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
Papers by Dr. Washington Matthews, U. S. A., Dr. W. H. Corbusier, U. S.
A., and Mr. James Stevenson were read in the Anthropological Society
of Washington during the season of 1884-5, giving account of important
and entirely novel paintings by the Navajo, Yuman, and Zuni Indians.
These paintings were made upon the ground by means of sand, ashes,
and powdered vegetable matter of various colors. These were highly
elaborate, made immediately preceding certain ceremonies, at the close
of which they were obliterated.
Dr. W. J. Hoffman states that when the expedition under command of
Capt. G. M. Wheeler, U. S. A., passed through Southern Nevada in
1871, the encampment for one night was at Pai-Uta Charlie’s rancheria,
where it was visited by many of the Pai-Uta Indians of that vicinity.
On leaving camp the following morning representations of many mounted
men, the odometer cart and pack animals were found depicted upon the
hard, flat surface of the sand. The Indians had drawn the outlines in
life size with sticks of wood, and the work was very artistically done.
A mounted expedition was a new thing in that part of the country and
amused them not a little.
The well-known animal mounds, sometimes called effigy mounds, of
Wisconsin come in this category.
THE HUMAN PERSON.
Pictographs upon the human person may be divided into, 1st, paint on
the face; 2d, paint on the body; and, 3d, tattooing, which is also
divided into tattoo marks upon the head and tattoo marks upon the body.
PAINT.
Dr. Hoffman, who visited the Hualpai Indians of northern Arizona in
1871, gives an account (see _ante_, p. 52) of their habit of besmearing
their bodies and faces with the blood of game killed.
A colored plate, facing page 33 of the report of the Pacific Railroad
Expedition, 1856, pt. III, shows the designs adopted by the Mojave
Indians for painting the body. These designs consist of transverse
lines extending around the body, arms, and legs, or horizontal lines,
or different parts may partake of different designs. Clay is now
generally used, as was observed by Dr. Hoffman, who visited Camp Mojave
in 1871.
For other notices of paint on head and body and the significance of
color see _ante_, page 53 _et seq._
Everard F. im Thurn, in his work before cited, page 196, describes the
painting of the Indians of Guiana as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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