[Illustration:  Fig. 225.]

SIGNS CONNECTED WITH ETHNOLOGIC FACTS.

The present limits permit only a few examples of the manner in which the signs of Indians refer to sociologic, religious, historic, and other ethnologic facts.  They may incite research to elicit further information of the same character.

[Illustration:  Fig. 226.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 227.]

The Prince of Wied gives in his list of signs the heading Partisan, a term of the Canadian voyageurs, signifying a leader of an occasional or volunteer war party, the sign being reported as follows:  Make first the sign of the pipe, afterwards open the thumb and index-finger of the right hand, back of the hand outward, and move it forward and upward in a curve.  This is explained by the author’s account in a different connection, that to become recognized as a leader of such a war party as above mentioned, the first act among the tribes using the sign was the consecration, by fasting succeeded by feasting, of a medicine pipe without ornament, which the leader of the expedition afterward bore before him as his badge of authority, and it therefore naturally became an emblematic sign.  This sign with its interpretation supplies a meaning to Fig. 226 from the Dakota Calendar showing “One Feather,” a Sioux chief who raised in that year a large war party against the Crows, which fact is simply denoted by his holding out demonstratively an unornamented pipe.  In connection with this subject, Fig. 227, drawn and explained by Two Strike, an Ogalala Dakota, relating to his own achievements, displays four plain pipes to exhibit the fact that he had led four war parties.

[Illustration:  Fig. 228.]

The sign of the pipe or of smoking is made in a different manner, when used to mean friend, as follows:  (1) Tips of the two first fingers of the right hand placed against or at right angles to the mouth; (2) suddenly elevated upward and outward to imitate smoke expelled. (Cheyenne II).  “We two smoke together.”  This is illustrated in the Ojibwa pictograph, Fig. 228, taken from Schoolcraft I, pl. 59.

[Illustration:  Fig. 229.]

A ceremonial sign for peace, friendship, is the extended fingers, separated (R), interlocked in front of the breast, hands horizontal, backs outward. (Dakota I.) Fig. 229 from the Dakota Calendar exhibits the beginning of this gesture.  When the idea conveyed is peace or friendship with the whites, the hand shaking of the latter is adopted as in Fig. 230, also taken from the Dakota Calendar, and referring to the peace made in 1855 by General Harney, at Fort Pierre, with a number of the tribes of the Dakotas.

[Illustration:  Fig. 230.]