malleuy.] WINTER COUNTS OF LONE-DOG'S SYSTEM. 95 



This copy is on a smaller scale than that of Lone-Dog, being a flat 

 and elongated spiral, 2 feet 6 inches by 1 foot C inches. The spiral reads 

 from right to left. Tbis chart, which begins as does that of Lone-Dog, 

 ends with the years 1868-'69. 



The present writer has had conversation and correspondence concern- 

 ing other copies and other translated interpretations of what may be 

 called for convenience and with some right, on account of priority in 

 publication, the Lone-Dog system of winter counts. But it also was dis- 

 covered that there were other systems in which the same pictographic 

 method was adopted by the Dakotas. An account of the most import- 

 ant of these, viz.: the charts of Baptiste or Battiste Good, American- 

 Horse, Cloud-Shield, and White-cow-killer has been communicated by 

 Dr. William H. Oorbusier, assistant surgeon, United States Army, and 

 is presented infra, page 127, under the title of The Oorbusier Winter 

 Counts. 



The study of all the charts, with their several interpretations, ren- 

 ders plain some points remaining in doubt while the Lone-Dog chart 

 was the only example known. In the first place, it became clear that 

 there was no fixed or uniform mode of exhibiting the order of continuity 

 of the year-characters. They were arranged spirally or lineally, or in 

 serpentine curves, by boustrophedon or direct, starting backward from 

 the last year shown, or proceeding uniformly forward from the tirst 

 year selected or remembered. Any mode that would accomplish the 

 object of continuity with the means of regular addition seemed to be 

 equally acceptable. So a theory advanced that there was some sym- 

 bolism in the right to left circling of Lone-Dog's chart was aborted, es- 

 pecially when an obvious reproduction of that very chart was made by 

 an Indian with the spiral reversed. It was also obvious that when 

 copies were made, some of them probably from memory, there was no 

 attempt at Chinese accuracy. It was enough to give the graphic or 

 ideographic character, and frequently the character is better defined on 

 one of the charts than on the others for the corresponding year. One 

 interpretation or rather one translation of the interpretation would often 

 throw light on the others. It also appeared that while different events 

 were selected by the recorders of the different systems, there was some- 

 times a selection of the same event for the same year and sometimes for 

 the next, such as would be natural in the progress of a famine or epi- 

 demic, or as an event gradually became known over a vast territory. 

 To exhibit these points more clearly, the characters on the charts of The- 

 Flame, Lone Dog, and The-Swau have been placed together on Plates 

 VII-XXXIII, and their interpretations, separately obtained and trans- 

 lated, have also been collated, commencing on page 100. Where any 

 information was supplied by the charts of Mato Sapa or of Major Bush 

 and their interpretation, or by other authorities, it is given in connection 

 with the appropriate year. Reference is also made to some coincidences 

 or explanatory manner noticed in the Oorbusier system. 



