Page:The American Indian.djvu/173

Rh large areas. In short, we are justified in assuming that the rotating tool or wheel had no place in the original mechanical concepts of the New World.

Perhaps one of the greatest discoveries ever made by man was that fire could be kindled at will. The great English anthropologist, Tylor, has given us a model study of fire-making. It appears that in aboriginal times practically the whole of the New World kindled fire with the simple hand-drill. Only among the Eskimo and a few of the adjoining Indians were other types of drill in use, as may be inferred from the preceding discussion. To strike fire from flint one must have good iron, preferably steel, hence, that method was unknown here; but nature provides a fair substitute in iron pyrites to which the Eskimo frequently resort and which is the prevailing method in the greater part of the caribou area. It is sometimes believed that this is intrusive from the Old World, but it is also the method in the guanaco area of South America, which suggests that the cause may be environmental.

Another invention of great significance is the art of writing. So far as we can tell, no form of writing was practised in South America, that achievement appearing to be a Maya contribution. The codices of Mexico and their official use at the time of the Conquest are a matter of common knowledge, but the more definite extinct Maya system of writing presents one of the great puzzles of our subject. Some progress has been made in recovering the key to it, in so far as the calendar and dates are concerned. From these, it appears that the Maya system is both pictographic and phonetic and that the Mexican scheme was in the main derived from it.

North of Mexico the existence of true writing may be doubted. In the pictographic year counts of certain tribes of Plains Indians, we find something faintly suggesting the Mexican codex, and in the birchbark ceremonial tablets of the Ojibway we have true picture writing. Yet, in no case did such picture writing become an accepted mode of communication, its function usually being merely to herald the deeds of the scribe. By this means, however, were developed a few conventional characters that were equivalent to hieroglyphs.