A discussion of the “ghost gamble,” with many illustrations, some of which show marks which, in a broad sense, may be classed as pictographic, is published in the paper “Study of the mortuary customs of the North American Indians,” by Dr. H. C. Yarrow (a), U. S. Army.
Colored pebbles found in the grotto of Mas d’Azil, in the department of the Ariège, France, have lately awakened some discussion. These pebbles were selected as being narrow and flat, and, with rare exceptions, are no more than 9 centimeters in length. They were colored with red oxide of iron. Many of the designs could have been made by the end of a finger anointed with the coloring matter, but others would have required a small pencil. The coloring matter was thick and probably fixed by grease or glue, which time has destroyed. The color now disappears on the least rubbing. Its preservation until now has been owing to the fact that the pebbles were left undisturbed in the cindery layer where they were deposited. Only one of the faces of the pebbles bears a design, and generally their border is ornamented by a narrow band of red, resembling a frame to the design, the color being applied in the same manner as to the latter. Fig. 775 gives examples though without color of these pebbles. They are selected from a plate in L’Anthropologie (d) illustrating the text by Émile Cartailbac, who declines to offer any hypothesis concerning the use of these objects. But to an observer familiar with the gambling games of the North American Indians in which marked plum stones, and similar objects are employed, these stained flat pebbles at once suggest their use to decide the values in a game by the several designs and by the pebbles falling on the figured or on the unmarked side.
Fig. 775.—Pebbles from Mas d’Azil.
CHAPTER XVI.
HISTORY.
It is seldom possible to distinguish by pictographs, or indeed to decide from oral accounts obtained from Indians, whether those purporting to be historical have a genuine basis or are merely traditions connected with myths. This chapter may therefore be correlated with Chapter IX, section [5], which has special relation to traditions as mnemonically pictured. The notes now following are considered to refer to actual events or to explain the devices used in the record of such events.
The account by Dr. Brinton (c) of the Walum-Olum or bark record of the Lenni-Lenapé, as also some of Schoolcraft’s pictographic illustrations, may with some propriety be regarded as historic, but are so well known that their specific citation is needless.
The American Indians have not produced detailed historic pictures, such as appear on the Column of Trajan, and the Bayeux tapestry, with such excellence in art as to be self-interpreting. Neither do they equal in this respect the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, which portray the ordering of battle, the engineering work of sieges, the plan of camps, and the tactical moves of chieftains. Those sculptures also depict the whole civil and domestic lives of the peoples of the several nations. In some of these particulars the Mexicans approached these graphic details, as is shown below, but, as a rule, in the three divisions of America, history was noted and preserved by ideographic methods supplementing the incompleteness of artistic skill.
With regard to the advance gained by the Mexicans reference is made, with regret that copious quotation is impossible, to the essay of Henry Phillips, jr. (a), and to the monumental work of Eugène Boban, before cited. It will be noticed by students that ideography and its attendant conventionalism continually appear in the pictographic histories mentioned. The original authors had not advanced very far in art, but they had not lost the thought-language, which preceded art.