156 



NATURE 



{June 1 6, 1887 



year by a trader. Fig. 7 is the year of a great aerolite. 

 Lone-Dog's system is not the only calendar. Others 

 have recently been found by Dr. Corbussier which are 

 drawn more elaborately, though not more intelligibly. 

 The most important of these is only described, and not 

 reproduced in this volume. It is by Battiste Good, and 

 professes to date from prior to the year 1700. Being 



n 



lift 



drawn in five colours, it would require much cost to 

 imitate, and is withheld for the present. 



Other curious features of the work are the pictorial 

 censuses that it contains. One consists of eighty-four 

 heads of families in the band of "Big-Road." Each is 

 represented with the symbol expressive of his name 

 attached to his head, after the manner of Fig. 8. Another 



census is of the 289 adherents of Red-Cloud, who are for 

 the most part portrayed on a similar principle. 



Some of the more symbolic representations are amusing 

 and instructive. Those for various diseases are as 

 follow : — We have already seen the representation of 

 small-pox, and that of measles is much the same. A 

 whooping-cough year is typified by Figs. 9 and 10, in 



?\ 



10 



different calendars. Fig. 10 showing the broken and explo- 

 sive expiration with much effect. Craziness is expressed 

 by a wavy line ; thus the name of the chief in Fig. 8 

 being Crazy-Horse, the animal has wavy lines drawn on 

 his body. Starvation is shown, in Fig. 11, by a thin belly, 

 and a black line across it; and gripes are excellently 

 expressed by a scroll, Fig. 12, something like a figure 3, 



only more twisted and tortured, scrawled over the 

 abdomen. 



The question is fully discussed whether this calendar- 

 making was in any way due to the influence of the 

 whites, but is decided on good grounds in the negative. 

 The whole conception and the way of carrying it out 

 seems to be thoroughly Indian, but it is not every Indian 

 who is born with the historiographic capacities of Lone- 

 Dog. The author testifies to the variety of individual 

 aptitudes when speaking of the inhabitants of Queen 

 Charlotte's Islands, who are beautifully tattooed. He 

 says, "nor is it everyone who can tattoo. Certain ones, 

 almost always men (let Mr. Romanes make a note of 

 it), have a natural gift which enables them to excel in 

 this kind of work." 



The events that a group of persons are most apt to 

 associate with an epoch during which they have lived 

 together, are not necessarily the most important ones. 

 They are those occurrences which are simple and well- 

 defined, and have struck the fancy on that account, as 

 well as from their unlikeness to former experiences. Such 

 events are recalled with ease, and a partial or symbolic 

 act of recollection suffices to identify them. 



When pictorial nick-names are given to each successive 

 year in council, as in the case of the Dakotas, the process 

 must be very like that of giving verbal nick-names to 

 new boys at school. This used to be a far more prevalent 

 custom than it is now, and I have a vivid recollection of 

 two old Etonians describing how it was done in their 

 time. When the new boy made his appearance, he was 

 of course well looked over and watched. Then, as the fancy 

 took them, first one lad and then another addressed him 

 with tentative nick-names. At the beginning, these 

 trial names were apt to fall flat ; at length one stuck ; 

 other lads adopted it, and usually in a few days the new 

 boy was fitted with a generally-accepted name, by which 

 he was afterwards known almost exclusively during the 

 whole time he was at school. The appropriateness of 

 the nick-name was by no means always obvious to 

 strangers ; it might even be due to some passing event 

 with which by pure accident the boy was in some indirect 

 way associated. I think this giving of nick-names is an 

 excellent illustration of the manner in which many common 

 words must have arisen. 



The process of determining the most typical event of a 

 year, and then of portraying it by a simple and bold 

 design of a higher order of art than was known to 

 Lone-Dog, and introducing no more detail than is 

 necessary for identification, is well worth trying as an 

 experiment. I tested it myself by attempting to construct 

 such pictographs for the last few years of my life, under 

 the condition that each should be included within a circle 

 of the size of a shilling, and at last I succeeded fairly 

 well, in my own, but probably too partial, judgment. I 

 may add that, having done this, I laid a florin over my 

 drawing, and traced a second circle round the florin. In 

 the ring that lay between the two circles there was space 

 for fully twenty-five bold capital letters, which I distributed 

 among words that referred to other leading events of the 

 year. The whole formed a by no means inartistic series 

 of designs suitable for medallions. 



I soon became so absorbed in my pictographs that I 

 think others might interest themselves in the same way. 

 It would be an amusing test of skill in a round game, to 

 try who could make the most artistic and vigorous design 

 within the compass of a circle traced, say, round a half- 

 penny—that is, of exactly one inch in diameter — to com- 

 memorate some recent event known to all. What a 

 capital prize subject for art students it would be, to refer 

 them to some brief register of events during the fifty years 

 of Her Majesty's reign, and to ask for fifty such medal- 

 lions, one for each year. Then, again, many persons carve 

 in wood or paint on china, and want designs ; let them 

 take episodes in their own histories, and make friezes 



