MALLERY. } EXPLOIT MARKS. 435 
Fig. 565 denotes that the wearer was the fifth that touched the 
body of his enemy after he was killed. 
Fig. 566 denotes that the wearer has been wounded in many places 
by the enemy. 
The following variations in the scheme were noticed in 1883 among 
the Mdewakantanwan Dakotas, near Fort Snelling, Minnesota. 
Feathers of the eagle are used as among the other bands of Dakotas. 
A plain feather is used to signify that the wearer has killed an 
enemy, without regard to the manner in which he was slain. 
When the end is clipped transversely, and the edge colored red, it 
signifies that the throat of the enemy was cut. 
A black feather denotes that an Ojibwa woman was killed. Enemies 
are considered as Objibwas, that being the tribe with which the 
Mdewakantanwan Dakotas have been most in collision. 
When a warrior has been wounded a red spot is painted upon the 
broad side of a feather. If the wearer has been shot in the body, arms, 
or legs, a red spot is painted upon his clothing or blanket, immediately 
over the locality of the wound. ‘These red spots are sometimes worked 
in porcupine quills, or in cotton fiber as now obtained from the traders. 
Belden (a) says: 
Among the Sioux an eagle’s feather with a red spot painted on it, worn by a war- 
rior in the village, denotes that on the last war-path he killed an enemy, and for 
every additional enemy he has slain he carries another feather painted with an 
additional red spot about the size of a silver quarter. 
A red hand painted on a warrior’s blanket denotes that he has been wounded by 
the enemy, and a black one that he has been unfortunate in some way. 
Boller (a) in Among the Indians, p. 284, describes a Sioux as wear- 
ing a number of small wood shavings stained with vermilion in his hair, 
each the symbol of a wound received. ; 
Lynd (c) gives a device differing from all the foregoing, with an ex- 
planation : 
To the human body the Dakotas give four spirits. The first is supposed to be a 
spirit of the body, and dies with the body. The second is a spirit which always 
remains with or near the body. Another is the soul which accounts for the deeds 
of the body, and is supposed by some to go to the south, by others to the west, after 
the death of the body. The fourth always lingers with the small bundle of the hair 
of the deceased kept by the relatives until they have a chance to throw it into the 
enemy’s country, when it becomes a roving, restless spirit, bringing death and dis- 
ease to the enemy whose country it is in. 
From this belief arose the practice of wearing four scalp-feathers for each enemy 
slain in battle, one for each soul. 
It should be noted that all the foregoing signs of individual achieve- 
ments are given by the several authorities as used by the same body 
of Indians, the Dakota or Sioux. This, however, is a large body, di- 
vided into tribes, and it is possible that a different scheme was used in 
the several tribes. But the accounts are so conflicting that error in 
either observation or description or both is to be suspected. 
