Their value would be unquestionable as an aid to memory in the perpetuation of a mythic or historical poem; but, if the tradition were lost, they embody no sufficient record from which to recover it. Neither the Iroquois nor the Algonkin nation can be pointed to as specially gifted with imitative powers, or in other ways furnishing evidence of any highly developed artistic faculty. They cannot compare in this respect with the Zuñi, or others of the Pueblo Indians, among whom the arts of long-settled, agricultural communities have been developed for purposes of ornament as well as utility; nor is their inferiority less questionable when we compare them with some of the barbarous tribes of the north-west coast, and the neighbouring islands. Their languages confirm this; for while, as Mr. Cushing has shown, the Zuñi language possesses many words relating to art-processes, the Iroquois and Algonkin dialects supply such terms, for the most part, in descriptive holophrasms, and not in primitive roots. Nevertheless, alike in their pottery and carvings, and in their picture-writing, they show a degree of artistic capacity of which few traces are found in Europe’s Neolithic age. In the Ojibway, _oozhebegawin_ is used indiscriminately for “writing, drawing, painting,” _wazhebeegad_, for “a man who writes, draws.” In combination with _muh-ze-ne_, “figure, form,” such words are in use as _muhzenebeégawin_, “a painting, drawing”; _muhzenebeégawenene_ (M.), _muhzenebeégawequa_ (F.), “a painter, an artist”; _muhzenebeégun_, “a picture.” “To carve,” or “engrave on a rock,” is _muhzeneko_; _muhzenekojegun_, “a sculptor’s chisel”; _muhzenekoda_, “it is carved,” etc. Again with _wahbegun_, “clay,” such holophrasms are obtained as _wahbegunoonahgunekawenene_, “a man who makes earthen vessels, a potter,” _wahbeguhega_, “a worker in clay,” lit. “I work with clay.”[110]