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
2. The-Swan’s chart was kindly furnished to the writer by Dr. Charles
Rau, of the Smithsonian Institution. It was sent to him in 1872 by
Dr. John R. Patrick, of Belleville, Saint Clair County, Illinois, who
received it from Dr. Washington West, of Belleville, Illinois, who
became an acting assistant surgeon, U. S. Army, November 2, 1868, and
was assigned to duty at Cheyenne Agency, Dakota, established by General
Harney, as one of a number of agencies to become useful as rendezvous
for Dakotas to keep them from disturbing the line of the Union Pacific
Railroad. He remained there from November, 1868, to May, 1870. The
agency was specially for the Two Kettles, Sans Arcs, and Minneconjous.
A Minneconjou chief, The-Swan, elsewhere called The-Little-Swan, kept
this record on the dressed skin of an antelope or deer, claiming that
it had been preserved in his family for seventy years. The title of
the written interpretation of this chart was called the History of the
Minneconjou Dakotas, its true use not being then understood. In return
for favors, Dr. West obtained permission to have some copies made on
common domestic cotton cloth and employed an Indian expert of the Two
Kettle band to do the work in fac-simile. From one of these he had a
photograph taken on a small plate, and then enlarged in printing to
about two-thirds of the original size and traced and touched up in
India ink and red paint to match the original, which was executed in
some black pigment and ruddle.
The characters are arranged in a spiral similar to those in Lone-Dog’s
chart, but more oblong in form. The course of the spiral is from left
to right, not from right to left. The interpretation of this chart
was made at Cheyenne Agency in 1868 for Dr. Washington West by Jean
Premeau, interpreter at that agency.
A useful note is given in connection with the interpretation, that in
it all the names are names given by the Minneconjous, and not the names
the parties bear themselves, _e. g._, in the interpretation for the
year 1829-’30, (see Plate XVIII, and page 114,) Bad Arrow Indian is a
translation of the Dakota name for a band of Blackfeet. The owner and
explainer of this copy of the chart was a Minneconjou, and therefore
his rendering of names might differ from that of another person equally
familiar with the chart.
3. Another chart examined was kindly loaned to the writer by Brevet
Maj. Joseph Bush, captain Twenty-second United States Infantry. It was
procured by him in 1870 at the Cheyenne Agency, from James C. Robb,
formerly Indian trader, and afterwards post trader. This copy is one
yard by three-fourths of a yard, spiral, beginning in the center from
right to left. The figures are substantially the same size as those
in Lone-Dog’s chart, with which it coincides in time, except that it
ends at 1869-’70. The interpretation differs from that accompanying the
latter in a few particulars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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