The Indians of Guiana know nothing about the picture writing by tradition. They scout the idea of their having been made by the hand of man, and ascribe them to the handiwork of the Makunaima, their great spirit. Nevertheless, they do not regard them with any superstitious feelings, looking upon them merely as curiosities, which is the more extraordinary as there are numbers of large rocks without any markings on some rivers, which they will not even look at in passing, lest some calamity should overtake them. Their Peaimen or sorcerers always squeeze tobacco juice in their eyes on approaching these, but pay no regard to the sculptured rocks. In the Pacaraima mountains, between the villages of Mora and Itabay, the path passes through a circle of square stones placed on one end, one of which has a carving upon it; some of these blocks have been thrown down and broken by the Indians, clearly proving their utter disregard for them. If then there were any traditions regarding these writings handed down from father to son, I conclude that the Indians of the present day—the most superstitious of beings—would undoubtedly treat them with awe and respect. Again, if their forefathers were as indolent as they now are, they never would have gone to the trouble of making these pictures merely for the purpose of passing away their time, which they could have more easily accomplished by lying in their hammocks from morning to night in a semi-dreamy sort of state, as their descendants do at present. As these figures were evidently cut with great care and at much labor by a former race of men, I conclude that they were made for some great purpose, probably a religious one, as some of the figures give indications of Phallic worship.
PETROGLYPHS IN BRAZIL.
The following is an abstract from a paper by J. Whitfield on Rock Inscriptions in Brazil, in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1874, Vol. III, p. 114:
The rock inscriptions were visited in August, 1865, during an exploring expedition for gold mines in the province of Ceará. Several similar inscriptions are said to exist in the interior of the province of Ceará, as well as in the provinces of Pernambuco and Piauhy, especially in the Sertaõs, that is, in the thinly-wooded parts of the interior, but no mention is ever made of their having been seen near the coast.
In the margin and bed only of the river are the rocks inscribed. On the margin they extend in some instances to fifteen or twenty yards. Except in the rainy season the stream is dry. The rock is a silicious schist of excessively hard and flinty texture. The marks have the appearance of having been made with a blunt heavy tool, such as might be made with an almost worn-out mason’s hammer.
The situation is about midway between Serra Grande or Ibiapaba and Serra Merioca, about seventy miles from the coast and forty west of the town Sobral. There are not any indications of works of art or other antiquarian remains, nor anything peculiar to the locality. The country is gently undulating, and of the usual character that obtains for hundreds of miles extending along the base of the Serra Ibiapaba.
The native population attribute all the ‘Letreiros’ (inscriptions), as they do everything else of which they have no information, to the Dutch as records of hidden wealth. The Dutch, however, only occupied the country for a few years in the early part of the seventeenth century. Along the coast numerous forts, the works of the Dutch, still remain; but there are no authentic records of their ever having established themselves in the interior of the country, and less probability still of their amusing themselves with inscribing puzzling hieroglyphics, which must have been a work of time, on the rocks of the far interior, for the admiration of wandering Indians.
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.