174 PICTOGRAPHS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS. 



AN OGALALA ROSTER. 



Plates LII to LYIII represent a pictorial roster of the beads of families, 

 eighty-four in number, in the band or perhaps clan of Chief Big-Road, 

 and were obtained by Rev. S. D. Hiuman at Standing Rock Agency, 

 Dakota, in 1883, from the United States Indian agent, Major McLaugh- 

 lin, to whom the original was submitted by Chief Big-Road when brought 

 to that agency and required to give an account of his followers. 



Chief Big-Road and his people belong to the Northern Ogalala (accu- 

 rately Oglala), and were lately hostile, having been associated with 

 Sitting-Bull in various depredations and hostilities against both settlers 

 and the United States authorities. Mr. Hiuman states that the trans- 

 lations of the names were made by the agency interpreter, and al- 

 though not as complete as might be, are, in the whole, satisfactory. 

 Chief Big-Road " is a man of fifty years and upwards, and is as igno- 

 rant and uncompromising a savage, in mind and appearance, as one 

 could well find at this late date." 



The drawings in the original are on a single sheet of foolscap paper, 

 made with black and colored pencils, and a few characters are in yellow 

 ocher — water-color paint. On each of the seven plates, into which the 

 original is here divided from the requirements of the mode of publica- 

 tion, the first figure in the upper left-hand corner represents, as stated, 

 the chief of the sub-band, or perhaps, "family" in the Indian sense. 



On five of the plates the chief has before him a decorated pipe and 

 pouch, the design of each being distinct from the others. On Plates 

 LIV and LV the upper left hand figure does not have a pipe, which 

 leads to the suspicion that, contrary to the information so far received, 

 the whole of the figures from Nos. 11 to 45 inclusive, on Plates LIII, 

 LIV, and LV, constitute one band under the same chief, viz., No. 11. 

 In that case Nos. 23 and 3G would appear to be leaders of subordinate 

 divisions of that baud. Each of the five chiefs has at least three 

 transverse bands on the cheek, with differentiation of the pattern. 



It will be noticed that each figure throughout the plates, which car- 

 ries before it a war club, is decorated with three red transverse bauds, 

 but that of No. 30, on Plate LIV, and No. 48 on Plate LVI, have the 

 three bands without a war club. 



The other male figures seem in some instances to have each but a 

 single red band ; in others two bauds, red and blue, but the drawing is 

 so indistinct as to render this uncertain. 



It will be observed, also, that in four instances (Nos. 14, 44, 4.5, and 72) 

 women are depicted as the surviving heads of families. Their figures 

 do not have the transverse bands ou the cheek. 



Also that the five chiefs do not have the war club, their rank being 

 shown by pipe and pouch. Those men who are armed with war clubs, 

 which are held vertically before the person, indicate (in accordance with 

 a similar custom among other branches of the Dakota Nation, in which, 

 however, the pipe is held instead of the club) that the man has at some 

 time led war parties on his own account. See pages 118 and 139. 



