Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper / Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256

by Garrick Mallery

PICTOGRAPHS IN PERU.

Dr. J. J. Von Tschudi mentions in his Travels in Peru during the years 1838-1842, [Wiley and Putnam’s Library, Vols. XCIII-XCIV, New York, 1847,] Pt. II, p. 345-346, that the ancient Peruvians also used a certain kind of “hieroglyphics” which they engraved in stone, and preserved in their temples. Notices of these “hieroglyphics” are given by some of the early writers. There appears to be a great similarity between these Peruvian pictographs and those found in Mexico and Brazil.

The temptation to quote from Charles Wiener’s magnificent work Pérou et Bolivie, Paris, 1880, and also from La Antigüedad del Hombre en el Plata, by Florentine Ameghino, Paris (and Buenos Aires), 1880, must be resisted.