by the Medicine-men in their ceremonies; and among the tribes which have not been christianized they are still to be found in use. After we left Mexico, Mr. Christy visited some tribes in the Hudson’s Bay Territory; and on one occasion, happening to assist at a festival in which just such a wooden drum was used, he bought it of the Medicine-man of the tribe, and packed it off triumphantly to his museum.
A few picture-writings are still to be seen in the Museum, which, with the few preserved in Europe, are all we have left of these interesting records, of which there were thousands upon thousands in Mexico and Tezcuco. Some were burnt or destroyed during the sieges of the cities, some perished by mere neglect, but the great mass was destroyed by archbishop Zumarraga, when he made an attempt—and, to some extent, a successful one—to obliterate every trace of heathenism, by destroying all the monuments and records in the country. One of the picture-writings hanging on the wall is very probably the same that was sent up from Vera Cruz to Montezuma, with figures of the newly-arrived white men, their ships and horses, and their cannons with fire and smoke issuing