The methods which I have just mentioned are the precursors of true writing. This really only begins with drawings expressing a sequence of ideas, with pictography. Imperfect attempts at pictography are found in the drawings of the Melanesians, representing different events of their life; in certain rock-pictures of the Bushmen (Fig. [64]) and Australians. But already among the Eskimo, side by side with the simple representation of objects, certain figures are seen to appear denoting action or relations between objects: this is the beginning of ideographic writing. Here, for example, is the gist of a hunting story engraved by an Eskimo of Alaska on an ivory whip (Fig. [29]). The first figure (1) represents the story-teller himself, his right hand making the gesture which indicates “I,” and his left, turned in the direction in which he is going, means “go.” Continuing our translation, we read the subsequent figures as follows:—(2) “in a boat” (paddle raised); (3) “sleep” (hand on the head) “one night” (the left hand shows a finger); (4) “(on) an island with a hut in the middle” (the little point); (5) “I going (farther);” (6) “(arrive at) an (other) isle inhabited” (without a point); (7) “spend (there) two nights;” (8) “hunt with harpoon;” (9) “a seal;” (10) “hunt with bow;” (11) “return in canoe with another person” (two oars directed backward); (12) “(to) the hut of the encampment.” As is evident, this ideography bears a relation to the language of gesture. It might be thus assumed a priori that it is highly developed among the Indians of North America, and as a matter of fact it is. The number of pictographs on tablets of wood, bits of bark, skins (often on those forming the tent), is enormous in every tribe. These are messages, hunting stories, songs, veritable annals embracing cycles of seventy, a hundred and more years (the latter bear the picturesque name of “winter tales”).[163] We may judge of the degree of development of this art among the Indians by the following example of a petition (Fig. [30]) presented in 1849 to the President of the United States by the Chippeway chiefs asking for the possession of certain small lakes (8) situated in the neighbourhood of Lake Superior (10), towards which leads a certain road (11). The petition is painted in symbolic colours (blue for water, white for the road, etc.) on a piece of bark. Figure 1 represents the principal petitioning chief, the totem of whose clan is an emblematic and ancestral animal (see [Chapter VII.]), the crane; the animals which follow are the totems of his co-petitioners. Their eyes are all connected with his to express unity of view (6), their hearts with his to express unity of feeling. The eye of the crane, symbol of the principal chief, is moreover the point of departure of two lines: one directed towards the President (claim) and the other towards the lakes (object of claim). In the other pictographs the symbolism is carried yet further by the reproduction either of parts of the object for the object itself (head or footmarks for the whole animal, etc.), or by conventional objects for very complicated ideas. Thus the Dakotas indicate “a fight” by the simple drawing of two arrows directed against each other (Fig. [31], 1); the Ojibways represent morning by the rising sun (2), “nothing” by the gesture of a man stretching out his arms despairingly (3), and “to eat” by the gesture of the hand carried to the mouth (4), exactly as the ancient Mexicans and Egyptians have drawn it in their hieroglyphics, or again, the natives of Easter Island (Fig. [31], 5) in their rude attempt at ideographic writing on their “speech tablets.”[164] The writing of these tablets is but a series of mnemonic signs which succeed each other in boustrophedon arrangement (see p. [142]), being used for sacred and profane songs, or for magical rites.
FIG. 30.—Petition of Chippeway Indians to the President of the United States. Example of pictography.
(After Schoolcraft.)
From a similar pictographic method is derived the figurative writing in hieroglyphics of the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Mexicans of the table-land of Anahuoc and their neighbours the Mayas of the peninsula of Yucatan. This mode of writing is a step in advance; certain figures have the phonetic value of the first syllable of the word which they represent. It is the rebus or “iconomatic” system, as Brinton calls it. Thus the first words of the Lord’s Prayer are represented in the Mexican code by the figures of a flag (Fig. [32]) (pantli), a stone (tetl), the fruit of the Indian fig (nochtli), and another stone (tetl), the first syllables of which form pa-te-noch-te (Pater-noster).[165] The drawings not representing more than sounds, in this species of writing there is a tendency to simplify them, and thus we see the primitive figure being transformed into a conventional sign representing a sound, a syllable. This transformation may be traced in the Egyptian hieroglyphics as well as in the cuneiform writing of the ancient Assyrians. In Chinese writing the same phenomenon has taken place, as is evident from Fig. [33], which represents the ancient hieroglyphics side by side with the modern—morning, 1; the moon, 2; a mountain, 3; tree, 4; dog, 5; horse, 6; man, 7. These characters, though simplified, have kept their first signification corresponding to the figure. The association of these figures with the purely phonetic signs constitutes one of the principal resources of Chinese writing, which enables homophonic words,[166] etc., to be distinguished.
FIG. 31.—Various signs of symbolic pictography:
1, war; 2, morning; 3, nothing; 4 and 5, to eat.
