lOO DANIEL WILSON ON THE ARTISTIC 



ture-writiiig or icleography, aud so to arbitrary hieroglyphic sigus, or word-writing, is 

 seen in the graven records of Copau or Palenque, and on the ancient monuments of the 

 Nile. 



It is replete with interest for us 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 this 

 western hemisj)here 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 refor- 

 mer 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 recognize 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, aud 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 simp-le 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, aud 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 ; aud 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 descrip- 

 tion 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, 

 Tor the sky a bow above it ; 

 White tlie 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 tlie top a point for noontide ; 

 And for rain and cloudy \\eather 

 Waving lines descending from it." 



The picture-writing of the Aztecs, though greatly improved in execution, aud simpli- 

 fied by abbreviations, w^as the same in principle as that of the rude northern tribes. The 

 recognized signs of the months and days of their calendar are not greatly in advance of 

 Indian symbolism ; w^hile 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 graz- 

 ing scene recovered from a Swiss grotto near Thayingen. One example of such a pictorial 



