2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. Ill 



and making a list with pencil and paper that specified the number 

 of dogs seen, size, whether leashed, carried, or perambulated (Catlin, 

 1848, vol. 2, p. 221). Early travelers going from the British colonies 

 to various southern and western tribes remarked the custom of 

 keeping the date of an appointment by using notched sticks, a bundle 

 of sticks, or a knotted string — one unit being discarded each day 

 until the date of the meeting (Brinton, 1885, pp. 59-62; Swanton, 

 1928, p. 704; 1946, pp. 610-613). Even now the Iroquois send out 

 notched invitation sticks summoning delegates to religious councils. 

 One notch is destroyed each day, until the holder arrives on the ap- 

 pointed day of the council and returns the stripped stick and the 

 short string of attached wampum. From Virginia north to New 

 England, the distribution of the notched-stick memorandum ex- 

 tended westward through the Iroquoian tribes toward the Plains 

 (Flannery, 1939, p. 81). 



The literature on American aboriginal chronological records has 

 expanded considerably since the discovery of the Walam Olum or 

 "red score" of the Delawares by Rafinesque in 1820 and its publica- 

 tion by D. G. Brinton in 1885. In the Walam Olum the Delawares 

 reduced a genesis myth, a migration legend, and a genealogy of chiefs 

 to a series of symbols for remembering the text of a chant. Five 

 sections of the chant were segregated, the characters were burned or 

 carved and then painted red on as many wooden boards, and pre- 

 sumably these were of a covenient size for bundling. Later the 

 record was reduced to writing, but the manuscript as well as the 

 original slabs have disappeared. Similar records from the Plains 

 were painted on skins or drawn in notebooks and came into promi- 

 nence when Mallery discovered and published the Dakota Winter 

 Counts. James Mooney monographed the Kiowa calendars (1898). 



In the Southwest, Russell (1908, pp. 35, 104-105) reported no 

 fewer than five notched-stick calendars among the Pima, and the 

 nearby Maricopa of the Gila River had identical calendar sticks, 

 bearing notches for each year, but "all the sticks of both peoples were 

 derived from a single prototype made after 1833." (Spier, 1933, 

 pp. 138 ff.) 



Throughout the eastern forests in the eighteenth century war 

 memorials emblazoned on the peeled trunks of great trees stood 

 on eminences or at important river crossings to recall to whomever 

 might read them the achievements of great war captains. "These 

 drawings in red by the warriors . . ." were sometimes ". . , legible 

 for fifty years after a hero" had died, preserving the memory of 

 his deeds for many years (Zeisberger, 1910, p. 145). A character- 



