The number of instances in this paper in which the picture has been expressive of an idea, and not a mere portraiture of an object, and has amounted sometimes to a graphic representation of an abstract idea, is so great as to render cross-references superfluous. As examples, attention may be invited to Figure 72, page 166, for the idea of “voice,” Figure 179, page 241, for that of “war,” and the Corbusier winter counts for the year 1876-’77—No. I, page 146, for that of “support.” In addition to them, however, for convenience of grouping under this special heading, the following illustrations (some of which would as properly appear under the head of Conventionalizing) are presented.

ABSTRACT IDEAS.

Figure 140 is taken from the winter count of Battiste Good, and is drawn to represent the sign for pipe, which it is intended to signify. The sign is made by placing the right hand near the upper portion of the breast, the left farther forward, and both held so that the index and thumb approximate a circle, as if holding a pipe-stem. The remaining fingers are closed.

The point of interest in this character is that instead of drawing a pipe the artist drew a human figure making the sign for pipe, showing the intimate connection between gesture-signs and pictographs. The pipe, in this instance, was the symbol of peace.

Figure 141, taken from the winter count of Battiste Good for the year 1703-’04, signifies plenty of buffalo meat.

The forked stick being one of the supports of a drying-pole or scaffold, indicates meat. The circle may represent a pit or “cache” in which buffalo meat was placed during the winter of 1703-’04, or it may mean “heap”—i. e., large quantity, buffalo having been very plentiful that year. The buffalo head denotes the kind of meat stored. This is an abbreviated form of the device immediately following, and being fully understood affords a suggestive comparison with some Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese letters, both in their full pictographic origin and in their abbreviation.

Figure 142 is taken from the same count for the year 1745-’46, in which the drying-pole is supported by two forked sticks or poles, only one of which, without the drying-pole, was indicated in the preceding figure, which is an abbreviated or conventionalized form of the objective representation in the pre-present figure, viz., a scaffold or pole upon which buffalo meat was placed for drying. Buffalo were very plentiful during the winter of 1745-’46, and the kind of meat is denoted by the buffalo head placed above the pole, from which meat appears suspended.

Figure 143 is taken from Prince Maximilian’s Travels, op. cit. p. 352. The cross signifies, I will barter or trade. Three animals are drawn on the right hand of the cross; one is a buffalo (probably albino); the two others, a weasel (Mustela Canadensis) and an otter. The pictographer offers in exchange for the skins of these animals the articles which he has drawn on the left side of the cross. He has there, in the first place, depicted a beaver very plainly, behind which there is a gun; to the left of the beaver are thirty strokes, each ten separated by a longer line; this means: I will give thirty beaver skins and a gun for the skins of the three animals on the right hand of the cross.

The ideographic character of the design consists in the use of the cross—being a drawing of the gesture-sign for “trade”—the arms being in position interchanged. Of the two things each one is put in the place before occupied by the other thing—the idea of exchange.

Figure 144, from the record of Battiste Good for the year 1720-’21, signifies starvation, denoted by the bare ribs.

This design survives among the Ottawa and Pottawatomi Indians of Northern Michigan, but among the latter a single line only is drawn across the breast, shown in Figure 145. This corresponds, also, with one of the gesture-signs for the same idea.

Figure 146, from the record of Battiste Good for the year 1826-’27, signifies “pain.” He calls the year “Ate-a-whistle-and-died winter,” and explains that six Dakotas, on the war path, had nearly perished with hunger when they found and ate the rotting carcass of an old buffalo, on which the wolves had been feeding. They were seized soon after with pains in the stomach, their bellies swelled, and gas poured from the mouth and the anus, and they died of a whistle, or from eating a whistle. The sound of gas escaping from the mouth is illustrated in the figure. The character on the abdomen and on its right may be considered to be the ideograph for pain in that part of the body.

SYMBOLISM.

The writer has, in a former publication, suggested the distinction to be made between a pictorial sign, an emblem, and a symbol; but it is not easy to preserve the discrimination in reference to ideographic characters which have often become conventionalized. To partly express the distinction, nearly all of the characters in the Dakota Winter Counts are regarded as pictorial signs, and the class represented by tribal signs, personal insignia, etc., is considered to belong to the category of emblems. There is no doubt, however, that true symbols exist among the Indians, as they must exist to some extent among all peoples not devoid of poetic imagination. Some of them are shown in this paper. The pipe is generally a symbol of peace, although in certain positions and connections it sometimes signifies preparation for war, and again subsequent victory. The hatchet is a common symbol for war, and closed hands or approaching palms denote friendship. The tortoise has been clearly used as a symbol for land, and many other examples can be admitted. If Schoolcraft is to be taken as uncontroverted authority, the symbolism of the Ojibwa rivalled that of the Egyptians, and the recent unpublished accounts of the ZuÑi, Moki, and Navajo before mentioned indicate the frequent employment of symbolic devices by those tribes which are notably devoted to mystic ceremonies. Nevertheless, the writer’s personal experience is, that often when he has at first supposed a character to be a genuine symbol it has resulted, with better means of understanding, in being not even an ideograph but a mere objective representation. In this connection, the remarks on the circle on page 107, and those on Figure 206, on page 246, may be in point.

Another case for consideration occurs. The impression, real or represented, of a human hand is used in several regions in the world with symbolic significance. For instance, in Jerusalem a rough representation of a hand is reported by Lieutenant Conder (Palestine Exploration Fund, January, 1873, p. 16) to be marked on the wall of every house whilst in building by the native races. 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, employ the marks on their houses as prophylactics. 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. Among the North American Indians the mark so readily applied is of frequent occurrence, an instance, with its ascertained significance, being given on page 187, supra.

It has been recently ascertained 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. This coincidence would seem at first to assure symbolic significance and possibly to connect the symbolism of the two hemispheres. But Mr. Thomas V. Keam explains the Arizona etchings of hands, on the authority of the living Moki, as follows:

“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 Hopitus [Moki] first obtained corn. Only those were chosen as novices, the imprints of whose hands had dried on the instant.”

While the subject-matter is, therefore, ceremonial, there is absolutely no symbolism connected with it. The etchings either simply perpetuate the marks made in the several tests or imitate them.

In the present stage of the study no more can be suggested than that symbolic interpretations should be accepted with caution.

With regard to the symbolic use of material objects, which would probably be extended into graphic portrayal, the following remarks maybe given:

The Prince of Wied mentions (op. cit., Vol. I, p. 244) that in the Sac and Fox tribes the rattle of a rattlesnake attached to the end of the feather worn on the head signifies a good horse stealer. The stealthy approach of the serpent, accompanied with latent power, is here clearly indicated.

Mr. Schoolcraft says of the Dakotas that “some of the chiefs had the skins of skunks tied to their heels to symbolize that they never ran, as that animal is noted for its slow and self-possessed movements.” See Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontier, etc., Philadelphia, 1851, p. 214.

This is one of the many customs to be remembered in the attempted interpretations of pictographs. The present writer does not know that a skunk skin, or a strip of skin which might be supposed to be a skunk skin, attached to a human heel, has ever been used pictorially as the ideograph of courage or steadfastness, but with the knowledge of this objective use of the skins, if they were found so represented pictorially, as might well be expected, the interpretation would be suggested, without any direct explanation from Indians.