26 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
reference to sound, gesture language being the other and probably ear- 
lier form. Whether remaining purely ideographic, or having become 
conventional, picture-writing is the direct and durable expression of 
ideas of which gesture language gives the transient expression. Orig- 
inally it was not connected with the words of any language. When 
adopted for syllabaries or alphabets, which is the historical course of 
its evolution, it ceased to be the immediate and became the secondary 
expression of the ideas framed in oral speech. The writing common 
in civilization may properly be styled sound-writing, as it does not 
directly record thoughts, but presents them indirectly, after they have 
passed through the phase of sound. The trace of pictographs in alpha- 
bets and syllabaries is discussed in the present work under its proper 
heading so far as is necessary after the voluminous treatises on the topic, 
and new illustrations are presented. It is sufficient for the present 
to note that all the varied characters of script and print now cur- 
rent are derived directly or mediately from pictorial representations 
of objects. Bacon well said that ‘pictures are dumb histories,” and he 
might have added that in the crude pictures of antiquity were con- 
tained the germs of written words. 
The importance of the study of picture-writing depends partly upon 
the result of its examination as a phase in the evolution of human 
culture. As the invention of alphabetic writing is admitted to be the 
great step marking the change from barbarism to civilization, the his- 
tory of its earlier development must be valuable. It is inferred from 
internal evidence, though not specifically reported in history, that pic- 
ture-writing preceded and generated the graphic systems of Egypt, 
Assyria, and China, but in America, especially in North America, its 
use is still current. It can be studied here without any requirement 
of inference or hypothesis, in actual existence as applied to records 
and communications. Furthermore, the commencement of its evolu- 
tion into signs of sound is apparent in the Aztec and the Maya 
characters, in which transition stage it was arrested by foreign con- 
quest. The earliest lessons of the genesis and growth of culture in 
this important branch of investigation may, therefore, be best learned 
from the western hemisphere. In this connection it should be noticed 
that picture-writing is found in sustained vigor on the same continent 
where sign language has prevailed and has continued in active opera- 
tion to an extent historically unknown in other parts of the world. 
These modes of expression, i. e., transient and permanent thought- 
writing, are so correlated in their origin and development that neither 
ean be studied to the best advantage without including the other. 
Unaequainted with these facts, but influenced by an assumption that 
America must have been populated from the eastern hemisphere, some 
enterprising persons have found or manufactured American inscrip- 
tions composed of characters which may be tortured into identity with 
some of the Eurasian alphabets or syllabaries, but which sometimes 
