MALLERY. | CULT SOCIETIES. 529 
with this union and then gradually rise higher through the others. As the badge 
of their band they wear an eagle’s claw fastened around the wrist with a leather 
strap. They have also a particular mode of painting themselves, like every other 
band, and their peculiar songs and dance. (2) The dogs. Its badge is not known 
to me; it consists of young married men, and the number is not limited. (3) The 
prairie dogs. This is a police union, which receives married men; its badge is a 
long hooked stick wound round with otter skin, with knots of white skin at inter- 
vals, and a couple of eagle’s feathers hanging from each of them. (4) Those who 
carry the raven. Its badge is a long staff covered with red cloth, to which black 
ravens’ feathers in a long thick row are fastened from one end to the other. They 
contribute to the preservation of order and the police. (5) The buffalo, with thin 
horns. When they dance they wear horns on their caps. If disorders take place 
they must help the soldiers, who mark out the camp and then take the first place. 
(6) The soldiers. They are the most distinguished warriors, who exercise the 
police, especially in the camp and on the march; in publie deliberations they have 
the casting vote whether, for instance, they shall hunt, change their abode, make 
war or conclude peace, ete. They carry as their badge a wooden club the breadth 
ofa hand, with hoofs of the buffalo cow hanging to the handle. They are sometimes 
40 or 50 men in number. (7) The buffalo bulls. They form the first, that is, the 
most distinguished, of all the unions, and are the highest in rank. They earry in 
their hand a medicine badge, hung with buffalo hoofs, which they rattle when 
they dance to their peculiar song. They are too old to attend to the police, having 
passed through all the unions, and are considered as haying retired from office. In 
their medicine dance they wear on their head «a cap made of the long forelock and 
mane of the buffalo bull, which hangs down to a considerable length. 
Fig. 737.—** The policeman” was killed by the 
enemy. Cloud-Shield’s Winter Count, 1780-81. 
S The man here figured was probably one of the ac- 
tive members of the associations whose functions are 
above described to keep order and carry out the 
commands of the chiefs. 
Fig. 737.—The policeman. 
These voluntary associations are not of necessity ancient or perma- 
nent. An instance is given in Fig. 738 which is instructive in the 
interpretation of pictographs. It is a copy of drawings on a pipe stem 
which had been made and used by Ottawa Indians. On each side are 
four spaces, upon each of which are various incised characters, three 
spaces on one side being reserved for the delineation of human figures, 
each having diverging lines from the head upward, denoting their 
social status as chiefs or warriors and medicine men. 
Upon the space nearest the mouth is the drawing of a fire, the flames 
passing upward from the horizontal surface beneath them. The cross 
bands are raised portions of the wood (ash) of which the pipestem 
is made; these show peculiarly shaped openings which pass entirely 
through the stem, though not interfering with the tube necessary for 
the passage of the smoke. This indicates considerable mechanical 
skil. 
10 ETH ot 
