MALLERY.] DETERMINATIVE DESIGNS. 173 
the theory about the mythical mound builders or some other suppo- 
sititious race. All suggestions of this nature should at once be aban- 
doned. The practice of pictography does not belong to civilization 
and declines when an alphabet becomes popularly known. Neither is 
there the slightest evidence that an alphabet or syllabary was ever 
used in pre-Columbian America by the aborignes, though there is 
some trace of Runic inscriptions. The fact that the Maya and Aztec 
peoples were rapidly approaching to such modes of expressing thought, 
and that the Dakota and Ojibwa had well entered upon that line of 
evolution, shows that they had proceeded no farther, and it is admitted 
that they were favorable representatives of the tribes of the continent 
in this branch of art. The theory mentioned requires the assumption, 
without a particle of evidence, that the rock sculptures are alphabetic, 
and therefore were made by a supposititious and extinct race. Topers 
of the mysterious may delight in such dazing infusions of perverted 
fancy, but they are repulsive to the sober student. 
The foregoing remarks apply mainly to rock inscriptions and not to 
pictographs on other substances, the discussion and illustration of 
which occupy the greater part of the present work. In that division 
there is no need of warning against wild theories or uncertain data. 
The objects are in hand and their current use as well as their signifi- 
cance is understood. Their description and illustration by classes is 
presented in the above chapters with such detail that further discus- 
sion here would be mere repetition. 
One line of thought, however, is so connected with several of the 
classifications that it may here be mentioned with the suggestion that 
the preceding headings, with the illustrations presented under each, may 
be reviewed in reference to the methodical progress of pictography 
toward a determined and convenient form of writing. This exhibition 
of evolution was arrested by foreign invasion before the indirect signs 
of sound had superseded the direct presentments of sight for communi- 
cation and record. Traces of it appear throughout the present paper, 
but are more intelligently noticed on a second examination than in 
cursory reading. In the Winter Counts of Battiste Good there are 
many characters where the figure of a human being is connected with 
an object, which shows his tribal status or the disease of which he 
died, and the characters representing the tribe or disease are purely 
determinative. 
The discrimination which is made between animals and objects por- 
trayed simply as such, and as supernatural or mystic, is shown in the 
many illustrations of Ojibwa and Zuni devices, in which the heart is con- 
nected with a line extending to the mouth, and those of the Ojibwa and 
the Dakota, where the spirals indicate spirit or wakan. Animals are 
often portrayed without such lines, in which cases it is understood that 
they are only the animals in natural condition, but with the designa- 
tions or determinatives they are intended to be supernatural. Among 
