I have already referred to the difficulty of finding a term which will
express all that might be dealt with in this section.
In order to convey information from one man to another, when oral or
gesture language are impossible, recourse must be had to pictorial
signs in some form or another.
Probably one of the earliest of this needs was that of indicating
ownership, and it may be that many devices on primitive implements and
utensils have this as one reason for their existence, although the
nature of the ornamentation may be owing to quite a different reason.
As a matter of fact we know very little about owners’-marks, but it is
possible that while an object may frequently be decorated with a clan
or tribal device, the particular variety or delineation of that figure
will serve to distinguish the ownership of the object.
Allied to owners’-marks are trade-marks; on this subject, too,
information is lamentably deficient, but we know that these do occur
amongst primitive folk (p. 48, Fig. 23).
Most savages employ a more elaborate method of conveying information,
and this picture-writing, as it is called, has been of such importance
in the history of the world, especially in its later developments; that
it deserves a more detailed treatment.
_Pictographs._
A pictograph is writing by means of a picture. It records and conveys
a fact or an idea by graphic means, without the employment of words
or letters. As pictography belongs to a low plane of culture, so
far as the visual communication of information is concerned, the
representations are generally very crude. By no means should they be
regarded as typical examples of the artistic skill of the people who
execute them. They are intended for picture-writing, not for pictures.
An examination of pictographs shows at once that only essential or
salient characters are noted, and when objects are frequently repeated
they become conventionalised, and in their later forms cannot be
regarded as in any sense objective portraitures.
Nowhere in the world are pictographs so much employed as in America,
and fortunately it is possible to gain precise information respecting
their signification. Colonel Mallery[115] has devoted himself to an
exhaustive study of North American pictography, and I cannot do better
than briefly detail a few of his deductions.
[115] Garrick Mallery, “On the Pictographs of the North
American Indians,” _Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of
Ethnology_, 1882-83 (1886). See also _Tenth Ann. Rep._, 1888-89
(1893).
“A general deduction, made after several years of study of pictographs
of all kinds found among the North American Indians, is that they
exhibit very little trace of mysticism or of esotericism in any form.
They are objective representations, and cannot be treated as ciphers
or cryptographs in any attempt at their interpretation. A knowledge
of the customs, costumes, including arrangement of the hair, paint,
and all tribal designations, and of their histories and traditions, is
essential to the understanding of their drawings. Comparatively few of
their picture signs have become merely conventional. A still smaller
proportion are either symbolical or emblematic. By far the larger part
of them are merely mnemonic records, and are treated of in connection
with material objects formerly and, perhaps, still used mnemonically.
“It is believed that the interpretation of the ancient forms is to be
obtained, if at all, not by the discovery of any hermeneutic key, but
by an understanding of the modern forms, some of which fortunately
can be interpreted by living men; and when this is not the case the
more recent forms can be made intelligible, at least in part, by
thorough knowledge of the historic tribes, including their sociology,
philosophy, and arts, such as is now becoming acquired, and of their
sign language.
“It is not believed that any considerable information of value in
an historical point of view will be obtained directly from the
interpretation of the pictographs in North America. They refer
generally to some insignificant fight or some season of plenty or
famine.
“Ample evidence exists that many of the pictographs, both ancient and
modern, are connected with the mythology and religious practices of
their makers.
“Some of them were mere records of the visits of individuals to
important springs or to fords on regularly established trails. In this
respect there seems to have been, in the intention of the Indians,
very much the same spirit as induces the civilised man to record his
initials upon objects in the neighbourhood of places of general resort.
“One very marked peculiarity of the drawings of the Indians is that
within each particular system, such as may be called a tribal system,
of pictography, every Indian draws in precisely the same manner. The
figures of a man, of a horse, and of every other object delineated, are
made by every one who attempts to make any such figure with all the
identity of which their mechanical skill is capable, thus showing their
conception of motive to be the same” (pp. 15-17; all the quotations are
from the _Fourth Ann. Rep._).
[Illustration: FIG. 112.