Gregg, in Commerce of the Prairies, New York, 1844, II, 286, says of the Plains tribes:  “When traveling, they will also pile heaps of stones upon mounds or conspicuous points, so arranged as to be understood by their passing comrades; and sometimes they set up the bleached buffalo heads, which are everywhere scattered over those plains, to indicate the direction of their march, and many other facts which may be communicated by those simple signs.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 151.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 152.]

A more ingenious but still arbitrary mode of giving intelligence is practiced at this day by the Abnaki, as reported by H.L.  Masta, chief of that tribe, now living at Pierreville, Quebec.  When they are in the woods, to say “I am going to the east,” a stick is stuck in the ground pointing to that direction, Fig. 151.  “Am not gone far,” another stick is stuck across the former, close to the ground, Fig. 152.  “Gone far” is the reverse, Fig. 153.  The number of days journey of proposed absence is shown by the same number of sticks across the first; thus Fig. 154 signifies five days’ journey.  Cutting the bark off from a tree on one, two, three or four sides near the butt means “Have had poor, poorer, poorest luck.”  Cutting it off all around the tree means “I am starving.”  Smoking a piece of birch bark and hanging it on a tree means “I am sick.”

[Illustration:  Fig. 153.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 154.]

Where there has existed any form of artistic representation, however rude, and at the same time a system of ideographic gesture signs prevailed, it would be expected that the form of the latter would appear in the former.  The sign of river and water mentioned on page 358 being established, when it became necessary or desirable to draw a character or design to convey the same idea, nothing would be more natural than to use the graphic form of delineation which is also above described.  It was but one more and an easy step to fasten upon bark, skins, or rocks the evanescent air pictures that still in pigments or carvings preserve their skeleton outline, and in their ideography approach, as has been shown above, the rudiments of the phonetic alphabets that have been constructed by other peoples.  A transition stage between gestures and pictographs, in which the left hand is used as a supposed drafting surface upon which the index draws lines, is exhibited in the DIALOGUE BETWEEN ALASKAN INDIANS, infra, page 498.  This device is common among deaf-mutes, without equal archaeologic importance, as it may have been suggested by the art of writing, with which they are generally acquainted, even if not instructed in it.

The reproduction of apparent gesture lines in the pictographs made by our Indians has, for obvious reasons, been most frequent in the attempt to convey those subjective ideas which were beyond the range of an artistic skill limited to the direct representation of objects, so that the part of the pictographs which is still the most difficult of interpretation is precisely the one which the study of sign language is likely to elucidate.  The following examples of pictographs of the Indians, in some cases compared with those from foreign sources, have been selected because their interpretation is definitely known and the gestures corresponding with or suggested by them are well determined.