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MICMAC OR RECOLLECT HIEROGLYPHICS.

THE accompanying page contains the "Our Father" in the Micmac hieroglyphics, which that tribe has long employed, but to which no attention has been paid till quite recently. Leaving those who choose to build up theories as to these, we here give the result of our investigations, which have persuaded us that they are a European work on an Indian foundation.

The picture-writing was common to all the American tribes, existing in its highest beauty in Mexico. Elsewhere it was apparently only occasional. The buffalo-robe was decorated with the achievements of the warrior; a rock was occasionally inscribed with the account of some great action, or more probably was the historical register where many a brave at different intervals recorded his triumphs. The war-party having struck a blow in the enemy's country, would pin to a tree a strip of bark telling their tribe, their number, and their success.

The missionaries who have undertaken to convert the Indians, have almost always resorted to the Roman characters to express sounds, and instructed the Indians in their use and power. Guess, the Cherokee, invented a syllabic alphabet, containing eighty-five letters, many quite complex in form, but which has been adopted, and books, tracts, and newspapers even, printed in it. The missionaries at Hudson's Bay have adopted a simpler set of letters, each representing a syllable, and amounting to fifty-six in number, with ten final letters, in which character books have also been issued. These two form a second class-the syllabic alphabets.

given, and its explanation, is having the dies for the characters cut in Vienna, and proposes printing there the three works now extant in it-one containing the various Prayers; another, Devotions for Mass, of which I have a copy made by a chief in Cape Breton, sent me by Father Kauder; and the third, a Catechism.

To investigate their history, it was necessary to go back to the earliest accounts of European intercourse with the Micmac tribe, whose territory lay east of the Etechemins, and ran north to the lands of the Montagnais, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, including Cape Breton, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Champlain, Lescarbot, and Father Biard, make no allusion to any such characters as in use among the Micmacs, down to 1613, although they had every opportunity of remarking them had they existed.

A Recollect mission was established some time after; but the account of their labors, though said by Le Clercq to have been printed, is one of the unknown books on American history, and it is impossible to say what light, if any, it will give. The Jesuit missionaries, after Biard, did not extend their labors to Nova Scotia, and had only occasional missions in the upper district of the territory of the Micmacs or Souriquois. One of them, Father Julian Perrault, has left a short account of Cape Breton, where he was a missionary in 1635, and where the characters are now in use, but he makes no allusion whatever to them; nor do the accounts of the labors of Father Andrew Richard, who was a missionary at Miscou at that time, and for thirty years later, refer to them in the slightest manner. Thus far all is negative. A positive testimony comes to aid, in 1652. In

The characters we here give are symbolic, not that year Father Gabriel Druilletes, who had phonetic. Each represents a word, thus:

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founded the Kennebec Mission, in 1646, giving an account of his labors, and especially of his method of instructing the Indians, says:

"Some wrote their lessons after their fashion; they used a small coal as a pen, and a bark for they are; paper. Their characters are so new and so peculiar, that one would not know or understand the writing of another; that is to say, they use his father, or certain marks, according to their ideas, as a local memory, to recollect the points, articles, and maxims which they had heard. They took their papers with them to study their lessons during the night."

Of course the number of these is very great, ainounting, as I am informed by the Rev. Charles Kauder, to seven thousand, and yet they have but three books in it-all religious. To carry it out would require an infinite number to express the various other classes of ideas that do not come within the compass of professed religious teaching. Undeterred by the number, this clergyman, to whose kindness I owe the "Our Father," here

The hint conveyed by this was lost on the missionary; and neither he nor any other of the Jesuit Fathers seems to have thought of turning Indian symbolic characters to account, although missionaries a few years later introduced the pictures of Le Nobletz for that purpose.

The Recollect Father Christian Le Clercq, author of the work vaguely entitled "Etablissement de la Foi," underwent a similar experience, but prof

ited by it. In his "Nouvelle Relation de la Gas-characters that I formed, convince me that most pésia," p. 141, he says: "Our Lord inspired me with this method the second year of my mission (say 1679), when being greatly embarrassed in what way I should teach the Indians to pray, I perceived some children making marks with a coal on a piece of birch bark, and pointing to them very exactly, at each of the prayers that they uttered; this led me to believe, that by giving them some formulary which would help their memory by certain characters, I would be able to progress much more than by teaching them to repeat over and over again what I said. I was charmed to see that I was not mistaken, and that these characters which I had formed on paper, produced all the effect that I desired, so that in a few days they learned all their prayers without difficulty. I cannot express the ardor with which these poor Indians contended with each other in praiseworthy emulation to see who should be most learned and skilful. It is true that it cost much time and pains to form as many as they ask; and especially, since I increased them so as to teach all the prayers of the Church, with the sacred mysteries of the Trinity, Incarnation, Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist.

"As I sought in this little formulary only the advantage of my Indians, and the most prompt and easy method of instructing them, I used it with the more pleasure, inasmuch as several persons of virtue and merit, kindly, by word and letter, encouraged me to continue, even obliging me to send some to France to show the curious a new method of learning to read, and how God uses the humblest things to manifest the glory of his holy name to these people of Gaspe. The approbation of Mgr. de St. Valier, now bishop of Quebec, has more than sufficiently authorized the use; and this worthy prelate esteems them so highly, that after observing personally the use and benefit, in the very painful journey which he made to Acadia, he asked some models of Rev. Father Moreau, to whom I had sent them several years before. His lordship received with pleasure from this zealous missionary, our billets and instructive characters to give them to one of his missionaries; and I have no doubt but that this good servant of God will receive relief in the instruction of the Indians of his mission.

"Our Gaspesians have so much veneration and respect for these characters, that they scruple to throw them in the fire. When they are torn or soiled, they bring me the fragments. You see the esteem which our Indians have for my Oukate Iguenne Kignatimonoer, which we call, as I have said, instructive characters or papers."

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In a previous part of his volume (p. 129), he says: "The easy method which I found for teaching our Gaspesians their prayers, with certain

would soon become educated; for after all, I would not find it more difficult to teach them to read than to pray by my papers, in which each arbitrary letter signifies a particular word, sometimes, even, two together. They so easily conceive this kind of writing, that they learn in a single day what they never could have retained in a whole week, without the help of these billets, which they call Kignamotinoer or Kateguenne. They preserved these instructive papers with so much care, and esteem them so highly, that they put them up very neatly in little bark cases trimmed with wampurn, beads, and porcupine quills. They hold them in their hands as we do our prayer-books during mass, after which they put them in their cases. The principal use and advantage of this new method is, that the Indians instruct each other wherever they happen to be: the son teaches the father; the mother, her children; the wife, her husband and children; the aged, who show no reluctance to learn from their little grandchildren and little girls, even, the principles of Christianity. Even the little children, that have not the entire use of speech, pronounce, as well as they can, some words from these billets which they hear in their cabins, when the Indians in holy emulation repeat them. In fact, a little boy seven years old, at our convent in Quebec, has often been justly admired, as he read distinctly in his book the prayers which I had taught him when at the mission. He deciphered these characters with such ease and readiness that our friars and seculars were extremely surprised. Nor were they less edified to see the parents at mass with their Gaspesian prayer-books in their hands, containing the instructions that a good Christian should know in order to assist with merit at the august sacrifice."

Father Le Clercq had a theory about the Gaspesians which seems untenable. The reverence which they had for the cross, and of the origin of which Perrault had spoken long before, misled him; and like some in our days, who take up the cause of a tribe, he wished to make them out an original people. They were, however, merely a branch of the Micmacs or Souriquois, and the territory which he assigned to them, from Gaspé to Nipsiguit and Cape Breton, is still in the Micmac district. In the last number of the Magazine will be found all the Gaspesian words introduced by Le Clercq in his work, and a comparison of many with the Micmac, which leaves no doubt of the identity of the language.

We have then the fact, that Father Le Clercq introduced symbolic characters among the Micmacs; and as they still remain, modified perhaps by time, there can be little doubt but that he is entitled to the honor of inventing the charac

ters we have given. If this be the case, they are the most interesting monument yet discovered of the labors of the early Recollect missionaries, and that their clain may be tested, we have styled them the Recollect Hieroglyphics, open to information, correction, or advice.

A manuscript in this character is said to exist in one of the public libraries at Paris, and steps have been taken to have it copied in whole or in part. As described to me, it is of the seventeenth century; and it may possibly be one of those sent to France by Father Le Clercq himself, who states that he was requested to furnish specimens, and did so. From its age, it will be of great value for

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THE following letter of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the founder of St. Augustine, is given by the Father Bartolomé Alcazar, in his "ChronoHistoria de la Compañia de Jesus en la Provincia de Toledo," Madrid, 1710, 2 vols. fol. (Tom. ii., Dec. iii., Año vi., Cap. iii.), from the original in the archives of Alcalá. As it has never been republished or translated, and as the work of Alcazar is of extreme rarity (not mentioned by Brunet), it may be found of interest to the readers of the Hist. Mag. It was written to a Jesuit father residing in Cadiz. Its tone of earnest piety seems to prove its writer's assertion as recorded by Sacchinus: "Cum ejusmodi præfecturas plerique mortalium pecunia causâ ambire solent, profitebatur ille [Petrus Menendis], reque ipsa probabat, unam sibi propositam esse pereuntium animarum curam.' "Hist. Soc. Jesu, Pars. iii.,

fol. 85.

WEST CHESTER, Penn.

[Translation.]

D. G. B.

"By the letters of Pedro de el Castillo, I have learned the great kindness shown toward me throughout our kingdom by the Society of Jesus. In answer to their prayers our Lord has shown me many mercies, and continues daily so to do, granting victory and good success in every thing to which myself and the Spaniards who are with me have laid our hands since we have been in these provinces. And though we have undergone great hunger, toil, and danger, and some like feeble men could not bear it but became disheartened, yet most, I among them, though the greatest sinner

of all, being sure that they came to pass through the will of our Lord, and that his reward would not fail me, never felt them; and I continued as cheerful, sound, strong, and contented as ever I was, and this even in our time of greatest need, when the Indians used to come two or three times a week, and each time would kill two or three of us and wound others, and when we had nothing to eat, and when for two months those of one fort did not know whether those of the other were alive or dead.*

"On St. Peter's eve (the anniversary of the day that I left Spain for this land),† seventeen ships appeared off the entry to the harbor of St. Augustine, and all entered with good success, bringing fifteen hundred infantry, five hundred sailors, a large quantity of artillery and munitions of war, and a good store of provisions. This was to us all a great consolation and pleasure, those who were in this fort going out to meet them weeping for joy, their hands and eyes lifted to heaven, praising the Lord. At the time I was not here. But I returned within eight days. And as I beheld how much aid and succor his majesty the king, Don Philip, had sent us, and how our Lord had conducted it safely, on the one hand I had great pleasure in witnessing the kindness of his majesty, but on the other was affected and lost that there came no member of the Society [of Jesus], nor indeed any learned religious; because on and the good understanding and judgment of the account of the many caciques I have for friends, natives of these provinces, and the warm desire the law of Jesus Christ, half a dozen missionaries they manifest to become Christians and to learn would do more good in one month than many thousand men such as we in many years. It is merely a waste of time to think of planting the Gospel in this country with the military alone. in error, that the Word will spread abroad in these Your grace may rest assured, unless I am much parts. For their religion is in great measure a dead deer and other animals; each year they worship of the sun and moon; their idols are have three or four celebrations, when they adore the sun, and remain three days without eating, drinking, or sleeping, these being their fasts. Whoever is feeble, and cannot endure this, they look upon as unworthy, and he is despised by the nobler portion; but he who best sustains these privations, is held to be greatest, and is much honored. They are a race of great strength and agility, and remarkable swimmers. They wage many wars one with another, but there is no

The two forts referred to were Fort St. Augustine, and Fort San Mattheo, near the mouth of the St. Johns. Hist. Mag. + St. Peter's eve occurs on the 28th of June.-Ed.

This was the fleet commanded by Juan de Avila.

learn where they were, and a storm arising they could not return. They had met many Indians who, saying that they were my friends and brothers, had received them kindly and assisted them. Their misfortune happened them a league from Fort San Mattheo.* Father Martinez had with him some gifts from the Holy Father, and both these and whatever else he had, all were lost. Blessed be our Lord for all things. And since his Divine Majesty permits and wishes it, let us give him unceasing thanks; for we here are of so little merit that it seemed good to our Lord to visit upon us this calamity; depriving us of the great consolation we would have had in the company of the Father Martinez, of whom all of us, both Spaniards and natives, had such great need.t I believe that the sloop has not been lost, but has gone to Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, or Cuba. I have sent a servant to these isles with orders to direct the pilot of the sloop to go to Havana, and take with him the two fathers of the Society who were still on board,‡ in order that they may occupy themselves there till the end of February, when the winter will have passed, in collecting vocabularies, and studying the language of the territory of Carlos, a very friendly cacique.§ In the beginning of March, they can go to this cacique, the transit being a very easy one, and the country thickly settled, it not being necessary that they should disembark here. Most of the tribes they will encounter are friendly, having among them crosses which I gave them, and boys and soldiers to instruct them in Christian doctrine.

powerful cacique among them. I have avoided entering into an alliance with any chief against another, even against my enemies, for I tell them that our Lord reigns in the heavens, and is Cacique of all the caciques of the earth and of every created thing, and He is angry with them because they make war upon each other and kill each other like wild beasts. Thus certain of them have been induced to promise that they will be friends and quit their idolatry, and have begged me for crosses to worship. I sent some youths and soldiers among them to instruct them in the Christian dogmas. When they said they wished to be Christians as we, I replied that I was expecting missionaries who would construct vocabularies and master rapidly their tongue; that these would tell them what they had to do to become Christians, and would undeceive them, showing them how, not being like us, they serve and deify the vilest creature of the world, which is the devil; but when their eyes are opened, and they become Christians, they will serve our Lord who is Cacique of heaven and earth, and will be contented and happy, and our brothers in truth, and whatever we have we will share with them. As I had promised them that the missionaries would come in this fleet, when they did not come, the natives thought I was false to them. Certain ones have created scandal, saying that I deceive them, while the caciques, my enemies, ridicule both them and me. It has thus done great harm that none of your reverences nor any other learned religious have come out to teach them. The more so since if we do not take advantage of the treaties we have at present to propagate the Holy Gospel, "We have not ventured inland, having been engaging the chiefs to certify what the missiona-occupied in fortifying ourselves on the coast, and ries say, at a later date we will be able to do in trying to pacify the caciques about here, so nothing, as they will have no confidence in us. that our front may be secure. We have, conseMay our Lord stir up the excellent Society of quently, not seen any large towns, though there Jesus, that it send hither at least six laborers, fit are many Indians here, both men and boys. The for the harvest, for it will be abundant. interior is said to be thickly peopled, and there is

"On the 14th September, 1566, a ship, sailing with a side wind, came within two leagues of this port of St. Augustine; and as it appeared to me that she did not recognize it, I sent a skiff with a number of oars to bring her inside. But the sea being rough, and the tide adverse, it could not go out, and within two days a storm arose. A fortnight afterwards a boat came to anchor in the river of the fort of San Mattheo, near the sea, with six Flemings on board, without any food, and two of them almost mortally wounded with arrows. It proved to belong to a Spanish vessel. They related how, the day before, certain Indians, our enemies, a league from there, had slain Father Martinez of the Society; and how the vessel that had passed here was the sloop whence they came; that not recognizing the harbor, the pilot had sent them ashore in the boat a fortnight before, to

*Fairbanks ("Hist. and Antiq. of St. Augustine," p. 100) suggests St. George's Island as the probable scene of this occurrence. This, however, lies to the north of the mouth of the St. Johns; and as they were creeping along the shore to the south of this river, it must have been on the bank opposite St. George's. + On the missionary voyage of Martinez, see Alcazar, "Chrono-Historia," tom. ii., 145, sqq., Alegambe, "Mortes Illustres," fol. 44-6, and especially Sacchinus, "Hist. Societat. Jesu," pars. iii., fol. 86-90. gives the fullest account of the Jesuit missions to Florida, that I have anywhere found.

The latter

Juan Rogel and Francisco de Villareal. He refers to the Caloosa tribe, for a long time the leading native nation of the southern portion of the peninsula. Their chief town was twelve or fourteen leagues from the southernmost cape (cf. Brinton, "Notes on the Floridian Peninsula," pp. 112-16). The passage affords another proof of the facile communication that existed at the earliest dates between the West Indies and the northern mainland (see op. cit., p. 101).

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