Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256Mallery, Garrick
History
Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256
Mallery, Garrick
Haida Indians; Picture-writing, Indian; Tattooing
The situation is about midway between Serra Grande or Ibiapaba and
Serra Merioca, about seventy miles from the coast and forty west of
the town Sobral. There are not any indications of works of art or
other antiquarian remains, nor anything peculiar to the locality. The
country is gently undulating, and of the usual character that obtains
for hundreds of miles extending along the base of the Serra Ibiapaba.
The native population attribute all the ‘Letreiros’ (inscriptions),
as they do everything else of which they have no information, to the
Dutch as records of hidden wealth. The Dutch, however, only occupied
the country for a few years in the early part of the seventeenth
century. Along the coast numerous forts, the works of the Dutch,
still remain; but there are no authentic records of their ever
having established themselves in the interior of the country, and
less probability still of their amusing themselves with inscribing
puzzling hieroglyphics, which must have been a work of time, on the
rocks of the far interior, for the admiration of wandering Indians.
PICTOGRAPHS IN PERU.
Dr. J. J. Von Tschudi mentions in his Travels in Peru during the
years 1838-1842, [Wiley and Putnam’s Library, Vols. XCIII-XCIV, New
York, 1847,] Pt. II, p. 345-346, that the ancient Peruvians also used
a certain kind of “hieroglyphics” which they engraved in stone, and
preserved in their temples. Notices of these “hieroglyphics” are given
by some of the early writers. There appears to be a great similarity
between these Peruvian pictographs and those found in Mexico and Brazil.
The temptation to quote from Charles Wiener’s magnificent work Pérou
et Bolivie, Paris, 1880, and also from La Antigüedad del Hombre en el
Plata, by Florentine Ameghino, Paris (and Buenos Aires), 1880, must be
resisted.
OBJECTS REPRESENTED IN PICTOGRAPHS.
The objects depicted in pictographs of all kinds are too numerous and
varied for any immediate attempt at classification. Those upon the
petroglyphs may, however, be usefully grouped. Instructive particulars
regarding them, may be discovered, for instance the delineation of the
fauna in reference to its present or former habitat in the region where
the representation of it is found, is of special interest.
As an example of the number and kind of animals pictured, as well as
of their mode of representation, the following Figures, 4 to 21, are
presented, taken from the Moki inscriptions at Oakley Springs, Arizona,
by Mr. G. K. Gilbert. These were selected by him from, a large number
of etchings, for the purpose of obtaining the explanation, and they
were explained to him by Tubi, an Oraibi chief living at Oraibi, one of
the Moki villages.
Jones, in his Southern Indians, p. 377-379, gives a résumé of objects
depicted as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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