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
The facsimile copy is on a cotton cloth about a yard square and in black
and red, thus far similar to the copy of Lone-Dog’s chart, but the
arrangement is different. The character for the first year mentioned
appears in the lower left-hand corner, and the record proceeds toward
the right to the extremity of the cloth, then crossing toward the left
and again toward the right at the edge of the cloth, and so throughout,
in the style called boustrophedon. It thus answers the same purpose of
orderly arrangement, allowing constant additions, like the more circular
spiral of Lone-Dog. This record is for the years 1786-’87 to 1876-’77,
thus commencing earlier and ending later than that of Lone-Dog.
2. A Minneconjou chief, The-Swan, kept another record on the dressed
skin of an antelope or deer, claiming that it had been preserved in his
family for seventy years.
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.
3. Another chart was kindly loaned to the writer by Bvt. Maj. Joseph
Bush, captain Twenty-second U. S. Infantry. It was procured by him, in
1870 at the Cheyenne Agency. 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 as those in Lone-Dog’s chart, with
which it coincides in time, except that it ends at 1869-’70, but the
interpretation differs from that accompanying the latter in a few
particulars.
4. The chart of Mato Sapa, Black-Bear. He was a Minneconjou warrior,
residing in 1868 and 1869 on the Cheyenne Agency reservation, on the
Missouri river, near the mouth of the Cheyenne river.
This copy is on a smaller scale than that of Lone-Dog, being a flat and
elongated spiral, 2 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 6 inches. The spiral reads
from right to left. This chart, which begins like that of Lone-Dog, ends
with the years 1868-’69.
5. A most important and interesting Winter Count is that made by
Battiste Good, a Brulé Dakota, which was kindly contributed by Dr.
William H. Corbusier, surgeon U. S. Army. It begins with peculiar cyclic
devices from the year A. D. 900, and in thirteen figures embraces the
time to A. D. 1700, all these devices being connected with myths, and
some of them showing European influence. From 1700-’01 to 1879-’80 a
separate character is given for each year, with its interpretation,
in much the same style as shown in the other charts mentioned. Several
Indians and half-breeds said that this count formerly embraced about the
same number of years as the others, but that Battiste Good gathered the
names of many years from the old people and placed them in chronological
order as far back as he was able to learn them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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