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On the outer surface of each tent was exhibited the biography of its owner expressed in picture-writing. More especially were his deeds of prowess thus recorded encounters with the couguar and grizzly bear with Crows, Cheyennes, Pawnees, and Arapahoes each under its suitable symbol.
In one part of the picture we have a lake, and near by stands a priest pouring water on the head of a native. On the other side, a poor Indian has a cord about his throat. Lines run from these two groups to a central figure, a man with beard and full Spanish panoply. The interpretation of the picture-writing is this: "Be baptized, as this saved heathen; or be hanged, as that damned heathen."
We may laugh at the rude picture-writing, the uncouth brick pyramid, the coarse fabric, the homely and ill-shapen instruments, as they present themselves to our notice in the remains of these ancient nations; but they are really worthier of our admiration than of our ridicule.
The ancient and modern inscriptions of Asia, from the Red Sea to China, present many significant stages in the development of picture-writing.
From these considerations, it results, that even the very best specimens of Indian oratory, deserve the name of picturesque, rather than of eloquent two characteristics which bear no greater affinity to each other, than do the picture-writing of the Aztec and the alphabetical system of the Greek.
Though doubtless it was in the beginning a mere picture-writing, like that of the Mexicans, it had already, at the first moment we meet with it, undergone a twofold development ideographic and phonetic; the one expressing ideas, the other sounds.
We cannot, we think, better illustrate our opinion respecting our own great poet than by contrasting him with the father of Tuscan literature. The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are.
In short, my discovery precisely paralleled that of Boussard; for even as the Rosetta Stone gave the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, so did this transliteration into intelligible characters make all Aztec picture-writing plain.
The inference that the hieroglyphics of the Egyptians were thus produced, is confirmed by the fact that the picture-writing of the Mexicans was found to have given birth to a like family of ideographic forms; and among them, as among the Egyptians, these had been partially differentiated into the kuriological or imitative, and the tropical or symbolic; which were, however, used together in the same record.
It can hardly be questioned that when these pictures were first used calligraphically they were meant to represent the idea of a bird or animal. In other words, the first stage of picture-writing did not go beyond the mere representation of an eagle by the picture of an eagle. But this, obviously, would confine the presentation of ideas within very narrow limits.
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