220 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
mixed, which is afterwards applied to incisions in ivory, bone, and 
wood. 
Among the Dakota, colors for dyeing porcupine quills were obtained 
chiefly from plants. The vegetable colors, being soluble, penetrate the 
substance of the quills more evenly and beautifully than the mineral 
colors of eastern manufacture. 
The black color of some of the Pueblo pottery is obtained by a special 
burning with pulverized manure, into which the vessel is placed as it is 
cooling after the first baking. The coloring matter—soot produced by 
smoke—is absorbed into the pores of the vessel, and does not wear off 
as readily as when colors are applied to the surface by brushes. 
In decorating skins or robes the Arikara Indians boil the tail of the 
beaver, thus obtaining a viscous fluid which is thin glue. The figures 
are first drawn in outline with a piece of beef-rib, or some other flat 
bone, the edge only being used after having been dipped into the 
liquor. The various pigments to be employed in the drawing are 
then mixed with some of the same liquid, in separate vessels, when 
the various colors are applied to the objects by means of a sharpened 
piece of wood or bone. The colored mixture adheres firmly to the 
original tracing in glue. 
When similar colors are to be applied to wood, the surface is fre- 
quently pecked or slightly incised to receive the color more readily. 
Jacques Cartier, in Hakluyt (b), reports the Indian women of the Bay 
of Chaleur as smearing the face with coal dust and grease. 
A small pouch, discovered on the Yellowstone river in 1873, which 
had been dropped by some fleeing hostile Sioux, contained several frag- 
ments of black micaceous iron. The latter had almost the appearance 
and consistence of graphite, so soft and black was the result upon rub- 
bing with it. It had evidently been used for decorating the face as 
war-paint. 
Mr. Wm. H. Dall (a), treating of the remains found in the mammalian 
layers in the Amakuak cave, Unalaska, remarks: 
In the remains of a woman’s work-basket, found in the uppermost layer in a cave, 
were bits of this resin [from the bark of pine or spruce driftwood], evidently care- 
fully treasured, with a little bireh-bark case (the bark also derived from drift logs) 
containing pieces of soft hematite, graphite, and blue carbonate of copper, with 
which the ancient seamstress ornamented her handiwork. 
The same author reports (/): 
The coloration of wooden articles with native pigments is of ancient origin, but all 
the more elaborate instances that have come to my knowledge bore marks of com- 
paratively recent origin. The pigments used were blue carbonates of iron and cop- 
per; the green fungus, or peziza, found in decayed birch and alder wood; hematite 
and red chalk; white infusorial or chalky earth; black charcoal, graphite, and mi- 
caceous ore of iron. A species of red was sometimes derived from pine bark or the 
cambium of the ground willow. 
Stephen Powers (a) states that the Shastika women “smear their faces 
all over daily with choke-cherry juice, which gives them a bloody, cor- 
sair aspect ” 
