92 PICTOGRAPHS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 



istence of portable pictographs of tbis ascertained character renders 

 it proper to examine rock etchings and other native records with 

 reference to their possible interpretation as designating events chrono- 

 logically. 



A query is naturally suggested, whether intercourse with mission- 

 aries and other whites did not first give the Dakotas some idea of 

 dates and awaken a sense of want in that direction. The fact that 

 Lone-Dog's winter count, the only one known at the time of its first 

 publication, begins at a date nearly coinciding with the first year of 

 the present century by our computation, awakened a suspicion that it 

 might be due to civilized intercourse, and was not a mere coincidence. 

 If the influence of missionaries or traders started any plan of chronology, 

 it is remarkable that they did not suggest one in some manner resem- 

 bling the system so long and widely used, and the only one they knew, 

 of counting in numbers from an era, such as the birth of Christ, the 

 Ilegira, the Ab Urbe Coudita, the First Olympiad, and the like. But 

 the chart shows nothing of this nature. The earliest character (the 

 one in the center or beginuing of the spiral) merely represents the kill- 

 ing of a small number of Dakotas by their enemies, an event of fre- 

 quent occurrence, and neither so important nor interesting as many 

 others of the seventy-one shown in the chart, more than one of which, 

 indeed, might well have been selected as a notable fixed point before 

 and after which simple arithmetical notation could have been used to 

 mark the years. Instead of any plan that civilized advisers would 

 naturally have introduced, the one actually adopted — to individualize 

 each year by a specific recorded symbol, or totem, according to the 

 decision of a competent person, or by common consent acted upon by a 

 person charged with or undertaking the duty whereby confusion was 

 prevented — should not suffer denial of its originality merely because it 

 was ingenious, and showed more of scientific method than has often 

 been attributed to the northern tribes of America. The ideographic 

 record, being preserved and understood by many, could be used and 

 referred to with sufficient ease and accuracy for ordinary purposes. 

 Definite signs for the first appearance of the small-pox and for the first 

 capture of wild horses may be dates as satisfactory to the Dakotas as 

 the corresponding expressions A. D. 1802 and 1813 to. the Christian 

 world, and far more certain than much of the chronological tables of 

 Begiomontanus and Archbishop Usher in terms of A. M. and B. C. 

 The careful arrangement of distinctly separate characters in an out- 

 ward spiral starting from a central point is a clever expedient to dis- 

 pense with the use of numbers for noting the years, yet allowing every 

 date to be determined by counting backward or forward from any other 

 that might be known ; and it seems unlikely that any such device, so 

 different from that common among the white visitors, should have been 

 prompted by them. The whole conception seems one strongly charac- 

 teristic of the Indians, who in other instances have shown such expert- 



