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 study of all the charts, with their several interpretations,
renders plain some points remaining in doubt while the Lone-Dog chart
was the only example known. In the first place, it became clear
that there was no fixed or uniform mode of exhibiting the order of
continuity of the year-characters. They were arranged spirally or
lineally, or in serpentine curves, by boustrophedon or direct, starting
backward from the last year shown, or proceeding uniformly forward
from the first year selected or remembered. Any mode that would
accomplish the object of continuity with the means of regular addition
seemed to be equally acceptable. So a theory advanced that there was
some symbolism in the right to left circling of Lone-Dog’s chart was
aborted, especially when an obvious reproduction of that very chart was
made by an Indian with the spiral reversed. It was also obvious that
when copies were made, some of them probably from memory, there was
no attempt at Chinese accuracy. It was enough to give the graphic or
ideographic character, and frequently the character is better defined
on one of the charts than on the others for the corresponding year. One
interpretation or rather one translation of the interpretation would
often throw light on the others. It also appeared that while different
events were selected by the recorders of the different systems, there
was sometimes a selection of the same event for the same year and
sometimes for the next, such as would be natural in the progress of a
famine or epidemic, or as an event gradually became known over a vast
territory. To exhibit these points more clearly, the characters on the
charts of The-Flame, Lone-Dog, and The-Swan have been placed together
on Plates VII-XXXIII, and their interpretations, separately obtained
and translated, have also been collated, commencing on page 100. Where
any information was supplied by the charts of Mato Sapa or of Major
Bush and their interpretation, or by other authorities, it is given in
connection with the appropriate year. Reference is also made to some
coincidences or explanatory manner noticed in the Corbusier system.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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