Pictographs are considered in the present paper chiefly in reference to their significance as one form of thought-writing directly addressed to the sight, gesture-language being the other and probably earlier form. So far as they are true ideographs they are the permanent, direct, visible expression of ideas of which gesture-language gives the transient expression. When adopted for syllabaries or alphabets, which is known to be the historical course of evolution in that regard, they have ceased to be the direct and have become the indirect expression of the ideas framed in oral speech. The writing common in civilization records sounds directly, not primarily thoughts, the latter having first been translated into sounds. The trace of pictographs in the latter use shows the earlier and predominant conceptions.
The importance of the study of pictographs depends upon their examination as a phase in the evolution of human culture, or as containing valuable information to be ascertained by interpretation.
The invention of alphabetic writing being by general admission the great step marking the change from barbarism into civilization, the history of its earlier development must be valuable. It is inferred from internal evidence that picture-writing preceded and originated the graphic systems of Egypt, Nineveh, and China, but in North America its use is still modern and current. It can be studied there, without any requirement of inference or hypothesis, in actual existence as applied to records and communications. Furthermore, its transition into signs of sound is apparent in the Aztec and the Maya characters, in which stage it was only arrested by foreign conquest. The earliest lessons of the birth and growth of culture in this most important branch of investigation can therefore be best learned from the Western Hemisphere. In this connection it may be noticed that picture-writing is found in sustained vigor on the same continent where sign-language has prevailed or continued in active operation to an extent unknown in other parts of the world. These modes of expression, i. e., transient and permanent idea-writing, are so correlated in their origin and development that neither can be studied with advantage to the exclusion of the other.
The limits assigned to this paper allow only of its comprehending the Indians north of Mexico, except as the pictographs of other peoples are introduced for comparison. Among these no discovery has yet been made of any of the several devices, such as the rebus, or the initial, adopted elsewhere, by which the element of sound apart from significance has been introduced.
The first stage of picture-writing as recognized among the Egyptians was the representation of a material object in such style or connection as determined it not to be a mere portraiture of that object, but figurative of some other object or person. This stage is abundantly exhibited among the Indians. Indeed, their personal and tribal names thus objectively represented constitute the largest part of their picture-writing so far thoroughly understood.
The second step gained by the Egyptians was when the picture became used as a symbol of some quality or characteristic. It can be readily seen how a hawk with bright eye and lofty flight might be selected as a symbol of divinity and royalty, and that the crocodile should denote darkness, while a slightly further step in metaphysical symbolism made the ostrich feather, from the equality of its filaments, typical of truth. It is evident from examples given in the present paper that the North American tribes at the time of the Columbian discovery had entered upon this second step of picture-writing, though with marked inequality between tribes and regions in advance therein. None of them appear to have reached such proficiency in the expression of connected ideas by picture as is shown in the sign-language existing among some of them, in which even conjunctions and prepositions are indicated. Still many truly ideographic pictures are known.
A consideration relative to the antiquity of mystic symbolism, and its position in the several culture-periods, arises in this connection. It appears to have been an outgrowth of human thought, perhaps in the nature of an excrescence, useful for a time, but abandoned after a certain stage of advancement.
A criticism has been made on the whole subject of pictography by Dr. Richard Andree, who, in his work, Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche, Stuttgart, 1878, has described and figured a large number of examples of petroglyphs, a name given by him to rock-drawings and adopted by the present writer. His view appears to be that these figures are frequently the idle marks which, among civilized people, boys or ignorant persons cut with their pen-knives on the desks and walls of school-rooms, or scrawl on the walls of lanes and retired places. From this criticism, however, Dr. Andree carefully excludes the pictographs of the North American Indians, his conclusion being that those found in other parts of the world generally occupy a transition stage lower than that conceded for the Indians. It is possible that significance may yet be ascertained in many of the characters found in other regions, and perhaps this may be aided by the study of those in North America; but no doubt should exist that the latter have purpose and meaning. Any attempt at the relegation of such pictographs as are described in the present paper, and have been the subject of the study of the present writer, to any trivial origin can be met by a thorough knowledge of the labor and pains which were necessary in the production of some of the petroglyphs described.
All criticism in question with regard to the actual significance of North American pictographs is still better met by their practical use by historic Indians for important purposes, as important to them as the art of writing, of which the present paper presents a large number of conclusive examples. It is also known that when they now make pictographs it is generally done with intention and significance.
Even when this work is undertaken to supply the demand for painted robes as articles of trade it is a serious manufacture, though sometimes imitative in character and not intrinsically significant. All other instances known in which pictures are made without original design, as indicated under the several classifications of this paper, are when they are purely ornamental; but in such cases they are often elaborate and artistic, never the idle scrawls above mentioned. A main object of this paper is to call attention to the subject in other parts of the world, and to ascertain whether the practice of pictography does not still exist in some corresponding manner beyond what is now published.