coration of certain classes of his pottery he
has attempted the reproduction of almost everything and of every
phenomenon in nature held as sacred or mysterious by him. On certain
other classes he has developed, imitatively, many typical decorations
which now have no special symbolism, but which once had definite
significance; and, finally, he has sometimes relegated definite
meanings to designs which at first had no significance, except as
decorative agents, after ward using them according to this
interpretation in his attempts to delineate natural objects, their
phenomena, and functions. I will illustrate by examples, the last
point first.

[Illustration: FIG. 553.--The fret of basket decoration.]

[Illustration: FIG. 554.--The fret of pottery decoration.]

[Illustration: FIG. 555.--Scroll as evolved from fret in pottery
decoration.]

Going back to basketry, we find already the fully developed fret. (See
Fig. 553.) I doubt not that from this was evolved, in accordance with
Professor Hartt's theory, the scroll or volute as it appears later on
pottery. (See Figs. 554, 555.) To both of these designs, and
modifications of them ages later, the Pueblo has attached meanings.
Those who have visited the Southwest and ridden over the wide, barren
plains, during late autumn or early spring, have been astonished to
find traced on the sand by no visible agency, perfect concentric
circles and scrolls or volutes yards long and as regular as though
drawn by a skilled artist. The circles are made by the wind driving
partly broken weed-stalks around and around their places of
attachment, until the fibers by which they are anchored sever and the
stalks are blown away. The volutes are formed by the stems of red-top
grass and of a round-topped variety of the _chenopodium_, drifted
onward by the whirlwind yet around and around their bushy adhesive
tops. The Pueblos, observing these marks, especially that they are
abundant after a wind storm, have wondered at their similarity to the
painted scrolls on the pottery of their ancestors. Even to-day they
believe the sand marks to be the tracks of the whirlwind, which is a
God in their mythology of such distinctive personality that the
circling eagle is supposed to be related to him. They have naturally,
therefore, explained the analogy above noted by the inference that
their ancestors, in painting the volute, had intended to symbolize the
whirlwind by representing his tracks.