The present writer obtained a valuable collection of birch-bark pictographs immemorially and still made by the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes of Abnaki in Maine, showing a similarity in the use of picture-writing between the members of the widespread Algonquian stock in the regions west of the great lakes and those on the northeastern seaboard. He also learned that the same art was common to the less known Montagnais and Nascapees in the wooded regions north of the St. Lawrence. This correlation of the pictographic practice, in manner and extent, was before inferentially asserted, but no satisfactory evidence of it had been furnished until the researches of the Bureau of Ethnology, in 1887 and 1888, made by the writer, brought into direct comparison the pictography of the Ojibwa with that of the Micmacs and the Abnaki. Many of the Indians of the last-named tribes still use marks and devices on birch bark in the ordinary affairs of life, especially as notices of departure and direction and for warning and guidance. The religious use of original drawings among them, which is still prominent among the Ojibwa, has almost ceased, but traces of it remain.
The most interesting of all the accounts regarding the pictographs of the North American Indians published before the last decade was contained in the works of Henry R. Schoolcraft, issued in 1853 and subsequent years, and the most frequently quoted part of his contributions on this subject describes the pictographs of the Ojibwa. He had special facilities for obtaining accurate information with regard to all matters relating to that tribe on account of his marriage to one of its women, a granddaughter of a celebrated chief, Waub-o-jeeg and daughter of a European named Johnson. She was educated in Ireland and had sufficient intelligence to understand and describe to her husband the points of interest relating to her tribe.
The accounts given by Mr. Schoolcraft, with numerous illustrations, convey the impression that the Ojibwa were nearly as far advanced in hieroglyphic writing as the Egyptians before their pictorial representations had become syllabic. The general character of his voluminous publications has not been such as to assure modern critics of his accuracy, and the wonderful combination of minuteness and comprehensiveness attributed by him to the Ojibwa “hieroglyphs” has of late been generally regarded with suspicion. It was considered in the Bureau of Ethnology an important duty to ascertain how much of truth existed in these remarkable accounts, and for that purpose the writer, with Dr. Hoffman as assistant, examined the most favorable points in the present habitat of the tribe, namely, the northern regions of Minnesota and Wisconsin, to ascertain how much was yet to be discovered.