CALENDAR HISTORY OF THE KIOWA INDIANS 



By James Mooney 



INTEODUCTIOl!} 



AGE OF ABORIGINAL, AMERICAN RECORDS 



The desire to preserve to future ages the memory of past achieve- 

 meuts is a universal human instinct, as witness the clay tablets of old 

 Chaldea, the hieroglyphs of the obelisks, our countless thousands of 

 manuscripts and printed volumes, and the gossiping old story-teller 

 of the village or the backwoods cabin. The reliability of the record 

 depends chiefly on the truthfulness of the recorder and the adequacy 

 of the method employed. In Asia, the cradle of civilization, authentic 

 history goes back thousands of years; in Europe the record begins 

 much later, while in America the aboriginal narrative, which may be 

 considered as fairly authentic, is all comprised within a thousand years. 



ABORIGINAL AMERICAN CALENDARS 



The peculiar and elaborate systems by means of which the more 

 cultivated ancient nations of the south recorded their histories are too 

 well known to students to need more than a passing notice here. It 

 was known that our own tribes had various ways of depicting their 

 mythology, their totems, or isolated facts in the life of the individual 

 or nation, but it is only within a few years that it was even suspected 

 that they could have anything like continuous historical records, even 

 in embryo. 



The fact is now established, however, that i)ictographic records cover- 

 ing periods of from sixty to perhaps two hundred years or more do, or 

 did, exist among several tribes, aiul it is entirely probable that every 

 leading mother tribe had such a record of its origin and wanderings, 

 the pictured narrative being compiled by the priests and preserved 

 with sacred care through all the shifting vicissitudes of savage life 

 until lost or destroyed iu the ruin that overwhelmed the native govern- 

 ments at the coming of the white man. Several such histories are now 

 known, and as the aboriginal field is still but partially explored, others 



may yet come to light. 



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