MALLERY. } THE MICMAC HIEROGLYPHICS. 667 
to have been a band of the Ojibwa, which shows a connection between 
the practice of the Ojibwa and that of the Micmacs, both being of the 
Algonquian stock, to mark on bark ideographie or other significant in- 
scriptions which would assist them to memorize what struck them as of 
special interest and importance, notably religious rites. Many instances 
are given in the present paper, and the spontaneous employment of 
prayer sticks by other persons of the same stock is also illustrated 
in Figs. 715 and 716. 
The next notice in date is by Pere Chrétien Le Clereq (a), a member of 
the Recollect order of Franciscans who landed on the coast of Gaspé 
in 1675, learned the language of the Micmaes and worked with them 
continuously for several years. 
It would appear that he observed and took advantage or the picto- 
graphic practice of the Indians, which may have been continued from 
that reported by Father Druillettes a few years earlier with reference to 
the same general region, or may have been a separate and independent 
development in the tribe with which Father Le Clercq was most closely 
connected. 
His quaint account is translated as follows: 
Our Lord inspired me with this method the second year of my mission, when, 
being greatly embarrassed as to the mode in which I should teach the Indians to 
pray, I noticed some children making marks on birch bark with coal, and they 
pointed to them with their fingers at every word of the prayer which they pro- 
nounced, This made me think that by giving them some form which would aid 
their memory by fixed characters, I should advance much more rapidly than by 
teaching on the plan of making them repeat over and over what I said. I was 
charmed to know that I was not deceived, and that these characters which I had 
traced on paper produced all the effect I desired, so that in a few days they learned all 
theirprayers without difficulty. Icannotdescribeto you the ardor with which these 
poor Indians competed with each other in praiseworthy emulation which should be 
the most learned and the ablest. It costs, indeed, much time and pains to make all 
they require, and especially since I enlarged them so as to include all the prayers 
of the church, with the sacred mysteries of the trinity, incarnation, baptism, pen- 
ance, and the eucharist. 
There is no description whatever of the characters. 
The next important printed notice or appearance of the Miemace char- 
acters is in the work of Rey. Christian Kauder, a Redemptorist mission- 
ary, the title page of which is given in Fig. 1082. It was printed in 
Vienna in 1866 and therefore was about two centuries later than the first 
recorded invention of the characters. During those two centuries the 
French and therefore the Roman Catholic influences had been much of 
the time dormant in the habitat of the Miemacs (the enforced exodus of 
the French from Acadie being about 1755). Father Kauder was one of 
the most active in the renewal of the missions. He learned the Micmac 
language, probably gathered together such “ hieroglyphs” on rolls of 
bark as had been preserved, added to them parts of the Greek and 
Roman alphabet and other designs, and arranged the whole in syste- 
matic and grammatie form. After about twenty years of work upon 
