: "In the absence of pinna, a small orifice, a line in
diameter, into which a probe could be passed, alone represents the
external meatus." In the dried museum specimen this slit is wholly
invisible, and even in the live or freshly killed animal it is by no means
readily apparent. Keen observer of natural objects, as savage and
barbaric man certainly is, it is going too far to suppose him capable of
representing an earless animal--earless at least so far as the purposes of
sculpture are concerned--with prominent ears. If, then, it can be
assumed that these sculptures are to be relied upon as in the slightest
degree imitative, it must be admitted that the presence of ears would
alone suffice to show that they cannot have been intended to represent
the manatee. But the feet shown in each and all of them present equally
unquestionable evidence of their dissimilarity from the manatee.