208 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
See also Fig. 633 for another illustration of pictographic work by 
colored porcupine quills. 
GOURDS. 
After gourds have dried the contents are removed and small pebbles 
or bones placed in the empty vessel. Handles are sometimes attached. 
They serve as rattles in dances and in religious and shamanistic rites. 
The representations of natural 
or mythical objects, coni¥ected 
with the ceremonies, for which 
the owner may have special 
reverence are often depicted 
upon their outer surfaces. 
This custom prevails among 
the Pueblos generally, and 
also among many other tribes, 
notably those of the Siouan 
linguistic stock. 
Fig. 159 isa drawing of the 
Sci-Manzi or ‘ Mescal Wo- 
man” of the Kiowa as it ap- 
pears on asacred gourd rattle 
in the mescal ceremony of that 
tribe, and was procured with 
Fig. 158.— Quill pictograph: full explanations in the winter 
of 189091 by Mr. James Mooney of the Bureau of Ethnology. 
It shows the rude semblance of a woman, with divergent rays about 
her head, a fan in her left hand, and a star under her feet. 
The peculiarity of the drawing is its hermeneutic character, which is 
rarely ascertained by actual evidence as existing among the North 
American Indiaus. It has a double meaning, and 
while apparently only a fantastic figure of a woman, it 
conveys also to the minds of the initiated a symbolic 
representation of the interior of the sacred mescal 
lodge. Turning the rattle with the handle toward the 
east, the lines forming the halo about the head of the 
figure represent the cirele of devotees within the lodge. 
The head itself, with the spots for eyes and mouth, 
represents the large consecrated mescal which is placed 
Kia. 159.--Picto- the lodge, this mound being represented in the figure 
graph on gourd. 5 a 5 A g 
by a broad, curving line, painted yellow, forming the 
curve of the shoulders. Below this is a smaller crescent curve, 
the original surface of the gourd, which symbolizes the smaller 
crescent mound of ashes built wp within the crescent of earth as the 
ceremony progresses. The horns of both crescents point toward the 
upon a crescent-shaped mound of earth in the center of 
