Picture-Writing of the American Indians: Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822Mallery, Garrick
History
Picture-Writing of the American Indians: Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822
Mallery, Garrick
Picture-writing, Indian
It is believed to be the original belt delivered by the
Leni-Lenape sachems to William Penn at the celebrated treaty under
the elm tree at Schackamaxon in 1682. Up to the year 1857 this belt
remained in the keeping of the Penn family. In March, 1857, it was
presented to the Pennsylvania Historical Society by Granville John
Penn, a great-grandson of William Penn. Mr. Penn, in his speech on
this occasion, states that there can be no doubt that this is the
identical belt used at the treaty, and presents his views in the
following language:
“In the first place, its dimensions are greater than of those
used on more ordinary occasions, of which we have one still in
our possession--this belt being composed of 18 strings of wampum,
which is a proof that it was the record of some very important
negotiation. In the next place, in the center of the belt, which
is of white wampum, are delineated in dark-colored beads, in a
rude, but graphic style, two figures--that of an Indian grasping
with the hand of friendship the hand of a man evidently intended
to be represented in the European costume wearing a hat, which can
only be interpreted as having reference to the treaty of peace and
friendship which was then concluded between William Penn and the
Indians, and recorded by them in their own simple but descriptive
mode of expressing their meaning by the employment of hieroglyphics.”
SECTION 4.
ORDER OF SONGS.
The Indian songs or, more accurately, chants, with which pictography is
connected, have been preserved in their integrity by the use of pictured
characters. They are in general connected with religious ceremonies,
and are chiefly used in the initiation of neophytes to secret religious
orders. Some of them, however, are used in social meetings or ceremonies
of cult societies, though the distinction between social or any other
general associations and those to be classified as religious is not
easily defined. Religion was the real life of the tribes, permeating all
their activities and institutions.
The words of these songs are invariable, even to the extent that by
their use for generations many of them have become archaic and form no
part of the colloquial language. Indeed, they are not always understood
by the best of the shaman songsters, which fact recalls the oriental
memorization of the Veda ritual through generations by the priests, who
thus, without intent, preserved a language. The sounds were memorized,
although the characters designating or, more correctly, recalling them,
were not representations of sound, but of idea.
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