The publication of Father Kauder was a duodecimo in three parts: Catechism, 144 pages; religious reflections, 109 pages; and hymnal, 208 pages. They are very seldom found bound together, and a perfect copy of either of the parts or volumes is rare. On a careful examination of the hieroglyphs, so called, it seems evident that on the original substratum of Micmac designs or symbols, each of which represented mnemonically a whole sentence or verse, a large number of arbitrary designs have been added to express ideas and words which were not American, and devices were incorporated with them intended to represent the peculiarities of the Micmac grammar as understood by Kauder, and it would seem of a universal grammar antedating Volapük. The explanation of these additions has never been made known. Kauder died without having left any record or explanation of the plan by which he attempted to convert the mnemonic characters invented by the Indians into what may be considered an exposition of organized words (not sounds) in grammatical form. An attempt which may be likened to this was made by Bishop Landa in his use of the Maya characters, and one still more in point was that of the priests in Peru, mentioned in connection with Figs. [1084] and [1085], infra.
The result is that in the several camps of Micmacs visited by the present writer in Cape Breton island, Prince Edward island, and Nova Scotia, fragments of the printed works are kept and used for religious worship, and also many copies on various sheets and scraps of paper have been made of similar fragments, but their use is entirely mnemonic, as was that of their ancient bark originals. Very few of the Indians who in one sense can “read” them currently in the Micmac language, have any idea of the connection between any one of the characters and the vocables of the language. When asked what a particular character meant they were unable to answer, but would begin at the commencement of the particular prayer or hymn, and when arrested at any point would then for the first time be able to give the Micmac word or words which corresponded with that character. This was not in any religious spirit, as is mentioned by Dr. Washington Matthews, in his Mountain Chant, Fifth Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, with reference to the Navajo’s repeating all, if any, of the chant, but because they only knew that way to use the script. In that use they do as is mentioned of the Ojibwa, supra. The latter often by their bark script keep the memory of archaic words, and the Micmac keep that of religious phrases not well understood. A few, and very few, of the characters, which were constantly repeated, and were specially conspicuous, were known as distinct from the other characters by one only of the Indians examined. It apparently had never occurred to any of them that these same characters, which in their special mnemonic connection represented Micmac words, could be detached from their context and by combination represent the same words in other sentences. Therefore, the expression “reading,” used in reference to the operation, is not strictly correct. In most cases the recitation of the script was in a chant, and the musical air of the Roman Catholic Church belonging to the several hymns and chants was often imitated. The object, therefore, which has been expressed in the above quoted accounts of Fathers Druillettes and Le Clercq had been accomplished regarding the then extant generation of Indians two hundred years before Father Kauder’s publication. That object was for Indians under their immediate charge to learn in the most speedy manner certain formulæ of the church, by the use of which it was supposed that they would gain salvation. The formation of an alphabet, or even a syllabary, by which the structure of the language should be considered and its vocal expression recorded, was not the object. It is possible that there was an objection to the instruction of the Indians in a modern alphabet by which they might more readily learn either French or English, and at the same time be able to read profane literature and thereby become perverted from the faith. These missionaries certainly refrained, for some reason, not only from instructing the heathen in any of the languages of civilization, but also from teaching them the use of an alphabet for their own language.
It is probable that Father Kauder had some idea of reducing the language of the Micmacs to a written form, based not upon verbal or even syllabic notation, but upon some anomalous compromise between their ideographic original or substratum and a grammatic superstructure. If so, he entirely failed. The interesting point with regard to this remarkable and unique attempt is, that there is undoubtedly a basis of Indian designs and symbols included and occluded among the differentiated devices in the three volumes mentioned, which arbitrarily express thoughts and words by a false pictographic method, instead of sentences and verses. But the change from the pictorial forms to those adopted, if not as radical as that from the Egyptian hieroglyphs to the Roman text, resembles that from the archaic to the modern Chinese. Therefore it would follow that the present form of the characters is not one which the Indians would learn more readily than an alphabet or a syllabary, and that is the ascertained fact. At Cow bay, a Micmac camp, about 12 miles from Halifax, an aged chief who in his boyhood at Cape Breton island was himself instructed by Father Kauder in these characters, explained that Kauder taught them to the boys by drawing them on a blackboard and by repetition, very much in the manner in which a schoolmaster in civilized countries teaches the alphabet to children. The actual success of the Cherokees in the free and general use of Sequoya’s Syllabary, which was not founded on pictographs, but on signs for sounds, should be noted in this connection.
Among the thousands of scratchings on the Kejemkoojik rocks, many of which were undoubtedly made by the Micmac, only two characters were found resembling any in Kauder’s volumes, and those were common symbols of the Roman Catholic Church, and might readily have been made by the Frenchmen, who also certainly left scratchings there. Altogether after careful study of the subject it is considered that the devices in Father Kauder’s work are so intrinsically changed, both in form and intent, from the genuine Micmac designs that they can not be presented as examples of Indian pictography.
Connected with this topic is the following account in the Jesuit Relations of 1646, p. 31, relative to the Montagnais and other Algonquians of the St. Lawrence river, near the Saguenay: “They confess themselves with admirable frankness; some of them carry small sticks to remind them of their sins; others write, after their manner, on small pieces of bark.” This is but the application of the ideographic writing on birch bark by the converts to the ceremonies and stories of the Christian religion, as the same art had been long used for their aboriginal traditions.
Fig. 1084.—Religious story. Sicasica.
Examples of pictographic work, done in a spirit similar to that above mentioned, are given by Wiener (g), describing the illustrations of which Figs. 1084 and 1085 are copies, one-fifth real size.
In the most distant part of Peru, in the valley of Paucartambo, at Sicasica, the history of the passion of Christ was found written in the same ideographic system that the Indians of Ancon and the north of the coast were acquainted with before the conquest. (Fig. 1084.) The drawings were made with a pencil, probably first dipped in a mixture of gum and mandioc flour. This tissue is of a dark brown and the designs are of a very bright red.
