Schoolcraft, who has been more explicit than other writers respecting
the picture-writings of the North American Indians, speaks of two
distinct pictographic systems among the Algonkin tribes, called by
them respectively _Kekeewin_ and _Kekeenowin_. The first appeared to be
their method of recording facts of every-day occurrence, and embraced
the heraldic devices used upon the grave posts--the communications
written upon birch bark, and the caution marks, itinerary, hunting, and
war records inscribed upon the trunks of blazed trees by travelling
bands, to communicate intelligence to their comrades in the forest.
These writings, the signs of which were carefully taught to the
young, like the language of signs common at present to a majority of
the Western tribes, could be understood by any Indian. Loskiel, the
Moravian missionary, who makes frequent mention of picture records,
states that "it gave the Indians great pleasure if one halted on coming
to such a tree, and listened to their description of the great chief
and his exploits thereon inscribed."
The Kekeenowin, on the other hand,--the pictographic system of
the prophets, jugglers, and medicine-men,--was far less generally
understood by the Indians themselves. It was the method used in the
historical records, sung before the tribe at religious feasts and
dances, and was likewise invariably employed in the incantations of the
priests, prophets, and medicine-men, of which Schoolcraft gives seven
kinds relating to medicine, necromancy, revelry, hunting, prophecy,
war, and love.
The chief characteristic of the Kekeenowin is the fact that in it each
symbol recalled to the mind of the reader learned in the art a song,
previously committed to memory by him in connection with the symbol,
and the general idea of which was more or less arbitrarily connected
with it. "The words of the song," says James, in his appendix to
Tanner's narrative, "were not variable, but must be learned by heart,
otherwise though from an inspection of the figure the idea might
be comprehended, no one would know what to sing." The main object,
however, was the preservation of the songs, which the priests, on
consulting their birch-bark scrolls or painted wooden tablets, were
thus enabled to sing at the great feasts, giving the many verses in
their proper order. The connection between the symbol and the idea
expressed by the song was often beyond the power of divination to the
uninitiated, and the key to these sacred incantations, a knowledge of
the songs, once lost, could never be recovered, as it was doubtless far
from the intention of the priests that the uninitiated Indian should
divine their mysteries from an inspection of the symbols. It was only
upon the payment of many beaver skins, says Tanner in his narrative,
that he was permitted to learn the mystic signification of the
twenty-seven symbols of the Chippeway song for medicine hunting, which
it took him more than a year to learn.
The historical records, however, were sometimes, it appears, written
in Kekeewin and sometimes in Kekeenowin; some were related in songs,
others were not. Those inscribed upon painted wooden tablets, or the
bark scrolls, and pieces of slate alluded to by George Copway, were
doubtless generally sung at stated occasions before the tribe, while
the Muzzinabicks or rock-writings upon the face of cliffs and boulders,
as at "Bald Friars" and "Miles Island" on the Susquehanna or West
River, and Bellows Falls, Vermont, at the Cunningham Islands, Lake
Erie, or upon the famous Dighton Rock at Fall River, Mass., although
including many of the characters seen in the song records were probably
not expressed in songs.