216 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1901. 



but wood, bone, and pottery were in common u.se. The exhibit will 

 convey a good idea of the range of form and material, and of the 

 geographical distribution. 



In a limited manner the specimens in the twelfth group (Plate 57) 

 illustrate the attempts of the aboriginal Americans to record their 

 thoughts in symbols. Save in the making of calendars the art of 

 expressing concrete thoughts in syllabic or phonetic symbols had not 

 been reached anywhere, even among the barbaric tribes of Mexico, 

 Central America, and Peru. Writing was by means of pictures, parts 

 of pictures, and rebuses. The Eskimo etched long prompters for 

 stories on ivory, the forest tribes carved them on wood or scratched 

 them on bark, the Plains Indians painted them on robes, while the 

 Mexicans and Mayans sculptured them in stone or painted them on 

 codices of native paper. The originals of the writings, called codices, 

 were painted on cotton cloth, skins, or paper made from the maguey 

 plant, by native artists, long before the conquest by Spain. They 

 contain histories, genealogical tables, tribute rolls, land titles, laws, 

 calendars, and minute instructions concerning matters of religion. 

 Hundreds of them were ruthlessly destined by the Spaniards, but a 

 few were preserved and are now kept with strictest care in the great 

 libraries of Europe. By the munificence of His Excellency, Duke de 

 Lou bat, copies of existing specimens are being made in the highest 

 style of modern reproduction, so that scholars may have the oppor- 

 tunity of studying them. In this exhibit will be seen facsimilies of 

 the Codex Vaticanus, 3773, and the Codex de Bios, now in the Vatican 

 Library; Codex Cospianus, library of the University of Bologna; and 

 Codex Borbonicus, in the Palais Bourbon, Paris. 



The thirteenth exhibit is designed to show the distribution of time- 

 marking musical devices among the aboriginal Americans. There was 

 entire absence of attempts at harmonics among the native tribes of 

 the Western Hemisphere. Their melodic scale has not been deter- 

 mined. No mention of stringed musical instruments is found in any 

 early writer, and all such found in the hands of Indians now are of 

 foreign patterns. The whistle, the flageolet, and the simple conch- 

 shell horn were in vogue in many places, but the universal musical 

 instrument was for rhythm alone, in the form of the drum or the 

 rattle. The Eskimo made his time-marking instrument of skin, the 

 West Coast tribes of wood, the Indians of the plains of hoofs of ani- 

 mals, the Pueblo Indians of gourds, the coast tribes of shells, those of 

 British Columbia of wood and basketry. In each region the time- 

 keeper found some natural object ready at hand to do him service. 



EXHIBITS REPRESENTING THE ART COLLECTIONS. 



Distinct from the above groups of ethnological material are two 

 series of exhibits representing the art collections of the Smithsonian 



