MALLERY. | EMBLEMS. 609 
ter Counts in this work are regarded as pictorial signs, and the class 
represented by tribal and clan designations, insignia, etc., is considered 
to belong to the category of emblems. There is no doubt, however, 
that true symbols exist among the Indians, as they must exist to some 
extent among all peoples not devoid of poetic imagination. Some of 
them are shown in this work. The pipe is generally a symbol of peace, 
although in certain positions and connections it signifies preparation 
for war, and, again, subsequent victory. The hatchet is a common sym- 
bol for war, and joined hands or approaching palms denote peace. 
The tortoise has been clearly used as a symbol for land, and many 
other examples can be admitted. Apart from the exaggerations of 
Schooleraft, true symbolism is found among the Ojibwa, of which illus- 
trations are presented. The accounts of the Zuni, Moki, and Navajo, 
before mentioned, show the constant employment of symbolic devices 
by those tribes which are notably devoted to mystic ceremonies. 
Nevertheless the writer’s personal experience is that when he has at 
first supposed a character to be a genuine symbol, better means of 
understanding has often proved it to be not even an ideograph, but a 
mere objective representation. In this connection the remarks on the 
circle, in Lone-Dog’s Winter Count for 181112, and those on the cross 
infra, may be in point. 
The connection, to the unlettered Indian, between printed words, 
pictures, and signs, was well illustrated through the spontaneous copial, 
by a Cheyenne, of the ornate labels on packages of sugar and coffee, 
which he had seen at a reservation, and the lines of which he rather 
skillfully and very ingeniously repeated on a piece of paper when send- 
ing to a post-trader to purchase more of the articles. The printed 
label was to him the pictorial sign for those articles. 
The following remarks are quoted from D’Alviella (a): 
There isa symbolism so natural, that, like certain implements peculiar to the stone 
age, itdoes not belong to any particular race, but constitutes a characteristic trait 
of mankind at a certain phase of its development. Of this class are representations 
of the sun by a disk or radiating face, of the moon by a crescent, of the air hy birds, 
of water by fishes or a broken line, of thunder by an arrow or a club, etc. We 
ought, perhaps, to add a few more complicated analogies, as those which lead to 
symbolizing the diffcrent phases of human life by the growth of a tree, the genera- 
tive forces of nature by phallic emblems, the divine triads by an equilateral triangle, 
or in general by any triple combination the members of which are equal, and the 
four principal directions of space by a cross. How many theories have been built 
upon the presence of the cross as an object of veneration among nearly all the peo- 
ples of the Old and New Worlds? Roman Catholic writers have justly protested, in 
recent years, against attributing a pagan origin to the cross of the Christians, be- 
cause there were cruciform signs in the symbolism of religions anterior to Christi- 
anity. It is also right, by the same reason, to refuse to accept the attempts to seek 
for infiltrations of Christianity in foreign religions because they also possess the 
sign of redemption. * * * Nearly all peoples have represented the fire from the 
sky by an arm and, sometimes also, by a bird of strong and rapid flight. It was 
symbolized among the Chaldeans by a trident. Cylinders going back to the most 
ancient ages of Chaldean art exhibit a water jet gushing from a trident which 
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