Lana is the juice of the fruit of a small tree (Genipa americana) with which without further preparation, blue-black lines are drawn in patterns, or large surfaces are stained on the skin. The dye thus applied is for about a week indelible.
Paul Marcoy (a), in Travels in South America, says the Passés, Yuris, Barrés and Chumanas of Brazil, employ a decoction of indigo or genipa in tattooing.
F. S. Moreat, M. D., in Jour. Roy. Geog. Soc., XXXII, 1862, p. 125, says that the Andaman Islanders rubbed earth on the top of the head, probably for the purpose of ornamentation.
Dr. Richard Andree (b) says:
Long before Europeans came to Australia, the Australian blacks knew a kind of pictorial representation, exhibiting scenes from their life, illustrating it with great fidelity to nature. An interesting specimen of that kind was found on a piece of bark that had served as cover of a hut on Lake Tyrrell. The black who produced this picture had had intercourse with white people, but had had no instruction whatever in drawing. The bark was blackened by smoke on the inside, and on this blackened surface the native drew the figures with his thumb nail.
CHAPTER IX.
MNEMONIC.
This is the most obvious and probably was the earliest use to which picture-writing was applied. The contrivance of drawing the representations of objects, to fix in the memory either the objects themselves or the concepts, facts, or other matters connected with them, is practiced early by human individuals and is found among peoples the most ancient historically or in the horizons of culture. After the adoption of the characters for purely mnemonic purposes, those at first intended to be iconographic often became converted into ideographic, emblematic, or symbolic designs, and perhaps in time so greatly conventionalized that the images of the things designed could no longer be perceived by the imagination alone.
It is believed, however, that this form and use of picturing were preceded by the use of material objects which afterwards were reproduced graphically in paintings, cuttings, and carvings. In the present paper many examples appear of objects known to have been so used, the graphic representations of which, made with the same purpose, are explained by knowledge of the fact. Other instances are mentioned as connected with the evolution of pictographs, and they possibly may interpret some forms of the latter which are not yet understood.
This chapter is divided into (1) knotted cords and objects tied; (2) notched or marked sticks; (3) wampum; (4) order of songs; (5) traditions; (6) treaties; (7) appointment; (8) numeration; (9) accounting.