The purposes for which pictography has been employed by the North
American Indians are:—
1. _Mnemonic._—For the remembrance of the order of songs, the
figurative or representative pictures remind the singers of the
order of the stanzas previously committed to memory; as well as for
traditions, treaties, and the records of events. Among the most
interesting of the latter are the Dakota Winter Counts. The Dakotas
reckon time by winters, and apply names to them instead of numbering
them from an era. Each name refers to some notable occurrence of the
year to which it belongs, and ideographic records of these occurrences
were formerly painted in colours on the hides of animals. A single
example will suffice, it is for the year 1812-13. “Many wild horses
caught,” or “catching wild-horses winter.” The wild horses were first
run and caught by the Dakotas. The device is a lasso. The date is of
value, as showing when the herds of prairie horses, descended from
those animals introduced by the Spaniards, had multiplied so as to
extend into the far northern regions. The Dakotas undoubtedly learned
the use of the horse, and perhaps also of the lasso, from southern
tribes ... in only two generations since they became familiar with
the horse they have become so revolutionised in their habits as to be
utterly helpless, both in war and the chase, when deprived of that
animal” (p. 108).
2. _Notification._—The pictographs of this division may be grouped
as follows—(1) Notice of departure, direction, etc.; (2) notice of
condition, suffering, etc.; (3) warning and guidance; (4) charts of
geographical features; (5) messages or communications; (6) record of
expedition, and so forth.
The following (Fig. 113) is an example of a notice of departure on
a hunting expedition.[116] Similar ones are made by the natives to
inform their visitors or friends of their departure for a certain
purpose. They are depicted upon strips of wood, which are placed in
conspicuous places near the doors of the habitations.
[116] Originally published by Dr. W. J. Hoffman, _Trans.
Anthrop. Soc., Washington_, ii., 1883, p. 134.
[Illustration: FIG. 113.—Alaskan notice of a hunt; from Mallery, after
Hoffman.]
1. The speaker, with the right hand indicating himself, and with
the left pointing in the direction to be taken.
2. Holding a boat paddle—going by boat.
3. The right hand to the side of the head, to denote sleep, and
the left elevated with one finger, to signify one—one night.
4. A circle with two marks in the middle, signifying an island
with huts upon it.
5. Same as No. 1.
6. A circle to denote another island.
7. Same as No. 3, with an additional finger elevated, signifying
_two_—two nights.
8. The speaker with his harpoon, making the sign of a sea-lion
with the left hand. The flat hand is held edgewise with
the thumb elevated, then pushed outward from the body in a
slightly downward curve.
9. A sea-lion.
10. Shooting with bow and arrow.
11. The boat with two persons in it, the paddles projecting
downward.
12. The winter, a permanent habitation of the speaker.
The following is a translation of the native account:—“I there go that
island, one sleep there; then I go another that island, there two
sleeps; I catch one sea-lion, then return place mine.”
“Hunters who have been unfortunate, and are suffering from hunger,
scratch or draw upon a piece of wood characters similar to those
figured (Fig. 114), and place the lower end of the stick in the ground
on the trail where the greatest chance of its discovery occurs. The
stick is inclined toward the locality of the habitation.
[Illustration: FIG. 114.—Pictograph of starving hunters, Alaska; after
Mallery.]
“1. A horizontal line, denoting a canoe, showing the persons to
be fishermen.
“2. An individual with both arms extended, signifying _nothing_,
corresponding with the gesture for negation.
“3. A person with the right hand to the mouth, signifying _to
eat_, the left hand pointing to the house occupied by the
hunters.
“4. The habitation.
“The whole signifies that there is _nothing to eat_ in the _house_.
This is used by natives of Southern Alaska.”
Lean-Wolf, of the Hidatsa, who drew the picture of which Fig. 115 is
a fac-simile, made a trip on foot from Fort Berthold to Fort Buford,
Dakota, to steal a horse from the Dakotas encamped there. The returning
horse-tracks show that he attained the object in view and that he rode
home. The following explanation of characters was made to Dr. Hoffman,
at Fort Berthold, in 1881:—
[Illustration: FIG. 115.—Lean-Wolf’s Map, Hidatsa; after Mallery.]
1. Lean-Wolf, the head only of a man to which is attached the
outline of a wolf.
2. Hidatsa earth lodges, circular in form, the spots
representing the pillars supporting the roof. Indian village
and Fort Berthold, Dakota.
3. Human footprints; the course taken by the recorder.
4. The Government buildings at Fort Buford (square).
5. Several Hidatsa lodges (round), the occupants of which had
intermarried with the Dakotas.
6. Dakota lodges.
7. A small square—a white man’s house—with a cross marked upon
it, to represent a Dakota lodge. This denotes that the owner,
a white man, had married a Dakota woman who dwelt there.
8. Horse-tracks returning to Fort Berthold.
9. The Missouri River.
10-16. Tule Creek, Little Knife River, White Earth River, Muddy
Creek, Yellowstone River, Little Missouri River, Dancing
Beard Creek.
3. _Designation._—This group embraces tribal, clan and personal names,
marks, status of individual and signs of particular achievements.
The clan, or gentile, designations are totems; these are depicted in
the funeral pictographs to the exclusion of the personal names; the
latter are not indicative of an Indian’s totem.
In No. 1 of the last figure we have the usual signature of Lean-Wolf.
During his boyhood he had another name.
4. _Religious._—Comprising mythic personages, shamanism dances and
ceremonies, mortuary practices, grave posts, charms, etc.
5. _Customs, Daily Life and Habits._—The accompanying figure is from
a carving made of a piece of walrus tusk and represents incidents in
the life of an Alaskan native. The special purport of some of the
characters and etchings is not apparent.
[Illustration: FIG. 116.—Ivory carving with records, Alaska; after
Mallery.]
1. A native with his left hand resting against a house. To the
right is a “shaman stick” surmounted by the emblem of a bird,
a “good spirit,” in memory of some departed friend (? of his
wife).
2. A reindeer.
3. One man, the recorder, shot and killed another with an arrow.
4. A trading expedition with a dog sledge.
5. Is a sail boat, although the elevated paddle signifies that
that was the manner in which the voyage was best made.
6. A dog-sled with the animal hitched up for a journey. Above is
the sun.
7. A sacred lodge. The four figures at the outer corners of the
square represent the young men placed on guard armed with
bows and arrows, to keep away the uninitiated. Inside are
the members of the band dancing; the fire-place is in the
centre. The angled lines extending from the right side of the
lodge to the partition line are a plan of the subterranean
entrance to the lodge.
8. A pine tree, up which a porcupine is climbing.
9. A pine tree, from which a woodpecker is extracting larvæ for
food.
10. A bear.
11. The recorder in his boat, holding aloft his double-bladed
paddle to drive fish into a net.
12. An assistant fisherman driving fish into the net.
13. The net.
The figure over the man (No. 12) represents a whale, with harpoon and
line attached, caught by the narrator.
6. _Historical._—Colonel Mallery says: “It is very difficult, if not
impossible, to distinguish in pictographs, or indeed orally, between
historical and traditional accounts obtained from Indians.... The
winter counts, while having their chief value as calendars, contain
some material that is absolute and veritable tribal history.”
7. _Biographic._—Pictographs are very common either of a continuous
account of the chief events in the life of the subject of the sketch,
or of separate accounts of some particular exploit or event in the life
of the person referred to.
In this and in another memoir[117] Colonel Mallery calls attention to
the fact that it is necessary to distinguish between different kinds of
pictorial signs, but this becomes more difficult when the characters
have become conventionalised. They may be classified under—1. Pictorial
Signs; 2. Emblems; 3. Symbols.
[117] Garrick Mallery, “Sign Language among North American
Indians,” _First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_,
1879-80 (1881).
1. The representation of any object when it is intended to express that
object is a _pictorial sign_; for example, the figure of a fish in a
pictograph would usually refer to fish in general or to some particular
species of fish. The pictorial translation of a personal name, such as
“Lean-Wolf” (Fig. 115, 1), comes under this heading.
2. Tribal signs, personal insignia, etc., are _emblems_; and these do
not necessarily require any analogy between the objects representing
and the objects or qualities represented, but may arise from pure
accident. The representation of a totem belongs to this category, so
that under certain conditions a drawing would not refer to any actual
fish or that the individual was named “fish,” but that he belonged to
the fish clan; it was emblematic of his clan or his family group, like
most of our armorial bearings. Tribal signs among savage peoples are
emblems in the same way that the rose, thistle, leek, and shamrock are
the emblems of the main components of the British Islands. As Mallery
points out, “After a scurrilous jest the beggar’s wallet became the
emblem of the confederated nobles, the Gueux of the Netherlands; and
a sling, in the early minority of Louis XIV., was adopted from the
refrain of a song by the Frondeur opponents of Mazarin.”
3. “_Symbols_ are less obvious and more artificial than mere signs,
they are usually conventional, and are not only abstract but
metaphysical, and often need explanation from history, religion, and
customs. They do not depict but suggest objects; do not speak directly
through the eye to the intelligence, but presuppose in the mind
knowledge of an event or fact which the sign recalls. The symbols of
the ark, dove, olive-branch, and rainbow would be wholly meaningless
to people unfamiliar with the Mosaic or some similar cosmology, as
would be the cross and the crescent to those ignorant of history.
The last-named objects appeared in the class of emblems when used in
designating the conflicting powers of Christendom and Islamism.” Among
the North American Indians “the pipe is generally the symbol of peace,
although in certain positions and connections it sometimes signifies
preparation for war, and again subsequent victory. The hatchet is a
common symbol for war, and closed hands or approaching palms denote
friendship. The tortoise has been clearly used as a symbol for
land.” Many pictorial signs can be used as emblems, and both can be
converted into symbols or explained as such by perverted ingenuity. An
interesting example of the last is seen in the early Christian conceit
of the portraiture of a fish used for the name and title of Jesus
Christ. This is based on the Greek word ιχθυς “an acrostic composed
of the initials of the several Greek words signifying that name and
title. This origin being unknown to persons whose religious enthusiasm
was in direct proportion to their ignorance, they expended much
rhetoric to prove that there was some true symbolic relation between an
actual fish and the Saviour of men. Apart from this misapplication, the
fish undoubtedly became an emblem of Christ and of Christianity.”[118]
[118] Mallery, “Sign Language,” etc., 1881, p. 389.
An interesting example of the transformation of a symbol into an
emblem is found in the case of the triskele or triquetra. This is now
recognised to be a variant of the tetraskele, fylfot, gammadion, or
swastika, as it is variously called. Originally this was a sun-symbol,
but many other meanings were doubtless associated with it. The
triskelion “first appears on the coins of Lycia, about B.C. 480; and
then on those of Sicily, where it was adopted by Agathocles, B.C.
317-307, but not as a symbol of the morning, mid-day, and afternoon
sun (‘the Three Steps of Vishnu’), but of the ‘three-sided’ or rather
‘three-ended’ or ‘three-pointed’ (triquetrous) land of Trin-akria,
_i.e._, ‘Three-Capes,’ the ancient name of Sicily; and finally, from
the seventeenth century, on the coins of the Isle of Man;”[119] where
covered with chain armour, but without spurs, it was introduced by
Alexander III. of Scotland in 1266, when that prince took over the
island from the Norwegians; he having become familiar with the device
at the English Court of Henry III. (1216-72), whose son Edmund was for
a short time styled King of Sicily, and who quartered the Sicilian arms
with the royal arms of England.[120] The triquetra is also met with in
the armorial bearings of several noble families in England, Germany,
Switzerland, and Poland, but now the legs are appropriately clothed in
armour and spurs are added; probably these are relics of the Crusades.
Truly “the Three Legs of Man” have run afar not only in historical time
and geographical space, but also in the unseen world of symbolism.
[119] J. Newton, _Athenæum_, No. 3385, September 10, 1892,
p. 353; and for further details cf. _Manx Note-Book_, January
1886.
[120] Sir George Birdwood, Introduction to Count Goblet
d’Alviella’s _The Migration of Symbols_.
In the section devoted to Religion I deal with the history and
migration of the fylfot, one of the most widely distributed symbols,
as this particular instance forms a good example of the method which
should be adopted in studying symbols and their meaning.
Pictography is so obvious a means for conveying information that there
is no difficulty in supposing it to have originated independently among
different peoples. Its use is, and has been, very widely spread.
Petroglyphs are known from great antiquity in Europe and Asia. They
are still employed in Australia; they are found in New Zealand, but
most of these, like many of those which scattered throughout the
continent of Australia, are comparatively ancient. They are common in
some parts of South Africa, where they are due to the artistic impulses
of the Bushmen; neither the Kafirs nor the Hottentots paint human and
animal forms on the rocks. As petroglyphs are much more permanent than
pictographs on more perishable materials, they are more likely to be
preserved from ancient times, but it is probable that the latter were
actually of more frequent occurrence.
There is no single system of pictography. Everywhere a figure of
a man means a man, and that of a tree stands for a tree, and to
this extent pictographs can be deciphered by any one. More precise
information can be gleaned when the figures are provided with some
unmistakable determinative, and are in a realistic attitude. In the
vast majority of cases a native interpreter is required to explain
the exact significance of the figures, or of the event which they
commemorate. Once explained, the representations are usually found to
be sufficiently appropriate. Although the meaning of simple pictographs
may be guessed at readily enough, the elucidation of complex
representations is a very different matter, as there are usually some
signs, symbols, or determinatives of which the significance is unknown.
In attempting to decipher pictographs, not only is it necessary to have
a thorough knowledge of the people who made them, but it must be borne
in mind that characters substantially the same, or “homomorphs” (to use
Colonel Mallery’s term) made by one set of people, have a different
signification among others. Further, differing forms (“symmorphs”)
for the same general conception or idea may occur. It is usually
comparatively easy for any one to get a meaning out of a pictograph;
but it is quite a different matter whether that was the meaning which
the inscriber intended to convey.
I have dwelt at some length on pictographs, or ideograms, as they are
used to so large an extent by backward peoples to convey ideas; but
this is only the threshold of a much larger and more important matter,
the Art of Writing.
These early steps, as has already been mentioned, have been traversed
by various peoples, but fewer have attained the next stage, while the
last has proved a laborious and tedious effort. “To invent and to bring
to perfection the score or so of handy symbols for the expression of
spoken sounds which we call our alphabet, has proved to be the most
arduous enterprise on which the human intellect has ever been engaged.
Its achievement tasked the genius of the three most gifted races of the
ancient world. It was begun by the Egyptians, continued by the Semites,
and finally perfected by the Greeks. From certain Egyptian hieroglyphic
pictures, which were in use long before the Pyramids were erected, it
is possible to deduce the actual outlines of almost every letter of our
modern English alphabet.”[121]
[121] Isaac Taylor, _The Alphabet, an Account of the Origin and
Development of Letters_, 1883.