than of a special character, such as comport better with
the state of art as developed among certain of the Indian tribes than
among a people that has achieved any notable advance in culture is
important not only in its bearing on the questions previously noticed in
this paper, but in its relation to another and highly interesting class
of sculptures.

If a large proportion of the animal carvings are so lacking in artistic
accuracy as to make it possible to identify positively only the few
possessing the most strongly marked characters, how much faith is to be
placed in the ability of the Mound sculptor to fix in stone the features
and expressions of the human countenance, infinitely more difficult
subject for portrayal as this confessedly is?

That Wilson regards the human sculptures as affording a basis for sound
ethnological deductions is evident from the following paragraph, taken
from Prehistoric Man, vol. 1, p. 461:

Alike from the minute accuracy of many of the sculptures of
animals, hereafter referred to, and from the correspondence to well
known features of the modern Red Indian suggested by some of the
human heads, these miniature portraits may be assumed, with every
probability, to include faithful representations of the predominant
physical features of the ancient people by whom they were executed.

Short, too, accepting the popular idea that they are faithful and
recognizable copies from nature, remarks in the North Americans of
Antiquity, p. 98, _ibid._, p. 187:

There is no reason for believing that the people who wrought stone
and clay into perfect effigies of animals have not left us
sculptures of their own faces in the images exhumed from the
mounds;" and again, "The perfection of the animal representations
furnish us the assurance that their sculptures of the human face
were equally true to nature.

Squier and Davis also appear to have had no doubt whatever of the
capabilities of the Mound-Builders in the direction of human
portraiture. They are not only able to discern in the sculptured heads
niceties of expression sufficient for the discrimination of the sexes,
but, as well, to enable them to point out such as are undoubtedly
ancient and the work of the Mound-Builders, and those of a more recent
origin, the product of the present Indians. Their main criterion of
origin is, apparently, that all of fine execution and finish were the
w