258 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
The latter prepare a number of strings, each of which is knotted as many times as 
there are days before the feast day. One of these strings is kept by the headman of 
the settlement where the feast is to be held; the others are distributed, one to the 
headman of each of the settlements from which guests are expected. Every day 
one of the knots, on each of the strings, is untied, and when the last has been un- 
tied guests and hosts know that the feast day has come. 
Sometimes, instead of knots on a string, notches on a piece of wood are used. 
This system of knot-tying, the quippoo system of the Peruvians, which occurs in 
nearly identical form in all parts of the world, is not only used as in the above in- 
stance for calendar-keeping, but also to record items of any sort; for instance, if 
one Indian owes another a certain number of balls of cotton or other articles, debtor 
and ereditor each has a corresponding string or stick, with knots or notches to the 
number of the owed article, and one or more of these is oblitered each time a pay- 
ment is made until the debt is wiped out. 
Darius (Herodot. tv, 98) did something of the kind when he took a 
thong and, tying sixty knots in it, gave it to the Ionian chiefs, that they 
might untie a knot every day and go back to their own land if he had 
not returned when all the knots were undone. 
Champlain (a) describes a mode of preparation for battle among the 
Canadian Algonquins which partook of the nature of a military drill 
as well as of an appointment of rank and order. It is in its essentials 
mnemonic. He describes it as follows: 
Les chefs prennent des batons de Ja longueur d’un pied antant en nombre qu’ils 
sont et signalent par d’autres un peu plus grands, leurs chefs; puis vont dans le bois 
et esplanadent une place de cing ou six pieds en quarré ot le chef comme Sergent 
Major, met par ordre tous ces bitons comme bon luy semble; puis appelle tous ses 
compagnons, qui viennent tous armez, et leur monstre le rang et ordre qu’ils deuvont 
tenir lors qu’ils se battront avec leurs ennemis. 
The author adds detail with regard to alignment, breaking ranks, 
and resumption of array. 
SECTION 8. 
NUMERATION, 
D. W. Eakins, in Schooleraft I, p. 273, describes the mnemonic nu- 
meration marks of the Muskoki thus: 
Each perpendicular stroke stood for one, and each additional stroke marked an 
additional number. The ages of deceased persons or number of scalps taken by 
them, or war-parties which they have headed, are recorded on their grave-posts by 
this system of strokes. The sign of the cross represents ten. The dot and comma 
never stood as a sign for a day, or a moon, or a month, or a year, The chronologi- 
cal marks that were and are in present use are a small number of sticks made gen- 
erally of cane. Another plan sometimes in use was to make small holes in a board, 
in which a peg was inserted to keep the days of the week. 
Capt. Bourke (b) gives the following account of an attempt at com- 
promise between the aboriginal method of numbering days, weeks, and 
months, and that of the civilized intruders to whose system the Indians 
found it necessary to conform. 
The Apache scouts kept records of the time of their absence on campaign. There 
were several methods in vogue, the best being that of colored beads which were 
