mallery.J TIME WINTER COUNTS. 89 



graph for the year is placed beneath each one. At other times the line 

 is not continuous, but is interrupted at regular intervals by the yearly 

 circle, as in Figure 40. 



-ooo 



Flo. 40. — Device denoting succession of time. Dakota. 



The large amount of space taken up by the Dakota Winter Counts, 

 now following, renders it impracticable to devote more to the graphic 

 devices regarding time. While these Winter Counts are properly under 

 the present head, their value is not limited to it, as they suggest, if 

 they do not explain, points relating to many other divisions of the 

 present paper. 



THE DAKOTA WINTER COUNTS. 



The existence among the Dakota Indians of continuous designations 

 of years, in the form of charts corresponding in part with the orderly 

 arrangement of divisions of time termed calendars, was first made pub- 

 lic by the present writer in a paper entitled " A Calendar of the Dakota 

 Nation," which was issued in April, 1877, in Bulletin III, No. 1, of the 

 United States Geological and Geographical Survey. Later considera- 

 tion of the actual use of such charts by the Indinns has induced the 

 change of their title to that adopted by themselves, viz., Winter Counts, 

 in the original, waniyetu wowapi. 



The lithographed chart published with that pajjer, substantially the 

 same as Plate VI, now presented, was ascertained to be the Winter Count 

 used by or at least known to a large portion of the Dakota people, ex- 

 tending over the seventy-one years commencing with the winter of A. 

 D. 1800-'01. 



The copy from which the lithograph was taken is traced on a strip of 

 cotton cloth, in size one yard square, which the characters almost en- 

 tirely fill, and was made by Lieut. H. T. Reed, First United States In- 

 fantry, an accomplished officer of the present writer's former company 

 and regiment, in two colors, black and red, used in the original, of which 

 it is a/ac simile. 



The general design of the chart and the meaning of most of its 

 characters were ascertained by Lieutenant Reed, at Fort Sully, Dakota, 

 and afterwards at Fort Rice, Dakota, in November, 1876, by the present 

 writer; while further investigation of records and authorities at Wash- 

 ington elicited additional details used in the publication mentioned and 

 many more since its issue. 



After exhibition of the copy to a number of military and civil offi- 

 cers connected with the Departments of War and of the Interior, it 

 appeared that those who, from service on expeditions and surveys or 

 from special study of American ethnology, were most familiar with 



