Signs Connected with Pictographs

The picture writing of Indians is the sole form in which they recorded events and ideas that can ever be interpreted without the aid of a traditional key, such as is required for the signification of the wampum belts of the Northeastern tribes and the quippus of Peru. Strips of bark, tablets of wood, dressed skins of animals, and the smooth surfaces of rock have been and still are used for such records, those most ancient, and therefore most interesting, being of course the rock etchings; but they can only be deciphered, if at all, by the ascertained principles on which the more modern and the more obvious are made. Many of the numerous and widespread rock carvings are mere idle sketches—of natural objects, mainly animals, and others are as exclusively mnemonic as the wampum above mentioned. Even since the Columbian discovery some tribes have employed devices yet ruder than the rudest pictorial attempt as markers for the memory. An account of one of these is given in E. Winslow's Relation (A.D. 1624), Col. Mass. Hist. Soc., 2d series, ix, 1822, p. 99, as follows:

"Instead of records and chronicles they take this course: Where any remarkable act is done, in memory of it, either in the place or by some pathway near adjoining, they make a round hole in the ground about a foot deep, and as much over, which, when others passing by behold, they inquire the cause and occasion of the same, which being once known, they are careful to acquaint all men as occasion serveth therewith. And lest such holes should be filled or grown over by any accident, as men pass by they will often renew the same; by which means many things of great antiquity are fresh in memory. So that as a man traveleth, if he can understand his guide, his journey will be the less tedious, by reason of the many historical discourses which will be related unto him."

Gregg, in Commerce of the Prairies, New York, 1844, II, 286, says of the Plains tribes: "When traveling, they will also pile heaps of stones upon mounds or conspicuous points, so arranged as to be understood by their passing comrades; and sometimes they set up the bleached buffalo heads, which are everywhere scattered over those plains, to indicate the direction of their march, and many other facts which may be communicated by those simple signs."

A more ingenious but still arbitrary mode of giving intelligence is practiced at this day by the Abnaki, as reported by H.L. Masta, chief of that tribe, now living at Pierreville, Quebec. When they are in the woods, to say "I am going to the east," a stick is stuck in the ground pointing to that direction, Fig. 151. "Am not gone far," another stick is stuck across the former, close to the ground, Fig. 152. "Gone far" is the reverse, Fig. 153. The number of days journey of proposed absence is shown by the same number of sticks across the first; thus Fig. 154 signifies five days' journey. Cutting the bark off from a tree on one, two, three or four sides near the butt means "Have had poor, poorer, poorest luck." Cutting it off all around the tree means "I am starving." Smoking a piece of birch bark and hanging it on a tree means "I am sick."

Where there has existed any form of artistic representation, however rude, and at the same time a system of ideographic gesture signs prevailed, it would be expected that the form of the latter would appear in the former. The sign of river and water mentioned on page 358 being established, when it became necessary or desirable to draw a character or design to convey the same idea, nothing would be more natural than to use the graphic form of delineation which is also above described. It was but one more and an easy step to fasten upon bark, skins, or rocks the evanescent air pictures that still in pigments or carvings preserve their skeleton outline, and in their ideography approach, as has been shown above, the rudiments of the phonetic alphabets that have been constructed by other peoples. A transition stage between gestures and pictographs, in which the left hand is used as a supposed drafting surface upon which the index draws lines, is exhibited in the Dialogue between Alaskan Indians, infra, page 498. This device is common among deaf-mutes, without equal archæologic importance, as it may have been suggested by the art of writing, with which they are generally acquainted, even if not instructed in it.

The reproduction of apparent gesture lines in the pictographs made by our Indians has, for obvious reasons, been most frequent in the attempt to convey those subjective ideas which were beyond the range of an artistic skill limited to the direct representation of objects, so  that the part of the pictographs which is still the most difficult of interpretation is precisely the one which the study of sign language is likely to elucidate. The following examples of pictographs of the Indians, in  some cases compared with those from foreign sources, have been selected because their interpretation is definitely known and the gestures corresponding with or suggested by them are well determined.

The common Indian gesture sign for sun is: "Right hand closed, the index and thumb curved, with tips touching, thus approximating a circle, and held toward the sky," the position of the fingers of the hand forming a circle being

shown in Fig. 155. Two of the Egyptian characters for sun, Figs. 156

and 157, are plainly the universal conception of the disk. The latter, together with indications of rays, Fig. 158, and in its linear form, Fig. 159, (Champollion, Dict., 9), constitutes the Egyptian character for light. The rays emanating from the whole disk appear in Figs. 160 and 161, taken from a MS. contributed by Mr. G.K. Gilbert of the United States Geological Survey,
from the rock etchings of the Moqui pueblos in Arizona. The same authority gives from the same
locality Figs. 162 and 163 for sun, which may be distinguished from several other similar etchings for star also given by him, Figs. 164, 165, 166, 167, by always showing some indication of a face, the latter being absent in the characters denoting star.

		With the above characters for sun compare Fig. 168, found at Cuzco, Peru, and taken from Wiener's Pérou et Bolivie, Paris, 1880, p. 706. The Ojibwa pictograph for sun is seen in Fig. 169, taken from Schoolcraft, loc. cit., v. 1,
pl. 56, Fig. 67. A gesture sign for sunrise, morning, is: Forefinger of right hand crooked to represent half of the sun's disk and pointed or extended to the left, then slightly elevated. (Cheyenne II.) In this connection it may be noted that when the gesture is carefully made in open country the pointing would generally be to the east, and the body

turned so that its left would be in that direction. In a room in a city, or under circumstances where the points of the compass are not specially attended to, the left side supposes the east, and the gestures relating to sun, day, &c., are made with such reference. The half only of the disk represented in the   above gesture appears in the following Moqui pueblo etchings for morning and sunrise, Figs. 170, 171, and 172. (Gilbert, MS.)

		A common gesture for day is when the
index and thumb form a circle (remaining fingers closed) and are passed from east to west.

Fig. 173 shows a pictograph found in Owen's Valley, California, a similar one being reported in the Ann. Rep. Geog. Survey west of the 100th Meridian for 1876, Washington, 1876, pl. opp. p. 326, in which the circle may indicate either day or month (both these gestures having the same execution), the course of the sun or moon being represented perhaps in mere contradistinction to the vertical

line, or perhaps the latter signifies one. Fig. 174 is a pictograph of the Coyotero Apaches, found at Camp Apache, in Arizona, reported in the Tenth Ann. Rep. U.S. Geolog. and Geograph. Survey of the Territories for 1876, Washington, 1878, pl. lxxvii. The sun and the ten spots of approximately the same shape represent the days, eleven, which the party with five pack mules passed in traveling through the country. The separating lines are the nights, and may include the conception of covering over and consequent obscurity above referred to (page 354). A common sign for moon, month, is the right hand closed, leaving the thumb and index extended, but curved to form a half circle and

		the hand held toward the sky, in a position which is illustrated in Fig. 175, to which curve the Moqui etching, Fig. 176, and the identical form in the ancient Chinese has an obvious resemblance.
	The crescent, as we commonly figure the satellite, appears also in the Ojibwa pictograph, Fig. 177 (Schoolcraft, I, pl. 58), which is the same, with a slight addition, as the Egyptian figurative character.

The sign for sky, also heaven, is generally made by passing the index from east to west across the zenith. This curve is apparent in the Ojibwa pictograph Fig.

178, reported in Schoolcraft, I, pl. 18, Fig. 21, and is abbreviated in the Egyptian character with the same meaning, Fig. 179 (Champollion, Dict., p. 1).

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