Fig. 706.—Mdewakantawan fetich.
Fig. 706, drawn by the Dakota Indians, near Fort Snelling, Minnesota, exhibits the use as a charm or talisman of an instrument fashioned in imitation of a war club, though it is not adapted to offensive employment. The head of the talisman is a grooved stone hammer from an inch and a half to 5 inches in length. A withe is tied about the middle of the hammer, in the groove binding on a handle of from 2 to 4 feet in length. The latter is frequently wrapped with buckskin or rawhide to strengthen it, as well as for ornamental purposes. Feathers attached bear designs indicating marks of distinction, perhaps sometimes fetichistic devices not understood.
It is believed that these objects possess the charm of warding off an enemy’s missiles when held upright before the body, as shown in the pictograph. The interpretation was explained by the draftsman himself.
“Medicine bags,” as they are termed by frontiersmen, are worn as amulets. They are sometimes filled by the owner in obedience to the suggestions of visions, but more frequently are prepared by the shaman. They are carried suspended from the neck by means of string or buckskin cords, as shown in Fig. 707, drawn in 1889 by I-teup'-de-tĭ, No-Shin-Bone, a Crow Indian, to represent himself with his insignia, and was extracted from a record kindly communicated by Dr. R. B. Holden, physician at the Crow Agency, Montana.
Fig. 708.—Medicine bag hung up.
Fig. 708, drawn by the same hand, shows the same medicine bag temporarily hung on a forked stick. When the bag is carried on a war party it is never allowed to touch the ground. Also among the Ojibwa some of the bags which are considered to have the greatest fetichistic power are not kept in the lodges, as too dangerous, but are suspended from trees.
Capt. Bourke (d) gives the following account of the medicine hat of the Apache:
The medicine hat of the old and blind Apache medicine man, Nan-ta-do-tash, was an antique affair of buckskin, much begrimed with soot and soiled by long use. Nevertheless it gave life and strength to him who wore it, enabled the owner to peer into the future, to tell who had stolen ponies from other people, to foresee the approach of an enemy, and to aid in the cure of the sick. * * * This same old man gave me an explanation of all the symbolism depicted upon the hat, and a great deal of valuable information in regard to the profession of medicine men, their specialization, the prayers they recited, etc. The material of the hat, as already stated, was buckskin. How that was obtained I can not assert positively, but from an incident occurring under my personal observation in the Sierra Madre, in Mexico, in 1883, where our Indian scouts and the medicine men with them surrounded a nearly grown fawn and tried to capture it alive, as well as from other circumstances too long to be here inserted, I am of the opinion that the buckskin to be used for sacred purposes among the Apache must, whenever possible, be that of a strangled animal, as is the case, according to Dr. Matthews, among the Navajo.
The body of Nan-ta-do-tash’s cap was unpainted, but the figures upon it were in two colors, a brownish yellow and an earthy blue, resembling a dirty Prussian blue. The ornamentation was of the downy feathers and black-tipped plumes of the eagle, pieces of abalone shell and chalchihuitl, and a snake’s rattle on the apex.
Nan-ta-do-tash explained that the characters on the medicine hat meant: A, clouds; B, rainbow; C, hail; E, morning star; F, the god of wind, with his lungs; G, the black “kan;” H, the great stars or suns. “Kan” is the name given to their principal gods. The appearance of the kan himself and of the tail of the hat suggest the centipede, an important animal god of the Apache. The old man said that the figures represented the powers to which he appealed for aid in his “medicine” and the kan upon whom he called for help.
The same author says, op. cit., p. 587:
The Apache, both men and women, wear amulets, called tzidaltai, made of lightning-riven wood, generally pine or cedar or fir from the mountain tops, which are highly valued and are not to be sold. These are shaved very thin and rudely cut in the semblance of the human form. They are in fact the duplicates, on a small scale, of the rhombus. Like it they are decorated with incised lines representing the lightning. Very often these are to be found attached to the necks of children or to their cradles.
Four of the several winter counts described in the present work unite in specifying for the year 1843-’44 the recapture of a fetich called the great medicine arrow.
Fig. 709.—Magic arrow.
Fig. 709.—In a great fight with the Pawnees the Dakotas captured the great medicine arrow which had been taken from the Cheyennes, who made it, by the Pawnees. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1843-’44.
The head of the arrow projects from the bag which contains it. The delicate waved or spiral lines show that it is sacred.
White-Cow-Killer calls it “The Great-medicine-arrow-comes-in winter.”
Fig. 710.—Magic arrow.
Battiste Good’s record gives the following for the same year:
“Brought-home-the-magic-arrow winter. This arrow originally belonged to the Cheyennes, from whom the Pawnees stole it. The Dakotas captured it this winter from the Pawnees, and the Cheyennes then redeemed it for one hundred horses.” His sign for the year is shown in Fig. 710. An attempt was made to distinguish colors by the heraldic scheme, which in this cut did not succeed. The upper part of the man’s body is sable or black, the feathers on the arrow are azure or blue, and the shaft, gules or red. The remainder of the figure is of an undecided color not requiring specification.
Fig. 711.—Magic arrow.
Fig. 711.—The great medicine arrow was taken from the Pawnees by the Oglalas and Brulés, and returned to the Cheyennes to whom it rightly belonged. American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1843-’44. The arrow appears to be in a case marked over with the lines meaning sacredness.
Another account of a magic arrow and illustrations of other fetichistic objects are in Chap. IX.
Pl. XXXIII is a copy of a cloak or mantle made from the skin of a deer, and covered with various mystic paintings. It was made and used by the Apaches as a mantle of invisibility, that is, a charmed covering for spies which would enable them to pass with impunity through the country, and even through the camp of their enemies. In this instance the fetichistic power depends upon the devices drawn. A similar but not identical pictographic fetich or charm is described and illustrated by Capt. Bourke (e) as obtained from a Chicarahua Apache which told when his ponies were lost, and which brought rain. The symbols show, inter alia, the rain cloud, and the serpent lightning, the raindrops and the cross of the winds of the four cardinal points.
Lewis and Clarke (b) say that the Chilluckittequaw, a Chinook tribe, had a “medicine” bag colored red 2 feet long, suspended in the middle of the lodge. It was held sacred, containing pounded dirt, roots, and such mysterious objects. From the chief’s bag he brought out fourteen forefingers of enemies—Snakes—whom he had killed.
A remarkable drawing in an Australian cave, described by Sir George Grey, in Worsnop, op. cit., was an ellipse, 3 feet in length and 1 foot 10 inches in breadth. The outside line of the painting was of deep blue color, the body of the ellipse being of a bright yellow dotted over with red lines and spots, whilst across it ran two transverse lines of blue. The portion of the painting above described formed the ground, or main part of the picture, and upon this ground was painted a kangaroo in the act of feeding; two stone spear heads, and two black balls; one of the spear heads was flying to the kangaroo, and one away from it; so that the whole subject probably constituted a sort of charm by which the luck of an inquirer in killing game can be ascertained. This cave drawing is copied in Fig. 712.
George Turner (c) gives account of hieroglyphic taboos, as he calls them, which are connected with the present subject:
The sea-pike taboo. If a man wished that a sea-pike might run into the body of the person who attempted to steal, say, his bread fruits, he would plait some cocoanut leaflets in the form of a sea-pike, and suspend it from one or more of the trees which he wished to protect.
The white-shark taboo was another object of terror to a thief. This was done by plaiting a cocoanut leaf in the form of a shark, adding fins, etc., and this they suspended from the tree. It was tantamount to an expressed imprecation, that the thief might be devoured by the white shark the next time he went to fish.
The cross-stick taboo. This was a piece of any sort of stick suspended horizontally from the tree. It expressed the wish of the owner of the tree, that any thief touching it might have a disease running right across his body, and remaining fixed there till he died.
The ulcer taboo. This was made by burying in the ground some pieces of clam shell, and erecting at the spot three or four reeds, tied together at the top in a bunch like the head of a man. This was to express the wish and prayer of the owner that any thief might be laid down with ulcerous sores all over his body.
The death taboo. This was made by pouring some oil into a small calabash, and burying it near the tree. The spot was marked by a little hillock of white sand.
The thunder taboo. If a man wished that lightning might strike any who should steal from his land, he would plait some cocoanut leaflets in the form of a small square mat, and suspend it from a tree, with the addition of some white streamers of native cloth flying. A thief believed that if he trespassed, he, or some of his children, would be struck with lightning, or perhaps his own trees struck and blasted from the same cause. They were not, however, in the habit of talking about the effects of lightning. It was the thunder they thought did the mischief; hence they called that to which I have just referred the thunder taboo.
Many examples of masks, dance ornaments, and fetiches used in ceremonies are reported and illustrated in the several papers of Messrs. Cushing, Holmes, and Stevenson in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Paintings or drawings of many of them have been found on pottery, on shells, and on rocks.
An admirable article by Mr. J. Walter Fewkes (b) on Tusayan Pictographs explains many of the petroglyphs of that region as depicting objects used in dances and ceremonies.
Fig. 713 exhibits drawings of various masks used in dancing, the characters of which were obtained by Mr. G. K. Gilbert from rocks at Oakley springs and were explained to him by Tubi, the chief of the Oraibi Pueblos. They are representations of masks as used by the Moki, Zuñi, and Rio Grande Pueblos.
Dr. W. H. Corbusier, U. S. Army, writing from Camp Verde, Arizona, kindly furnished the following account of Yuman ceremonies, in which the making of sand pictures was prominent:
All the medicine men meet occasionally and with considerable ceremony “make medicine.” They went through the performance early in the summer of 1874 on the reservation for the purpose of averting the diseases with which the Indians were afflicted the summer previous. In the middle of one of the villages they made a round ramada, or house of boughs, some 10 feet in diameter, and under it, on the sand, illustrated the spirit land in a picture about 7 feet across, made in colors by sprinkling powdered leaves and grass, red clay, charcoal, and ashes on the smoothed sand. In the center was a round spot of red clay about 10 inches in diameter, and around it several successive rings of green and red alternately, each ring being an inch and a half wide. Projecting from the outer ring were four somewhat triangular-shaped figures, each one of which corresponded to one of the cardinal points of the compass, giving the whole the appearance of a Maltese cross. Around this cross and between its arms were the figures of men with their feet toward the center, some made of charcoal, with ashes for eyes and hair, others of red clay and ashes, etc. These figures were 8 or 9 inches long, and nearly all of them lacked some portion of the body, some an arm, others a leg or the head. The medicine men seated themselves around the picture on the ground in a circle, and the Indians from the different bands crowded around them, the old men squatting close by and the young men standing back of them. After they had invoked the aid of the spirits in a number of chants, one of their number, apparently the oldest, a toothless, gray-haired man, solemnly arose and, carefully stepping between the figures of the men, dropped on each one a pinch of the yellow powder which he took from a small buckskin bag which had been handed to him. He put the powder on the heads of some, on the chests of others, and on other parts of the body, one of the other men sometimes telling him where to put it. After going all around, skipping three figures, however, he put up the bag, and then went around again and took from each figure a large pinch of powder, taking up the yellow powder also, and in this way collected a heaping handful. After doing this he stepped back and another medicine man collected a handful in the same way, others following him. Some of the laymen, in their eagerness to get some, pressed forward, but were ordered back. But after the medicine men had supplied themselves the ramada was torn down and a rush was made by men and boys; handfuls of the dirt were grabbed and rubbed on their bodies or carried away. The women and children, who were waiting for an invitation, were then called. They rushed to the spot in a crowd, and grabbing handfuls of dirt tossed it up in the air so that it would fall on them, or they rubbed their bodies with it, mothers throwing it over their children and rubbing it on their heads. This ended the performance.
According to Stephen Powers (in Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., III, p. 140), there is at the head of Potter valley, California, “a singular knoll of red earth which the Tatu or Hūchnom believe to have furnished the material for the erection of the original coyote-man. They mix this red earth into their acorn bread, and employ it for painting their bodies on divers mystic occasions.”
Descriptions of ceremonies in medicine lodges and in the initiation of candidates to secret associations have been published with and without illustrations. The most striking of these are graphic ceremonial charts made by the Indians themselves, a number of which besides those immediately following appear in different parts of the present work.
Fig. 714.—Shaman’s lodge. Alaska.
Fig. 714 was drawn and interpreted by Naumoff, a Kadiak native, in San Francisco, California, in 1882. It represents the ground plan of a shaman’s lodge, with the shaman curing a sick man.
The following is the explanation:
a, the entrance to the lodge; b, the fireplace; c, a vertical piece of wood upon which is placed a crosspiece, upon each end of which is a lamp; d, the musicians upon the raised seats drumming and producing music to the movements of the shaman during his incantations in exorcising the “evil spirit” supposed to have possession of the patient; e, visitors and friends of the afflicted seated around the walls of the lodge; f, the shaman represented in making his incantations; g, the patient seated upon the floor of the lodge; h represents the shaman in another stage of the ceremonies, driving out of the patient the “evil being”; i, another figure of the patient—from his head is seen to issue a line connecting it with j; j, the “evil spirit” causing the sickness; k, the shaman in the act of driving the “evil being” out of the lodge—in his hands are sacred objects, his personal fetich, in which the power lies; l, the flying “evil one”; m, n, are assistants to the shaman stationed at the entrance to hit and hasten the departure of the evil being.
The writer in examination at three reservations in Wisconsin obtained information concerning the Midē' ceremonies additional to the details described by Dr. Hoffman (a) and by others quoted in the present work. The full ceremonies of the Midē' lodges, which the more southern Ojibwa, who speak English, translate as “grand medicine,” were performed twice a year—in the fall and in the spring. Those in the spring were of a rejoicing character, to welcome the return of the good spirits; those in the fall were in lamentation for the departure of the beneficent and the arrival of the maleficent spirits. The drums were beaten four days and nights before the dance, which lasted for a whole day. After the dance twelve selected persons built a lodge, about the center of which they placed stones which had been heated, and dancing went on around it until the stones were moistened and cooled by the sweat of the performers. Singing, or more properly chanting, regulated the rhythm of the dances, although, perhaps, in the order of evolution the dance was prior to the chant. These ceremonies were performed by the body of the people, and were independent of the initiations in the secret order. With regard to the candidates who passed the initiations, it was mentioned as an undisputed fact that they always became stronger and better men, perhaps because only those succeeded who had the requisite strength of mind and body to endure the various ordeals and to pass examination in the mysteries. In pictography the spring and the fall, the drums and the steaming stones, the dancing forms and the open chanting mouth are shown.
Fig. 715.—Ah-tón-we-tuck.
Catlin (a) gives an account of Kee-an-ne-kuk, the foremost man, who, though a Kickapoo, was commonly called the Shawnee Prophet, and also the following description relating to Fig. 715, painted by that author in 1831:
Ah-tón-we-tuck, The-Cock-Turkey, is another Kickapoo of some distinction and a disciple of the [Shawnee] Prophet, in the attitude of prayer, which he is reading off from characters cut upon a stick that he holds in his hand. It was told to me in the tribe by the traders (though I am afraid to vouch for the whole truth of it) that while a Methodist preacher was soliciting him for permission to preach in his village, the Prophet refused him the privilege, but secretly took him aside and supported him until he learned from him his creed and his system of teaching it to others, when he discharged him and commenced preaching amongst his people himself, pretending to have had an interview with some superhuman mission or inspired personage, ingeniously resolving that if there was any honor or emolument or influence to be gained by the promulgation of it, he might as well have it as another person; and with this view he commenced preaching and instituted a prayer, which he ingeniously carved on a maple stick of an inch and a half in breadth, in characters somewhat resembling Chinese letters. These sticks, with the prayers on them, he has introduced into every family of the tribe and into the hands of every individual; and as he has necessarily the manufacturing of them all, he sells them at his own price and has thus added lucre to fame, and in two essential and effective ways augmented his influence in his tribe. Every man, woman, and child in the tribe, so far as I saw them, were in the habit of saying their prayer from this stick when going to bed at night and also when rising in the morning, which was invariably done by placing the forefinger of the right hand under the upper character until they repeat a sentence or two, which it suggests to them, and then slipping it under the next and the next, and so on to the bottom of the stick, which altogether required about ten minutes, as it was sung over in a sort of a chant to the end.
Fig. 716.—On-sáw-kie.
Fig. 716, from the same volume, opposite page 100, is a portrait of On-sáw-kie, The-Sac, a Pottawatomie, using one of these prayer sticks, which had been procured from the Shawnee Prophet.
Figs. 715 and 716 with their descriptions exhibit an intermediate condition between the aboriginal mnemonic method and the Christian formula of prayer by the use of printed books. They should be considered in comparison with the remarks on the “Micmac Hieroglyphs,” Chap. XIX, Sec. 2.
Fig. 717.—Medicine lodge. Micmac.
Fig. 717, incised on the Kejimkoojik rocks in Nova Scotia, suggests the midē' lodge, sometimes called the medicine lodge, of the Ojibwa, which is described above. The ground plan indicated in this figure seems to be divided by partitions, which, together with the human figures and designs, probably refer to the rites of initiation and celebration performed in them. Some of the Micmacs examined had a vague recollection of these ceremonies, which, at the time of the European discovery of the northeastern part of North America, probably were as widely prevalent, as they continued to be much later, among the regions farther in the interior, also occupied by the Algonquian tribes.
Fig. 718.—Juggler lodge. Micmac.
Fig. 718, from the same locality, is a drawing of the ground plan of another description of ceremonial wigwam or lodge which is remarkably similar to that now called by the Ojibwa “the jessăkân.” Its distinguishing feature is the branch of a tree erected on the outside, and it is the wigwam of a juggler or wizard, and not the lodge belonging to the regular order of the Midē'. Such wigwams of jugglers, who performed wonderful feats similar to those of modern spiritualistic exhibitions, are frequently mentioned by the early French and English writers, who gave accounts of the provinces of New France and New England. The figure now presented is not suggestive without comparison, and would not have been selected for the foregoing description without the authority of living Micmac and Abnaki Indians, to whom it was significant.
Figs. 717 and 718, however, when studied, recall the use of branches and prayer plumes in the descriptions of the houses, and especially of the kivas of the Pueblos and the forms of their consecration mentioned in the study of the Pueblo Architecture, by Mr. Victor Mindeleff, in the Eighth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, as follows:
It is difficult to elicit intelligent explanation of the theory of the baho and the prayer ceremonies in either kiva or house construction. The baho is a prayer token; the petitioner is not satisfied by merely speaking or singing his prayer; he must have some tangible thing upon which to transmit it. He regards his prayer as a mysterious, impalpable portion of his own substance, and hence he seeks to embody it in some object which thus becomes consecrated. The baho, which is inserted in the roof of the kiva, is a piece of willow twig about 6 inches long, stripped of its bark and painted. From it hang four small feathers suspended by short cotton strings tied at equal distances along the twig. In order to obtain recognition from the powers especially addressed, different colored feathers and distinct methods of attaching them to bits of wood and string are resorted to.
Fig. 719.—Moki ceremonial.
The characters in Fig. 719 are copied from a drawing on the rocks in the Canyon Segy. They have been submitted to the most intelligent of the old Moki priests, and are said to represent the primitive sun priests. They watched for the sunrise every morning and the chief sun priest kept a reckoning of the equinoxes. The chief sun priest, a, made the daily sacrifices to the sun by scattering consecrated meal and singing a prayer to the sun just as it rose. His assistant, b, lit a pipe of tobacco at the same time, and exhaled puffs of smoke, one toward each of the cardinal points, one to the zenith, and one to the nadir. The three other figures are flageolet priests, and the skins of different kinds of foxes were attached to their reed flageolets. c played to the morning star, typified by the skin of the gray fox. d played to the dawn, typified by the skin of the red fox. e played to the daylight, typified by the skin of the yellow fox.
Dr. Franz Boas (e) reported as follows:
The Tsimshian have four secret societies, which have evidently been borrowed from the Kwākiutl, the Olala or Wihalait, Nō'ntlem, Mē'itla, and Semhalait.
The candidate is taken to the house of his parents and a bunch of cedar bark is fastened over the door, to show that the place is tabooed, and nobody is allowed to enter. The chief sings while it is being fastened. In the afternoon the sacred house is prepared for the dance. A section in the rear of the house is divided off by means of curtains; it is to serve as a stage, on which the dancers and the novice appear. When all is ready messengers carrying large carved batons are sent around to invite the members of the society, the chief first. The women sit down in one row, nicely dressed up in button blankets and their faces painted red. The chief wears the amhalait, a carving rising from the forehead, set with sea-lion barbs and with a long drapery of ermine skins; the others, the cedar bark rings of the society. * * *
The Mēitla have a red head ring and red eagle downs, the Nōntlem a neck ring plaited of white and red cedar bark, the Olala a similar but far larger one. The members of the societies receive a head ring for each time they pass through these ceremonies. These are fastened one on top of the other.
Mr. James W. Lynd (d) says:
In the worship of their deities paint (with the Dakotas), forms an important feature. Scarlet or red is the religious color for sacrifices, whilst blue is used by the women in many of the ceremonies in which they participate. This, however, is not a constant distinction of sex, for the women frequently use red and scarlet. The use of paints, the Dakotas aver, was taught them by the gods. Unktehi taught the first medicine men how to paint themselves when they worshiped him and what colors to use. Takushkanshkan (the moving god), whispers to his favorites what colors are most acceptable to him. Heyoka hovers over them in dreams, and informs them how many streaks to employ upon their bodies and the tinge they must have. No ceremony of worship is complete without the wakan or sacred application of paint. The down of the female swan is colored scarlet and forms a necessary part of sacrifices.
Wiener (d) gives a description of Peruvian ceremonies, with an illustration reproduced here as Fig. 720.
The paintings on this vase, found by Dr. Macedo in the excavations at Pachacamac, show the principal practices of the exoteric worship of the sun. In this painting there are three entirely distinct groups. The central one is composed of the solar image surrounded by nine rays, terminating in symbols of fecundity. Two men placed at its right and left seem to play on pandean pipes. The group on the left is formed of four individuals, two of whom have head-dresses of royal feathers. This group is performing a dance, while the third group represents the same solar disk and the sacrifice accompanied by music performed in its honor. There are also vases of different forms containing, probably, the sacred drink, and the officiator approaching one hand to one of the great urns, while with the other he holds the vase or the bowl from which he is about to drink the chica consecrated to the sun. The princely personages who have the right to approach the sun wear casques with royal plumes, chemisettes extending below the middle, and ornaments at the lower part of the legs and on the feet. The musicians, four in number (two of whom play upon the pandean pipes and two upon the henna), are distinguished by bonnets without feathers and by a kind of cloak tied around the neck by a band which floats behind them. Finally, the priests, one of whom is an officiator, and the other dancers in the suite of the princely personages, wear bonnets like that of the musicians (who very probably belong to the same class). They have their faces painted.
A. W. Howitt, in MS. Notes on Australian Pictographs, contributes the following:
Among the most interesting of the pictorial markings used by the aborigines are those which are made in connection with the ceremonies of initiation. I now take as an instance the Murring tribe of the southern coast of New South Wales, whose ceremonies I have described elsewhere. The humming instrument, which is known in England as a child’s toy called the bull roarer, has a sacred character with all the Australian tribes. The Murring call it Mŭdji, and the loud roaring sound made when it is swung around at the end of a cord is considered to be the voice of Daramūlŭn, the great supernatural being by whom, according to their tradition, these ceremonies were first instituted.
On this instrument there are marked two notches, one at each end, representing the gap left in the upper jaw of the novice after his teeth have been knocked out during the rites; there is also figured on it the rude representations of Daramūlŭn.
A similar rude outline of a man in the attitude of the magic dance, being also Daramūlŭn, is cut by the old men (wizards) at the ceremonies, upon the bark of a tree at the spot where one of them knocks out the tooth of the novice. This pictograph is then carefully cut out and obliterated after the ceremonies are over.
At a subsequent stage of the proceedings a similar figure is molded on the ground in clay, and is surrounded by the native weapons which Daramūlŭn is said to have invented. This figure, after having been exhibited to the novice, is also destroyed, and they are strictly forbidden under pain of death to make them known in any manner to “women or children;” that is to say, to the uninitiated.
The Mŭdji is not destroyed, but is carefully and secretly preserved by the principal headman who had caused the ceremonies to be held.
The ceremonies of the Wirajuri tribe in New South Wales are substantially the same as those of the Murring, although the tribes are several hundred miles apart. The details, however, differ in some respects.
For instance, at one part of the ceremonies certain carvings are made upon the tree adjoining the place of the ceremonies and upon the ground, as follows:
(1) A piece of bark is stripped off the tree from the branches spirally down the bole to the ground. This represents the path along which Daramūlŭn is supposed to descend from the sky to the place where the initiation is held.
(2) The figure of Daramūlŭn is cut upon the ground, resembling that which the Murring cut upon the tree at the place where in their ceremonies the tooth is knocked out. The figure represents a naked black fellow dancing, his arms being slightly extended and the legs somewhat bent outwards (sideways) at the knee, as in the well known “corroboree” attitude.
(3) The representation of his tomahawk cut on the ground, where he let it fall on reaching the earth.
(4) The footsteps of an emu of which Daramūlŭn was in chase.
(5) The figure of the emu extended on the ground where it fell when struck down by Daramūlŭn.
The same author (f) remarks as follows:
Speaking generally, it may be asserted with safety that initiation ceremonies of some kind or other, and all having a certain fundamental identity, are practiced by the aboriginal tribes over the whole of the Australian continent. * * *
Here, then, the novices for the first time witness the actual exhibition of those magical powers of the old men of which they have heard since their earliest years. They have been told how these men can produce from within themselves certain deadly things which they are then able to project invisibly into those whom they desire to injure or to kill; and now the boys see during the impressive magical dances these very things, as they express it, “pulled out of themselves” by the wizards.
Figs. 721, 722, and 723 are copies of the designs upon Tartar and Mongol drums, taken from G. N. Potanin (b). They are used in religious ceremonies with the belief that the sounds emanating from the surface upon which the designs are made, or, to carry the concept a little further, the sounds coming from the designs themselves, produce special influences or powers. Some of these designs are notably similar to some of those found in America and reproduced in the present paper.
The upper left-hand design (a) in Fig. 721, on the outside of the drum, represents the sun and the moon in the form of circles with a central dot. Below the crossbar were two other such figures with central dot. Besides, were represented below, on the left side, two shamans, and under them a wild goat and serpent in the form of wavy lines; on the right side three shamans and a deer.
The upper right-hand design (b) on the same figure is a group representing the bringing of a horse to sacrifice. Under a rainbow, dots represent stars, and two heavenly maidens who the shamans said were the daughters of Ulgen and who were playing. They come down to the mountains and rise up to the skies.
A bow with a knob at each end is made to represent a rainbow in the lower part of a shaman’s drum.
The lower left-hand design (c) on the same figure on a drum of the telengit shaman is the external delineation of a head without eyes and nose. The lower end of the line coming from the head represents a bifurcation. Under the head is a short horizontal line like an extended arm. Above a line extending from side to side of the drum are two circles, and below six circles, all empty. According to the owner of the drum these circles are representations of drums, and the three human figures are masters or spirits of localities.
The lower right-hand design (d) in the same figure has in the upper section five zigzag lines represented similar to those with which lightning is often represented. According to the shaman these are serpents.
The upper left-hand design (a) in Fig. 722 inside the drum has painted two trees. On each of them sits the bird karagush, with bill turned to the left. On the left of the trees are two circles, one dark (the moon), the other light (the sun). Below a horizontal line are depicted a frog, a lizard, and a serpent.
The upper right-hand design (b) in the same figure has on the upper half two circles, the sun and moon; on the left side four horsemen; under them a bowman, also on horseback. The center is occupied by a picture of a net and a sieve for winnowing the nuts and seeds of the cedar tree. On the right side are two trees, baigazuin (literally the rich birch), over which two birds, the karagush, are floating. Under a division on the right and on the left side are oval objects with latticed-figured or scaly skin. These are two whales. In the middle, between them, are a frog and a deer, and below a serpent. Above, toward the hoop of the drum, is fastened an owl’s feather.
The lower left hand design (c) in the same figure has represented in the upper half seven figures reminding one of horses. These are the horses, bura, going to heaven, i. e., their sacrifice. Above them are two circles emitting light, the sun and the moon; on the right of the horses are three trees; under a horizontal line on the left is a serpent; on the right a fish, the kerbuleik, the whale according to Verbitski, literally the bay-fish.
The lower right-hand design (d) in the same figure has a drawing on the outside, a circle divided by horizontal bars into halves. The field of the upper half is divided into three strata, the first stratum of which is heaven, the second the rainbow, and in the lower stratum the stars. On the left side the sun, and the crescent moon on the right side; the goat, trees, and an undefined figure, which is not given in the drawing, underneath. The kam, a kind of shaman, called it the bura. Some said that it meant a cloud; others that it meant heavenly horses.
The left-hand design (a) in Fig. 723 shows four vertical and four horizontal lines. The latter represent the rainbow; the vertical lines borsui. Circles with dots in the center are represented in three sections, and in the fourth one circle.
The right-hand design in the same figure: On the upper sections are represented a number of human figures. These, according to the shaman’s own explanation, are heavenly maidens (in the original Turkish, tengriduing kuiz). Below, under a rainbow, which is represented by three arched lines, are portrayed two serpents, each having a cross inside. These are kurmos nuing tyungurey, i. e., the drums are kurmos’s. Kurmos is the Alti word for spirits, which the shamans summon.
Bastian (a) makes remarks as follows concerning the magic drum of the Shamans in the Altai, which should be considered in this connection:
The Shamans admit three worlds (among the Yakuts), the world of the heavens (hallan jurda), the middle one of the earth (outo-doidu) and the lower world or hell (jedän tügara), the former the realm of light, the latter the realm of darkness, while the earth has for a time been given over by the Creator (Jüt-tas-olbohtah Jürdän-Ai-Tojan) to the will of the devil or tempter, and the souls of men at their death, according to the measure of their merit, are sent into one or the other realm. When, however, the earth world has come to an end, the souls of the two realms will wage a war against each other, and victory must remain on the side of the good souls.
Champlain (f) in his voyage of 1603, says of the Northeastern Algonquins that their graves were covered with large pieces of wood, and one post was erected upon them, the upper part of which was painted red.
The same author, in 1613, writing of the Algonquins of the Ottawa river, at the Isle des Alumettes, gives more details of the pictures on their grave posts:
On it the likeness of the man or woman who is buried there is roughly engraved. If a man, they put on a buckler, a spear, war club, and bows and arrows. If he is a chief he will have a plume on his head and some other designs or ornaments. If a boy, they give him one bow and a single arrow. If a woman or girl, they put on a kettle, an earthen pot, a wooden spoon, and a paddle. The wooden tomb is 6 or 7 feet long and 4 wide, painted yellow and red.
Some northern tribes—probably Cree—according to the Jesuit Relations (a), gave a notice of death to absent relations or dear friends of the deceased by hanging the object signifying his name on the path by which the traveler must return, e. g., if the name of the deceased was Piré (Partridge) the skin of a partridge was suspended. The main object of the notice was that the traveler, thereby knowing of the death, should not on his return to the lodge or village ask after or mention the deceased. Perhaps this explains the custom of placing pictographs of personal names and totemic marks on some prominent point or on trails without any apparent incident.
The same Relation describes a custom of the same Indians of shaping out of wood a portraiture of the more distinguished dead and inserting it over their graves, afterwards painting and greasing it as if it were the live man.
In Keating’s Long (g) it is told that the Sac Indians are particular in their demonstrations of grief for departed friends. These consist in darkening their faces with charcoal, fasting, abstaining from the use of vermillion and other ornaments in dress, etc. They also make incisions in their arms, legs, and other parts of the body; these are not made for the purposes of mortification, or to create a pain which shall by dividing their attention efface the recollection of their loss, but entirely from a belief that their grief is internal and that the only way of dispelling it is to give it a vent through which to escape.
This is an explanation of the practice which has been verified in the field work of the Bureau of Ethnology and corresponds with the concept of finding relief from disease and pain by similar incisions, to let out the supposed invading entity that causes distress.
The same authority, p. 332, gives the following account of Dakota burial scaffolds: