It is obvious that before attempting the interpretation of pictographs, concerning which no direct information is to be obtained, there should be a full collection of known characters, in order that through them the unknown may be learned. When any considerable number of objects in a pictograph are actually known, the remainder may be ascertained by the context, the relation, and the position of the several designs, and sometimes by the recognized principles of the art.
The Bureau of Ethnology has been engaged, therefore, for a considerable time in collating a large number of characters in a card-catalogue arranged primarily by similarity in forms, and in attaching to each character any significance ascertained or suggested. As before explained, the interpretation upon which reliance is mainly based is that which has been made known by direct information from Indians who themselves were actually makers of pictographs at the time of giving the interpretation. Apart from the comparisons obtained by this collation, the only mode of ascertaining the meaning of the characters, in other words, the only key yet discovered, is in the study of the gesture-sign included in many of them. The writer several years ago suggested that among people where a system of ideographic gesture-signs prevailed, it would be expected that their form would appear in any mode of artistic representation made by the same people with the object of conveying ideas or recording facts. When a gesture-sign had been established and it became necessary or desirable to draw a character or design to convey the same ideas, nothing could be more natural than to use the graphic form or delineation which was known and used in the gesture-sign. It was but one more step, and an easy one, to fasten upon bark, skins, or rocks the evanescent air pictures of the signs.
The industrious research of Dr. D. G. Brinton, whose recent work, The Lenâpé and their Legends, before mentioned, is received as this paper passes through the press, has discovered passages in Rafinesque’s generally neglected and perhaps unduly discredited volumes, by which that eccentric but acute writer seems to have announced the general proposition that the graphic signs of the Indians correspond to their manual signs. He also asserted that he had collected a large number of them, though the statement is not clear, for if all Indian pictographs are, in a very general sense, “based upon their language of signs,” all of those pictographs might be included in his alleged collection, without an ascertained specific relation between any pictograph and any sign. It is probable, however, that Rafinesque actually had at least valuable notes on the subject, the loss of which is greatly to be regretted.
In the paper “Sign Language among the North American Indians,” published in the First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, a large number of instances were given of the reproduction of gesture lines in the pictographs made by the North American Indians, and they appeared to be most frequent when there was an attempt to convey subjective ideas. These were beyond the range of an artistic skill limited to the rough presentation of objects in outline. It was suggested, therefore, that the part of pictographs which is the most difficult of interpretation in the absence of positive knowledge, was the one in the elucidation of which the study of sign-language would assist. Many pictographs in the present paper, the meaning of which is definitely known from direct sources, are noted in connection with the gesture-signs corresponding with the same idea, which signs are also understood from independent evidence.
So numerous and conclusive are these examples, that it is not necessary to add to them save by presenting the pictograph copied in Figure 155, as one of special importance in this connection.
During the summer of 1882 Dr. W. J. Hoffman visited the Tule River Agency, California, where he found a large rock painting, of which Figure 155 is a copy made by him, the following being his description:
The agency is located upon the western side of the Sierra Nevada in the headwater cañons of the branches of the south fork of Tule River. The country is at present occupied by several tribes of the Yokuts linguistic stock, and the only answer received to inquiries respecting the age or origin of the record was, that it was found there when the ancestors of the present tribes arrived. The local migrations of the various Indian tribes of this part of California are not yet known with sufficient certainty to determine to whom the records may be credited, but all appearances with respect to the weathering and disintegration of the rock upon which the record is etched, the appearance of the coloring matter subsequently applied, and the condition of the small depressions made at the time for mixing the pigments with a viscous substance would indicate that the work had been performed about a century ago.
The Tulare Indians have been residents of that part of the State for at least one hundred years, and the oldest now living state that the records were found by their ancestors, though whether more than two generations ago could not be ascertained.
