The same mode of indicating the close of a narrative or statement is made by the Wichitas, by holding the extended left hand horizontally before the body, fingers pointing to the right, palm either toward the body or downward, and cutting edgewise downward past the tips of the left with the extended right hand.  This is the same sign given in the ADDRESS OF KIN CH[=E]-[)E]SS as cut off, and is illustrated in Fig. 324, page 522.  This is more ideographic and convenient than the device of the Abyssinian Galla, reported by M.A. d’Abbadie, who denoted a comma by a slight stroke of a leather whip, a semicolon by a harder one, and a full stop by one still harder.

GESTURES AIDING ARCHAEOLOGIC RESEARCH.

The most interesting light in which the Indians of North America can be regarded is in their present representation of a stage of evolution once passed through by our own ancestors.  Their signs, as well as their myths and customs, form a part of the paleontology of humanity to be studied in the history of the latter as the geologist, with similar object, studies all the strata of the physical world.  At this time it is only possible to suggest the application of gesture signs to elucidate pictographs, and also their examination to discover religious, sociologic, and historic ideas preserved in them, as has been done with great success in the radicals of oral speech.

SIGNS CONNECTED WITH PICTOGRAPHS.

The picture writing of Indians is the sole form in which they recorded events and ideas that can ever be interpreted without the aid of a traditional key, such as is required for the signification of the wampum belts of the Northeastern tribes and the quippus of Peru.  Strips of bark, tablets of wood, dressed skins of animals, and the smooth surfaces of rock have been and still are used for such records, those most ancient, and therefore most interesting, being of course the rock etchings; but they can only be deciphered, if at all, by the ascertained principles on which the more modern and the more obvious are made.  Many of the numerous and widespread rock carvings are mere idle sketches—­of natural objects, mainly animals, and others are as exclusively mnemonic as the wampum above mentioned.  Even since the Columbian discovery some tribes have employed devices yet ruder than the rudest pictorial attempt as markers for the memory.  An account of one of these is given in E. Winslow’s Relation (A.D. 1624), Col.  Mass.  Hist.  Soc., 2d series, ix, 1822, p. 99, as follows: 

“Instead of records and chronicles they take this course:  Where any remarkable act is done, in memory of it, either in the place or by some pathway near adjoining, they make a round hole in the ground about a foot deep, and as much over, which, when others passing by behold, they inquire the cause and occasion of the same, which being once known, they are careful to acquaint all men as occasion serveth therewith.  And lest such holes should be filled or grown over by any accident, as men pass by they will often renew the same; by which means many things of great antiquity are fresh in memory.  So that as a man traveleth, if he can understand his guide, his journey will be the less tedious, by reason of the many historical discourses which will be related unto him.”