Hoiv Ancient America Wrote. 213 



clu'onicle— historical events and matters pertaining to government, 

 religion and social life— could be portrayed with the simple means of 

 wampum strings, knotted cords and pictographs, since these matters 

 required merely the recording of concrete ideas in their totality without 

 regard to the elementary parts of the sentence. 



A brief description of these auxiliaries will best elucidate how they 

 were rendered available. The \Yampum, employed chiefly by the 

 northern tribes, consisted of beads of shells and colored bits of wood, 

 pierced in the middle, and hung in such a manner as to form figures 

 and characters. Each color, size, shape, and combination of strings, 

 had its peculiar meaning. Brown and deep violet, which were the 

 most valuable, portended something of serious import ; white signified 

 peace and kindness; red was the emblem of war, while a black belt 

 gave warning of an approaching evil, or an earnest remonstrance ; col- 

 ored figures intermixed with the beads, expressed new ideas ; a red 

 belt, wrought with the figure of a hatchet m white, declared war; a 

 black belt, with two hands joined in white, indicated peace. Besides 

 the strings were used to keep an account of time, and to record events 

 they were given in the delivery of speeches and messages, and at the 

 execution of treaties, to recall the chief articles of the transaction. 

 These public documents, says Loskiel, are carefully preserved in a 

 chest made for this purpose. At certain seasons, the tribes meet to 

 study their meaning, and renew the ideas of which they are an emblem 

 and confirmation ; and as it is the custom to admit even the young 

 boys, who are related to the chief, to these assemblies, they 

 become early acquainted with all the affairs of the state, and thus the 

 contents of their documents are transmitted to posterity and cannot 

 easily be forgotten. 



Besides these belts, various simpler mnemonic aids were employed, 

 such as strings of pebbles and fruit stones, and circular slabs, 

 engraved with characters. The Indians of North Carolina and the 

 Assiniboins, used parcels of reeds of different length and marked with 

 notches. In memorizing their lessons, the children in the public 

 schools of Mexico availed themselves of belts of coral. The ancient 

 Carans, of Quito, were accustomed to perpetuate the memory of im- 

 portant events by a significant juxtaposition of small pieces of wood, 

 clay, and stones, of various sizes, colors and forms, which were kept in 

 their temples, palaces and tombs.* Analagous to the wampum belts 

 are the knotted cords or quippos, mainly in use with the southern 

 tribes. They were known to the Chibchas, Cocomucos, Araucanians, 



<=Hassaurek, " Four Years in South America." p. 361. Also see Bollaert. 



