CHAPTER XVI. 
HISTORY. 
It is seldom possible to distinguish by pictographs, or indeed to 
decide from oral accounts obtained from Indians, whether those pur- 
porting to be historical have a genuine basis or are merely traditions 
connected with myths. This chapter may therefore be correlated with 
Chapter Ix, section 5, which has special relation to traditions as mne- 
monically pictured. The notes now following are considered to refer 
to actual events or to explain the devices used in the record of such 
events. 
The account by Dr. Brinton (c) of the Walum-Olum or bark record 
of the Lenni-Lenapé, as also some of Schooleraft’s pictographie illus- 
trations, may with some propriety be regarded as historic, but are so 
well known that their specific citation is needless. 
The American Indians have not produced detailed historic pictures, 
such as appear on the Column of Trajan and the Bayeux tapestry, with 
such excellence in art as to be self-interpreting. Neither do they equal 
in this respect the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, which portray 
the ordering of battle, the engineering work of sieges, the plan of 
‘amps, and the tactical moves of chieftains. Those sculptures also 
depict the whole civil and domestic lives of the peoples of the several 
nations. In some of these particulars the Mexicans approached these 
graphic details, as is shown below, but, as a rule, in the three divisions 
of America, history was noted and preserved by ideographic methods 
supplementing the incompleteness of artistie skill. 
With regard to the advance gained by the Mexicans reference is 
made, with regret that copious quotation is impossible, to the essay of 
Henry Phillips, jr. (a), and to the monumental work of Eugéne Boban, 
before cited. It will be noticed by students that ideography and its 
attendant conventionalism continually appear in the pictographic his- 
tories mentioned. The original authors had not advanced very far in 
art, but they had not lost the thought-language, which preceded art. 
The subject is here divided into: (1) Record of expedition; (2) Record 
of battle; (3) Record of migration; (4) Record of sociologic events. 
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