MALLERY. ] PROPERTY MARKS. 44] 
Prof. Dall (b) tells of fhe Sitka-Kwan: 
They perforate their noses, wearing a ring adorned with feathers. They make a 
succession of perforations all around the edge of the ears, which are ornamented 
with scarlet thread, shark’s teeth, or pieces of shell. Each hole is usually the record 
of a deed performed or a feast given by the person so adorned. 
PROPERTY MARKS. 
This topic, upon which much interesting material has been collected 
inmany geographic and ethnologic divisions of the earth, can not include 
objectively or pictorially many genuine and distinctive illustrations 
from the North American Indians. The reason for this paucity is that 
the individual Indian had very little property. Nearly everything which 
could be classed as personal property belonged to his tribe or, more gen- 
erally, to his clan or gens. Yet articles of a man’s personal manufacture, 
such as arrows, were often marked in such a manner as to be distin- 
guished. Those marks, many examples of which are upon arrows in 
the U.S. National Museum, are not of sufficient general interest to be 
reproduced here. They are not valuable unless they are connected 
with the makers or owners by a concurrence of the devices with the signs 
adopted by persons or by classes, the evidence of which can not now 
except in rare instances be procured. Most of the devices mentioned 
seem to have degenerated into mere ornamentation, which might be 
expected, because the arrows are not of great antiquity, and during 
recent years the records which could have been used for their identifi- 
cation have decayed as authorities even when they have remained in 
the immediate family, having escaped sale and robbery. 
As a general rule neither a man nor a family, in the modern sense, 
had any property in land, which belonged to a much larger sociologic 
division, but on their arrival in California Europeans noticed among 
the Indians there a device to assert rights in realty by the use of dis- 
tinetive marks. It is not clear whether these marks were merely per- 
sonal or were tribal or gentile. 
According to Mr. A. F. Coronel, of Los Angeles, California, the 
Serrano Indians in that vicinity formerly practiced a method of mark- 
ing trees to indicate the corner boundaries of patches of land. The 
Indians owning areas of territory of whatever size would cut lines upon 
the bark of the tree corresponding to lines drawn on their own faces, 
i. e., lines running outward and downward over the cheeks, or perhaps 
over the chin only, tattooed in color. These lines were made on the 
trees on the side facing the property, and were understandingly recog- 
nized by the whole tribe. This custom still prevailed when Mr. Coronel 
first located in southern California about the year 1843. 
Among the Arikara Indians a custom prevails of drawing upon the 
blade of a canoe or bull-boat paddle such designs as are worn by the 
chief and owner to suggest his personal exploits. This has to great 
extent been adopted by the Hidatsa and Mandans. The marks are 
