122 Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Nation. 



remains of the architecture of the earlier Polynesians, which their 

 degenerate offspring of the present day can only behold with 

 amazement, rather as the scanty but interesting relics cf an 

 ancient and primitive civilisation, of which both the memory and 

 the evidences have almost passed away. In short, it appears to 

 me incontestable 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 

 when held closer 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 French, the most powerful Indian nation in North 

 America was the Iroquois — a nation whom it afterwards required 

 many a fierce battle to exterminate. That warlike nation was 

 sufficiently civilived 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 Prench, 

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

 of the Prench, 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 moen in her fir.^t 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, pub- 

 lished in the sixth volume of the Archseologia, 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 



