INDIAN PICTURE-WRITING.
Schoolcraft, who has been more explicit than other writers respecting the picture-writings of the North American Indians, speaks of two distinct pictographic systems among the Algonkin tribes, called by them respectively Kekeewin and Kekeenowin. The first appeared to be their method of recording facts of every-day occurrence, and embraced the heraldic devices used upon the grave posts—the communications written upon birch bark, and the caution marks, itinerary, hunting, and war records inscribed upon the trunks of blazed trees by travelling bands, to communicate intelligence to their comrades in the forest. These writings, the signs of which were carefully taught to the young, like the language of signs common at present to a majority of the Western tribes, could be understood by any Indian. Loskiel, the Moravian missionary, who makes frequent mention of picture records, states that "it gave the Indians great pleasure if one halted on coming to such a tree, and listened to their description of the great chief and his exploits thereon inscribed."
The Kekeenowin, on the other hand,—the pictographic system of the prophets, jugglers, and medicine-men,—was far less generally understood by the Indians themselves. It was the method used in the historical records, sung before the tribe at religious feasts and dances, and was likewise invariably employed in the incantations of the priests, prophets, and medicine-men, of which Schoolcraft gives seven kinds relating to medicine, necromancy, revelry, hunting, prophecy, war, and love.
The chief characteristic of the Kekeenowin is the fact that in it each symbol recalled to the mind of the reader learned in the art a song, previously committed to memory by him in connection with the symbol, and the general idea of which was more or less arbitrarily connected with it. "The words of the song," says James, in his appendix to Tanner's narrative, "were not variable, but must be learned by heart, otherwise though from an inspection of the figure the idea might be comprehended, no one would know what to sing." The main object, however, was the preservation of the songs, which the priests, on consulting their birch-bark scrolls or painted wooden tablets, were thus enabled to sing at the great feasts, giving the many verses in their proper order. The connection between the symbol and the idea expressed by the song was often beyond the power of divination to the uninitiated, and the key to these sacred incantations, a knowledge of the songs, once lost, could never be recovered, as it was doubtless far from the intention of the priests that the uninitiated Indian should divine their mysteries from an inspection of the symbols. It was only upon the payment of many beaver skins, says Tanner in his narrative, that he was permitted to learn the mystic signification of the twenty-seven symbols of the Chippeway song for medicine hunting, which it took him more than a year to learn.
The historical records, however, were sometimes, it appears, written in Kekeewin and sometimes in Kekeenowin; some were related in songs, others were not. Those inscribed upon painted wooden tablets, or the bark scrolls, and pieces of slate alluded to by George Copway, were doubtless generally sung at stated occasions before the tribe, while the Muzzinabicks or rock-writings upon the face of cliffs and boulders, as at "Bald Friars" and "Miles Island" on the Susquehanna or West River, and Bellows Falls, Vermont, at the Cunningham Islands, Lake Erie, or upon the famous Dighton Rock at Fall River, Mass., although including many of the characters seen in the song records were probably not expressed in songs.
TRADITION OF THE GREAT BUFFALO.
Another version of the big-buffalo tradition is found in Rembrandt Peale's pamphlet on the mammoth, published in Philadelphia in 1803. Notwithstanding the highly colored style of the translation the ideas expressed seem to be those of the Indian. It reads as follows: "Ten thousand moons ago, when naught but gloomy forests covered this land of the sleeping sun, and long before the pale men, with thunder and fire at their command, rushed on the wings of the wind to ruin this garden of nature, when naught but the untamed wanderers of the woods, and men as unrestrained as they, were lords of the soil, a race of animals existed, huge as the frowning precipice, cruel as the bloody panther, swift as the descending eagle, and terrible as the angel of night. The pines crashed beneath their feet, and the lake shrunk when they slaked their thirst; the forceful javelin in vain was hurled, and the barbed arrow fell harmless by their side. Forests were laid waste at a meal, the groans of expiring animals were everywhere heard, and whole villages, inhabited by men, were destroyed in a moment. The cry of universal distress extended even to the region of peace in the west, and the Good Spirit interposed to save the unhappy. The forked lightning gleamed aloud, and loudest thunder rocked the globe. The bolts of heaven were hurled upon the cruel destroyers alone, and the mountains echoed with the bellowings of death. All were killed except one male, the fiercest of the race, and him even the artillery of the skies assailed in vain. He ascended the bluest summit which shades the source of the Monongahela, and roaring, aloud, bid defiance to every vengeance. The red lightning scorched the lofty firs, and rived the knotty oaks, but only glanced upon the enraged monster. At length, maddened with fury, he leaped over the waves of the west at a bound, and at this moment reigns the uncontrolled monarch of the wilderness, even in despite of omnipotence itself."