Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
Among the uses of art for conveying intelligence we notice that even the
Australians have what the Greeks would have called the [Greek], a staff
on which inscriptions, legible to the Aborigines, are engraven. I
believe, however, that the Australian [Greek] is not usually marked with
picture-writing, but with notches--even more difficult to decipher. As
an example of Red Indian picture-writing we publish a scroll from Kohl's
book on the natives of North America. This rude work of art, though the
reader may think little of it, is really a document as important in its
way as the Chaldaean clay tablets inscribed with the record of the
Deluge. The coarsely-drawn figures recall, to the artist's mind, much of
the myth of Manabozho, the Prometheus and the Deucalion, the Cain and the
Noah of the dwellers by the great lake. Manabozho was a great chief, who
had two wives that quarrelled. The two stumpy half-figures (4) represent
the wives; the mound between them is the displeasure of Manabozho.
Further on (5) you see him caught up between two trees--an unpleasant
fix, from which the wolves and squirrels refused to extricate him. The
kind of pyramid with a figure at top (8) is a mountain, on which when the
flood came, Manabozho placed his grandmother to be out of the water's
way. The somewhat similar object is Manabozho himself, on the top of his
mountain. The animals you next behold (10) were sent out by Manabozho to
ascertain how the deluge was faring, and to carry messages to his
grandmother. This scroll was drawn, probably on birch bark, by a Red Man
of literary attainments, who gave it to Kohl (in its lower right-hand
corner (11) he has pictured the event), that he might never forget the
story of the Manabozhian deluge. The Red Indians have always, as far as
European knowledge goes, been in the habit of using this picture-writing
for the purpose of retaining their legends, poems, and incantations. It
is unnecessary to say that the picture-writing of Mexico and the
hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt are derived from the same savage
processes. I must observe that the hasty indications of the figure used
in picture-writing are by no means to be regarded as measures of the Red
Men's skill in art. They can draw much better than the artist who
recorded the Manabozhian legend, when they please.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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