Signaling and Indian Signs 245 



BLAZES AND INDIAN SIGNS — BLAZES 



First among the trail signs that are used by Scouts, 

 Indians, and white hunters, and most likely to be of use to 

 the traveler, are axe blazes on tree trunks. Among these 

 some may vary greatly with locahty, but there is one that I 

 have found everywhere in use with scarcely any variation. 

 That is the simple white spot meaning, ^^Eere is the trails 



The Indian in making it may nick off an infinitesimal 

 speck of bark with his knife, the trapper with his hatchet 

 may make it as big as a dollar, or the settler with his heavy 

 axe may slab off half the tree-side; but the sign is the same 

 in principle and in meaning, on trunk, log or branch from 

 Atlantic to Pacific and from Hudson Strait to Rio Grande. 

 "This is your trail," it clearly says in the universal language 

 of the woods. 



There are two ways of employing it: one when it appears 

 on back and front of the trunk, so that the trail can be run 

 both ways; the other when it appears on but one side of 

 each tree, making a blind trail, which can be run one way 

 only, the blind trail is often used by trappers and pros- 

 pectors, who do not wish any one to follow their back track. 



But there are treeless regions where the trail must be 

 marked; regions of sage brush and sand, regions of rock, 

 stretches of stone, and level wastes of grass or sedge. Here 

 other methods must be employed. 



A well-known Indian device, in the brush, is to break a 

 twig and leave it hanging. {Second line?) 



Among stones and rocks the recognized sign is one stone 

 set on top of another {top line) and in places where there is 

 nothing but grass the custom is to twist a tussock into a 

 knot {third line). 



These signs also are used in the whole country from Maine 

 to California. 



