MALLERY. | WINTER COUNTS. 275 
that they were of general notoriety, or perhaps of special interest to 
the recorders. 
Fig. 192, 1809-10.—A chief, Little-Beaver, set fire to a trad- 
ing store, and was killed. The character simply designates 
his name-totem. The other interpretations say that he was a 
white trapper, but probably he had gained a new name among 
the Indians. 
Fia. 192. 
Fig. 193, 1810-11.—Black-Stone made medicine. The expression 
medicine is too common to be successfully eliminated, though it is 
altogether misleading. The ‘medicine men” have no connection with 
therapeutics, feel no pulses, and administer no drugs, or, if sometimes 
they direct the internal or external use of some secret prepara. 
tion, it is as a part of superstitious ceremonies, and with main 
reliance upon those ceremonies. Their incantations are not 
only to drive away disease, but for many other purposes, such 
as to obtain success in war, avert calamity, and were very fre- 
quently used to bring within reach the buffalo, on which the 
Dakotas depended for food. The rites are those known as 
shamanism, noticeable in the ethnic periods of savagery and F!% 1%. 
barbarism. In the ceremonial of ‘making medicine,” a buffalo head, 
and especially the head of an albino buttalo, held a prominent place 
among the plains tribes. Many references to this are to be found 
in the Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America. Also 
see infra, Chap. x1v. The device in the chart is the man figure, with 
the head of an albino buffalo held over his own. 
Fig. 194, 181112.—The Dakota fought a battle with the Gros 
Ventres and killed a great many. Device, a circle inclosing 
three round objects with flat bases, resembling heads severed 
from trunks, which are too minute in this device for decision of yy 194, 
objects represented; but they appear more distinct in the record for 
186465 as the heads of enemies slain in battle. In the sign language 
of the plains, the Dakota are denoted by drawing a hand across the 
throat, signifying that they cut the throats of their enemies. The 
Dakota count by the fingers, as is common to most peoples, but with 
a peculiarity of their own. When they have gone over the fingers and 
thumbs of both hands, one finger is temporarily turned down for one ten. 
At the end of the next ten another finger is turned, and so on to a hun- 
dred. Opawinge (Opawixe), one hundred, is derived from pawinga 
‘(pawi"xa), to go round in circles, to make gyrations, and contains the 
idea that the round of all the fingers has again been made for their 
respective tens. So the circle is never used for less than one hundred, 
but sometimes signifies an indefinite number greater than a hundred. 
The cirele, in this instance, therefore, was at first believed to express 
the killing in battle of many enemies. But the other interpretations 
removed all symbolic character, leaving the circle simply as the rude 
