for the elucidation of subjects in which language fails him. He will
take a burnt stick and draw a map indicating the route that has to be
taken, the portages on a river, or the trail through the forest, after
he has failed by signs and gestures to convey his meaning; and he can
interpret with ease the drawings of Indians of other tribes. When
camping out on the Nepigon River in 1866, with Indian guides from the
Saskatchewan, who were strangers to the locality, they interpreted the
drawings or carvings on a soft metamorphic rock overlaid by the syenite
of that district; and were able thereby to tell us who had preceded
them, and to determine the route we should take. Lieutenant Whipple in
the narration of his route near the thirty-fifth parallel, remarks:
“Near the Llano Extacado were seen Pueblo Indians from San Domingo.
After an introductory smoke they became quite communicative, furnishing
curious information as to their traditions and peculiar faith. When
questioned regarding the numbers and positions of the Pueblos in New
Mexico, they rudely traced upon the ground a sketch from which a map of
the country is reproduced in the Government Reports.”[106] The Rev. Dr.
O’Meara, for many years a missionary among the Ojibway Indians of Lake
Superior, thus writes to me: “The Indians were always pictorial, even in
common conversation, _i.e._ they liked to explain what they meant by
making figures; and always, if you asked one of them for information as
to the route to any place, he would make a rough map of it, either on
the sand or on a piece of birch-bark.” This fully accords with my own
experience. I have repeatedly seen Indian guides take a piece of
birch-bark and indicate on it some idea otherwise inexpressible from our
ignorance of any common language. Their map-making must be familiar to
all who have travelled much with Indian guides. They delineate with much
accuracy the leading geographical features of any familiar locality. I
have in my note-books sketches made by Indians, when I have placed the
pencil in their hand, and indicated by signs some information I desired
to obtain, about game, fishing, or other matters familiar to them; or
about their own tribal relationships, which they generally express in
totemic fashion by their symbolic bear, deer, beaver, eagle, turtle, or
other animal. Such signs of the clan, tribe, or nation are familiar to
every Indian, as well as the ideographs of his own and others’ names;
and when represented on the roll of birch-bark, painted on the chiefs
buffalo robe, or inverted on his grave-post, they can be interpreted
with the same facility with which an heraldic student discerns the
family history on the painted hatchment or the sculptured shields of
some noble mausoleum.
By an alphabet, strictly so called, we understand a series of symbols
which have become the conventional equivalents to the eye of the sounds
which combine to form the speech of a people. But _alpha_, _beta_, etc.,
were undoubtedly, in their first stage, pictures, and not arbitrary
signs; though they passed undesignedly into the demotic characters of
the Egyptian current hand, and were then transformed, from ideographic
and syllabic characters, into the true phonetics out of which have come
the later alphabets of the civilised world. Egypt is justly credited
with the origination of a system of writing which lies at the foundation
of all our inherited knowledge, and which, as Bacon says, “makes ages so
distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations and inventions, the
one of the other.” Yet the germ of all this lay in the graphic records
of the palæolithic cave-men; and the very same process of evolution from
pure pictorial representation to picture-writing or ideography, and so
to arbitrary hieroglyphic signs, or word-writing, is seen in the graven
records of Copan or Palenque, and on the ancient monuments of the Nile.
It is replete with interest thus to turn aside from the Old World, with
all its wealth of intellectual progress associated with the letters of
Cadmus, and find that in the western hemisphere the human mind has
followed the very same path in its struggle towards the light.
Longfellow, in his “Song of Hiawatha,” has interwoven Algonkin and
Iroquois legends into a national epic, in which the elements of Indian
progress are all traced to this mythic benefactor, subsequently
identified by Mr. Horatio Hale, in his _Book of Iroquois Rites_, with a
wise Onondaga chief of the fifteenth century. But, tracing in legendary
fashion the early steps of Indian progress, the poet represents the
mythic reformer mourning how all things perish and pass into oblivion.
Even the great achievements and the traditions of their people fade away
from the memory of the old men. And so he inaugurates the method of
recording events, which in reality we recognise as the natural product
of the human mind in the exercise of that imitative faculty which the
discoveries of comparatively recent years have revealed to us as in full
activity among the men of Europe’s remote Post-Glacial era. With his
paints of diverse colours he depicts on the smooth birch-bark simple
figures and symbols, such as are to be seen graven on hundreds of rocks
throughout the North American continent, and are in constant use by the
Indian in chronicling his own deeds on his buffalo robe, or recording
those of the deceased chief on his grave-post. The result is a simple
process of picture-writing, readily translatable, with nearly equal
facility, into the language of every tribe. Deeds of daring against
Indians or white men are set forth by the native chronicler, and the
rivals are clearly indicated by means of their characteristic costume
and weapons. Headless figures are the symbols of the dead; scalps
represent his own special victims; and in like manner incidents of the
chase, or feats against the buffalo or grizzly bear, are recorded in
graphic picturings, which are as intelligible as any monumental
inscription of ancient or modern times. The description in Longfellow’s
Indian epic of the celestial and terrestrial symbols, in actual use as
Algonkin and other aboriginal hieroglyphics, would answer, with slight
modification, for those still to be seen on the walls of Egyptian
temples and catacombs:—
For the earth he drew a straight line,
For the sky a bow above it;
White the span between for day-time,
Filled with little stars for night-time;
On the left a point for sunrise,
On the right a point for sunset,
On the top a point for noontide;
And for rain and cloudy weather
Waving lines descending from it.
The picture-writing of the Aztecs, though greatly improved in execution,
and simplified by abbreviations, was the same in principle as that of
the rude northern tribes. The recognised signs of the months and days of
their calendar are not greatly in advance of Indian symbolism; while
some of their pictorial records are as definite pieces of literal
representation as the battle of the reindeer from the Dordogne cave, or
the peaceful grazing scene recovered from a Swiss grotto near Thayingen.
One example of such a pictorial chronicling of an important event has
been repeatedly described, and aptly illustrates its practical
application. When Cortez held his first interview with the emissaries of
Montezuma, one of the attendants of Teuhtlile, the chief Aztec noble,
was observed sketching the novel visitors, their peculiar costumes and
arms, their horses and ships; and by such means a report of all that
pertained to the strange invaders of his dominion was transmitted to the
Aztec sovereign. The skill with which every object was delineated
excited the admiration of the Spaniards. But however superior this may
have been as a piece of art, it was manifestly no advance on the
principle of Indian picture-writing; nor can we be in much doubt as to
its style of execution, since Lord Kingsborough’s elaborate work
furnishes many facsimiles of nearly contemporary Mexican drawings. In
the majority of these, the totemic symbols, and the representations of
individuals by means of their animal or other cognomens, are abundantly
apparent. The specific aim of the artist has to be kept in view. The
figures are for the most part grotesque, from the necessity of giving
predominance to the special feature in which the symbol is embodied. To
the generation for which such were produced, the connection between the
sign, and the person or thing signified, would be manifest; and as a
mnemonic aid, supplemented by verbal descriptions of the trained
official registrars, the record would be ample. But a brief interval
suffices to render such abbreviated symbols obscure, if not wholly
unintelligible; and within less than a century after the Conquest, De
Alva could not find more than two surviving Mexicans, both very aged,
who were able to interpret the native pictorial records. Nevertheless a
system of picture-writing, originating among the rude forest tribes with
the simple employment of the imitative faculty in the representation of
familiar objects, with their associated ideas, had advanced on this
continent to the very same stage from which, in ancient Egypt, the next
step was taken, resulting in the evolution of a phonetic alphabet, and
so of all that is implied in letters in the largest sense.
To this grand aim of ideography, or an equivalent of written speech,
may, as it appears to me, be traced the earliest efforts at drawing and
painting, reaching back to that strange dawn of intellectual vigour
revealed to us in the graphic art of the men of Europe’s Palæolithic
age. The same effort at written speech underlies all the manifestations
of the artistic faculty, common alike to the semi-civilised and to the
barbarous native races of this continent; and in the terms by which they
express the graphic art in their various dialects, the common
significance of drawing and writing is generally apparent. But the
æsthetic faculty was thus stimulated into activity with results which
tended to develop art in all its forms of carving, modelling, sculpture,
and painting. An appreciation of colour, not merely for personal
adornment, but in its artistic application—alike as a decorative art,
and as the means whereby natural objects can be presented with vivid
truthfulness to the eye,—is widely diffused; though the mastery of form
by the modeller or sculptor long precedes that of chiaroscuro, or aerial
perspective. Aboriginal painting is crude, consisting mainly of colour
without tone or shading, even where the drawing is correct. But paints
and dyes, both of mineral and vegetable origin, are largely in use by
many Indian tribes. The Eskimo execute tasteful patterns on their skin
robes in diverse colours; and the northern tribes both to the east and
west of the Rocky Mountains dye porcupine quills and grasses, and with
them work ornamental patterns on their dresses and in basket-work. The
pottery of the Pueblo Indians is elaborately decorated in colours; and
in various other ways—as in the colouring of their masks, and the
painting of their boats and houses, by the Indians of Oregon and British
Columbia,—the native taste for colour is manifested. Mr. Hugh Martin,
in a communication of an early date to the American Philosophical
Society, gives an account of the principal dyes employed by the North
American Indians.[107] The Shawnees obtained a vegetable red, which they
called _hau-ta-the-caugh_, from the root of a marsh plant, and largely
used it in dyeing wool, porcupine quills, and the white hair of deers’
tails. From another root, the _Radix_ _flava_, a bright yellow was
obtained, by mixing which with the red an orange tint is made. But they
also extracted a rich orange colour from the Poccon root. A fine
vegetable blue is also easily procured, and this was transformed to
green by means of a yellow liquor of the smooth hickory bark. Black,
which is much in demand, was obtained both from the sumack and from the
bark of the white walnut. All the colours thus far named are vegetable
dyes, but mineral colours are in general use for painting, and
especially for personal decoration, which is no doubt the primary idea
associated in the Indian mind with the verb “to paint.” The Lenapes, Dr.
Brinton remarks, “obtained red, white, and blue clays, which were in
such extensive demand that the vicinity of those streams in Newcastle
County, Delaware, which are now called White Clay Creek and Red Clay
Creek, are widely known to the natives as _Walamink_, ‘the place of
paint.’”[108] The Shawnees applied the name _Alamonee-sepee_, “Paint
Creek,” to the stream which falls into the Scioto close to Chilicothe.
The word _walamen_, signifying “to paint,” is the Shawnee _alamon_, and
the Abnaki _wramann_, the _r_ being substituted for the _l_. Roger
Williams, describing the New England Indians, speaks of “_wunnam_, their
red painting, which they most delight in,—both the bark of the pine, as
also a red earth.” The word is derived from Narr. _wunne_, Del. _wulit_,
Chip. _gwanatseh_: “beautiful, handsome, good, pretty,” etc. “The Indian
who had bedaubed his skin with red ochreous clay, was esteemed in full
dress, and delightful to look upon. Hence the term _wulit_, ‘fine,
pretty,’ came to be applied to the paint itself.”[109]
A review of the terms of art in the diverse aboriginal vocabularies
would furnish an interesting supplement to the general question of the
manifestation of an artistic faculty, and the evidences of appreciation
of art among savage races. I note a few illustrations, which the
languages of some Northern Indian tribes supply, of the ideas associated
in the native mind with terms of art. The Algonkin languages generally
have no distinctive words clearly discriminating between painting,
drawing, and writing in the sense of ideography; though the inevitable
tendency to invent or appropriate words, as equivalents expressive of
any novel object or idea, is in operation in those as in other
languages. The Ojibways have no generic term for painting the body or
face, but express it by some word connected with the specific colour in
use. For example, the painting the face black, as is done to a youth on
attaining puberty, is _muhkuhdaekawin_. This consists of _muh-kuh-da_,
meaning “black,” _eka_, the form which gives it the verbal significance,
“he makes himself black,” with the termination _win_, constituting the
whole a noun. So _misquah_, “red,” is the root of _misquah-ne-ga-zoo_,
“he is painted red”; _misquah-ne-gah-da_, “it is painted red.”
_Oozahwah_, “yellow,” gives _oo-zah-we-ne-gah-zoo_, “he is painted
yellow”; with the corresponding terminal change for the neuter. But the
word _oozahnamahne_, from _oonah_, “the cheek,” is also used for
painting the face either red or yellow. _Quahnaiy_, or _gwanai_, the
word for “beautiful,” is applied to moral as well as physical beauty,
_e.g._ _gwanaienene_ would be used of a fair, honourable dealing man, as
well as of one who was handsome or good-looking. But such rhetorical
tropes are common to many languages.
I was indebted to the late Silas T. Rand, for upwards of thirty years a
missionary among the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia, for the following
illustrative details: “The Micmac is rich in words relating to art, the
making and ornamenting of garments, moccasins, snow-shoes, etc., of
weapons and implements for domestic use, making pottery and modelling in
clay. For building and managing a canoe there are at least seventy-six
words. They have words for carving on stone, and also on wood, for
marking dressed skins with flower patterns, for carving flowers in
stone, for scraping them on birch-bark dishes, for drawing a likeness,
making models and patterns, and for working after them. When I was
engaged in translating Exodus, and largely dependent on my Indian
teacher for the words to express all the parts of the Tabernacle, its
coverings and furniture, mortices, tenons, hooks, fillets, loops, bars,
pins, sockets, etc., I fully expected to be baffled. What was my
surprise to find that there were words in the language by which to
express all I needed. Boards, bars, bolts, pillars, poles, rings,
everything was made, put together, and my ‘pundit’ an excellent
mechanic, when he returned next day to go on with our work, assured me
that he had been dreaming about that ‘wigwam’ we had been erecting the
previous day, and he was sure he could make such a one. He had the
pattern in his head as clearly as Moses had it, after he had seen it up
the mountain.” In the Micmac, _aweekum_ is “a drawing,” lit. “I write
it,” “I draw it”; _essum_, “I colour it”; _elapskudaaga_, “I am
carving,” or “cutting stone”; _elapskudaam_, “I am carving it in stone”;
_apsk_, which here denotes “stone,” is only used in composition;
_coondow_ is the word for “stone”; _eloksowa_, “I am carving in wood”;
_noojeweekuga_, “a painter,” “drawer,” “writer,” lit. “a maker of
marks”; _aweegasik_, “a picture,” lit. “it is marked down,” etc.
The Algonkin root _walam_, “red,” is the term employed in the _Walum
Olum_, or “Red Score of the Lenape,” which was brought under the notice
of the New York Historical Society, in 1848, by Mr. E. G. Squier, as
_The Bark Record of the Lenni-Lenape_. His narrative has been more than
once reprinted; but the carefully edited version of this curious Indian
ideograph given by Dr. Brinton, in his _Lenape and their Legends_, will
supersede earlier and less accurate versions. The full translation with
which the pictographic record of the _Walum Olum_ is accompanied,
abundantly suffices to prove that it may be most correctly described as
a series of mnemonic signs employed for the purpose of keeping in memory
a national chant, of a class very familiar to the students of primitive
history. The ballad-epics of the ancient Germans, and the still earlier
lays of ancient Rome, the Abanic Duan, and others of the genealogical
and historical poems of the Celtic nations, were all of this class; and
analogous traditionary chants have been perpetuated among the Maoris of
New Zealand. The system of pictography corresponds to that in use among
the Ojibways and other Algonkin tribes, including the totems, or
sign-names; but it falls far short of true picture-writing. Section IV.
records the conquest by the Lenape tribe, of the northern country, which
they call “The Snake Land.” Bald Eagle, Beautiful Head, White Owl,
Keeping Guard, Snow Bird, and a succession of other chiefs are named,
all of whom are more or less graphically indicated by their totems; but
a paraphrastic interpretation accompanies them setting forth ideas that
have no pictorial representation. Then comes a horizontal line with ten
oblique lines rising from it, and three cross-lines below, with the
interpretation: “After the Seizer there were ten chiefs and there was
much warfare south and north.” Next follows another succession of
chiefs, each symbolised with some associated idea. Thus a group of six
small circles, arranged upright in two columns, is surmounted by a
larger circle, with three oblique lines rising from the top. This is
paraphrased: “After him, Corn-Breaker was chief, who brought about the
planting of corn.” It is not difficult to imagine in the drawing the
conventional representation of an ear of corn; but the major idea can be
no more than one suggested to the memory by association. In some
instances the picture-writing is more manifest. A horizontal line
surmounted by two _téepees_, or buffalo-skin tents, is “the buffalo
land.” In one group, a semicircle with radiating lines, placed on a
straight line, is translated: “Let us go together to the east, to the
sunrise.” In another case, nearly the same symbol—assumed, no doubt, to
represent the sun setting in the ocean,—is rendered, “at the great
sea.” It is, indeed, a system of picture-writing; but instead of being
abbreviated into word-symbols, it is reduced to mere catch-words or
mnemonic signs. Their value would be unquestionable as an aid to memory
in the perpetuation of a mythic or historical poem; but, if the
tradition were lost, they embody no sufficient record from which to
recover it.
Neither the Iroquois nor the Algonkin nation can be pointed to as
specially gifted with imitative powers, or in other ways furnishing
evidence of any highly developed artistic faculty. They cannot compare
in this respect with the Zuñi, or others of the Pueblo Indians, among
whom the arts of long-settled, agricultural communities have been
developed for purposes of ornament as well as utility; nor is their
inferiority less questionable when we compare them with some of the
barbarous tribes of the north-west coast, and the neighbouring islands.
Their languages confirm this; for while, as Mr. Cushing has shown, the
Zuñi language possesses many words relating to art-processes, the
Iroquois and Algonkin dialects supply such terms, for the most part, in
descriptive holophrasms, and not in primitive roots. Nevertheless, alike
in their pottery and carvings, and in their picture-writing, they show a
degree of artistic capacity of which few traces are found in Europe’s
Neolithic age.
In the Ojibway, _oozhebegawin_ is used indiscriminately for “writing,
drawing, painting,” _wazhebeegad_, for “a man who writes, draws.” In
combination with _muh-ze-ne_, “figure, form,” such words are in use as
_muhzenebeégawin_, “a painting, drawing”; _muhzenebeégawenene_ (M.),
_muhzenebeégawequa_ (F.), “a painter, an artist”; _muhzenebeégun_, “a
picture.” “To carve,” or “engrave on a rock,” is _muhzeneko_;
_muhzenekojegun_, “a sculptor’s chisel”; _muhzenekoda_, “it is carved,”
etc. Again with _wahbegun_, “clay,” such holophrasms are obtained as
_wahbegunoonahgunekawenene_, “a man who makes earthen vessels, a
potter,” _wahbeguhega_, “a worker in clay,” lit. “I work with
clay.”[110]
In previous remarks on the main subject of this paper, the development
of the artistic faculty has been noted as, in many cases, an exceptional
manifestation of intellectual activity, alike in ancient and modern
barbarous races. The striking contrast between the richly fluent forms
of the language, and the infantile condition of this people in relation
to so much else, including metallurgy, and the application of the arts
generally to the practical requirements of life, furnishes a no less
interesting illustration of intellectual development fostered by special
influences in another direction. The habitual practice of oratory made
the Iroquois acute reasoners; and their language abounds in abstract
terms to a degree altogether surprising in an uncivilised race. The
purposes of the rhetorician also encouraged the tropical use of literal
terms. It is not, therefore, difficult to understand how the primary
sense of the verb “to track” or “trace out” should ultimately yield the
meaning of “drawing” or “sketching,” and so finally of “painting.” On
the other hand, it abundantly coincides with the instinctive use of the
imitative faculty as a means of conveying definite ideas to others, that
in the Iroquois, as in other languages, the same terms are used to
express the idea of making a mark, drawing, or writing. The primitive
hieroglyphics, from whence our phonetic alphabets have come, were first
literal drawings, and then their abbreviations employed to express
associated ideas. An ideographic purpose appears to underlie the
earliest efforts of imitative art.
-----
[79] _Essai sur les déformations artificielles du Crâne_, p. 74.
[80] _Crania Britannica_, vi. Pl. 15; xiv. Pl. 12; xxxii. Pl. 42.
[81] Vide _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, 2d ed. i. 495.
[82] _Trans. Ethnol. Soc._, N.S. iii. 227.
[83] _Prehistoric Annals of Scotland_, i. 495.
[84] _I.e._ the Island of Santa Barbara. See “Remarks on Aboriginal
Art,” in _Proc. Davenport Acad. Nat. Science_, iv. 121.
[85] “The Right Hand:” _Left-handedness_, pp. 35, 37.
[86] _Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot._, ix. 297, 301.
[87] Vide _Prehistoric Man_, 3rd ed. ii. 54.
[88] _Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific_, i. 241.
[89] _Trans. Anthropol. Soc. Washington_, ii. 140.
[90] _Marchand’s Voyages_, ii. 282.
[91] _Remarks on Aboriginal Art in California and Queen Charlotte
Islands_, p. 118.
[92] _The Lenape Stone: or the Indian and the Mammoth_, by H. C. Mercer.
New York, 1885, pp. 5, 17.
[93] _Hommes fossiles et Hommes sauvages_, p. 49.
[94] _Hommes fossiles_, etc., p. 46.
[95] _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, ii. 75.
[96] “Aboriginal Monuments,” etc., p. 76.
[97] _Proceedings of Hamilton Association_, i. 54.
[98] _Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, xxii. 82.
[99] The Rev. Mark Pattison, according to one biographer, Mr. Althaus,
had cultivated a habit of reticence, till it became one of his most
marked characteristics. His usual response to any remark was “Ah”; but
his biographer adds: “It was interesting to observe of what a variety of
shades of meaning that characteristic ejaculation ‘Ah’ was capable. Many
times it was his sole answer. Mostly it signified that something had
aroused his interest; sometimes it conveyed approval, sometimes
surprise, sometimes doubt; sometimes it was said in a way that indicated
he did not wish to express himself on the point in question.”
[100] _Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Route for a Railroad to
Pacific Ocean_, 1885. Part iii. p. 39.
[101] _Reports of Explorations and Surveys for Route for a Railroad to
Pacific Ocean_, 1885. Part iii. p. 39.
[102] _Reports of Secretary of War, U.S._, 1850, p. 67.
[103] _Transactions of Anthropol. Soc., Washington_, ii. 130.
[104] _United States Exploring Expedition_, vii. 644.
[105] _Burton’s City of the Saints_, p. 157.
[106] _Explorations and Surveys, Washington_, 1856, iii. 10, 36.
[107] _Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc._ iii. 222.
[108] _The Lenape and their Legends_, p. 53.
[109] _Ibid._, pp. 60, 104.
[110] See pp. 300, 301 for examples in Iroquois.
VI
THE HURON-IROQUOIS: A TYPICAL RACE