FACULTY IN ABOEIGINAL EACI«. 97 



of them, however, approaching to exactness except the deer, the outline of which showed 

 certainly a good eye for proportion." These are the work of the Jemez Indians, who 

 worshipped the sun, moon, and fire ; representations of which in circular form, and with 

 zigzag barbed lines for lightning, also occur on the walls.' Lieutenant Simpson, remarks 

 that he asked a Jemez Indian " Whether they still worshipped the Sun, as God, with con- 

 trition of heart.'' His reply was : " Why not ? He governs the World ! " 



Dr. Hoffman figures and interprets a curious rock-painting, copied by him from 

 a granite boulder at Tulare River, California. It covers an area of about twelve feet by 

 eight ; and the largest figure is about six feet in length, and appears to be the work of an 

 advanced party of native explorers, intended for the guidance of those who followed on 

 their trail." Dr. Hoffman also furnishes some interesting illustrations of the reproduction 

 of gesture-language in native pictographs preserved in the Museum of San Francisco. 

 Certain symbols are in very general use. But the description of an Innuit drawing on a 

 slat of wood, as interpreted by a native, partly in his own dialect, but largely supple- 

 mented by gestures, will best illustrate this development of a system of picture-writing 

 among a savage people. A human figure directs his right hand to his own side, while, 

 wùth his left, he points away from him. This is the Ego, the personal pronoun /. Again, 

 a simple tracing of the like figure, successively with a boat-paddle over his head ; his 

 right hand to the side of his head ; one finger elevated ; his hand stretched out in the 

 direction indicated, with his harpoon, or his bow and arrow, expresses his various 

 actions. A spot enclosed in a circle, and again a blank circle, mark the islands — inhabited 

 or uninhabited, — to which he is bound. A canoe, with two persons in it, defines the num- 

 ber going and the mode of transport ; a phoca, or other auiïnal, indicates the prey ; and 

 the record closes with an outline of the house, or tent, towards which the canoe is directed. 

 The whole is ec^uivalent to a written memorandum left behind, to inform the members of 

 his family that he has gone in his boat to a particular island, where he -will pass a night, — 

 the right hand to the side of the head being a symbol of sleep. From thence he will pro- 

 ceed to another island, where he purposes to catch a seal or sea-lion, and then he will 

 return home. It is in no degree surprising to find that nearly the same symbols are in 

 use by widely different tribes ; for, alike in their pictographs and gestures, they naturally 

 aim at the most familiar and literal representations. The Eskimo and Alaskans represent 

 death, in their drawings and bone carvings by the symbol of a headless body, in nearly 

 the same way as the Iroquois, the Algonkins, and the Blackfeet. To this is added the spear, 

 the bow and arrow, or the gun, to indicate the mode of death by violence. The ordinary 

 symbol of sepulchral memorial is the reversing of the totem and other objects pictured 

 on the gTave-post. A succession of lines in rows or columns is the simplest mode of 

 primitive numeration, perpetuated among the Egyptians even so late as the Ptolemaic 

 dynasty. It appears to have been in xise among the cave-men of the Vézère in palœolithic 

 times, and is common to all such records. But in the Eskimo and Indian pictographs 

 the elevated hand, with one or more fingers extended, serves for numeration ; and where 

 the extended fingers and thumbs of both hands are represented on an exaggerated scale, 

 it signifies miiHUude. The native gestures, drawings, and spoken languages, have indeed 



1 Reports of Secretary of "War, IT. S., 18.50, p. 67. 



- Transactions of Anthro^K)!. Soc, Washington, ii. 130. 



Sec. II., 1885. 13. 



