ing upon shields, cradle hoods, kiâhâs, and tobacco pouches was of a crude sort and manifestly inferior to that upon the person. The moderately smooth finish given to all weapons, to trays, ladles, pottery paddles, fire-drills, awls, pestles, axes, basketry, and some pottery was of course based upon utilitarian motives, though the gratification of esthetic needs must have been subsidiary thereto and concomitantly developed. That the desire for embellishment was less consciously felt is evident from the fact that the other articles made by the Pimas that may be equally effective, when smoothness and symmetry are lacking are coarse and rough. The metate, for example, is unhewn and angular except upon the grinding surface and presents a striking contrast to the symmetrical metates of the Hohokam. Not only do the Pimas not give a pleasing finish to all artifacts, but they exhibit so dull an esthetic sense in their treatment of the beautiful polished axes that they find about the ruins that we are moved alike by pity and indignation. There are tons of stones within easy reach of the villages suitable for roughening the grinding surfaces of metates, yet the Pimas take the axes that are almost perfect in symmetry and polish and batter them into shapeless masses for the purpose. To the writer this affords an argument stronger than all the surmises of the early Spanish writers to the contrary that the Pimas are not the descendants of the Hohokam. Furthermore, the poverty of design and the absence of symbolism are a very strong indication of relationship with the California tribes rather than with the Pueblos.
One of the most striking examples of the poverty of esthetic resource among the Pimas is seen in their textiles. The wonderful possibilities of this art were almost unknown. True, after the whites brought bayeta to them their weavers produced a very creditable belt by closely copying the ornamentation from the Hohokam relics and from their southern congeners. But the principal pieces, the blankets, the weaving of which kept the art of making textile fabrics alive, were ornamented with nothing more elaborate than a dingy border of doubled selvage threads. After the red thread was imported we find scant trace of it in the blankets. However, we must credit the Pimas with the rudimentary esthetic sense that found expression in the smoothness and evenness of weaving in these plain white blankets.
The arts of basketry and pottery making do not furnish much evidence of a well-developed esthetic sense in the Pimas. The former art is recent and borrowed; at best it is in a mediocre state. If the baskets of the Pimas are compared with those of the Yavapais (pl. XXXIII, a, b, c, d), who have also begun to use similar motives very recently, we see that the latter tribe manifests superior taste. The Yavapai baskets were the only ones at the Fort McDowell
