562 MEDICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 



&quot; Mr. Astle informs ns that the first Chinese letters were knots on 

 cords.&quot; 



Speaking of the ancient Japanese, the Chinese chronicles relate: 

 &quot;They have no writing, but merely cut certain marks upon wood and 

 make knots in cord.&quot; 2 In the very earliest myths of the Chinese we 

 read of &quot;knotted cords, which they used instead of characters, and to 

 instruct their children. &quot; Malte-Brun calls attention to the fact that 

 &quot; the hieroglyphics and little cords in use amongst the ancient Chinese 

 recal in a striking manner the figured writing of the Mexicans and 

 the Quipos of Peru.&quot; 4 &quot;Bach combination [of the quipu] had, how 

 ever, a fixed ideographic value in a certain branch of knowledge, and 

 thus the quipu differed essentially from the Catholic rosary, tbe Jewish 

 phylactery, or the knotted strings of the natives of North America and 

 Siberia, to all of which it has at times been compared.&quot; s 



E. 13. Tylor differs in opinion from Brinton. According to Tylor, 

 &quot;the quipu is a near relation of the rosary and the wampum-string.&quot;&quot; 



The use of knotted cords by natives of the Caroline Islands, as a 

 means of preserving a record of time, is noted by Kotzebue in several 

 places. For instance : &quot; Kadu kept his journal by moons, for which he 

 made a knot in a string.&quot; 7 



During the years of my service with the late Maj. Gen. Crook in the 

 Southwest, I was surprised to discover that the Apache scouts kept 

 records of the time of their absence on campaign. There were several 

 methods in vogue, the best being that of colored beads, which were 

 strung on a string, six white ones to represent the days of the week 

 and one black or other color to stand for Sundays. This method gave 

 rise to some confusion, because the Indians had been told that there 

 were four weeks, or Sundays (&quot;Domingos&quot;), in each &quot;Luna,&quot; or moon, 

 and yet they soon found that their own method ef determining time by 

 the appearance of the crescent moon was much the more satisfactory. 

 Among the Zufii I have seen little tally sticks with the marks for the 

 days and months incised on the narrow edges, and among the Apache 

 another method of indicating the flight of time by marking on a piece 

 of paj&amp;gt;er along a horizontal line a number of circles or of straight lines 

 across the horizontal datum line to represent the full days which had 

 passed, a heavy straight line for each Sunday, and a small crescent for 

 the beginning of each month. 



Farther to the south, in the Mexican state of Sonora, I was shown, 

 some twenty years ago, a piece of buckskin, upon which certain Opata 

 or Yaqui Indians I forget exactly which tribe, but it matters very 



Uiggins, Anacalypsis, vol. 2, p. 218. 



2 Vinine:, An Inglorious Columbus, p. 635. 



Du Halde. History of China, London, 1736, vol. 1, p. 270. 



1 Univ. Geog., vol. 3, book 75, p. 144, Phila,, 1832. 



&quot;Brinton, Myths of the New World, X. Y., 1868, p. 15. 



Early History of Mankind, London, 1870, p. 156. 



Voyages, vol. 3. p. 102. 



