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Show 14 . PJCTOGRAPU8 OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. requirement of inference or hypothesis, in actual existence as applied to records and communications. Furthermore, its transition into signs of sound is apparent in the Aztec and the Maya ch aracters, in which stage it was only arrested by foreign conquest The earliest lessons of the birth and growth of culture in this most important branch of investigation can therefore be best learned from the Western Hemisphere. In this connection it may be noticed that picture- writing is found in sustained vigor on the same continent where sign- language has prevailed or continued in active operation to an extent unknown in other parts of the world. These modes of expression, t. e., transient and permanent idea-writing, are so correlated in their origin and development that neither can be studied with advantage to the exclusion of the other. The limits assigned to this paper allow only of its comprehending the Indians north of Mexico, except as the pictographs of other peoples are introduced for comparison. Among these no discovery has > et been made of any of the several devices, such as the rebus, or the initial, adopted elsewhere, by which the element of sound apart from significance has been introduced. The first stage of pic'ure- writing as recognized among the Egyptians was the representation of a material object in such style or connection as determined it not to be a mere portraiture of that object, but figurative of some other object. or person. This stage is abundantly exhibited among the Indians. Indeed, their personal and tribal names thus objectively represented constitute the largest part of their picture- writing so far thoroughly understood. The second step gained by the Egyptians was when the picture became used as a symbol of some quality or characteristic. It can be readily seen how a hawk with bright eye and lofty flight might be selected as a symbol of divinity and royalty, and that the crocodile should denote darkness, while a slightly further step in metaphysical symbolism made the ostrich feather, from the equality of its filaments, typical of truth. It is evident from examples given in the present paper that the North American tribes at the time of the Columbian discovery had entered upon this second step of picture- writing, though with marked inequality between tribes and regions in advance therein. None of them appear to have reached such proficiency in the expression of connected ideas by picture as is shown in the sign- language existing among some of them, in which even conjunctions and prepositions are indicated. Still many truly ideographic pictures are known. A consideration relative to the antiquity of mystic symbolism, and its position in the several culture- periods, arises in this connection. It appears to have been an outgrowth of human thought, perhaps in the nature of an excrescence, useful for a time, but abandoned after a certain stage of advancement. A criticism has been made on the whole subject of pictography by Dr. Richard Andree, who, in his work, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche, Stuttgart, 1878, has described and figured a large number of |
