As it is sometimes useful to have at hand an orderly geographical and cultural classification of tribes, this one used by Livingston Farrand is here given: I, Eskimo; II, North Pacific; III, Mackenzie Basin and High Plateaus; IV, Columbia River and California; V, Plains; VI, Eastern Woodlands; VII, The South-west and Mexico. [Illustration: HUMAN FORMS, MOKI] [Illustration: OMAHA WAR CLUB] CHAPTER III PICTURE-WRITING—SIGN-LANGUAGE—WAMPUM—CUPPED-STONES[36] Our pre-columbian knowledge of the Amerind people is at present meagre. The majority of the different stocks had not arrived at the point where they understood how to record their thoughts and their doings. Outside of the Maya and Nahuatl stocks, and others in that region, there is nothing but rude picture-writing to refer to besides an abundance of traditions, legends, and other oral matter. All the Amerind languages are capable of being readily written, being possessed of grammars and of copious vocabularies, but none of the tribes north of Mexico had made the discovery that marks can represent sounds. We trace our alphabet back to the Romans, still farther to the Greeks, and yet farther back to the Phœnicians, and then another stage back to even ruder characters connecting the chain of its development with the end links of such writing as that of the Mayas, and exhibiting writing in all stages, from rock scratching or picture-writing, through all phases down to the work of the writing and printing machines of to-day.