only, at first syllabic and subsequently alpha- betic. Many nations have not passed through all these stages, but continue to use hieroglyphs as a system of writing. Among these are the Chinese and Japanese, whose systems, like those of the ancient Egyptians, are given un- der the names of their respective countries. The. rudimentary savage paintings, scratchings, HIEROGLYPHICS 719 FIG. 1. carvings are very much the same every- where. They are not easily interpreted, unless it is known what they were intended to repre- sent. It is probable that many are mere picto- rial utterances without any attempt at record- ing a historical fact. The natives of North America were great proficients in the art of picture writing. Their hieroglyphs have been copied and interpreted by Schoolcraft. We give in the above specimen an Indian rec- ord on a pine tree. On the right are two canoes, with a catfish in one of them, and a fabulous animal, known as the copper-tailed bear, in the other. On the left are a bear and six catfish. The sense of the picture is simply that two hunters, whose names or totems were Coppertailed Bear and Catfish, went on a hunting expedition in their canoes, and took a bear and six catfish. Fig. 2 is a picture FIG. 2. on the face of a rock on the shore of Lake Superior, and records an expedition across the lake which was led by Myeengun, or Wolf, a celebrated Indian chief. The canoes with the upright strokes represent the force of the party in men and boats, and Wolf's chief ally, Kishkemunasee, that is, Kingfisher, goes in the first canoe. The arch with three circles be- 406 VOL. vin. 46 low it shows that there were three suns un- der heaven, that is, that the voyage took three days. The tortoise seems to indicate their getting to land, while the representation of the chief himself on horseback shows that the expedition took place since the time when horses were introduced into Canada. The highest development of this art is found in the Mexican picture writing, or the system of hieroglyphics in use among the semi-civilized nations of Central America and Mexico previ- ous to the discovery of America by Columbus. Among the nations which anciently had their seat near Palenque, there existed a probably pure hieroglyphical system ; while among the nations of central Mexico, in the valley of Ana- huac, as also among the affiliated families of San Salvador and Nicaragua, a less perfect or mixed system prevailed, which was composed of condensed pictures, and conventional or deri- vative representations of things, having a hiero- glyphical character and a clear phonetic value. The capacity of even this less perfect or mixed system was considerable. By means of it the Mexicans recorded their history, composed their rituals and civil and religious calendars, record- ed titles to property and the judgments of courts, assessed taxes or tribute, defined gene- alogies, &c. When Cortes landed, full accounts of him, his men, equipments, and, so far as he indicated them by word or action, of his pur- poses, were thus recorded and sent to Monte- zuma. The ecclesiastics who followed in the train of the army used their utmost exertions to acquaint themselves with this system, and adapt it to the purpose of converting the na- tives. The first attempt in this direction, or perhaps the first use of pictorial representa- tions, out of which this adaptation gradually grew, was within eight or nine years after the capture of Mexico, by Testera of Bayonne, brother of the chamberlain of Francis I. Saha- gun, Motolinia, and Peter of Ghent, as also the Fran- ciscans generally, adopted his example of using pic- tures, more or less bor- rowed from the Mexicans, in their teachings. In the provinces near Mexico, as soon as the Franciscans commenced this adapta- tion, the interpreters, and numbers of the natives employed as missionaries, lent themselves to extend its scope; and Motolinia informs us that he was lit- erally overwhelmed with Indians who present- ed their confessions to him in figures or paint- ings after their mode of representation. Val- dez in 1579, and Torquemada nearly a century after the conquest, received similar confessions ; and it appears that this system of recording confessions was preferred to alphabetical wri- ting, even by Indians who were versed in the
