mallehy.] SYMBOLISM OBJECTIVE DEVICES. 223 



that animal is noted for its slow and self-possessed movements." See 

 Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian 

 Tribes on the American Frontier, etc., Philadelphia, 1851, p. 214. 



This is one of the many customs to be remembered in the attempted 

 interpretations of pictographs. The present writer does not know that 

 a skunk skin, or a strip of skin which might be supposed to be a skunk 

 skin, attached to a human heel, has ever been used pictorially as the 

 ideograph of courage or steadfastness, but with the knowledge of this 

 objective use of the skins, if they were found so represented pictorially, 

 as might well be expected, the interpretation would be suggested, 

 without any direct explanation from Indians. 



