File:Ridpath's Universal history - an account of the origin, primitive condition and ethnic development of the great races of mankind, and of the principal events in the evolution and progress of the (14747340706).jpg

Identifier: ridpathsuniversa08ridp (find matches)
Title: Ridpath's Universal history : an account of the origin, primitive condition and ethnic development of the great races of mankind, and of the principal events in the evolution and progress of the civilized life among men and nations, from recent and authentic sources with a preliminary inquiry on the time, place and manner of the beginning
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Ridpath, John Clark, 1840-1900
Subjects: World history
Publisher: Cincinnati : Jones
Contributing Library: University of Pittsburgh Library System
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
rned also instinct and ex-the limited range of his perfathers thought and imagination. Thisincluded the practical arts of building,canoe-making, weapon-making, garment-making, and also the art of writing.The latter art some of the Indian tribespossessed, but it existed in the hiero-glyphic stage. Perhaps no other people have pos- 476 GREAT RACES OF MANKIND. sessed a truer picture writing- than that practiced by the Indians. It was wholly pictorial and allegorical, Indian skill in . production of and therefore universal. picture writing, rry, .1 „ ^r The acute perception ofthe White man, without a knowledge ofthe conventional system of the Indianscribes, is able to grasp at least the out- the outer or inner bark of a tree thehieroglyphics in which information,rather than thought, was conveyed. Inthe nature of things the allegory wouldrun to fact. The exigencies of Indianlife required that the writings employedshould relate to facts and events, withonly an occasional symbol of a truly
Text Appearing After Image:
DESIGNS AND HIEROGLYPHICS ON BUFFALO ROBE. line of the sense of the pictorial sym-bols employed. The Indians were not without skill ininventing and making the symbolicalcharacters of their system. They dis-covered those substances, chiefly thebark of trees, on which the writingmight be most easily executed. TheIndian scribes might readily trace on ideal character. The delineation wasgenerally done with a rude but signifi-cant skill which the reader could hardlymistake. Many conventionalities wereintroduced, some of which had respectto the particular tribe employing thesystem and others of a more generalcharacter, significant to all Indians, and,indeed, to all men. NORTHERN ABORIGINES.—WRITING AND LANGUAGE. 477 It was not difficult for White adven-turers among- the Indians to learn themeaning of their writings Easiness of un-derstanding the and to execute such writ-hieroglyphics. ^ themsclves . but the Indians had a certain hereditary expert-ness in these particulars.The stoical man

Note About Images