■Cushing.] dol [Nov. 6, 



lets or to otherwise represent such tablets in the paraphernalia of sacred 

 ancestral ceremonials. I may add that I believe it will yet be possible, 

 by the experimental reproduction and use of these forms, to determine 

 more definitely what the originals, the most mysterious of our finds, were 

 designed for. 



In addition to the head tablet I have spoken of, various thin, painted 

 slats of wood were found in two or three places. They were so related 

 to one another in each case, that it was evident they had also formed 

 portions of ceremonial head-dresses, for they had been arranged fan-wise 

 as shown by cordage, traces of which could still be seen at their bases. 

 Besides these, other slats and parts of other kinds of head-dresses, bark 

 tassels, wands — one in the form of a beautifully shaped spear, and others 

 in the form of staffs — were found ; many of them plainly indicating the 

 practice of mimetically reproducing useful forms, and especially weapons, 

 for ceremonial appliance. 



Perhaps the most significant object of a sacred or ceremonial nature, 

 however, was a thin board of yellowish wood, a little more than sixteen 

 inches in length, by eight and a half inches in wddth, which I found 

 standing slantingly upward near the central western shell-bench (Sec- 

 tion 22). On slowly removing the peatj^ muck from its surface, I dis- 

 covered that an elaborate figure of a crested bird was painted upon one 

 side of it, in black, white, and blue pigments, as outlined in Fig. 1, PI. 

 XXXIV. Although conventionally treated, this figure was at once 

 recognizable as representing either the jay or the king-fisher, or perhaps 

 a mythologic bird-being designed to typify both. There were certain 

 nice touches of an especially symbolic nature in portions of this pictorial 

 figure (and the same may also be said of various other figures illustrated 

 in the plates), the nicety of which is not sufficiently shown in the draw- 

 ings, that were unfortunately made from very imperfect prints of our 

 photographs. It will be observed, however, not only that considerable 

 knowledge of perspective was possessed by the primitive artist who 

 made this painting, but also that he attempted to show the deific character 

 of the bird he here represented by placing upon the broad black paint - 

 band beneath his talons (probably symbolic of a key), the characteris- 

 tic animal of the keys, the raccoon ; by placing the symbol or insignia of 

 his dominion over the water — in form of a double-bladed paddle — upright 

 under his dextral wing ; and to show his dominion over the four quarters of 

 the sea and island world thus typified, by placing the four circles or 

 word-signs, as if issuing from his mouth, — for in the original, a fine line 

 connects this series of circlets with his throat, and is further continued 

 downward from his mouth toward the heart, — as is so often the case with 

 similar representations of mythologic beings in the art of correspondingly 

 developed primitive peoples. 



On exhibiting this painting to that learned student of American lingu- 

 istics. Dr. Albert S. Gatchet, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, and 

 .stating to him that I regarded it as that of the crested jay, or of the king- 



