Picture-Writing of the American Indians: Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822Mallery, Garrick
History
Picture-Writing of the American Indians: Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822
Mallery, Garrick
Picture-writing, Indian
On the authority of a manuscript letter from St. Ange to D’Abbadie,
September 9, 1764, quoted by Parkman (_a_), Pontiac’s great wampum belt
was 6 feet long, 4 inches wide, and was wrought from end to end with the
symbols of tribes and villages, 47 in number, which were leagued with
him.
In addition to becoming conventional the designs in wampum, perhaps from
expertness in their workmanship, exhibited ideographs in their later
development, of which the following description, taken from Rev. Peter
Jones’s (_a_), “History of the Ojebway Indians” is an instance:
Johnson then explained the emblems contained in the wampum belt
brought by Yellowhead, which, he said, they acknowledged to be the
acts of their fathers. Firstly, the council fire at the Sault Ste.
Marie has no emblem, because then the council was held. Secondly,
the council fire at Mamtoulni has the emblem of a beautiful white
fish; this signifies purity, or a clean white heart--that all our
hearts ought to be white toward each other. Thirdly, the emblem
of a beaver, placed at an island on Penetanguishew bay, denotes
wisdom--that all the acts of our fathers were done in wisdom.
Fourthly, the emblem of a white deer, placed at Lake Simcoe,
signified superiority; the dish and ladles at the same place
indicated abundance of game and food. Fifthly, the eagle perched on
a tall pine tree at the Credit denotes watching, and swiftness in
conveying messages. The eagle was to watch all the council fires
between the Six Nations and the Ojebways, and being far-sighted, he
might, in the event of anything happening, communicate the tidings
to the distant tribes. Sixthly, the sun was hung up in the center
of the belt to show that their acts were done in the face of the
sun, by whom they swore that they would forever after observe the
treaties made between the two parties.
In the same work, p. 119, is a description of a wampum belt that
recorded the first treaty between the Ojibwa and the Six Nations of the
Iroquois confederacy. It has the figure of a dish or bowl at its middle
to represent that the Ojibwa and the Six Nations were all to eat out of
the same dish, meaning, ideographically, that all the game in the region
should be for their common use.
[Illustration: FIG. 164.--Penn wampum belt.]
Mr. W. H. Holmes (_c_) gives an illustration of the well-known Penn
wampum belt, reproduced here as Fig. 164, with remarks condensed as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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