The same is true of the
Mayas of Central America, whose ruined temples are still
to be traced in the tangled forests of Yucatan and
Guatemala. The ancient Peruvians also had a system, not
exactly of writing, but of record by means of QUIPUS or
twisted woollen cords of different colours: it is through
such records that we have some knowledge of Peruvian
history during about a hundred years before the coming
of the Spaniards, and some traditions reaching still
further back. But nowhere was the art of writing
sufficiently developed in America to give us a real
history of the thoughts and deeds of its people before
the arrival of Columbus.
This is especially true of those families of the great
red race which inhabited what is now Canada. They spent
a primitive existence, living thinly scattered along the
sea-coast, and in the forests and open glades of the
district of the Great Lakes, or wandering over the prairies
of the west. In hardly any case had they any settled
abode or fixed dwelling-places. The Iroquois and some
Algonquins built Long Houses of wood and made stockade
forts of heavy timber. But not even these tribes, who
represented the furthest advance towards civilization
among the savages of North America, made settlements in
the real sense.
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