The picture-writing of the Aztecs, though greatly improved in execution, and simplified by abbreviations, was the same in principle as that of the rude northern tribes. The recognised signs of the months and days of their calendar are not greatly in advance of Indian symbolism; while some of their pictorial records are as definite pieces of literal representation as the battle of the reindeer from the Dordogne cave, or the peaceful grazing scene recovered from a Swiss grotto near Thayingen. One example of such a pictorial chronicling of an important event has been repeatedly described, and aptly illustrates its practical application. When Cortez held his first interview with the emissaries of Montezuma, one of the attendants of Teuhtlile, the chief Aztec noble, was observed sketching the novel visitors, their peculiar costumes and arms, their horses and ships; and by such means a report of all that pertained to the strange invaders of his dominion was transmitted to the Aztec sovereign. The skill with which every object was delineated excited the admiration of the Spaniards. But however superior this may have been as a piece of art, it was manifestly no advance on the principle of Indian picture-writing; nor can we be in much doubt as to its style of execution, since Lord Kingsborough’s elaborate work furnishes many facsimiles of nearly contemporary Mexican drawings. In the majority of these, the totemic symbols, and the representations of individuals by means of their animal or other cognomens, are abundantly apparent. The specific aim of the artist has to be kept in view. The figures are for the most part grotesque, from the necessity of giving predominance to the special feature in which the symbol is embodied. To the generation for which such were produced, the connection between the sign, and the person or thing signified, would be manifest; and as a mnemonic aid, supplemented by verbal descriptions of the trained official registrars, the record would be ample. But a brief interval suffices to render such abbreviated symbols obscure, if not wholly unintelligible; and within less than a century after the Conquest, De Alva could not find more than two surviving Mexicans, both very aged, who were able to interpret the native pictorial records. Nevertheless a system of picture-writing, originating among the rude forest tribes with the simple employment of the imitative faculty in the representation of familiar objects, with their associated ideas, had advanced on this continent to the very same stage from which, in ancient Egypt, the next step was taken, resulting in the evolution of a phonetic alphabet, and so of all that is implied in letters in the largest sense.

To this grand aim of ideography, or an equivalent of written speech, may, as it appears to me, be traced the earliest efforts at drawing and painting, reaching back to that strange dawn of intellectual vigour revealed to us in the graphic art of the men of Europe’s Palæolithic age. The same effort at written speech underlies all the manifestations of the artistic faculty, common alike to the semi-civilised and to the barbarous native races of this continent; and in the terms by which they express the graphic art in their various dialects, the common significance of drawing and writing is generally apparent. But the æsthetic faculty was thus stimulated into activity with results which tended to develop art in all its forms of carving, modelling, sculpture, and painting. An appreciation of colour, not merely for personal adornment, but in its artistic application—alike as a decorative art, and as the means whereby natural objects can be presented with vivid truthfulness to the eye,—is widely diffused; though the mastery of form by the modeller or sculptor long precedes that of chiaroscuro, or aerial perspective. Aboriginal painting is crude, consisting mainly of colour without tone or shading, even where the drawing is correct. But paints and dyes, both of mineral and vegetable origin, are largely in use by many Indian tribes. The Eskimo execute tasteful patterns on their skin robes in diverse colours; and the northern tribes both to the east and west of the Rocky Mountains dye porcupine quills and grasses, and with them work ornamental patterns on their dresses and in basket-work. The pottery of the Pueblo Indians is elaborately decorated in colours; and in various other ways—as in the colouring of their masks, and the painting of their boats and houses, by the Indians of Oregon and British Columbia,—the native taste for colour is manifested. Mr. Hugh Martin, in a communication of an early date to the American Philosophical Society, gives an account of the principal dyes employed by the North American Indians.[[107]] The Shawnees obtained a vegetable red, which they called hau-ta-the-caugh, from the root of a marsh plant, and largely used it in dyeing wool, porcupine quills, and the white hair of deers’ tails. From another root, the Radix flava, a bright yellow was obtained, by mixing which with the red an orange tint is made. But they also extracted a rich orange colour from the Poccon root. A fine vegetable blue is also easily procured, and this was transformed to green by means of a yellow liquor of the smooth hickory bark. Black, which is much in demand, was obtained both from the sumack and from the bark of the white walnut. All the colours thus far named are vegetable dyes, but mineral colours are in general use for painting, and especially for personal decoration, which is no doubt the primary idea associated in the Indian mind with the verb “to paint.” The Lenapes, Dr. Brinton remarks, “obtained red, white, and blue clays, which were in such extensive demand that the vicinity of those streams in Newcastle County, Delaware, which are now called White Clay Creek and Red Clay Creek, are widely known to the natives as Walamink, ‘the place of paint.’ ”[[108]] The Shawnees applied the name Alamonee-sepee, “Paint Creek,” to the stream which falls into the Scioto close to Chilicothe. The word walamen, signifying “to paint,” is the Shawnee alamon, and the Abnaki wramann, the r being substituted for the l. Roger Williams, describing the New England Indians, speaks of “wunnam, their red painting, which they most delight in,—both the bark of the pine, as also a red earth.” The word is derived from Narr. wunne, Del. wulit, Chip. gwanatseh: “beautiful, handsome, good, pretty,” etc. “The Indian who had bedaubed his skin with red ochreous clay, was esteemed in full dress, and delightful to look upon. Hence the term wulit, ‘fine, pretty,’ came to be applied to the paint itself.”[[109]]

A review of the terms of art in the diverse aboriginal vocabularies would furnish an interesting supplement to the general question of the manifestation of an artistic faculty, and the evidences of appreciation of art among savage races. I note a few illustrations, which the languages of some Northern Indian tribes supply, of the ideas associated in the native mind with terms of art. The Algonkin languages generally have no distinctive words clearly discriminating between painting, drawing, and writing in the sense of ideography; though the inevitable tendency to invent or appropriate words, as equivalents expressive of any novel object or idea, is in operation in those as in other languages. The Ojibways have no generic term for painting the body or face, but express it by some word connected with the specific colour in use. For example, the painting the face black, as is done to a youth on attaining puberty, is muhkuhdaekawin. This consists of muh-kuh-da, meaning “black,” eka, the form which gives it the verbal significance, “he makes himself black,” with the termination win, constituting the whole a noun. So misquah, “red,” is the root of misquah-ne-ga-zoo, “he is painted red”; misquah-ne-gah-da, “it is painted red.” Oozahwah, “yellow,” gives oo-zah-we-ne-gah-zoo, “he is painted yellow”; with the corresponding terminal change for the neuter. But the word oozahnamahne, from oonah, “the cheek,” is also used for painting the face either red or yellow. Quahnaiy, or gwanai, the word for “beautiful,” is applied to moral as well as physical beauty, e.g. gwanaienene would be used of a fair, honourable dealing man, as well as of one who was handsome or good-looking. But such rhetorical tropes are common to many languages.

I was indebted to the late Silas T. Rand, for upwards of thirty years a missionary among the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia, for the following illustrative details: “The Micmac is rich in words relating to art, the making and ornamenting of garments, moccasins, snow-shoes, etc., of weapons and implements for domestic use, making pottery and modelling in clay. For building and managing a canoe there are at least seventy-six words. They have words for carving on stone, and also on wood, for marking dressed skins with flower patterns, for carving flowers in stone, for scraping them on birch-bark dishes, for drawing a likeness, making models and patterns, and for working after them. When I was engaged in translating Exodus, and largely dependent on my Indian teacher for the words to express all the parts of the Tabernacle, its coverings and furniture, mortices, tenons, hooks, fillets, loops, bars, pins, sockets, etc., I fully expected to be baffled. What was my surprise to find that there were words in the language by which to express all I needed. Boards, bars, bolts, pillars, poles, rings, everything was made, put together, and my ‘pundit’ an excellent mechanic, when he returned next day to go on with our work, assured me that he had been dreaming about that ‘wigwam’ we had been erecting the previous day, and he was sure he could make such a one. He had the pattern in his head as clearly as Moses had it, after he had seen it up the mountain.” In the Micmac, aweekum is “a drawing,” lit. “I write it,” “I draw it”; essum, “I colour it”; elapskudaaga, “I am carving,” or “cutting stone”; elapskudaam, “I am carving it in stone”; apsk, which here denotes “stone,” is only used in composition; coondow is the word for “stone”; eloksowa, “I am carving in wood”; noojeweekuga, “a painter,” “drawer,” “writer,” lit. “a maker of marks”; aweegasik, “a picture,” lit. “it is marked down,” etc.

The Algonkin root walam, “red,” is the term employed in the Walum Olum, or “Red Score of the Lenape,” which was brought under the notice of the New York Historical Society, in 1848, by Mr. E. G. Squier, as The Bark Record of the Lenni-Lenape. His narrative has been more than once reprinted; but the carefully edited version of this curious Indian ideograph given by Dr. Brinton, in his Lenape and their Legends, will supersede earlier and less accurate versions. The full translation with which the pictographic record of the Walum Olum is accompanied, abundantly suffices to prove that it may be most correctly described as a series of mnemonic signs employed for the purpose of keeping in memory a national chant, of a class very familiar to the students of primitive history. The ballad-epics of the ancient Germans, and the still earlier lays of ancient Rome, the Abanic Duan, and others of the genealogical and historical poems of the Celtic nations, were all of this class; and analogous traditionary chants have been perpetuated among the Maoris of New Zealand. The system of pictography corresponds to that in use among the Ojibways and other Algonkin tribes, including the totems, or sign-names; but it falls far short of true picture-writing. Section IV. records the conquest by the Lenape tribe, of the northern country, which they call “The Snake Land.” Bald Eagle, Beautiful Head, White Owl, Keeping Guard, Snow Bird, and a succession of other chiefs are named, all of whom are more or less graphically indicated by their totems; but a paraphrastic interpretation accompanies them setting forth ideas that have no pictorial representation. Then comes a horizontal line with ten oblique lines rising from it, and three cross-lines below, with the interpretation: “After the Seizer there were ten chiefs and there was much warfare south and north.” Next follows another succession of chiefs, each symbolised with some associated idea. Thus a group of six small circles, arranged upright in two columns, is surmounted by a larger circle, with three oblique lines rising from the top. This is paraphrased: “After him, Corn-Breaker was chief, who brought about the planting of corn.” It is not difficult to imagine in the drawing the conventional representation of an ear of corn; but the major idea can be no more than one suggested to the memory by association. In some instances the picture-writing is more manifest. A horizontal line surmounted by two téepees, or buffalo-skin tents, is “the buffalo land.” In one group, a semicircle with radiating lines, placed on a straight line, is translated: “Let us go together to the east, to the sunrise.” In another case, nearly the same symbol—assumed, no doubt, to represent the sun setting in the ocean,—is rendered, “at the great sea.” It is, indeed, a system of picture-writing; but instead of being abbreviated into word-symbols, it is reduced to mere catch-words or mnemonic signs. Their value would be unquestionable as an aid to memory in the perpetuation of a mythic or historical poem; but, if the tradition were lost, they embody no sufficient record from which to recover it.

Neither the Iroquois nor the Algonkin nation can be pointed to as specially gifted with imitative powers, or in other ways furnishing evidence of any highly developed artistic faculty. They cannot compare in this respect with the Zuñi, or others of the Pueblo Indians, among whom the arts of long-settled, agricultural communities have been developed for purposes of ornament as well as utility; nor is their inferiority less questionable when we compare them with some of the barbarous tribes of the north-west coast, and the neighbouring islands. Their languages confirm this; for while, as Mr. Cushing has shown, the Zuñi language possesses many words relating to art-processes, the Iroquois and Algonkin dialects supply such terms, for the most part, in descriptive holophrasms, and not in primitive roots. Nevertheless, alike in their pottery and carvings, and in their picture-writing, they show a degree of artistic capacity of which few traces are found in Europe’s Neolithic age.

In the Ojibway, oozhebegawin is used indiscriminately for “writing, drawing, painting,” wazhebeegad, for “a man who writes, draws.” In combination with muh-ze-ne, “figure, form,” such words are in use as muhzenebeégawin, “a painting, drawing”; muhzenebeégawenene (M.), muhzenebeégawequa (F.), “a painter, an artist”; muhzenebeégun, “a picture.” “To carve,” or “engrave on a rock,” is muhzeneko; muhzenekojegun, “a sculptor’s chisel”; muhzenekoda, “it is carved,” etc. Again with wahbegun, “clay,” such holophrasms are obtained as wahbegunoonahgunekawenene, “a man who makes earthen vessels, a potter,” wahbeguhega, “a worker in clay,” lit. “I work with clay.”[[110]]

In previous remarks on the main subject of this paper, the development of the artistic faculty has been noted as, in many cases, an exceptional manifestation of intellectual activity, alike in ancient and modern barbarous races. The striking contrast between the richly fluent forms of the language, and the infantile condition of this people in relation to so much else, including metallurgy, and the application of the arts generally to the practical requirements of life, furnishes a no less interesting illustration of intellectual development fostered by special influences in another direction. The habitual practice of oratory made the Iroquois acute reasoners; and their language abounds in abstract terms to a degree altogether surprising in an uncivilised race. The purposes of the rhetorician also encouraged the tropical use of literal terms. It is not, therefore, difficult to understand how the primary sense of the verb “to track” or “trace out” should ultimately yield the meaning of “drawing” or “sketching,” and so finally of “painting.” On the other hand, it abundantly coincides with the instinctive use of the imitative faculty as a means of conveying definite ideas to others, that in the Iroquois, as in other languages, the same terms are used to express the idea of making a mark, drawing, or writing. The primitive hieroglyphics, from whence our phonetic alphabets have come, were first literal drawings, and then their abbreviations employed to express associated ideas. An ideographic purpose appears to underlie the earliest efforts of imitative art.

[79] Essai sur les déformations artificielles du Crâne, p. 74.