Picture-Writing of the American Indians

Section 2 Homomorphs and Symmorphs

It has already been mentioned that characters substantially the same, or homomorphs, made by one set of people, have a different signification among others. The class of homomorphs may also embrace the cases common in gesture signs, and in picture writing, similar to the homophones in oral language, where the same sound has several meanings among the same people.

It would be very remarkable if precisely the same character were not used by different or even the same persons or bodies of people with wholly distinct significations. The graphic forms for objects and ideas are much more likely to be coincident than sound is for similar expressions, yet in all oral languages the same precise sound, sometimes but not always distinguished by different literation, is used for utterly diverse meanings. The first conception of different objects could not have been the same. It has been found, indeed, that the homophony of words and the homomorphy of ideographic pictures is noticeable in opposite significations, the conceptions arising from the opposition itself. The same sign and the same sound may be made to convey different ideas by varying the expression, whether facial or vocal, and by the manner accompanying their delivery. Pictographs likewise may be differentiated by modes and mutations of drawing. The differentiation in picturing or in accent is a subsequent and remedial step not taken until after the confusion had been observed and had become inconvenient. Such confusion and contradiction would only be eliminated from pictography if it were far more perfect than is any spoken language.

This heading, for convenience, though not consistently with its definition, may also include those pictographs which convey different ideas and are really different in form of execution as well as in conception, yet in which the difference in form is so slight as practically to require attention and discrimination. Examples are given below in this section, and others may be taken from the closely related sign-language, one group of which may now be mentioned.

The sign used by the Dakota, Hidatsa, and several other tribes for “tree” is made by holding the right hand before the body, back forward, fingers and thumb separated; then pushing it slightly upward, Fig. 1115; that for “grass” is the same, made near the ground; that for “grow” is made like “grass,” though, instead of holding the back of the hand near the ground, the hand is pushed upward in an interrupted manner, Fig. 1116. For “smoke” the hand (with the back down, fingers pointing upward as in grow) is then thrown upward several times from the same place instead of continuing the whole motion upward. Frequently the fingers are thrown forward from under the thumb with each successive upward motion. For “fire” the hand is employed as in the gesture for smoke, but the motion is frequently more waving, and in other cases made higher from the ground.

Symmorphs, a term suggested by the familiar “synonym,” are designs not of the same form, but which are used with the same significance or so nearly the same as to have only a slight shade of distinction and which sometimes are practically interchangeable. The comprehensive and metaphorical character of pictographs renders more of them interchangeable than is the case with words; still, like words, some pictographs with essential resemblance of meaning have partial and subordinate differences made by etymology or usage. Doubtless the designs are purposely selected to delineate the most striking outlines of an object or the most characteristic features of an action; but different individuals and likewise different bodies of people would often disagree in the selection of those outlines and features. In an attempt to invent an ideographic, not an iconographic, design for “bird,” any one of a dozen devices might have been agreed upon with equal appropriateness, and, in fact, a number have been so selected by several individuals and tribes, each one, therefore, being a symmorph of the other. Gesture language gives another example in the signs for “deer,” designated by various modes of expressing fleetness, also by his gait when not in rapid motion, by the shape of his horns, by the color of his tail, and sometimes by combinations of those characteristics. Each of these signs and of the pictured characters corresponding with them may be indefinitely abbreviated and therefore create indefinite diversity. Some examples appropriate to this line of comparison are now presented.

Sky

The Indian gesture sign for sky, heaven, is generally made by passing the index from east to west across the zenith. This curve is apparent in the Ojibwa pictograph, the left-hand character of Fig. 1117, reported in Schoolcraft (q), and is abbreviated in the Egyptian character with the same meaning, the middle character of the same figure, from Champollion (e). A simpler form of the Ojibwa picture sign for sky is the right-hand character of the same figure, from Copway (h).

Sun and Light

Fig. 1118 shows various representations of the sun taken from a petroglyph at Oakley springs.

The common Indian gesture sign for sun is: Right hand closed, the index and thumb curved, with tips touching, thus approximating a circle, and held toward the sky, the position of the fingers of the hand forming a circle as is shown in Fig. 1119. Two of the Egyptian characters for sun, the left-hand upper characters of Fig. 1120 are the common conception of the disk. The rays emanating from the whole disk appear in the two adjoining characters on the same figure, taken from the rock etchings of the Moki pueblos in Arizona. From the same locality are the two remaining characters in the same figure, which may be distinguished from several similar etchings for “star,” Fig. 1129, infra, by their showing some indication of a face, the latter being absent in the characters denoting “star.”

With the above characters for sun compare the left-hand character of Fig. 1121, found at Cuxco, Peru, and taken from Wiener (h).

In the pictorial notation of the Laplanders the sun bears its usual figure of a man’s head, rayed. See drawings in Scheffer’s History of Lapland, London, 1704.

The Ojibwa pictograph for sun is seen in the second character of Fig. 1121, taken from Schoolcraft (r). The sun’s disk, together with indications of rays, as shown in the third character of the same figure, and in its linear form, the fourth character of that figure, from Champollion, Dict., constitutes the Egyptian character for light.

Fig. 1122.—Light. Red-Cloud’s Census. This is to be compared with the rays of the sun as above shown, but still more closely resembles the old Chinese character for light, or more specifically “light above man,” in the left-hand character of Fig. 1123, reported by Dr. Edkins.

The other characters of the same figure are given by Schoolcraft (s) as Ojibwa symbols of the sun.

The left-hand character of Fig. 1124, from Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum (a), shows the top of an heraldic column of the Sentlae (Sun) gens of the Kwakiutl Indians in Alert bay, British Columbia, which represents the sun surrounded by wooden rays. A simpler form is seen in the right character of the same figure where the face of the sun is also fastened to the top of a pole. The author, Dr. Boas, states that Fig. 1125 is the sun mask used by the same gens in their dance. This presents another mode in which the common symbolic connection of the eagle (the beak of which bird is apparently shown) with the sun is indicated.

Prof. Cyrus Thomas, in Aids to the Study of the Manuscript Troano, Sixth Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., p. 348, gives the left-hand character in Fig. 1126 as representing the sun.

General Forlong (a) states that the middle device of the same figure represents the sun as Mihr, the fertilizer of the seed.

Dr. Edkins (e) gives the right-hand device of the same figure as a picture of the sun. Originally it was a circle with a stroke or dot in the middle.

Moon

A common Indian gesture sign for moon, month, is the right hand closed, leaving the thumb and index extended, but curved to form a half circle and the hand held toward the sky, in a position which is illustrated in Fig. 1127, to which curve the Moki drawing, the upper left-hand device in Fig. 1128, and the identical form in the ancient Chinese have an obvious resemblance.

The crescent, as Europeans and Asiatics commonly figure the satellite, appears also in the Ojibwa pictograph, the lower left-hand character in Fig. 1128, taken from Schoolcraft (t), which is the same, with a slight addition, as the Egyptian figurative character.

The middle character in Fig. 1128 is the top of an upright post of a house of the moon gens of the Kuakiutl Indians taken from Boas (g). It represents the moon.

Schoolcraft (u) gives the right-hand character of the same figure for the moon, i. e., an obscured sun, as drawn by the Ojibwa.

Stars

Fig. 1129 shows various forms of stars, taken from a petroglyph at Oakley Springs, Arizona. Most of them show the rays in a manner to suggest the points of stars common in many parts of the world.

Daytime and Kind of Day

Fig. 1130, copied from Copway (h), presents respectively the characters for sunrise, noon, and sunset.

An Indian gesture sign for “sunrise,” “morning,” is: Forefinger of right hand crooked to represent half of the sun’s disk and pointed or extended to the left, slightly elevated. In this connection it may be noted that when the gesture is carefully made in open country the pointing would generally be to the east, and the body turned so that its left would be in that direction. In a room in a city, or under circumstances where the points of the compass are not specially attended to, the left side supposes the east, and the gestures relating to sun, day, etc., are made with such reference. The half only of the disk represented in the above gesture appears in the Moki pueblo drawings for morning and sunrise.

Fig. 1131 shows various representations of sunrise from Oakley Springs, Arizona.

J. B. Dunbar (b), in The Pawnee Indians, says:

As an aid to the memory the Pawnees frequently made use of notches cut in a stick or some similar device for the computation of nights (for days were counted by nights), or even of months and years. Pictographically a day or daytime was represented by a six or eight pointed star as a symbol of the sun. A simple cross (a star) was a symbol of a night and a crescent represented a moon or lunar month.

A common Indian gesture for day is when the index and thumb form a circle (remaining fingers closed) and are passed from east to west.

Fig. 1132 shows a pictograph found in Owens valley, California, a similar one being reported in the Ann. Rep. Geog. Survey West of the 100th Meridian for 1876, Washington, 1876, pl. opp. p. 326, in which the circle may indicate either day or month (both these gestures having the same execution), the course of the sun or moon being represented perhaps in mere contradistinction to the vertical line, or perhaps the latter signifies one.

Fig. 1133 is a pictograph made by the Coyotèro Apaches, found at Camp Apache, in Arizona, reported in the Tenth Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Survey of the Terr., Washington, 1878, Pl. lxxvii. The sun and the ten spots of approximately the same shape represent the days, eleven, which the party passed in traveling through the country. The separating lines are the nights, and may include the conception of covering over and consequent obscurity referred to in connection with the pictographs for night.

Night

Fig. 1135.—Kills-the-Enemy-at-Night. Red-Cloud’s Census. Night is indicated by the black circle around the head, suggesting the covering over with darkness, as is shown in the common gesture for night, made by passing both flat hands from their respective sides, inward and downward, before the body. The sign for kill is denoted here by the bow in contact with the head, in accordance with a custom among the Dakota of striking the dead enemy with the bow or coup stick.

Fig. 1136.—Kills-Enemy-at-Night. Red-Cloud’s Census. This drawing is similar to the preceding. The differentiation is sufficient to allow of a distinction between the two characters, each representing the same name, though belonging to two different men.

Fig. 1138.—Kills-at-Night. Red-Cloud’s Census. Night is here shown by the curve for sky and the suspension, beneath it, of a star, or more probably in Dakotan expression, a night sun, i. e., the moon.

Fig. 1139.—A Crow chief, Flat-Head, comes into the tipi of a Dakota chief, where a council was assembled. Flame’s Winter Count, 1852-’53. The night is shown by the black top of the tipi.

A typical Indian gesture for night, illustrated by Fig. 1141, is: Place the flat hands horizontally about 2 feet apart, move them quickly in an upward curve toward one another until the right lies across the left. “Darkness covers all.”

The conception of covering executed by delineating the object covered beneath the middle point of an arch or curve, appears also clearly in the Egyptian characters for night, Fig. 1142, Champollion (f).

Cloud

Fig. 1144.—Cloud shield. Red-Cloud’s Census. This figure shows in conjunction with the disk, probably a shield but possibly the sun, a dim cloud, and below is a line apparently holding up clouds from which the raindrops have not yet begun to fall. This may be collated with the pictographs for rain and also for snow, as figured below.

A Cheyenne sign for cloud is as follows: (1) Both hands partially closed, palms facing and near each other, brought up to level with or slightly above but in front of the head; (2) suddenly separated sidewise, describing a curve like a scallop; this scallop motion is repeated for “many clouds.” The same conception is in the Moki etchings, the three left-hand characters of Fig. 1145 (Gilbert MS.), and in variants from Oakley Springs, the two right-hand characters of the same figure.

The Ojibwa pictograph for cloud, reported in Schoolcraft (n), is more elaborate, Fig. 1146. It is composed of the sign for sky to which that for clouds is added, the latter being reversed, as compared with the Moki etchings, and picturesquely hanging from the sky.

Rain

The gesture sign for rain is illustrated in Fig. 1002. The pictograph, Fig. 1148, reported as found in New Mexico, by Lieut. Simpson, in Ex. Doc. No. 64, 31st Congress, 1st session, 1850, p. 9, is said to represent Montezuma’s adjutants sounding a blast to him for rain. The small character inside the curve which represents the sky, corresponds with the gesturing hand, but may be the rain cloud appearing.

Edkins (f) gives Fig. 1150 as the Chinese character for rain. It is a picture of rain falling from the clouds. He adds, p. 155:

Rain was anciently without the upper line, and instead of the vertical line in the middle there were four, but all shorter. Above each of them and within the concave was a dot. These four dots were raindrops, the four lines were the direction of their descent, and the concave was the firmament.

Lightning

Among the northern Indians of North America the concept of lightning is included in that of thunder, and is represented by the thunder bird, see Chap. xiv, sec. 2, supra.

Fig. 1151 shows three ways in which lightning is represented by the Moki. They are copied from a petroglyph at Oakley Springs, Arizona. In the middle character the sky is shown, the changing direction of the streak and clouds with rain falling. The part relating specially to the streak is portrayed in an Indian gesture sign as follows: Right hand elevated before and above the head, forefinger pointing upward, brought down with great rapidity with a sinuous, undulating motion, finger still extended diagonally downward toward the right.

Fig. 1152 is a copy from a vase in the collection of relics of the ancient builders of the southwest table lands in the MS. Catalogue of Mr. Thomas V. Keam, and represents the body of the mythic Um-tak-ina, the Thunder. This body is a rain cloud with thunder [lightning] darting through it, and is probably of ancient Moki workmanship.

Fig. 1153, also from Keam’s MS., gives three other representations of the Moki characters for lightning. The middle one shows the lightning sticks which are worked by the hands of the dancers.

Fig. 1154 also represents lightning, taken by Mr. W. H. Jackson, photographer of the late U. S. Geol. and Geogr. Survey, from the decorated walls of an estufa in the Pueblo de Jemez, New Mexico. The former is blunt, for harmless, and the latter terminates in an arrow or spear point, for destructive or fatal lightning.

Connected with this topic is the following extract from Virgil’s Æneis, Lib. viii, 429:

Tres imbris torti radios, tres nubis aquosæ
Addiderant, rutili tres ignis et alitis austri.

The “radii” are the forks or spikes by which lightning is designated, especially on medals. It consisted of twelve wreathed spikes or darts extended like the radii of a circle. The wings denote the lightning’s rapid motion and the spikes or darts its penetrating quality. The four different kinds of spikes refer to the four seasons. The “tres imbristorti radii” or the three spikes of hail, are the winter when hail storms abound. The “tres nubis aquosæ radii,” the three spikes of a watery cloud, denote the spring. The “tres rutili ignis radii,” the three spikes of sparkling fire, are the summer when lightning is frequent and the “tres alitis austri radii,” or the three spikes of winged wind, are for autumn with its many wind storms.

Human Form

Fig. 1155.—a among the Arikara signifies men. The characters are used in connection with horseshoes, to denote “mounted men” b. In other pictographs such spots or dots are merely numerical. c is drawn by the Kiatéxamut branch of the Innuits for man. It is an abbreviated form and rare. d, drawn by the Blackfeet, signifies “Man-dead.” This is from a pictograph in Wind River mountains, taken from Jones’s (c) Northwestern Wyoming. e is also a Kiatéxamut Innuit drawing for man. This figure is armless; generally represents the person addressed.

Fig. 1156.—a is also a Kiatéxamut Innuit drawing for man. The person makes the gesture for negation. b and c, from a Californian petroglyph, are men also gesturing negation. d, from Schoolcraft (v), is the Ojibwa “symbol” for disabled man.

Fig. 1157.—a is the Kiatéxamut Innuit drawing for Shaman. b, used by the same tribe, represents man supplicating. c, reproduced from Schoolcraft (u), is the Ojibwa representative figure or man.

Fig. 1158.—a, from Schoolcraft, loc. cit., is an Ojibwa drawing of a headless body. b, from the same, is another Ojibwa figure for a headless body, perhaps female. c, contributed by Mr. Gilbert Thompson, is a drawing for a man, made by the Moki in Arizona. d, reproduced from Schoolcraft (w), is a drawing from the banks of the River Yenesei, Siberia, by Von Strahlenberg (a). e is given by Dr. Edkins, op. cit., p. 4, as the Chinese character for, and originally a picture of, a man.

The representation of a headless body does not always denote death. An example is given in Fig. 1159, a, taken from an ivory drill-bow in the collection of the Alaska Commercial Company, of San Francisco, California. It was made by the Aigaluxamut natives of Alaska. As the explanation gives no suggestion of a fatal casualty, the concept may be that the hunter got lost or “lost his head,” according to the colloquial phrase.

The figures of men in a canoe are represented by the Kiatéxamut Innuit of Alaska, as shown in the same figure, b. The right-hand upward stroke represents the bow of the boat, while the two lines below the horizontal stroke denote the paddles used by the men, who are shown as the first and second upward strokes above the canoe; in the same figure, c shows the outline of human figures, copied from a walrus ivory drill-bow (U. S. Nat. Mus., No. 44398) from Cape Nome, Alaska. The second pair closely resemble forms of the thunder-bird as drawn by various Algonquian tribes and as found in petroglyphs upon rocks in the northeastern portion of the United States; in the same figure, d, selected from a group of human forms, is incised upon a walrus ivory drill-bow obtained at Port Clarence, Alaska, by Dr. T. H. Bean, of the National Museum. The specimen is numbered 40054. The fringe-like appendages on the arms may indicate the garment worn by some of the Kenai or other inland Athabascan Indians of Alaska.

Fig. 1160, from Strahlenberg, op. cit., was found in Siberia, and is identical with the character which, according to Schoolcraft, is drawn by the Ojibwa to represent speed and the power of superior knowledge by exaltation to the regions of the air, being, in his opinion, a combination of bird and man.

It is to be noticed that some Ojibwa recently examined regard the character merely as a human figure with outstretched arms, and fringes pendent therefrom. It has, also, a strong resemblance to some of the figures in the Lone-Dog Winter Counts (those for 1854-’55 and 1866-’67, pages 283 and 285, respectively), in which there is no attempt understood to signify anything more than a war-dress.

Bastian (a), in Ethnologisches Bilderbuch, says:

Upon a shaman’s drum, from the Yakuts of Siberia, is the figure of a human form greatly resembling some forms of the American types. The appendages beneath the arms, given in Fig. 1162, suggest also some forms of the thunder-bird as drawn by the Ojibwa.

Fig. 1164, from Mr. Stevenson’s paper in the Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, p. 283, is the form of a man, drawn in the sand in the Hasjelti ceremony of the Navajo.

The left-hand character of Fig. 1165 is described in Keam’s MS. as follows:

This is a conventional design of dragon flies, and is often found among rock etchings throughout the plateau [Arizona]. The dragon flies have always been held in great veneration by the Mokis and their ancestors, as they have been often sent by Oman to reopen springs which Muingwa had destroyed and to confer other benefits upon the people.

This form of the figure, with little vertical lines added to the transverse lines, connects the Batolatci with the Ho-bo-bo emblems. The youth who was sacrificed and translated by Ho-bo-bo reappeared a long time afterwards, during a season of great drought, in the form of a gigantic dragon fly, who led the rain clouds over the lands of Ho-pi-tu, bringing plenteous rains.

Describing the middle character of the figure, he says: “The figure represents a woman. The breath sign is displayed in the interior. The simpler design in the right-hand character consists of two triangles, one upon another, and is called the ‘woman’s head and body.’”

Fig. 1166, reproduced by permission from the Century Magazine for October, 1891, p. 887, is a representation of a golden breastplate found in the United States of Colombia, and now in the Ruiz-Randall collection. The human figure is nearly identical with some of those described and illustrated in the present work as found in other localities.

Crevaux, quoted by Marcano, (g) in speaking of the photographs of French Guyana, makes these useful suggestions:

The drawings of frogs found by Brown on the Esesquibo are nothing else than human figures such as the Galihis, the Roucouyennes, and the Oyampis represent them every day on their pagaras, their pottery, or their skin. We ourselves, on examining these figures with legs and arms spread out, thought that they were meant for frogs, but the Indians told us that that was their manner of representing man.

In Necropolis of Ancon in Peru, by W. Reiss and A. Stubel, (a) are descriptions of figures a to g in Pl. L, all being painted sepulcher tablets one-seventh of the actual size. The descriptions are condensed. The general characteristics of the tablets are that they are in a tabular form, made of reeds, and covered with a white cotton fabric, the edges of which are stitched together behind and attached to a pole, short at top, and projecting to a greater length downwards. On the front is a slightly sketched design in red and black lines, while a winding or undulating border usually runs around the sides. Nearly all the space within this border is occupied by a human figure surrounded by isolated symbols or ornaments. The head and features of the conventionalized figure is out of all proportion to the small body, which is often merely suggested by a few strokes.

a. The features and high headdress of a human figure, represented by concentric black and red lines. To the short arms are attached outstretched three-fingered hands, the right holding some object, while body and legs are arbitrarily indicated. The legs are twice reproduced in black and red lines. The space between the figure and border is occupied by six simple designs, two black and one red on either side.

b. The human figure, comparatively simple and distinct, distinguished by large ear ornaments, with designs similar to those of the preceding figure, but varying in number and disposition.

c. Highly fantastic figure with diverse ornamentations; the space in the corners cut off by designs, of which the upper two show a bird motive, such as frequently occurs on earthenware and woven fabrics.

d. This is doubtless meant to represent a figure clothed down to the feet.

e. Here the human figure is formed of black lines, connected at right angles with complementary red lines. A wide top-piece covers the head, which consists of two small rectangles, leaving room only to indicate the eyes, while the mouth, placed rather too low down, is suggested by a red stroke. The arms are bent downwards; hands and feet with triple articulation. Within the red and black frame the figure is encircled by crosses, dots, and a conventional star.

f. Human figure filling most of the space, which is inclosed only by a narrow edging. Surface painting distinguishes the wide body, which is rounded off below and to which the triangular head is fitted above. Hands with five, feet with three, articulations; crenelled head gear; necklace suggested by dots; the corners of the ground-surface filled in with rectangular sharply-edged ornaments.

g. Human figure consisting of two disconnected parts; triangular head and body; hands and feet with two articulations; frame of red and black dovetailed teeth.

Wiener (i), describing illustrations reproduced here as Fig. 1167, says:

The tissue found at Moché, a, represents a man with flattened head, exaggerated ears, and the thumb of the right hand too much developed. When correlated with that from Ancon, b, with its coarse paintings, it becomes a sort of caligraphy in which all the letters are traced with the greatest care, while b, and also the sepulchral inscription c, found at the same place, become cursive.

The design a of this series presents peculiarities found in Zuñi drawings on pottery. The appendages from the side of the head among the latter denote large coils of hair so arranged by tying. Their significance is that the wearer is an unmarried woman. The remaining designs also resemble types of human figures found upon Zuñi and Pueblo pottery, being rather of a decorative character than having special significance.

Human Head and Face

A large number of human faces as drawn by members of different tribes and stocks of North American Indians appear in the present paper. Some of them are iconographic and others are highly conventionalized. Other examples from other regions of the world are also presented under various headings.

In the present connection it may be useful to examine a series of drawings from the prehistoric pottery of Brazil in the National Museum at Rio de Janeiro. Although the U. S. National Museum contains many specimens of a similar character, some of which have been copied and published, the Brazilian types show an instructive peculiarity in the reduction of the face to certain main lines and finally to the eyes, so that the latter are placed apart and independent in a symmetric field.

The following Figs. 1168 to 1174 are reproduced from Dr. Ladisláu Netto (d), all of them being from Brazil and from paintings and carvings on Marajo ware.

Fig. 1168 shows broken lines without the aid of curves, but gracefully attached to an instrument, either lance or trident, which present the outline of the contours of a face.

The characters in Fig. 1169 are somewhat more elaborate. The eyes are decorated with lines and the contour of the face is round.

The characters in Fig. 1170 are carved human faces, some of which would not be recognized as such unless shown in the series.

The face in Fig. 1171 represents the horizontal projection or plan of a double-faced head. The central H represents in this case the top of the head, each of the shafts of the H being neither more nor less than the double arch of the eyebrows, joined to which the representation of the nose in a triangular figure may be recognized. The most noticeable point is that if this surface be applied in imagination to the cranium of the bifrontal head, of which it seems to be the covering or skin, the features of the double-faced heads of the Marajo idols are immediately recognized, including the orifices by which those idols are hung on cords, which orifices are seen in the dividing line of the two faces.

Fig. 1172 presents the general form of decoration found upon vases bearing figures of the face as above mentioned. It is a funeral urn, carved and engraved, from Marajo, reduced to one-fifth.

Frequently the face is produced in relief, in which a larger portion of a vessel is taken to produce more lifelike imitation, as in Fig. 1173. It is the neck of an anthropomorphic vase of Marajo ornamented with grooves and lines, red on a white ground, reduced to one-half.

Fig. 1174 a, real size, is the neck of a Marajo vase, representing a human head. The nose and chin are very prominent, the eyes horizontal and slit in the same direction. This head is remarkable for the relief of the eyebrows which, after reaching the height of the ears, form these organs, describing above a second curve in the inverse direction of the curve of the brow, each brow thus forming an S. There are other heads in which the eyebrows are prolonged to form the relief of the ears at the outer extremity. In these cases the whole relief represents a semicircle more or less irregular, while on the contrary this relief forms the figure S.

Same figure, b, real size, is the neck of an ornithomorphic, anthropocephalous vase. It has on the face the classic and conventional T to represent the nose and brows. The eyes are formed by the symbolic figure equally conventional in the ceramics of the mound-builders of Marajo, and the ears differ very little from the characters seen in other figures.

Same figure, c, four-fifths real size, is the neck of a Marajo vase representing, by engraving and painting, all the conventional characters of the different parts of the human face employed by the mound-builders of Marajo. This vase preserves perfectly the primitive colors, which show vermilion lines on a white ground. A double protuberance from each ear, the design which forms the eyes, and that which surrounds and outlines the mouth, the nose, and the ears, are characteristic traces of the decorative art of the human face which few heads present in such perfection.

Same figure, d, four-fifths real size, is the neck of a Marajo vase more simple than the preceding one, but with more regular and distinct features.

The Brazilian system above illustrated, which reduces the face to certain main lines and finally to the eyes, in such manner that the eyes are placed apart and each is put by itself in a symmetric field, has its parallel in North America. This is the practice of the Bella Coola Indians and their neighbors at the present day. They divide the surface, to be ornamented into zones and fields, by means of broad horizontal and vertical lines, each field containing, according to its position, now a complete face, now only an indication of it, the especial indication being made by the eye. The eyes themselves are given different shapes, according to the different animals represented, being now large and round, now oblong and with pointed angles. These peculiarities, which have become conventional, are retained when the eye is represented alone, so that by this method it may still be easy to recognize which animal—for example, a raven or a bear, is intended to be portrayed.

The left-hand character in Fig. 1175, from Champollion (g), is the Egyptian character for a human face. The predominance of the ears probably has some special significance.

Schoolcraft (u) gives the right-hand character of the same figure as a man’s head, with ears open to conviction, as made by the Ojibwa.

Both of these may be compared with the exaggerated ears in Fig. 1167.

Hand

The impression, real or represented, of a human hand is used in several regions in the world with symbolic significance.

Among the North American Indians the mark so readily applied is of frequent occurrence, with an ascertained significance, which, however, differs in several tribes.

Fig. 1176, taken from Copway (b), represents the hand, and also expresses “did so.” This signification of “do,” or action, and hence “power,” is also given to the same character in the Egyptian and Chinese ideograms.

Among several Indian tribes a black hand on a garment or ornament means “the wearer of this has killed an enemy.” The decoration appears upon Ojibwa bead belts, and the Hidatsa and Arikara state that it is an old custom of showing bravery. The character was noticed at Fort Berthold, and the belt bearing it had been received from Ojibwa Indians of northern Minnesota. The mark of a black hand drawn of natural size or less, and sometimes made by the impress of an actually blackened palm, was also noticed, with the same significance, on articles among the Hidatsa and Arikara in 1881.

Schoolcraft (x) says of the Dakota on the St. Peters river that a red hand indicates that the wearer has been wounded by his enemy, and a black hand that he has slain his enemy.

Irving (b) remarks, in Astoria, of the Arikara warriors: “Some had the stamp of a red hand across their mouths, a sign that they had drunk the life-blood of a foe.”

In other parts of the present paper the significance of the mark is mentioned and may be briefly summarized here.

Among the Sioux a red hand painted on a warrior’s blanket or robe means that he has been wounded by the enemy, and a black hand that he has been in some way unfortunate. Among the Mandan a yellow hand on the breast signifies that the wearer had captured prisoners.

Among the Titon Dakota a hand displayed meant that the wearer had engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with an enemy. The impress of a hand, stained or muddy, upon the body or horse was the Winnebago mark that the wearer had killed a man.

The drawing of linked fingers or joined hands has been before discussed, p. 643, and in several petroglyphs illustrated in this paper the single hand appears. It is a common device on rocks, and doubtless with varieties of signification, as above mentioned in other forms of pictograph.

It will suffice now to add that the figure of a hand with extended fingers is very common in the vicinity of ruins in Arizona as a rock etching, and is also frequently seen daubed on the rocks with colored pigments or white clay. But Mr. Thomas V. Keam explains the Arizona drawings of hands on the authority of the living Moki. In his MS., in describing Fig. 1177, he says:

The outline of two outstretched hands joined at the wrists and figure of a hand with extended fingers is very common as a rock etching.

These are vestiges of the test formerly practiced among young men who aspired for admission to the fraternity of Salyko. The Salyko is a trinity of two women and a woman from whom the Hopitu obtained the first corn. The first test above referred to was that of putting their hands in the mud and impressing them upon the rock. Only those were chosen as novices the imprints of whose hands had dried on the instant.

Le Plongeon (a) tells that the tribes of Yucatan have the custom of printing the impress of the human hand, dipped in a red-colored liquid, on the walls of certain sacred edifices.

A. W. Howitt, in manuscript notes on Australian pictographs, says:

In very many places there are representations of a human hand imprinted or delineated upon the rocks or in caverns. In the mountains on the western side of the Darling river, in New South Wales, I have observed such, and the aborigines whom I questioned upon the subject said that these representations were made in sport. This reply would, however, be also given were any white man to find and draw their attention to one of the figures which are made in connection with the initiation ceremonies. The representations of hands are made in two ways. In one the hand is smeared with red ocher and water, and impressed upon the rock surface. In the other the hand, being placed upon the rock, a mouthful of red ocher or pipe-clay and water is squirted over it. The hand being then removed there remains its representation surrounded and marked out by the colored wash.

Thomas Worsnop (b) says:

Mr. Winnecke, in 1879, saw several drawings on rocks and in caves, [Fig. 1178], and describes them as follows:

There are found in several large caves near Mount Skinner and Ledans hill, in latitude 22° 30′ south and longitude 134° 30′ east. The natives appear to have selected the smooth surface of granite rocks inside several large caves, which spots are not subject to the influence of wind or rain. These caves are resorted to by the natives during excessive rainy seasons, as indicated by their camp preparations, and it is beyond doubt that these drawings have been performed during these periods of forced inactivity by some artistically inclined native. Those I am alluding to are somewhat numerous in these particular localities and present a uniform appearance.

a, apparently represents a heart pierced in the center by a spear. The outline of the object representing the heart has been delineated with red ocher, whilst the spear has been drawn with a burnt stick or piece of coal. I have only seen this particular sketch in one instance, where four distinct drawings of the same object exactly below and equidistant from each other have been made in anything but a crude manner, the outline having been carefully and very distinctly traced on the rocks, showing a degree of perfection scarcely to be anticipated from these wild inhabitants. The breadth of the heart is about 5 inches and its length about 6 inches. The length of the spear portion is about 3 feet. [The device reminds of St. Valentine’s day.]

b, consists of two parallel lines about 6 inches apart, with regular marks between, and probably represents the native’s notion of a creek with emu tracks traversing its bed. This drawing has been made with a coal, and is found depicted on smooth rocks in various localities.

c, has been drawn both with coal and red ocher. It is found in many places, and seems to be a favorite drawing of the natives. I have found it depicted in several localities in the interior of Australia. It is generally supposed to represent a hand.

d. This figure is made by the natives in the following manner: Placing their extended hand against a smooth rock, after having previously moistened the same, they fill their mouths with powdered charcoal, which they then blow violently along the outline of their extended hand, thus leaving the portions of rock covered perfectly clean, whilst the space between their fingers and elsewhere around about becomes covered with the black substance. This drawing is not very common. I found several specimens near the Sabdover river. I have, however, been informed that it has been seen in other and distant parts of Australia.

Renan (a) says in the chapter on the Nomad Semites:

The real monuments of the period were, as in the case with all people who can not write, the stones which they reared, the columns erected in memory of some event, and upon which was often represented a hand, whence the name of iad [finger post].

Major Conder (c) writes that in Jerusalem a rough representation of a hand is marked by the native races on the wall of every house while building. Some authorities connect it with the five names of God, and it is generally considered to avert the evil eye. The Moors generally, and especially the Arabs in Kairwan, apply paintings of red hands above the doors and on the columns of their houses as talismans to drive away the envious. Similar hand prints are found in the ruins of El Baird near Petra. Some of the quaint symbolism connected with horns is supposed to originate from such hand marks. The same people make the gesture against the evil eye by extending the five fingers of the left hand.

H. Clay Trumbull (b) gives the following:

It is a noteworthy fact that among the Jews in Tunis, near the old Phenician settlement of Carthage, the sign of a bleeding hand is still an honored and a sacred symbol as if in recognition of the covenant-bond of their brotherhood and friendship. “What struck me most in all the houses,” says a traveler (Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg) among these Jews, “was the impression of an open bleeding hand on every wall of each floor. However white the walls, this repulsive (yet suggestive) sign was to be seen everywhere.”

The following is extracted from Panjab Notes and Queries, Vol. I, No. 1 (October, 1883), p. 2:

At the Temple of Balasundarí Deví at Tilokpúr, near Náhan, the priests stamp a red hand on the left breast of the coat of a pilgrim who visits the temple for the first time to show that he has, as it were, paid for his footing. If the pilgrim again visits the temple and can show the stamp he pays only 4 annas as his fee to the priests.

Gen. A. Hontum-Schindler, Teheran, Persia, in a letter of December 19, 1888, tells:

All through Persia, principally in villages though, a rough representation of a hand, or generally the imprint of a right hand, in red, may be seen on the wall or over the door of a house whilst in building, or on the wall of a mosque, booth, or other public building. It is probably an ancient custom, although the Persians connect it with Islam, and they say that the hand represents that of Albas, a brother of Husain (a grandson of the prophet Mohammed), who was one of the victims at the massacre of Kerbela in 680, and who had his right hand cut off by el Abrad ibu Shaibân. In India I have noticed similar marks, hands, or simply red streaks.

In Journal of the Proc. Royal Soc. Antiq., Ireland, I, 3, fifth series, 1890, p. 247, is the following:

The hand an emblem of good luck in Ireland.—In Maj. Conder’s “Syrian Stone Lore,” published for the Palestine Exploration Committee by Bentley & Son (1886), p. 71, occurs the following passage: “Among other primitive emblems used by the Phenicians is the hand occurring on votive steles at Carthage, sometimes in connection with the sacred fish. This hand is still a charm in Syria, called Kef Miriam, ‘the Virgin Mary’s hand,’ and sovereign against the evil eye. The red hand is painted on walls, and occurs, for instance, in the Hagia Sophia at Constantinople and elsewhere. It is common also in Ireland and in India (Siva’s hand) and on early scepters, always as an emblem of good luck.” What actual foundation is there for the above statement as regards Ireland? About twenty years ago the first Monday in January was known in the south of Ireland as “Handsel Monday,” and looked upon as in some way indicating the prosperity the year succeeding was to bring forth. But whether, as the name would seem to imply, this had any connection with the hand as an emblem of good luck I am unaware.

—J. C.

Gen. Forlong (b) makes the following remarks:

The “red hand of Ireland” is known alike to Turanians, Shemites, and Aryans, and from the Americas to farthest Asia. The hand, being an organ peculiar to man, is in the East a sign of Siva, and seems to have been identified with his emblem even by the Medes. All men have usually worshiped and plighted their troth or sworn by manual signs, so the hand naturally stands as the sign of man himself; but more than this, Easterns attach a significance to it as an organ without which the procreating one is useless. In Germany, says J. Grimm, the hand was Tyr, or the son of Odin, “the one-handed,” for he lost one limb by the biting wintry wolf—that is, he became powerless to produce.... He was then the “golden-handed,” fertilizer, whom ancient Irans denoted by their name Zerdosht, and Irish Kelts placed as a talisman on their Ulster shield.... The Irish solo-phalik idea is seen in the “crosses” of Clon-Mac-Noise and Monasterboise, where, as in Fig. 1179, all the fingers are carefully placed in the center of the circle of fertility. The Vedas constantly speak of Savatar as “the golden-handed sun,” who lost this limb owing to his efforts when at sacrifice, and who remained impotent until the deity restored to him a hand of gold.

Hindus, like the high Asian tribes and the old Mexicans, usually impress a hand covered with blood or vermilion on the door posts of their temple—that is, on the Delpheus or “door of life;” and the great Islamite, Mahmood, when he captured Constantinople, rode up to the holy feminine shrine of St. Sophia, and reaching up as high as he could, there unwittingly imprinted this bloody sign of Great Siva. We must remember how often the hand appears with other significant objects on the arms of men and nations, and notably so on Roman standards.... Fig. 1180.

In the old shrines of America, Leslie says, the “sacred hand was a favorite subject of art,” and Stevens in his Yucatan says, “The red hand stared us in the face over all the ruined buildings of the country,... not drawn or printed, but stamped by the living hand, the pressure of the palm upon the stone being quite distinct, the thumb and fingers being extended as we see in the Irish and Hindu hands.”

Feet and Tracks

In the two first illustrations of this group the respective figures of the man and the eagle are in the act of forming tracks on the ground. Such tracks are shown in the next two figures, but without the context might not be recognized as such. The fifth figure is more distinctly ideographic, showing the foot and leg as in the act of making the impress, and the eagle’s feather to indicate the kind of track which would have been made by a running eagle.

Fig. 1186, copied from Copway (b), gives three characters of which the first represents “ran,” the second “walked” or “passed,” and the third “stand,” characters similar both to the tracks and the feet found on many petroglyphs in North America.

They are also found in the terraces of temples of Thebes, of Karnak, and especially at Nakhaur in South Bihar.

P. le Page Renouf (a), in An Elementary Grammar of the Ancient Egyptian Language, gives the right-hand character of the same figure as the generic determinative implying motion.

Broken Leg

This group gives several modes of expressing, pictorially, broken legs.

Fig. 1187.—Many were thrown from their horses while surrounding buffalo, and some had their legs broken. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1847-’48. The legs are distorted and the line may refer to the slippery ice touched by the toes.

Fig. 1189.—A Minneconjou Dakota named Broken-Leg died. The-Flame’s Winter Count, 1846-’47. The-Flame’s representation is objective, but Battiste Good gives another more ideographic. The arm in his character, given in Fig. 1190, is lengthened so as nearly to touch the broken leg, which is shown distorted, instead of indicating the injury by the mere distortion of the leg itself. The bird over the head, and connected by a line with it, probably represents the teal as a name-totem. Perhaps he was called Broken-Leg after the injury.

Fig. 1191.—There were a great many accidents and some legs were broken, the ground being covered with ice. American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1847-’48. Here the fracture is very obvious—too much so to be intended as objective—rather delineating the idea of the breaking and separation of the bone.

Fig. 1192.—Broken-Leg was killed by the Pawnees. His leg had been broken by a bullet in a previous fight with the Pawnees. American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1807-’08. Here the leg is entirely removed from its normal position.

Dr. Edkins (g) gives Fig. 1193, a, as a picture of a bent leg broken, and adds, “The true radical and phonetic for which this stands as representative is rather b, ‘fault,’ ‘move.’”

Voice and Speech

This group relates to sounds issuing from the mouth, that is, to voice and speech:

Fig. 1194.—The-Elk-that-Holloes-Walking. The-Swan’s Winter Count, 1860-’61. Interpreter A. Lavary said, in 1867, that The-Elk-that-Holloes-Walking, then chief of the Minneconjous, was then at Spotted-Tail’s camp. His father was Red-Fish. He was the elder brother of Lone-Horn. His name is given as A-hag-a-hoo-man-ie, translated The-Elk’s-Voice-Walking, compounded of he-ha-ka, elk, and omani, walk; this according to Lavary’s literation. The correct literation of the Dakota word meaning elk is heqaka; voice, ho; and to walk, walking, mani. Their compound would be heqaka ho mani, the translation being the same as above given.

Fig. 1196 is taken from the manuscript drawing book of an Indian prisoner at St. Augustine, Florida, now in the Smithsonian Institution, No. 30664. It represents an antelope and the whistling sound produced by the animal on being surprised or alarmed. It also shows the tracks, and supplies the idea of walking not exhibited by the preceding two figures.

Fig. 1197.—Dog-with-good-voice. Red-Cloud’s Census. The peculiar angular divisions of the line may indicate the explosive character of a dog’s bark as distinct from a long-drawn howl. Among the many lines indicating voice which appear in the Dakota pictographs none has been found identical with this, and therefore it probably has special significance.

Fig. 1198.—Bear-that-growls. Red-Cloud’s Census. This figure gives a marked differentiation. The sound of growling does not appear to come from the mouth, but from the lower part of the neck or the upper part of the chest, from which the lines here are drawn to emanate. They are also confined by a surrounding line, to suggest the occluded nature of the sound.

The Mexican pictograph, Fig. 1200, taken from Kingsborough (n), is illustrative of the sign made by the Arikara and Hidatsa for “tell” and “conversation.” “Tell me” is: Place the flat right hand, palm upward, about 15 inches in front of the right side of the face, fingers pointing to the left and front; then draw the hand inward toward and against the bottom of the chin. For “conversation,” talking between two persons, both hands are held before the breast, pointing forward, palms up, the edges being moved several times toward one another. Perhaps, however, the picture in fact only means the common poetical image of “flying words.”

Fig. 1201 is from Landa (b) and suggests one of the gestures for “talk,” and more especially that for “sing,” in which the extended and separated fingers are passed forward and slightly downward from the mouth—“many voices.” Although late criticisms of the bishop’s work are unfavorable to its authenticity, yet even if it were prepared by a Maya, under his supervision, the latter would probably have given him some genuine native conceptions, and among them gestures would be likely to occur.

Gustav Eisen (a), in describing Fig. 1202, says:

The original, from near Santa Lucia, Guatemala, represents a sepulchral tablet, on which are seen the portraits of perhaps man and wife, their different headdresses, etc., indicating decidedly their different sexes. From the mouths of the respective portraits extend as usual curved figures with notes or nodes.

Dwellings

Irving (c) noticed fifty years ago that each tribe of Indians has a different mode of shaping and arranging lodges, and especially that the Omaha make theirs gay and fanciful with undulating bands of red and yellow or with dressed and painted buffalo skins.

The left-hand upper characters of Fig. 1203 represents Dakota lodges as drawn by the Hidatsa. These characters when carelessly or rudely drawn can only be distinguished from personal marks by their position and their relation to other characters.

The right-hand upper characters of the same figure signify, among the Hidatsa, earth lodges. The circles represent the ground plan of the lodges, while the central markings are intended to represent the upright poles, which support the roof on the interior. Some of these are similar to the Kadiak drawing for island, Fig. 439.

The left-hand lower character of the figure represents buildings erected by civilized men; the character is generally used by the Hidatsa to designate government buildings and traders’ stores.

The remaining character is the Hidatsati, the home of the Hidatsa; an inclosure having earth lodges within it.

Fig. 1204.—Dakotas and Rees meet in camp together and are at peace. The-Flame’s Winter Count, 1792-’93. The two styles of dwellings, viz, the tipi of the Dakotas and the earth lodge of the Arikaras, are depicted.

Fig. 1205.—The Dakotas camped on the Missouri river, near the Gros Ventres, and fought with them a long time. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1792-’93. The Dakota tipi and the Gros Ventre lodge are shown in the figure. The gun shows that war was raging.

Fig. 1207.—Some of the Dakotas built a large house and lived in it during the winter. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1815-’16. White-Cow-Killer calls it “Made-a-house-winter.” It would seem to be a larger dwelling than the ordinary tipi, and that wood entered into its construction. This is made more clear by the figure next following.

Fig. 1209.—Adobe houses were built by Maj. J. W. Wham, Indian agent (afterwards paymaster, U. S. Army), on the Platte river, about 30 miles below Fort Laramie. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1871-’72. White-Cow-Killer calls it “Major-Wham’s-house-built-on-Platte-river winter.”

Prof. Cyrus Thomas, in A Study of the Manuscript Troano, Contrib. N. A. Ethn., Vol. V, p. 128, gives the following description of Fig. 1212:

The side wall in Fig. 1212 appears to be composed of blocks of some kind placed one upon another, probably of stone, each bearing the Muluc character. The character at the top of the wall with a cross in it, somewhat resembling that in the symbol for Ezanab, is very common in these figures. This probably marks the end of the beam which was placed on the wall to support the roof. The curved line running from this to the top portion probably represents the rafter; the slender thread-like lines (yellow in the original) the straw or grass with which the roof was thatched.

The checkered part may represent a matting of reeds or brushwood on which the straw was placed.

Eclipse of the Sun

Fig. 1214.—Dakotas witnessed eclipse of the sun; they were terribly frightened. The sun is a dark globe and the stars appear. The-Swan’s Winter Count, 1869-’70.

The left-hand design on the lower line of Pl. xlix is reproduced from Kingsborough. “In this year there was a great eclipse of the sun.”

Humboldt infers from this painting that the Mexicans were informed of the real cause of the eclipses; which would not be at all surprising considering the many other curious things with which they were acquainted, the knowledge of which they must have derived from the West. It is proper to observe that on the 127th page of the Vatican MS., where a representation of the same eclipse occurs, the disk of the moon does not appear to be projecting over that of the sun. The Vatican MS. appears to have been copied from a Mexican painting similar to but not the same as that which Pedro de los Rios copied, whose notes and interpretations the Italian interpreter had before his eyes and strictly followed.

Meteors

This group shows the pictorial representation of meteors by the Dakotas. The translations as well as the devices are suggestive.

This and the three following figures evidently refer to the fall of a single large meteor in the land of the Dakotas some time in the winter of 1821-’22. The fact can not be verified by scientific records. There were not many correspondents of scientific institutions in the upper Missouri region at the date mentioned.

Battiste Good says for the same phenomenon: “Star-passed-by-with-loud-noise winter.” His device is shown in Fig. 1218, showing the meteor, its pathway, and the clouds from which it came.

The five winter counts next cited all undoubtedly refer to the magnificent meteoric display of the morning of November 13, 1833, which was witnessed throughout North America and which was correctly assigned to the winter corresponding with that of 1833-’34. All of them represent stars having four points, except The-Swan, who draws a globular object followed by a linear track.

Battiste Good calls it “Storm-of-stars winter,” and gives as the device a tipi with stars falling around it. This is presented in Fig. 1223. The tipi is colored yellow in the original and so represented in the figure according to the heraldic scheme.

Fig. 1224 is taken from Kingsborough, I, Pls. xxix and xxx. The description, given in Codex Tell.-Rem., vi, p. 148, et seq., is as follows: Regarding the left-hand device figure, “In the year of Three Rabbits, or in 1534, Don Antonio de Mendoça arrived as Viceroy of New Spain. They say that the star smoked.”

Regarding the lower figure: “In the year of Eleven Houses, or in 1529, Nuño de Guzman set out for Yalisco on his march to subdue that territory; they pretend that a serpent descended from the sky, exclaiming that troubles were preparing for the natives since the Christians were directing their course thither.”

The Cross

Referring to the numerous forms of cross delineated in the work of Mr. W. H. Holmes (d), it is to be noted that most of them are equilateral or the Greek pattern, and that similar ornaments or instruments now used by the Dakotas are always worn so that the cross upon them stands as if resting on one foot only and not on two, as is the mode in which St. Andrew’s cross is drawn.

The “Greek” cross represents to the Dakota the four winds, which issue from the four caverns in which the souls of men existed before their incarnation in the human body. All “medicine-men,” i. e., conjurers and magicians, recollect their previous dreamy life in those places and the instructions then received from the gods, demons, and sages. They recollect and describe their preexistent life, but only dream and speculate as to the future life beyond the grave.

The top of the cross is the cold all-conquering giant, the North-wind, most powerful of all. It is worn on the body nearest the head, the seat of intelligence and conquering devices. The left arm covers the heart; it is the East-wind, coming from the seat of life and love. The foot is the melting burning South-wind, indicating, as it is worn, the seat of fiery passion. The right arm is the gentle West-wind, blowing from the spirit land, covering the lungs, from which the breath at last goes out, gently, but into unknown night. The center of the cross is the earth and man, moved by the conflicting influences of the gods and winds. This cross is often illustrated as in Fig. 1225. It is sometimes drawn and depicted in beadwork and also on copper, as in Fig. 1226, extracted from the Second Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., Pl. lii, Fig. 4, where it appears cut out of a copper plate found in an Ohio mound.

But among some of the Indian tribes the true Latin cross is found, viz, upright with three members of equal length, and the fourth, the foot, much longer. The use of this symbol antedates the discovery of America, and is carried far back in tradition and myth. When a missionary first asked a Dakota the name of this figure, which he drew for him in the sand, wishing to use the information in his translation of Bible and Creed, the Dakota promptly replied Sus-be-ca, and retraced the figure saying “That is a Sus-be-ca.” It was therefore promptly transferred to Scripture and Creed where it still reads “He was nailed to the Susbeca,” etc. “God forbid that I should glory save in the Susbeca of our Lord Jesus Christ.” To the good missionary this was plain and satisfactory; for the Dakota had demonstrated by tracing it in the sand that Susbeca was the name of the figure called in English, “cross.” The foregoing statement is made on the excellent authority of Rev. S. D. Hinman.

But when the Dakota read his new Bible or Creed, he must have been puzzled or confused to find, “He was nailed to a mosquito-hawk,” or, “God forbid that I should glory save in the mosquito-hawk of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The same disposition of straight lines which is called the Latin cross was and is used by the Dakota to picture or signify both in pictograph and gesture sign, the mosquito-hawk, more generally called dragon fly. The Susbeca or mosquito-hawk is a supernatural being. He is gifted with speech. He warns men of danger. He approaches the ear of the man moving carelessly or unconcernedly through the deep grass of the meadow or marsh—approaches his ear silently and at right angles, as shown in Fig. 1227a, and says to him, now alarmed, “Tci”-“tci”-“tci!”—which is an interjection equivalent to “Look out!” “You are surely going to destruction!” “Look out!” “Tci”-“tci”-“tci!”

Now the mosquito-hawk is easily knocked down and caught and has a temptingly small neck. But woe to the man or woman or child who with the cruelty commonly practiced on all living things by Indians of all ages and states, dares to wring off his head. Whoever shall do this before the winter comes shall be beheaded by the detested Ojibwa. It is true, for long ago a reckless young warrior feeling annoyed or insulted by the infernal “Tci”-“tci”-“tci!” so unceremoniously uttered in explosive breaths near his ear, tried it, and his headless trunk was found ere he escaped from the swamp.

The cross has its proper significance in this use not only in representing quite faithfully the shape of the insect but also the angle of his approach. It is variously drawn, but usually as in Fig. 1227, a, or b, and in painting or embroidery, c, and sometimes d.

One reason for the adoption of the dragon fly as a mysterious and supernatural being, is on account of its sudden appearance in large numbers. When in the still of the evening, before the shades of darkness come, there is heard from the meadow a hum as of the sound of crickets or frogs, but indistinct and prolonged; on the morrow the Susbeca will be hovering over it; it is the sound of their coming, but whence no man kens. See also Fig. 1165 and remarks.

Among the Ojibwa of northern Minnesota the cross is one of the sacred symbols of the society of the Midē or shamans, and has special reference to the fourth degree. A neophyte who has been advanced to the third initiation or degree, is instructed in ritualistic chants purporting to relate the struggle between Mi’nabō’zho, the mediator between the Ojibwa and Ki’tshi Ma’nidō, and the malevolent Bear spirit, which contest occurred when Mi’nabō’zho entered the fourth degree structure at the time when the first Indian was inducted therein for initiation.

The structure as erected at this day is built in the form of an oblong square having openings or doors at the four cardinal points. At these openings Mi’nabō’zho appeared and shot into the inclosure charmed arrows, to expel the horde of demons occupying the sacred place, and the Bear spirit was the last to yield to his superior powers. The openings being opposite to one another, north and south and east and west, suggested to Mi’nabō’zho the cross, which is now erected whenever a third degree Midē receives this last and highest honor.

The cross is made of saplings, the upright pole reaching the height of 4 to 6 feet, the transverse arms being somewhat shorter, each being of the same length as that part of the pole between the arms and the top. The upper parts are painted white, or besmeared with white clay, over which are spread small spots of red, the latter suggesting the sacred shell or mēgis, the symbol of the order. The lower arm or pole is squared, the surface toward the east being painted white, to denote the source of light and warmth. The face on the south is green, denoting the source of the thunder bird who brings the rains and causes the appearance of vegetation; the surface toward the west is covered with vermilion and relates to the land of the setting sun, the abode of the dead. The north is painted black, as that faces the direction from which come affliction, cold, and hunger.

Illustrations and additional details on this topic are presented in the paper of Dr. Hoffman (a).

In the chart presented in that paper, Pl. B, a midē’ structure is also shown, within which are a number of crosses, each of which designates the spirit of a deceased midē priest.

Upon several birch-bark scrolls received from Ojibwa midē priests are characters resembling rude crosses, which are merely intended to designate wigwams, resembling in this respect similar characters made by Hidatsa to designate Sioux lodges as shown in Fig. 1203.

Groups of small crosses incised upon ivory bow drills and representing flocks of birds, occur on Eskimo specimens, Nos. 45020 and 44211, in the collection of the U. S. National Museum. They are reproduced in Fig. 1228. In Figs. 429 and 1129, representing petroglyphs at Oakley Springs, Arizona, are crosses which are mentioned by Mr. G. K. Gilbert as signifying stars. The simple cross appears to be the simplest type of character to represent stellar forms. See Figs. 1219, 1220, 1221 and 1223.

Fig. 28, supra, represents a cross copied from the Najowe Valley group of colored pictographs, 40 miles west of Santa Barbara, California. The cross measures 10 inches in length, the interior portion being painted black, while the outside or border is of a dark red tint. This drawing, as well as numerous others in close connection, is painted on the walls of a shallow cave or rock-shelter in the limestone formation.

Fourteen miles west of Santa Barbara, on the summit of the Santa Ynez mountains, are caverns having a large opening, facing the northwest and north, in which crosses occur of the types given in Fig. 33, supra.

The interior portion of the cross is of a dull, earthy red, while the outside line is of a faded black tint. The cross measures nearly a foot in extent.

At Tulare Indian agency, Tulare valley, California, is an immense bowlder of granite which has become broken in such a manner that one of the lower quarters has moved away from the larger mass sufficiently to leave a passageway 6 feet wide and nearly 10 feet high. The interior walls are well covered with large, painted figures, while upon the ceiling are numerous forms of animals, birds, and insects. Among this latter group is a white cross measuring about 18 inches in length, Fig. 1229, presenting a unique appearance, for the reason that white coloring matter applied to petroglyphs is, with this single exception, entirely absent in that region.

One of the most interesting series of rock sculpturings in groups is that in Owens valley, south of Benton, California. Among these various forms of crosses occur, and circles containing crosses of various simple and complex types, as shown in Pls. I to xi and in Mojave desert, California, illustrated in Fig. 19, but the examples of most interest in the present connection are the two shown herewith in Fig. 1230, a and b.

The larger one, a, occurs upon a large bowlder of trachyte, blackened by exposure, located 16 miles south of Benton, at a locality known as the Chalk Grade. The circle is a depression about 1 inch in depth, the cross being in high relief within. Another smaller cross, b, found 3 miles north of the one above-mentioned, is almost identical, each of the arms of the cross, however, extending to the rim of the circle.

In this locality occurs also the form of the cross c, in the same figure, and some examples having more than two cross arms. Other simple forms clearly represent the human form, but by erosion the arms and body have become partially obliterated so as to lose all trace of resemblance to humanity.

In the same figure, d, from a rock in the neighborhood, exhibits the outline of the human form, while in e parts of the extremities have been removed by erosion so that the resemblance is less striking; in f a simple cross occurs, which may also have been intended to represent the same, but through disintegration the extremities have been so greatly changed or erased that their original forms can not be determined.

Rev. John McLean (a) says: “On the sacred pole of the sun lodge of the Blood Indians two bundles of small brushwood taken from the birch tree were placed in the form of a cross. This was an ancient symbol evidently referring to the four winds.”

Among the Kiatéxamut, an Innuit tribe, a cross placed on the head, as in Fig. 1231, signifies a Shaman’s evil spirit or demon. This is an imaginary being under control of the Shaman to execute the wishes of the latter.

Many of the mescal eaters at the Kaiowa mescal ceremony wear the ordinary Roman Catholic crucifixes, which they adopt as sacred emblems of the rite, the cross representing the cross of scented leaves upon which the consecrated mescal rests during the ceremony, while the human figure is the mescal goddess.

Concerning Fig. 1232, Keam, in his MS., says:

The Maltese cross is the emblem of a virgin; still so recognized by the Moki. It is a conventional development of a more common emblem of maidenhood, the form in which the maidens wear their hair arranged as a disk of 3 or 4 inches in diameter upon each side of the head. This discoidal arrangement of their hair is typical of the emblem of fructification worn by the virgin in the Muingwa festival, as exhibited in the head-dress illustration a. Sometimes the hair, instead of being worn in the complete discoid form, is dressed from two curving twigs and presents the form of two semicircles upon each side of the head. The partition of these is sometimes horizontal and sometimes vertical. A combination of both of these styles, b, presents the form from which the Maltese cross was conventionalized. The brim decorations are of ornamental locks of hair which a maiden trains to grow upon the sides of the forehead.

The ceremonial employment of the cross by the Pueblo is detailed in Mr. Stevenson’s paper entitled Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis and Mythical Sand-painting of the Navajo Indians, in the Eighth Ann. Rept. Bur. Ethn., p. 266, where it denotes the scalp-lock.

In the present paper the figure of the cross among the North American Indians is presented under other headings with many differing significations. Among other instances it appears on p. 383 as the tribal sign for Cheyenne; on p. 582 as Dakota lodges; on p. 613 as the character for trade or exchange; on p. 227 as the conventional sign for prisoner; on p. 438 for personal exploits; while elsewhere it is used in simple numeration.

But, although this device is used with a great variety of meanings, when it is employed ceremonially or in elaborate pictographs by the Indians both of North and South America, it represents the four winds. The view long ago suggested that such was the significance of the many Mexican crosses, is sustained by Prof. Cyrus Thomas, in his Notes on Maya and Mexican MSS., Second Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn., p. 61, where strong confirmatory evidence is produced by the arms of the crosses having the appearance of conventionalized wings, similar to some representations of the thunder-bird by more northern tribes. Yet the same author, in his paper on the Study of the MS. Troano, Contrib. N. A. Ethn., V, 144, gives Fig. 1233 as the symbol for wood, thus further showing the manifold concepts attached to the general form.

Bandelier (a) thinks that the crosses which were frequently used before the conquest by the aborigines of Mexico and Central America were merely ornaments and were not objects of worship, while the so-called crucifixes, like that on the “Palenque tablet,” were only the symbol of the “new fire” or close of a period of fifty-two years. He believes them to be merely representations of “fire-drills,” more or less ornamented.

Mr. W. H. Holmes (e) shows by a series representing steps in the simplification of animal characters that in Chiriqui a symmetrical cross was developed from the design of an alligator.

Carl Bovallius (a) gives an illustration, copied here as Fig. 1234, of pictographs in the island of Ceiba, Nicaragua.

Zamacois (a) says that “the cross figured in the religion of various tribes of the peninsula of Yucatan and that it represented the god of rain.”

Dr. S. Habel (f), describing Fig. 1235, says:

On it is a person in a reclining position, with a single band tied around his forehead, forming a knot with two pendent tassels. From his temple rises an ornament resembling the wing of a bird. The emaciated face, as well as the recumbent position of the body, indicates a state of sickness. The hair is interwoven behind with many ribbons forming loops, which are bound together by a clasp, and then spread out in the shape of a fan. The ear is ornamented with a circular disk, to the center of which are attached a plume and a twisted ornament similar to a queue. On the breast is a kind of brooch, which is hollow like a shell, and in which are imbedded seven pearls. Around the waist are three rows of a twisted fabric, which is knotted in front in a bow, the ends descending between the thighs. Another band, of a different texture, stretches out horizontally from the region of the above-mentioned knot. Attached to this girdle is another fabric, of a scaly texture, which surrounds the thighs. The right leg, below the knee, is encircled with a ribbon and a rosette. This would seem to be the undress substitute for the band and pendant. In front of the recumbent person stands the representation of a skeleton, quite well executed. Other points noticeable about this skeleton are the hair on the head and the fact that its hands are fleshy and the fingers and toes have nails. Like all representations by these sculptures, the skeleton is also embellished with ornaments.

From the back of the head emanate two objects similar to horns, which, if they were not differently ribbed, might represent flames. The ear is ornamented with a circular disk, with a pendant from its center. A double-ruffled collar surrounds the neck and a serpent encircles the loins. Both the shoulders and arms are enveloped in flames. From the mouth emanates a bent staff, touching the first of a row of ten circles. Beneath the second and third circles are five bars, three of which are horizontal. The lowest one is the longest, while the two upper ones are shorter and of different lengths. On the uppermost of these bars rest two others, crossing each other obliquely, and touching with their upper ends two of the aforesaid circles. From the last of these circles descend serpentine lines, which touch the ground behind the recumbent person.

Gustav Eisen, op. cit., describing Fig. 1236, says:

From near Santa Lucia, Guatemala, is a stone tablet, most likely a sepulchral tablet, having in its center a forced dead head, with outstretched tongue. Above the same are seen two crossed bars, perhaps meant to represent two crossed bones.

W. F. Wakeman (a) makes the following remarks:

A cross was used by the people of Erin as a symbol of some significance at a period long antecedent to the mission of St. Patrick or the introduction of Christianity to this island. It is found, not unfrequently, amongst the scribings picked or carved upon rock surfaces and associated with a class of archaic designs, to the meaning of which we possess no key. * * * It may be seen on prehistoric monuments in America, on objects of pottery found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik and at Mycenæ, and, in more than one form, on pagan Roman altars still preserved in Germany and Britain. With the Chinese it was for untold ages a symbol of the earth. The Rev. Samuel Beal, B. A., rector of Flastone, North Tyrone, professor of Chinese in University College, London, writes: “Now, the earliest symbol of the earth was a plain cross, denoting the four cardinal points; hence we have the word chaturanta, i. e., the four sides, both in Pâli and Sanscrit, for the earth; and on the Nestorian tablet, found at Siganfu some years ago, the mode of saying “God created the earth” is simply this: “God created the +.””

A writer in the Edinburgh Review in an article entitled “The Pre-Christian Cross,” January, 1870, p. 254, remarks: “The Buddhists and Brahmins who together constitute nearly half the population of the world, tell us that the decussated figure of the cross, whether in a simple or complex form, symbolizes the traditional happy abode of their primeval ancestors.”

Rudolf Cronau (c), describing Fig. 1237, says that in the Berlin Zeughause are swords of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, bearing the marks shown in a, b, c, and d, while those having the marks e and f are from swords in the Historical Museum at Dresden.

The remarkable resemblance of some of these characters to forms on petroglyphs in the three Americas, presented in this paper, will at once be noticed.

D’Alviella (c), remarks:

One of the most frequent forms of the cross is called the gamma cross, because its four arms are bent at a right angle so as to form a figure like that of four Greek gammas turned in the same direction and joined at the base. We meet it among all the peoples of the Old World, from Japan to Iceland, and it is found in the two Americas. There is nothing to prevent us from supposing that in the instance it was spontaneously conceived everywhere, like the equilateral crosses, circles, triangles, chevrons, and other geometrical ornaments so frequent in primitive decoration. But we see it, at least among the peoples of the Old Continent, invariably passing for talisman, appearing in the funeral scenes or on the tombstones of Greece, Scandinavia, Numidia, and Thibet, and adorning the breasts of divine personages—of Apollo and Buddha—without forgetting certain representations of the Good Shepherd in the Catacombs.

It is, however, impossible within the present limits, to attempt even a summary of the vast amount of literature on this topic. Perhaps one symbolic use of the form which is not commonly known is of sufficient interest to be noted. Travelers say that crosses are exhibited in the curtains of the monasteries of the Thibetan Buddhists, to mean peace and quietness. With the same conception the loopholes of the Japanese forts were in time of peace covered with curtains embroidered with crosses, which when war broke out were removed.

It is also impossible to refrain from quoting the following, translated with condensation, from de Mortillet (a). The illustration referred to is reproduced in the present paper by Fig. 1238, the right-hand figure being from the vase, and that on the left the recognized monogram of Christ:

There can no longer be any doubt as to the use of the cross as a religious symbol long before the advent of Christianity. The worship of the cross, extensive throughout Gaul before the conquest, already existed during the bronze age, more than a thousand years before Christ.

It is especially in the sepulchres of Golasecca that this worship is revealed in the most complete manner, and there, strange to say, has been found a vessel bearing the ancient monogram of Christ, designed perhaps 1,000 years before the coming of Jesus Christ. Is the isolated presence of this monogram of Christ in the midst of numerous crosses, an entirely accidental coincidence?

Another curious fact, very interesting to prove, is that this great development of the worship of the cross before the coming of Christ seems to coincide with the absence of idols and indeed of any representation of living objects. Whenever such objects appear, it may be said that the crosses become more rare and finally disappear altogether. The cross has then been, in remote antiquity, long before Christ, the sacred emblem of a religious sect which repudiated idolatry.

The author, with considerable naiveté, has evidently determined that the form of the cross was significant of a high state of religious culture, and that its being succeeded by effigies, which he calls idols, showed a lapse into idolatry. The fact is simply that, next after one straight line, the combination of two straight lines forming a cross is the easiest figure to draw, and its use before art could attain to the drawing of animal forms, or their representation in plastic material, is merely an evidence of crudeness or imperfection in designing. It is worthy of remark that Dr. Schliemann, in his “Troja,” page 107, presents as his Fig. 38 a much more distinct cross than that given by M. de Mortillet, with the simple remark that it is “a geometrical ornamentation.”

Probably no cause has more frequently produced archeologic and ethnologic blunders than the determination of Christian explorers and missionaries to find monograms of Christ in every monument or inscription where the cross figure appears. The early missionaries to America were obliged to explain the presence of this figure there by a miraculous visit of an apostle, St. Thomas being their favorite. Other generations of the same good people were worried in the same manner by the cross pattée or Thor hammer of the Scandinavians, and by the conventionalized clover leaf of the Druids. This figure often has been a symbol and as often an emblem or a mere sign, but it is so common in every variety of application that actual evidence is necessary to show in any special case what is its real significance.

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Gen. G. P. Thruston (a) gives the following account of Pl. li, which suggests several points of comparison with figures under other headings in this paper:

There has been discovered in Sumner county, Tennessee, near the stone graves and mounds of Castalian springs, a valuable pictograph, the ancient engraved stone which we have taken the liberty to entitle a Group of Tennessee Mound Builders.

This engraved stone, the property of the Tennessee Historical Society, is a flat, irregular slab of hard limestone, about 19 inches long and 15 inches wide. It bears every evidence of very great age. * * * The stone was found on Rocky creek, in Sumner county, and was presented, with other relics, to the Tennessee Historical Society about twelve years ago. * * *

It is evidently an ideograph of significance, graven with a steady and skillful hand, for a specific purpose, and probably records or commemorates some important treaty or public or tribal event. * * * Indian chiefs fully equipped with the insignia of office, are arrayed in fine apparel. Two leading characters are vigorously shaking hands in a confirmatory way. The banner or shield, ornamented with the double serpent emblem and other symbols, is, doubtless, an important feature of the occasion. Among the historic Indians, no treaty was made without the presence or presentation of the belt of wampum. This, the well-dressed female of the group appears to grasp in her hand, perhaps as a pledge of the contract. The dressing of the hair, the remarkable scalloped skirts, the implements used, the waistbands, the wristlets, the garters, the Indian leggings and moccasins, the necklace and breastplates, the two banners, the serpent emblem, the tattoo stripes, the ancient pipe, all invest this pictograph with unusual interest. * * * The double serpent emblem or ornament upon the banner may have been the badge or totem of the tribe, clan, or family that occupied the extensive earthworks at Castalian springs in Sumner county, near where the stone was found. The serpent was a favorite emblem or totem of the Stone Grave race of Tennessee, and is one of the common devices engraved on the shell gorgets taken from the ancient cemeteries. * * * The circles or sun symbol ornaments on the banners and dresses are the figures most frequently graven on the shell gorgets found near Nashville.

The following summary of the translation, kindly furnished by Mr. Pom K. Soh of an article, “Pictures of Dokatu or so-called bronze bell,” by Mr. K. Wakabayashi (a), in the Bulletin of the Tōkyō Anthropological Society, refers to Pl. lii. The author saw the bell described at the town of Takoka, Japan, in August, 1891. The “pictures” on it were fourteen in number, cast in the metal of the bell, each one occupying a separate compartment and running around the bell in several bands. The author took rubbings of the pictures, lithographs of which are published as illustrations of his article, and from these the eight pictures now presented in actual size are selected, the remainder being of the same general character, and some of them nearly identical with those selected. The information obtained is that the bell, which is iron and not bronze, was procured before, and perhaps long before, the present century from Jisei, in the village of Sasakura in the state of Yetsin, and had been excavated from a mountain at Samki. Copies of the markings upon it were taken in 1817 to a high authority at Yedo, now Tōkyō. It is believed that the markings illustrate or are related to a national story, “Kanden Ko Hitsu,” written by Ban Kokei. A few similar bells or fragments of them, some being bronze, have been found in various parts of the Japanese empire. One, which is bronze, height about 3½ feet, and diameter somewhat more than 1 foot, was dug up in Hanina in the year A. D. 821.

The interest of the drawings on Pl. lii, in the present connection, consists in their remarkable similarity, both in form and apparent motive, with several of those found in the western continent and figured in the present work. Thus, a is to be compared with characters on Figs. 437 and 1227 and others referring to the human form, the cross, and the dragon-fly; b with Figs. 57, 165 b and 1261 l; the two characters in c, respectively, with Fig. 1262; the mantis, and Fig. 1129, one form of star; d with a common turtle form, as in Fig. 50; e with Fig. 166, an Ojibwa human form, and also exhibiting gesture, and Fig. 113 a Brazilian petroglyph; and f with Fig. 657, a north-eastern Algonquian drawing. The three last-mentioned pictures, e and f and g, exhibit the peculiar internal life organ (often the conventionalized heart), noticed in Figs. 50, 700, and 701, and it is to be remarked that the largest quadruped in g has the life organ connected with the mouth, while the other quadrupeds, and those in h, show no depiction of internal organs. The human figure in g is noticeable for the American form of bow, and the upper character of h is to be compared with Figs. 104 and 148.