Formerly I was a frequent visitor to the Sac and Fox Reservation in Iowa.  About 400 of the tribe are left.  To an unusual degree they retain the old dress, language, arts and dances.  With them lived a few Winnebagoes.  In general the lives of the two peoples are similar.  Certain arts common to both of them particularly interested me.  They are the making of sacks of barks and cords, and the weaving of bead bands for legs and arms, upon the ci-bo-hi-kan.  Of the bark sacks there are several patterns, the simplest being made of splints of bark passing alternately over and under each other.  Another kind, far more elaborate in construction, is before you.  Yet more elaborate ones are made entirely of cords.  The first of these I saw was in old Jennie Davenport’s wikiup.  It was of white and black cords, and the black ones were so manipulated as to form a pattern—­a line of human figures stretching across the sack.  Jennie would not sell it, as she said, “It is a Winnebago woman’s sack; Fox woman not make that kind.”  I found afterward a large variety of these Winnebago sacks, and all were characterized by patterns of men, deer, turtles, or other animals.  Not one Fox sack of such pattern was to be found, though many elaborate and beautiful geometrical designs were shown me.

The most beautiful work done on this reservation is the bead weaving on the ci-bo-hi-kan—­woven work, not sewed, remember.  In appearance the result is like the Iroquois wampum belts, but the management of the threads is dissimilar.  The Sac and Fox patterns are frequently complex and beautiful, but always geometrical.  We have seen hundreds of them, but none with life forms.  The Winnebago belts, made in exactly the same way, frequently, if not always, present animals or birds or human beings.

This, it seems to us, is very curious.  Here are people of two tribes living side by side, with the same mode of life and the same arts, but in their art designs so diverse.  It is a case parallel to that of the old effigy builders, a people who have a passion for depicting animal forms—­a passion not shared by their neighbors.

If this were the only evidence that the Winnebagoes built the effigy mounds, or that their ancestors did so, it would have no great weight.  But the claim has been made already on other grounds.  This being the case, we think that this adds something to the testimony, and we ask, Have we here an ethnic survival?

At the close of the paper Dr. Starr exhibited a number of fine specimens of Indian handiwork, including woven work, bags, belts, etc.