MALLERY.] NOTICE OF CONDITION. 347 
SE GIrION 3. 
NOTICE OF CONDITION. 
In the curious manuscript of Gideon Lincecum, written with Roman 
characters in the Choctaw language about 1515, and referring to the 
ancient customs of that tribe, appears the following passage (p. 276): 
They had a significant and very ingenious method of marking the stakes so that 
each iksa could know its place as soon as they saw the stake that had been set 
up for them. Every clan had a name, which was known to all the rest. It was a 
species of heraldry, each iksa having its coat of arms. The iksas all took the name 
of some animal—buffalo, panther, dog, terrapin, any race of animals—and a little 
picture of whatever it might be, sketched on a blazed tree or stake, indicated the 
elan to which it belonged. They could mark a tree when they were about to leave 
a camp, in their traveling or hunting excursions, with a set of hieroglyphs, that any 
other set of hunters or travelers who might pass that way could read, telling what 
iksa they belonged to, how long they had remained at that camp, how many there 
were in the company, if any were sick or dead, and if they had been successful or 
otherwise in the hunt. Thus, drawn very neatly on a peeled tree near the camp, a 
terrapin; five men marching in a row, with bows ready strung in their hands, large 
packs on their backs, and one man behind, no pack, bow unstrung; one circle, 
half cirele, and six short marks in front of the half circle; below, a bear’s head, a 
buffalo head, and the head of an antelope. The reading is, ‘‘Terrapin iksa, 6 men 
in company, one sick; successful hunt in killing bear, buffalo, and antelope; that 
they remained at the camp a moon and a half and six days, and that they have gone 
home.” 
Among the Abnaki of the Province of Quebec, as reported by Masta, 
their chief, cutting the bark off from a tree on one, two, three, or four 
sides near the butt means ‘‘ Have had poor, poorer, poorest luck.” 
Cutting it off all around the tree means “TI am starving.” Smoking a 
piece of birch bark and hanging it on a tree means “ I am sick.” 
Tanner’s Narrative (¢) mentions regarding the Ojibwa that, in cases 
where the information to be communicated is that the party mentioned 
is starving, the figure of a man is sometimes drawn, and his mouth is 
painted white, or white paint may be smeared about the mouth of the 
animal, if it happens to be one, which is his totem. 
Fig. 456 is a copy of a drawing incised on birch bark by the old 
Passamaquoddy chief, Sapiel Selmo, who made comments upon it as 
follows: Two hunters followed the river a until it branclies off b, ¢. 
Indian d takes one river and its lakes and small branches, and the 
other hunter (not figured in the chart) follows the other branch and 
also claims its small streams and lakes. Sometimes during the winter 
they visit one another. If it happen that the other hunter was away 
from his wigwam e and if the visiting hunter wishes to leave word with 
his friend and wishes to inform him of his luck, he makes a picture on a 
piece of birch bark and describes such animals he has killed with the 
number of animals as seen in fand g (figure of moose’s head) which, 
with two crosses to each, means 20 moose. He killed in each hunt 
altogether 40. h is a whole moose, also with two crosses, and means 
20, and also the figure of a caribou i with one cross means 10 caribou, 
