612 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
appropriate to this section. More will be found in Chapter xx, on 
Special Comparisons, and indeed may appear under different headings; 
e. g., Battiste Good symbolizes hunting by a buffalo head and arrow, 
Fig. 321, and war by a special head-dress, Fig. 395. 
Sir A. Mackenzie (¢) narrates that in 1793 he found among the Athabas- 
cans an emblem of a country abounding in animals. This was a small 
round piece of green wood chewed at one end in the form of a brush, 
which the Indians use to pick the marrow out of bones. 
Mr. Frank H. Cushing, in notes not yet reduced to final shape for 
publication, gives two excellent examples of symbols among the Zuni: 
(1) The circle or halo around the sun is supposed to be and is called by the Zuni 
the House of the Sun-God. This is explained by analogy. A man seeks shelter on 
the approach of a rainstorm. As the sun cirele almost invariably appears only with 
the coming of a storm, the Sun, like his child, the man, seeks shelter in his house, 
which the circle has thus come to be. 
The influence of this simple inference myth on the folklore of the Zuni shows itself 
in the perpetuation, until within recent generations, of the round sun towers and 
circular estufas so intimately associated with sun worship, yet which were at first 
but survivals of the round medicine lodge. 
(2) The rainbow is a deified animal having the attributes of a human being, yet 
also the body and some of the functions of a measuring worm. Obviously, the 
striped back and arched attitude of the measuring worm, its sudden appearance and 
disappearance among the leaves of the plants which it inhabits, are the analogies 
on which this personification is based. As the measuring worm consumes the 
herbage of the plants and causes them to dry up, so the rainbow, which appears 
only after rains, is supposed to cause a cessation of rains, consequently to be the 
originator of droughts, under the influence of which latter plants parch and wither 
away as they do under the ravages of the measuring worms. Here it will be seen 
that the visible phenomenon called the rainbow gets by analogy the personality of 
the measuring worm, while from the measuring worm in turn the rainbow gets its 
fnnetions as a god. Of this the cessation of rain on the appearance of the rainbow 
is adduced as proof. 
The following is reported by Dr. W. H. Dall (e), and explains how 
the otter protruding his tongue is the emblem of Shaman: 
The carvings on the rattles of the Tlinkit are matters belonging particularly to 
the shaman or medicine man, and characteristic of his profession. Among these 
very generally, if not invariably, the rattle is composed of the figure of a bird, from 
which, near the head of the bird or carved upon the back of the bird’s head, is rep- 
resented a human face with the tongue protruding. 
This tongue is bent downward and usually meets the mouth of a frog or an otter, 
the tongue of either appearing continuous with that of the human face. In case it 
is a frog it usually appears impaled npon the tongue of a kingfisher, whose head and 
variegated plumage are represented near the handle in a conventional way. It is 
asserted that this represents the medicine man absorbing from the frog, which has 
been brought to him by the kingfisher, either poison or the power of producing evil 
effects on other people. 
In case it is an otter the tongue of the otter touches the tongue of the medicine 
man, as represented on the carving. ~ * * 
This carving is represented, not only on rattles, but on totem posts, fronts of 
houses, and other objects associated with the medicine man, the myth being that 
when the young aspirant for the position of medicine man goes out into the woods 
after fasting for a considerable period, in order that his to be familiar spirit may 
