68 ON THE OEIGIN AND MiaEATIONS Or THE POLYNESIAN NATION] 



memorv and the evidences liave almost passed away. In short, it 

 appears to me ineontestible that the practice of picture writing 

 was in general use among the earliest inhabitants of the South 

 Sea Islands ; but that in the course of exterminating wars, or 

 rather in consequence of that rust which gathers over the human 

 mind when it is cooped up within a narrow sphere, and thereby 

 loses the edge and the polish which it acquires by being 

 frequently rubbed upon the whetstone of society, this and various 

 other Asiatic arts were gradually lost. 



It is natural, however, to suppose that the impression which 

 had once been made upon the Polynesian mind, but which had 

 thus been well nigh effaced, from the causes I have enumerated, 

 in the South Sea Islands would again be revived and deepened on 

 the plains of Quito, and around the Lake of Mexico ; just as a 

 writing in sympathetic ink becomes darker and more distinct 

 w^hen held close to the fire. 



The Indian nations of North America had carried this, as well 

 as the other arts, and the general civilisation of its central 

 regions, as high as the lakes of Canada. When that province 

 was colonised by the Erench the most powerful Indian nation in 

 North America was the Iroquois — a nation which it afterwards 

 required many a fierce battle to exterminate. That warlike 

 nation was sufficiently civilised at the period I refer to, to practise 

 the Mexican art of picture-writing ; for an Indian village, situated 

 somewhere near the site of the present city of Montreal, having 

 about that period been surprised and destroyed by the French,' a 

 painting or picture-writing, which afterwards fell into the hands 

 of the Erench, containing a hieroglyphical representation of the 

 event, was executed by some Indian artist, to transmit an account 

 of it either to the distant tribes of the nation or to posterity. 

 The village was indicated by a series of wigwams, and the state in 

 which its inhabitants were surprised, by an Indian asleep. The 

 rising sun indicated that the attack had taken place at the break 

 of day ; and the moon in her first quarter on the back of a stag, 

 afforded the additional information that it had taken place in the 

 early part of that month in the Indian year of which the stag 

 was the emblem. 



In a letter to the Secretary of the Antiquarian Society, 

 pubhshed in the sixth volume of the Archaeologia, "W. Bray, Esq., 

 gives an account of an Indian picture-writing which had been 

 intended to commemorate the exploits of Wingenund, an Indian 

 warrior of the Delaware nation, about the middle of last century. 

 It consisted of a series of marks or characters inscribed within a 

 square figure on a sugar-maple tree on the Muskingham River, 

 in the State of Delaware. The first line consisted of the figure 

 of a turtle — the emblem of the tribe to which tlie warrior belonged 

 — an arbitrary mark designating the particular chief who had 



