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sounds which he articulated: in all
America there was
no alphabet, and to the eye knowledge was conveyed only by rude imitations.
In a picture of an animal drawn on a sheet of birch bark, or on a smooth stone, or on a blazed tree, an Indian will recognize the symbol of his tribe; and the figures that are sketched
around will give him a message from his friends.
Pic-
torial hieroglyphics were found in all parts of
America,
—in
Southern Louisiana, and in the land of the
Wyanwater's dots, among Algonquins and Mohawks.
The rudest
Vater's Mithridates, III. 324. |
painting, giving its story at a glance, constituted the only writing of the
Indian.
As his mode of writing was by imitation of visible objects, so his language itself was held in bonds by external nature.
Abounding in words to designate every object of experience, it had none to express a spiritual
Relation 1633, 36, 37, 114. |
conception; materialism reigned in it. The individuality of the barbarian and of his tribe, stamps itself upon his language.
Nature creates or shapes expressions for his sensations and his desires, and his language was always vastly copious in words for objects within his knowledge, for ideas derived from the senses; but for
Loskiel. Le Jeune.
Lafitau. |
‘spiritual matters’ it was poor; it had no name for continence or justice, for gratitude or holiness.
That each American language has been successfully used by Christian missionaries, comes not from an original store of words expressing moral truth, but from the reciprocal pliability of ideas and their signs.
It required, said Loskiel, the labor of years to make the
Delaware dia lect capable of expressing abstract truth; it was necessary to forge a new language out of existing terms by circumlocutions and combinations; and it was the glory of
Eliot, that his benevolent simplicity intuitively
Compare Lafitau, II. 481. |
caught the analogies by which moral truth could be
