[Fig. 8.  Red Indian Picture-Writing — The Legend of Manabozho:  293.jpg]

Among the uses of art for conveying intelligence we notice that even the Australians have what the Greeks would have called the [Greek], a staff on which inscriptions, legible to the Aborigines, are engraven.  I believe, however, that the Australian [Greek] is not usually marked with picture-writing, but with notches—­even more difficult to decipher.  As an example of Red Indian picture-writing we publish a scroll from Kohl’s book on the natives of North America.  This rude work of art, though the reader may think little of it, is really a document as important in its way as the Chaldaean clay tablets inscribed with the record of the Deluge.  The coarsely-drawn figures recall, to the artist’s mind, much of the myth of Manabozho, the Prometheus and the Deucalion, the Cain and the Noah of the dwellers by the great lake.  Manabozho was a great chief, who had two wives that quarrelled.  The two stumpy half-figures (4) represent the wives; the mound between them is the displeasure of Manabozho.  Further on (5) you see him caught up between two trees—­an unpleasant fix, from which the wolves and squirrels refused to extricate him.  The kind of pyramid with a figure at top (8) is a mountain, on which when the flood came, Manabozho placed his grandmother to be out of the water’s way.  The somewhat similar object is Manabozho himself, on the top of his mountain.  The animals you next behold (10) were sent out by Manabozho to ascertain how the deluge was faring, and to carry messages to his grandmother.  This scroll was drawn, probably on birch bark, by a Red Man of literary attainments, who gave it to Kohl (in its lower right-hand corner (11) he has pictured the event), that he might never forget the story of the Manabozhian deluge.  The Red Indians have always, as far as European knowledge goes, been in the habit of using this picture-writing for the purpose of retaining their legends, poems, and incantations.  It is unnecessary to say that the picture-writing of Mexico and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt are derived from the same savage processes.  I must observe that the hasty indications of the figure used in picture-writing are by no means to be regarded as measures of the Red Men’s skill in art.  They can draw much better than the artist who recorded the Manabozhian legend, when they please.

In addition to picture-writing, Religion has fostered savage representative art.  If a man worships a lizard or a bear, he finds it convenient to have an amulet or idol representing a bear or a lizard.  If one adores a lizard or a bear, one is likely to think that prayer and acts of worship addressed to an image of the animal will please the animal himself, and make him propitious.  Thus the art of making little portable figures of various worshipful beings is fostered, and the craft of working in wood or ivory is born.  As a rule, the savage is satisfied