250 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
part of his song recorded by the five last figures. Suecess in hunting 
they look upon as a virtue of a higher character, if we may judge from 
this song, than the patience under suffering or the rakishness among 
women, or even the hospitality recommended in the former part. 
h. My friends 
There seems to be an attempt to delineate a man sitting with his 
hands raised to address his friends; but the remainder of his speech 
is not remembered. This is sufficient to show that the meaning of the 
characters in this kind of picture writing is not well settled and re- 
quires a traditional interpretation to render it intelligible. 
i. Lopen my wolf skin and the death struggle must follow. 
This is a wolf skin used as a medicine bag and he boasts that when- 
ever he opens it something must die in consequence. 
Tanner’s Narrative (b) says of musical notation drawn on bark by 
Ojibwas: 
Many of these songs are noted down by a method probably peculiar to the Indians, 
on birch bark, or small flat pieces of wood: the ideas being conveyed by emblematic 
figures, somewhat like those * used in communicating ordinary information. 
Rey. P. J. De Smet (a@) gives an account of the mnemonic order of 
songs among the Kickapoo and Pottawatomi. He describes a stick 14 
inches broad and 8 or 10 long, upon which are arbitrary characters 
which they follow with the finger in singing the prayers, ete. There 
are five classes of these characters. The first represents the heart, the 
second heart and flesh (chair), the third life, the fourth their names, 
and the fifth their families. 
A. W. Howitt (b) says: 
The makers of the Australian songs, or of the combined songs and dances are the 
poets or bards of the tribe and are held in great esteem. Their names are known 
to the neighboring peoples, and their songs are carried from tribe to tribe until the 
very meaning of the words is lost as well as the original source of the song. 
Such an instance is a song which was accompanied by a carved stick painted red, 
which was held by the chief singer. This traveled down the Murray river from some 
unknown source. The same song, accompanied by such a stick, also came into 
Gippsland many years ago from Melbourne and may even have been the above men- 
tioned one on its return. 
SEC lO PNim le 
TRADITIONS. 
Even since the Columbian discovery some tribes have employed 
devices yet ruder than the rudest pictorial attempt as markers for the 
memory. An account of one of these is given in EK. Winslow’s Relation 
A. D. 1624), Col. Mass. Hist. Soc., 2d series, rx, 1822, p: 99, as follows: 
( ) ’ ; I ’ : 
Instead of records and chronicles they take this course: Where any remarkable 
act is done, in memory of it, either in the place or by some pathway near adjoining, 
they make a round hole in the ground about a foot deep and as much over, which, 
when others passing by behold, they inquire the canse and occasion of the same, 
which, b>ing once known, they are careful to acquaint all men as occasion serveth 
therewith. And lest such holes should be filled or grown over by any accident, as 
