PICTURE-WRITING—SIGN-LANGUAGE—WAMPUM—CUPPED-STONES[36]
Our pre-columbian knowledge of the Amerind people is at present meagre.
The majority of the different stocks had not arrived at the point where
they understood how to record their thoughts and their doings. Outside
of the Maya and Nahuatl stocks, and others in that region, there is
nothing but rude picture-writing to refer to besides an abundance of
traditions, legends, and other oral matter. All the Amerind languages
are capable of being readily written, being possessed of grammars
and of copious vocabularies, but none of the tribes north of Mexico
had made the discovery that marks can represent sounds. We trace our
alphabet back to the Romans, still farther to the Greeks, and yet
farther back to the Phœnicians, and then another stage back to even
ruder characters connecting the chain of its development with the end
links of such writing as that of the Mayas, and exhibiting writing in
all stages, from rock scratching or picture-writing, through all phases
down to the work of the writing and printing machines of to-day.
Mankind are all alike, merely exhibiting different degrees of culture.
As the rills in the mountains born of the rains and the snows are
all the same and reach the ocean by various devious and complicated
courses, so the races of men, emerging from the darkness of the past,
follow, because of the immutability of natural law, practically the
same lines of development through savagery, barbarism, civilisation,
toward a common goal of unification and enlightenment. The progress
of humanity from earliest times to now appears to be divided, in each
race evolution, into several epochs by certain great inventions or
discoveries which seemed to spread themselves over the world either
from one centre or from several. Of these the most important are,
first, fire; second, the bow; third, smelting; fourth, phonetic
writing; and fifth, printing. This progression is not even, but a
people may stand still for a long time and then suddenly become
active in one particular line, or in many lines.[37] Ours is the age
of mechanical development; the Greeks made a stride in art. When
development reaches a certain point and conditions are favourable for
an invention, it springs into being not in one individual alone but
usually in several widely separated ones, as if the seed of it had
been sprinkled over the earth. It may have germinated before when
conditions were not ripe, but it then died before even sprouting.
Environment cultivates the mind, and the mind feeds on environment.
Only a small portion of those to whom an idea occurs endeavour to carry
it out, and often other subsequent inventions are necessary to success.
[Illustration: PAINTED PETROGLYPHS, SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA]
[Illustration: PETROGLYPHS IN BROWN’S CAVE, WISCONSIN]
On the Amerind continent before the advent of the European the various
stocks and tribes were rising and falling under the influence of the
moulding conditions, and rising again or giving place to more highly
vitalised stock which might succeed in fertilising in the brain of a
Hiawatha or a Quetzalcohuatl great ideas that should lift them onward.
In the matter of writing, these races were moving toward success, and
had their isolation been maintained they would in time have come to
the full measure. As it was, the Mayas[38] had reached a considerable
degree of efficiency, and the Aztecs were following close. The more
northern stocks, however, had not passed beyond the elementary
stage. In the sense in which artists now use the word “drawing,”
it hardly existed anywhere on this continent; that is, there was
little exactness and delicacy of delineation, but it was mainly an
offhand representation of objects in a barbaric fashion. There was
considerable merit in some of the work executed by the sculptors,
but it was nevertheless as a whole aboriginal and primitive. In the
middle region the drawings and rock peckings[39] have no artistic
merit whatever, and are like the work of little children; nor are the
Eskimo efforts much better. The Eastern States do not afford the same
abundance of characters pecked and scratched, and sometimes painted on
the rocks, that exists in the Rocky Mountain region, and particularly
in the South-west, where they are found everywhere.[40] This may be
due to the more verdant nature of the eastern part of the country,
and also to the fact that the broad, smooth surfaces of sandstone
exposed so universally in the South-west are generally absent in the
East. Another reason may be that the Amerinds of the various Pueblo
stocks and allied tribes were more given to inscribing the rocks in
this manner. Certain it is that wherever evidences exist of the former
occupation of a locality by Amerinds of the Pueblo kind, there rocks
will be found covered with markings and paintings. These people went
everywhere in their region, and they generally left some record on the
rocks, as they do to-day. If one thinks he has found a place where
they did not arrive in that vast land of cliffs and canyons, he is
sure soon to be undeceived. Once I reached a little platform on the
face of a cliff in Arizona by hard scrambling, part of the way through
a narrow crevice, and as I stood viewing the valley a thousand feet
below, I thought, “Now, at last, I am on a spot where the Shinumo[41]
never stood.” As I turned to make my way down again I was confronted
by a lot of pictographs spread across the whole of the smooth wall
behind. Thus it was almost everywhere: in the deep gorges of the
Colorado River, in its side canyons, in the cliffs above and around,
and all along Green River, at least as far north as the lower end of
Split-Mountain canyon, these pictures occur. The climate is dry, and
there is little change from one century’s end to another.[42] Some are
comparatively recent, while others, even some of the painted ones,
are old; how old it is impossible to estimate, but many of them are
found in regions where no Amerinds of the Pueblo type[43] have lived
within historical times, or within the memory of those Amerinds who
now occupy the region. Some of the painted figures in sheltered places
appeared fresh, but they must have been at least a century or two
old. The other Amerinds, while they also executed picture-writings of
various kinds, did not so often decorate rock surfaces with them. They
were more inclined to drawing and painting on buffalo robes and other
skins, on bark, on trees, shell, pottery; even the human form in some
regions not being exempt. The Puebloans, while utilising most of these
methods, also used the rocks a great deal, the country they occupied
abounding in broad, smooth faces attractive for this purpose. In the
settled East the perishable substances have long ago disappeared,
except those fortunately preserved in museums or private collections.
Comparatively few rock inscriptions are found there, and these have
created considerable discussion and the usual number of theories. The
markings, undoubtedly Algonquian, on the now widely known Dighton Rock
in Massachusetts were for a long time ascribed to the Northmen, and
were copied in a great many different ways.[44] The trouble arose from
the same reason that has led to so many mistaken theories regarding
the Amerind race—that is, an underestimate of their intellectual side,
so far as those north of Mexico are concerned, and an overestimate of
those in the latter region. Brinton asserts that the Algonquins had
developed the picture-writing _farther than any other stock north of
the Aztecs_. “It had passed,” he says, “from the representative to the
symbolic stage, and was extensively employed to preserve the national
history and rites of the secret societies. The figures were scratched
or painted on pieces of bark or slabs of wood, and as the colour of the
paint was red, these were sometimes called ‘red sticks.’” Some of these
slabs, or “red sticks,” like the _Walam Olum_ (_walam_ = painted, and
_olum_ = scores or notches on a stick) of the Lenapés,[45] have been
preserved. Many of the figures executed by the Amerinds, not excepting
the Aztecs and the Mayas, were grotesque, and even childish. Their
strangeness is frequently due to our unfamiliarity with the originals,
figures with queer hair-dressing, masks, or complete ceremonial
costume, which, if we could see them to-day, would resemble nothing we
had ever imagined or viewed before. The extraordinary make-up of these
people for their ceremonials is beyond anything our race can imagine.
Those who have witnessed Pueblo ceremonials will understand how unlike
any human being the wearer of the strange costumes can become. The
_katcina_[46] is fearfully and wonderfully made, and, especially
if represented with the half-skill of the Amerind, would baffle
classification by anyone not familiar with the actual object. Among the
early tribes there were undoubtedly many of these ceremonial dresses
and costumes that we can now have no conception of, and where we see
them represented in sculpture or drawing they have a most uncanny and
diabolical appearance. Even to-day were we to see a representation
in their crude way of a simple little Moki girl, with the singular
arrangement of her hair in flat, circular puffs, like huge wheels, one
on each side of the head, and had never seen or heard of this fashion
of hair-dressing, we should be puzzled as to what it meant.
[Illustration: PAINTED PETROGLYPHS, SOUTHERN UTAH]
[Illustration: PETROGLYPH AT MILLSBORO, PENNSYLVANIA]
[Illustration: PETROGLYPHS IN GEORGIA]
[Illustration: RUNIC INSCRIPTION ON STONE FOUND AT IGALIKKO, GREENLAND.
Introduced here to show contrast to the Amerind writings or
pictographs.
Translation: “Vigdis, Mars’ daughter, rests here. May God gladden
her soul.”
]
[Illustration: DIGHTON ROCK, MASSACHUSETTS]
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATION OF THE “WALAM OLUM” OF THE LENAPÉ, FROM
BRINTON
1. Sayewitalli wemiguma wokgetaki.—At first, in that place, at all
times, above the earth.
2. Hackung kwelik owanaku wak yutali kitanitowitessop.—On the earth
(was) an extended fog, and there the great Manito was.
3. Sayewis hallemiwis nolemiwi elemamik, kitanitowitessop.—At
first, forever, lost in space, everywhere, the great Manito was.
4. Sohalawak kwelik hakik owak awasagamak.—He made the extended
land and the sky.
5. Sohalawak gishuk nipahum alankwak.—He made the sun, the moon,
and the stars.
6. Wemi-sohalawak yulik yuchaan.—He made them all to move evenly.
7. Wich-owagan kshakan moshakwat kwelik kshipe helep.—Then the wind
blew violently, and it cleared, and the water flowed off far and
strong.
8. Opeleken mani-menak delsin-epit.—And groups of islands grew
newly, and there remained.
10.—Owiniwak angelatawiwak chichankwak wemiwak.—To beings, mortals,
souls and all (spoke the Manito).
There are sixty of these figures painted on the sticks. Each one
recalls to the memory of those who have become acquainted with the
associated idea, that special idea, and as an example nine of the
signs are given here in connection with the associated idea, and
also with the translation into English.
There is seen here at once the resemblance to Genesis, and it is
difficult to believe that this portion of the _Walam Olum_ was not
inspired by the teachings of the missionaries. But Brinton says:
“This similarity is due wholly to the identity of psychological
action, the same ideas and fancies arising from similar impressions
in New as well as Old World tribes.
]
[Illustration: KATCINAS IN THE SOMAIKOLI CEREMONY, CICHUMOVI, ARIZONA,
NOVEMBER, 1884
Photograph by the author
]
[Illustration: KILLED TWO ARIKAREES]
Some of the ordinary rock pictures may have been carved for simple
amusement, but the majority were made with a purpose, and this was
usually the communication or record of an idea. The Amerind records
may be divided into two and perhaps three general classes: first, the
mnemonic; second, the ideographic; and, third, the phonetic. Brinton
suggests for the writings of the Aztecs, which were partly ideographic
and partly phonetic, the term _ikonomatic_,[47] and used it in his own
works. The ideographic class are those which represent an idea, as
a man striking another, like the accompanying illustration from the
autobiography of Running Antelope, who thus records his killing of two
Arikarees. The mnemonic class do not represent an idea, but simply are
memory helps, like a string tied around one’s finger, a good example
being any numeral, say the figure “9.” The phonetic class represent
sounds, like the letters of our alphabet, say the letter “e.” It is
believed that the Maya writings were largely phonetic, but the phonetic
quality is not well established.
[Illustration: PETROGLYPHS ON PAINT ROCK, NORTH CAROLINA]
It is supposed that the mnemonic symbols originated in sign-language.
One of the most striking examples of the universality of the
sign-language is the case, cited by Mallery, of a professor in a
deaf-mute college, who, visiting several wild tribes, was able to
communicate freely with them though he knew nothing of their spoken
languages. It was a natural thing that races should attempt to record
these signs, and some early hieroglyphs in Egyptian can clearly be
traced to them. These same efforts occurred amongst the Amerind
stocks in varying degree. Picture-writing, the world over, as well as
particularly in North America, probably grew out of sign-language,
giving, as the first stage in the development, sign-language, second
pictographs, third alphabet. These merge into each other, as there
was not a series of jumps, but a slow and gradual progression. Many
pictographs are merely representations of natural objects and had
no special significance, others were guide marks to springs, others
recorded visits to certain localities. Mallery states a particularly
interesting fact, that within “each particular system ... every
Indian draws in precisely the same manner.” Therefore, if a perfect
understanding of each tribal system is obtained, the various rock
markings and other pictographs can be classified. Sometimes frauds[48]
have been attempted by white men, one well-known case being where
an Illinois blacksmith copied on six copper plates designs from a
Chinese tea-box, and then claimed that the plates had been found in
a mound. Recently a most ingenious counterfeiter of stone implements
was discovered in Dane County, Wis. He had been selling the spurious
implements for years. They are usually of bizarre patterns.[49]
Bandelier says that “it is certain that some of them [pictographs in
Mexico] were manufactured after the Conquest, not with the intention
of fraud, but with a view to a compromise between the new method
of recording and the old one, which the new teachers were loath to
comprehend and which they refused to adopt.” Powell classifies all
the picture-writings as: (1) Mnemonic—songs, traditions, treaties,
war, and time; (2) Notification—departure, direction, condition,
warning, guidance, geographic features, claim or demand messages, and
communications and record of expeditions; (3) Totemic—tribal, gentile,
clan, and personal designations, insignia, tokens of authority,
personal names, property marks, status of individuals, signs of
particular achievements; (4) Religious—mythic personages, shamanism,
dances, ceremonies, mortuary practices, grave-posts, charms, fetiches;
(5) Customs, habits; (6) Tribal history; (7) Biographic.
[Illustration: LANDA’S MAYA ALPHABET AFTER BRASSEUR
From Bancroft’s _Native Races_
]
On this continent no true alphabet, so far as now known, was produced,
unless we accept that recorded by Bishop Landa, and ascribed to the
Mayas. Landa was the second bishop of Yucatan, and he did his best to
destroy the Maya records and everything else that in his estimation
linked them with the devil. But he did construct an alphabet after
theirs, for the purpose, no doubt, of putting before them the Holy
Gospel, and it is this alphabet that has been preserved. It has been
the basis of many vain attempts to decipher the few ancient Maya
documents that are known, and the failure of these attempts has caused
some investigators to consider the alphabet a pure fabrication, but the
identity of the characters with many of those in the ancient writing
completely disproves this charge. Besides the alphabet, Landa left
some other information concerning the Mayas, and Goodman thus presents
his respects to his memory[50]: “It is a signal instance of the irony
of fate that this bigoted destroyer of the fruits of Maya science and
art—the pietist whose zeal rendered him avid of the obliteration of
every vestige of their impious learning—should have been the only one
to leave a clue by which the mysterious codices and inscriptions will
yet be deciphered. Nevertheless he left such a clue—slight and vague,
it is true; but, when carefully followed up, it broadens and leads into
an open way where everything will presently become self-evident.” The
alphabet was probably modified by a desire to make it conform to the
Spanish, and it is this foreign element possibly that has led to the
unfavourable opinion expressed in some quarters concerning it.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER IN MICMAC HIEROGLYPHS
From Le Clercq
]
[Illustration: SEQUOYAH’S CHEROKEE SYLLABARY]
North of the Mexican country certain alphabets were invented by the
European priests for the purpose of furthering the introduction
of Christianity among the Amerinds. Of these the Micmac is a good
example.[51] They were not drawn from pictographs, and were used only
for teaching the Bible. In that field they did not serve to preserve
Amerind history, traditions, and legends. After long contact with
Europeans there was invented but one alphabet, and he who accomplished
this was a half-breed. In 1821, George Gist (or Guess), whose native
name was Sequoyah, a Cherokee, who spoke little if any English, but
whose father was a Dutch peddler and whose mother was of mixed blood,
produced an alphabet, or, more correctly speaking, a syllabary, which
was immediately adopted by his tribe, and enabled them to record their
traditions, sacred formulæ, prayers, etc., which to-day form a valuable
portion of the information we possess of these Amerind people. Many of
the symbols were adapted from our alphabet, an old spelling-book having
found its way into Sequoyah’s hands, but it was the forms which were
utilised, the sounds they represented being usually different. By means
of this syllabary the members of the Cherokee tribe were able to learn
in a few hours to write words, and the system is used to this day.
The endeavour to prove the descent of the Amerinds from one of the
numerous foreign sources that have from time to time been advocated
has at least resulted sometimes in the accumulation or reproduction
of some interesting material. Lord Kingsborough became so infatuated
with the idea that the Amerinds were the Lost Tribes of Israel that
he attempted to prove it in a number of splendid volumes, which also
contain admirable fac-similes of some old Amerind manuscripts.[52] He
spent his fortune on this work, and through a business dispute with
the merchants who furnished the paper he was thrown into Dublin Jail,
where, unfortunately, he died.
To explain the methods employed in the ruder attempts at recording,
the map made by Lean Wolf, a Hidatsa, who once made a trip from Fort
Berthold to Fort Buford, Dakota, with the ambition of stealing a horse,
is a good example. In the illustration the returning horse-tracks
indicate that he was successful and rode home. 1 is Lean Wolf himself;
2, the Hidatsa lodges; 3, Lean Wolfs tracks on his outward course; 4,
government buildings at Fort Buford; 5, several Hidatsa lodges whose
occupants intermarried with Dakotas; 6, Dakota tipis; 7, small square,
a white man’s home, with a cross indicating that he had married a
Dakota woman; 8, horse-tracks; 9, the Missouri River and tributaries.
[Illustration: LEAN WOLF’S MAP, HIDATSA]
Frequently the marks on the rocks merely record the visit of someone
to the place, exactly as when we visit the birthplace of Shakespeare
we write our names in a large book kept there for that purpose; or,
perhaps, as some persons carve their names on public buildings and in
other conspicuous places. Gilbert found a number of such records at
Oakley Springs, Arizona, and old Tuba, a Moki, explained them to him.
Tuba said that the Mokis go to a place in the canyon of the Little
Colorado for salt, and they stop on the return trip at this spring,
where each draws his totem mark, or crest, on the record rocks once,
and once only, for each trip. There are many repetitions of the same
sign, showing that the owner of that particular sign, or totem, had
made that many journeys to the salt mine. Tuba gave the name of the
totems, and they were all animals.
One cannot be too careful in taking statements from Amerinds, for,
like some of their white brethren, many of them will lie for the fun of
it, or just to experiment as to the probable result. Sometimes, too,
when they are telling the truth they tell only part of it. This is
particularly the case with regard to springs, sacred rites, and other
matters which are specially cherished. Some objects in the custody of
the heads of the secret orders are never shown in public, or are only
shown on special occasions. Pictographs representing them, therefore,
should any happen to be made, would not be intelligible to any persons
but the initiated.
[Illustration: THE “PENN” WAMPUM BELT]
[Illustration: STRINGS OF WAMPUM]
Another class of symbols was worked out in wampum. The popular idea
of wampum seems to be that it was a kind of Amerind money, but the
money function was only one of its uses. There was another, a mnemonic
use, of more importance—that is, it was a means of recording and
of communicating mnemonically among the tribes of the North-east.
The Iroquois used it chiefly in the form of belts. The beads were
generally white, and were used in strings as well as belts, other
colours being mingled with the white, as purple and white, or black and
white. These strings had important functions in summoning officers,
in representing persons, and in conferring authority. But all wampum
had a meaning only to those who remembered the particular association
of particular forms of it, and the knowledge once entirely forgotten
could never be regained. Consequently the ideas with which the belts,
etc., were associated had to be regularly brought to mind. Once a year,
therefore, they were exhibited in public, and the story connected
with each carefully rehearsed so that it should not be lost through
forgetfulness. This custom is still kept up among the remnants of the
wampum-using tribes. In other tribes, formulæ and drawings were often
preserved by certain orders who rehearsed them in the privacy of the
kiva. The wampum beads were generally ⅛ inch by ¼ inch diameter—that
is, flat discs of shell. They were sometimes also ¼ to ½ inch thick,
with the same diameter. When the white men discovered the valuation the
Amerinds placed on these beads an attempt was made to introduce some
of European manufacture, but it met with only partial success.[53] The
average width of a belt is three inches and the length three feet.
[Illustration: ORCA OR KILLER-WHALE DECORATION, HAIDA]
By some tribes the human body was also used as a surface for the
display of pictographs. Among all primitive people the body has been
often decorated to a greater or less extent by means of pigments or
by tattooing, and even to-day the practice lingers among civilised
races, in their sailors and soldiers especially. The primitive totem or
tattoo marks are frequently highly elaborate, but the work is not all
accomplished at one time. Years sometimes pass before the drawings
are complete. The Haidas of the North-west coast are specially given
to this form of decoration, and their bodies bear carefully prepared
symbols. They are heraldic signs, or the family totem, of the clan to
which the person belongs.
[Illustration: HAIDA TATTOOING]
Pottery was also a medium, and some of the designs contained upon
earthenware unfold a whole legend to the knowing eye of the native. The
designs that are woven into blankets, baskets, and scarfs of Amerind
manufacture are also, to a certain extent, symbolic. The Navajos, who
weave a superior kind of blanket, put into it a variety of designs,
that are carried entirely in their memory. It is asserted that the
majority of these designs are Pueblo. The Navajos no doubt absorbed
many of the Pueblos, who must have been in the country they now occupy
when they arrived. There is some intermarriage of Navajos and Mokis in
these latter days.[54]
Everything the Amerind does pertains to his religious belief, and these
symbols, totems, and pictures play an important part in his life. Some
sign or token occurs on almost every article of his manufacture.
[Illustration: ESKIMO DRAWING—“THE MAN IN THE MOON COMES DOWN”]
Excellent examples of Algonquin mnemonic records are found in the songs
of the Midē society, which have been preserved for many generations
by means of their picture-writing, and some of the records are
exceedingly elaborate. The method is to associate certain devices with
songs or with parts of songs to recall the words to the memory of the
singer when he beholds the pictures, and in this way they have been
handed along through the centuries. There is reason to believe that
almost all important legends are recorded in this mnemonic way among
the tribes of North America. Of course the memory is likely to fail in
some details and so the songs become more or less changed as time goes
on, but it is not probable that the changes are of much importance, for
where the memory is trained in this way it grows remarkably accurate.
There was much practising of the various songs at each particular
season, under the guidance of some veteran singer.
The Eskimo, in their picture-writing, seem now to be rather a class
by themselves. Whether the suggestion of perspective found in some
pictures was a result of contact with the whites I am unable to state,
but it seems probable. In the above illustration the suggestion of
perspective is clear. There is a landscape with houses, with the moon
in the sky, and with a perfectly evident effort to make the foreground
and middle and background take their proper places. Such a thing is not
to be found throughout all the other Amerind stocks.
From Alaska come some good examples of the ideographic, by way of
San Francisco, where one Naumoff, an Alaskan native, made them. They
are written on strips of wood and placed in conspicuous places as
notifications.
[Illustration: The irregular line indicates the contour of the country.
The traveller is seen starting out at the left. He presently leaves
a stick with a bunch of grass to show direction, and stops with a
friend at night—the division of days represented by a line upright.
Next morning, on the second hill, he discovers game, etc.
]
Some tribes have a system of enumerating the members of it and keeping
a kind of clan roll. Chief Big Road, a Dakota, was one day brought
to the agency and required to give an account of his followers. He
submitted a roster, made on common foolscap paper with black and
coloured pencils. The names, represented by pictures, were Big Bear,
Bear-looking-behind, Brings-back-Plenty, White Buffalo, and so on.
This is also an example of the ideographic. Red Cloud had a similar
census of his warriors. It was prepared under his supervision at the
Pine Ridge Agency. Owing to some disagreement, the agent had refused
to recognise Red Cloud’s leadership and named another man as chief.
Thereupon the adherents of Red Cloud prepared this document, and
sent it to Washington to establish his claim. The names pictorially
represented are Shield-Bear, Sees-the-Enemy, Biting-Bear, Cut-through,
Red Owl, etc.
[Illustration: SPECIMENS OF THE DAKOTA WINTER COUNTS
Dates determined by counting back from great events The left:
1788–89. Very severe winter. Crows were frozen to death.
“Many-crows-died-winter” Middle: 1789–90. Two Mandans killed by the
Minneconjous Right: 1790–91. “All-the-Indians-see-the-flag-winter”
]
In this same line are the Dakota winter counts collected by Dr.
Corbusier. The years are counted by winters, as the winter among the
Dakotas makes the deepest impression. These records have been kept for
many years and are used in computing time and to aid the memory in
recalling names and events of different years. The enumeration is begun
at the winter last recorded and carried backward. There are at least
five of these counts kept among the Oglalas and Brules by different
men.[55]
From the manuscript drawing-book of an Amerind prisoner at St.
Augustine we have a “conversation” about the lassooing, shooting, and
final killing of a bison which had wandered into camp. “The dotted
lines indicate footprints. The Indian drawn under the animal having
secured it by the forefeet, so informs his companions, as indicated by
the line drawn from his mouth to the object mentioned. The left-hand
figure, having secured the buffalo by the horns, gives his nearest
comrade an opportunity to strike it with an axe, which he no doubt
announces that he will do, as the line from his mouth to the head of
the animal indicates. The Indian in the upper left-hand corner is told
by a squaw to take an arrow and join his companions, when he turns his
head to inform her that he has one already, which fact he demonstrates
by holding up the weapon.”[56]
[Illustration: KILLING A BISON]
The Navajos have a singular kind of picture-writing which has been
called “dry-painting.” These dry-paintings are made on the ground with
dry sand of various colours.[57] All the designs are made with the
utmost care and precision, being drawn according to an exact system,
except in minor points, where the artist is left to his imagination.
So far as known this system is not recorded in any way, but depends
entirely on the memory of those in charge. Changes must therefore occur
in the course of time. The sand is trailed out of the hand between the
thumb and forefinger, and when a mistake is made it is corrected by
renewing at that point the surface of the sand which forms the general
ground for the work. No less than seventeen ceremonies are illustrated
by drawings of this kind. Sand enters into some of the kiva ceremonies
of the Moki, but in a different way. It is used more to maintain in
position certain objects that belong to the ritual.
[Illustration: SHELL DISC, TENNESSEE
Diameter, 4.4 inches
After Dr. Jones
]
The mounds of the Mississippi valley have yielded antiquities of great
interest, but thus far nothing that is beyond the ability of the
ordinary Amerind to execute. Some shell discs, which Holmes suggests
may have been time symbols, attract special attention. There are
generally thirteen small outer circles on the discs, and thirteen is
a number that occurs frequently in Amerind chronology. On other discs
various objects are drawn, the one first to fix the attention of the
white race being the figure of the cross because of its connection
with the Christian religion. But it had no similar significance with
the Christian cross. Crosses were found among almost all the tribes of
North America, because a cross is an easy and a most natural figure to
construct. Another emblem found throughout the world, and next to the
cross the simplest figure to make, is that called the swastika, merely
a cross 卐 with the arms broken at right angles. The Mormons firmly
believe, along with Kingsborough, that the Amerinds are the Lost Tribes
of Israel, and one of their elders has succeeded in translating some
picture-writing thus: “_I, Mahanti, the 2nd king of the Lamanites in
five valleys in the mountains, make this record in the twelve hundredth
year since we came out of Jerusalem. And I have three sons gone to the
south country to live by hunting antelope and deer._” Like the power to
divine the future, the power to translate picture-writings is rare.
In some of the Moundbuilder work there is a suggestion of a position
for the makers intermediate between, say, the Algonquin and the Nahuatl
or Aztec tribes. Their serpent symbols strongly resemble those of more
southern tribes, and also some of the figures in shell and copper.
The fact that the serpent was a prominent object with them as with
the Nahuatl tribes tends to link the tribes who made these symbols
with the Nahuatl tribes. The serpent symbol, especially the feathered
kind,[58] belongs mainly to the tribes of the Mexican region, where the
rattlesnake exists in its greatest variety. The rattlesnake was highly
venerated, and tribes as far north as the Moki country in the West,
and perhaps as the Ohio in the East, might be correctly called the
Snake people. There is nothing improbable in supposing that some of the
tribes of the Mississippi valley, if they were not of the same stock as
the Aztecs, were in tolerably close communication with them, or with
tribes intermediate between the two.
[Illustration: SHELL GORGET, TENNESSEE]
Sometimes there occur markings on the rocks in the South-west that
would be a puzzle to us did we not know, through the Mokis, who are
still making them, just what they are. There is therefore no room
for the imagination; the long scratchings are only grooves made in
sandstone by the Moki farmer sharpening his planting stick.
[Illustration: CUP MARKINGS]
Another kind of rock markings, the so-called cupped-stones or cup
markings, about which there has been a vast amount of discussion, may
be considered here because they have generally been thought to have
symbolic significance. That some of them may have had such significance
is admitted below, but the bulk of those on this continent it seems
possible to explain without resort to symbolism. An explanation which
I offer, for what it may be worth, I have never seen suggested, though
the idea may not be new. It is well known that the common form of
fire-drill in use from one end of this continent to the other was that
in which the end of a straight stick is made to rotate back and forth
in a rounded cavity in another stick of softer wood called the hearth.
In order that the operation should be speedily successful in producing
fire, it was necessary to have the end of the drill convex, so that
it would immediately bear as nearly as possible on the whole surface
of the hearth cavity. In order to produce this convexity, the Amerind
pecked a small cavity on a slab or rock of sandstone, and when he had
it in the proper condition, he could bring his drill very quickly
to the desired convexity, and also give it a roughness of surface
that would contribute to the friction. As the fire-drill was long in
constant use, many cavities were necessary, for a cavity would grow too
deep, or for some other cause would not be adequate. A new hole would
then be made, and thus in the course of time there would be numbers of
the cavities on a rock or slab, which was convenient or had been found
to possess the right texture for the purpose. My opinion, therefore,
is that these so-called “cup markings” or “cupped” stones were in
America the result of the sharpening of fire-drills, just as the long
grooves seen at the Moki towns to-day are the result of the sharpening
of planting sticks. Gerard Fowke describes the cupped-stones in the
Bureau of Ethnology collection,[59] as follows, and it will be noticed
that thin pieces have cups on both sides, while the large blocks have
them only on one. This was because it was convenient to turn the small
stones over. In some cases where a cup had worn too large, another
was started in the bottom of it, perhaps because the rock at that
particular spot suited the fancy of the individual. Fowke says: “The
cupped-stones in the Bureau are almost invariably of reddish sandstone,
of varying texture, from a few ounces to thirty pounds in weight. The
holes are from one to twenty-five in number, of various sizes, even in
the same stone, and follow the natural contour of the surface even when
that is quite irregular; the stone is never flattened or dressed to
bring the cups on a level; none show any marks of work, but are rough
blocks or slabs in their natural state. Many of the holes are roughly
pecked in, but the larger ones are usually smooth, as if ground out,
and almost complete hemispheres. They range from a pit only started or
going scarcely beyond the surface to one two inches in diameter. The
smaller ones with one cup pass into the pitted stones. Occasionally
at the bottom of a large cup there is a small secondary hole as though
made by a flint drill. Slabs or thin pieces nearly always have cups on
both sides, while blocks or thick slabs have them on one side only.”
In the case of the cup markings of the Eastern Hemisphere, their
frequent peculiar arrangement accompanied by grooves and circles may
have pertained to some ceremony connected with the drill-dressing. It
may have been thought that the fire would come quicker, be better, or
last longer when the drill was dressed in holes of a certain type; or
special stones and holes of peculiar arrangement may have been required
for dressing the drill-end that was to be used by the priest in the
sacred ceremony of producing the “new-fire.” In this manner a primitive
custom might become sacred and be surrounded with symbolism exemplified
in cup markings the world over.
[Illustration: CUP FROM CHIRIQUI]
[Illustration: TERRA COTTA FROM CHIRIQUI]