88 PICTURE-WEITING AND WOED-WRITTNG. 



Catlin tells tow the cHef of the Kickapoos, a man of great 

 ability, generally known as tlie " Shawnee Prophet," having, 

 as was said, learnt the doctrines of Christianity from a mis- 

 sionary, taught them to his tribe, pretending to have received 

 a supernatural mission. He composed a prayer, which he 

 wrote down on a flat stick, " in characters somewhat resem- 

 bling Chinese letters." When Catlin visited the tribe, every 

 man, woman, and child used to repeat this prayer morning 

 and evening, placing the fore-finger under the first character, 

 repeating a sentence or two, and so going on to the next, 

 till the prayer, which took some ten minutes to repeat, was 

 finished.^ I do not know whether any of these curious prayer- 

 sticks are now to be seen, but they were probably made on the 

 same principle as the suggestive pictures used for the native 

 Indian songs. 



Picture-writing is found among savage races in all quarters 

 of the globe, and, so far as we can judge, its principle is the 

 same everywhere. The pictures on the Lapland magic drums, 

 of which we have interpretations, serve much the same purpose 

 as the American writing. Savage paintings, or scratchings, or 

 carvings on rocks, have a family likeness, whether we find 

 them in North or South America, in Siberia or Australia. The 

 interpretation of rock-pictures, which mostly consist of few 

 figures, is in general a hopeless task, unless a key is to be had. 

 Many are, no doubt, mere pictorial utterances, drawings of 

 animals and things without any historical sense; some are 

 names, as the totems carved by those who sprang upon the 

 dangerous leaping-rock at the Red Pipestone Quarry.^ Dupaix 

 noticed in Mexico a sculptured eagle, apparently on the 

 boundary of Quauhnahuac, " the place near tlie eagle," now 

 called Cuernavaca,^ and the fact suggests that rock-sculptures 

 may often be, like this, symbolic boundary-marks. But there 

 is seldom a key to be had to the reading of rock-sculptures, 

 which the natives generally say were done by the people long 



^ Catlin, ' North American Indians,' 7th ed. ; London, 1848, vol. ii. p. 98. 

 2 Catlin, vol. ii. p. 170. 



^ Lord Kingsboroiigh, ' Antiquities of Mexico ;' London, 1830, etc., vol. iv. 

 part i., no. 31, and vol. v. Expl. 



