Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256Mallery, Garrick
History
Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256
Mallery, Garrick
Haida Indians; Picture-writing, Indian; Tattooing
[Illustration: FIG. 122.--Ivory carving with records. Alaska.]
The carving, Figure 122, made of a piece of walrus tusk, was copied
from the original in the museum of the Alaska Commercial Company, San
Francisco, California, during the summer of 1882. Interpretations were
verified by Naumoff, a Kadiak half-breed, in San Francisco at the time.
The special purport of some of the characters and etchings is not
apparent.
In No. 1 is a native whose left hand is resting against the house,
while the right hangs toward the ground. The character to his right
represents a “Shaman stick” surmounted by the emblem of a bird, a “good
spirit,” in memory of some departed friend. It was suggested that the
grave stick had been erected to the memory of his wife.
No. 2. Represents a reindeer, but the special import in this drawing is
unknown.
No. 3. Signifies that one man, the recorder, shot and killed another
with an arrow.
No. 4. Denotes that the narrator has made trading expeditions with a
dog-sledge.
No. 5. Is a sail-boat, although the elevated paddle signifies that that
was the manner in which the voyage was best made.
No. 6. A dog-sled, with the animal hitched up for a journey. The
radiating lines in the upper left hand corner, over the head of the
man, is a representation of the sun.
No. 7. A sacred lodge. The four figures at the outer corners of the
square represent the young men placed on guard, armed with bows and
arrows, to keep away those not members of the band, who are depicted as
holding a dance. The small square in the center of the lodge represents
the fire-place. The angular lines extending from the right side of the
lodge to the vertical partition line are an outline of the subterranean
entrance to the lodge.
No. 8. A pine tree, upon which a porcupine is crawling upward.
No. 9. A pine tree, from which a bird (woodpecker) is extracting larvæ
for food.
No. 10. A bear.
No. 11. The recorder in his boat, holding aloft his double-bladed
paddle to drive fish into a net.
No. 12. An assistant fisherman driving fish into the net.
No. 13. The net.
The figure over the man (No. 12) represents a whale, with harpoon and
line attached, caught by the narrator.
* * * * *
It will be understood that all personal customs, such, for instance, as
the peculiar arrangement of hair in any tribe, are embodied in their
pictorial designation by other tribes and perhaps by themselves. See in
this connection, page 230.
Among the many customs susceptible of graphic portrayal which do not
happen to be illustrated in this paper, an example may be given in the
mode in several tribes (_e. g._, Apache, Muskoki, Dakota and Miztec),
of punishing the infidelity of wives, namely, by cutting off the nose.
The picture of a noseless woman would, therefore, when made by those
tribes, have distinct meaning. The unfaithful wife mentioned on page
134 is drawn with a nose, but in her case the greater punishment of
death was inflicted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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