386 SIGN LANGUAGE AMONG NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS, 
illustration of these three signs, see respectively pages 521, 527, and 317. 
A different execution of the same conception of union or linking to signify 
Sriend is often made as follows: Hook the curved index over the curved 
forefinger of the left hand, the palm of the latter pointing forward, the 
palm of the right hand being turned toward the face ; remaining fingers 
and thumbs being closed. (Dakota VIII.) Fig. 232. 
Wied’s sign for medicine is “Stir with the right 
hand into the left, and afterward blow into the 
latter.” All persons familiar with the Indians 
will understand that the term ‘ medicine,” fool- 
ishly enough adopted by both French and English 
to express the aboriginal magic arts, has no thera- 
peutie significance. Very few even pretended 
Wigs/282: remedies were administered to the natives and 
probably never by the professional shaman, who worked by incantation, 
often pulverizing and mixing the substances mystically used, to prevent 
their detection. The same mixtures were employed in divination. The 
author particularly mentions Mandan ceremonies, in which a white “med- 
icine” stone, as hard as pyrites, was produced by rubbing in the hand 
snow or the white feathers of a bird. The blowing away of the disease, 
considered to be introduced by a supernatural power foreign to the 
body, was a common part of the juggling performance. 
A sign for stone is as follows: With the back of the arched right hand 
(H) strike repeatedly in the palm of the left, held horizontal, back out- 
ward, at the height of the breast and about a foot in front; the ends of 
the fingers point in opposite directions. (Dakota I.) From its use when - 
the stone was the only hammer. 
A suggestive sign for knife is reported, viz: Cut past the mouth with 
the raised righthand. (Wied.) This probably refers to the general prac- 
tice of cutting off food, as much being crammed into the mouth as can 
be managed and then separated from the remaining mass by a stroke 
of a knife. This is specially the usage with fat and entrails, the Indian 
delicacies. 
An old sign for tomahawk, ax, is as follows: Cross the arms and 
slide the edge of the right hand, held vertically, down over the left 
arm. (Wied.) This is still employed, at least for a small hatchet, or 
“dress tomahawk,” and would be unintelligible without special knowl- 
edge. The essential point is laying the extended right hand in the 
bend of the left elbow. The sliding down over the left arm is an almost 
unavoidable but quite unnecessary accompaniment to the sign, which 
indicates the way in which the hatchet is usually carried. Pipes, whips, 
bows and arrows, fans, and other dress or emblematic articles of the 
“buck” are seldom or never carried in the bend of the left elbow as is 
the ax. The pipe is usually held in the left hand. 
The following sign for Indian village is given by Wied: Place the 
open thumb and forefinger of each hand opposite to each other, as if to 
