766 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
The seven triangular characters represent the lodges of a village to 
which the person referred to belongs. 
The serpentine lines immediately below these signify a stream or river, 
near which the village is situated. 
The two persons holding guns in their left hands, together with 
another holding a spear, appear to be the companions of the speaker 
or recorder, all of whom are members of the turtle gens, as shown by 
that animal. 
The curve from left to right is arepresentation of the sky, the sun 
having appeared upon the left or eastern horizon, The drawing, so 
far, might represent the morning when a female member of the crane 
gens, was killed—shown by the headless body of a woman. 
The lower figure of a bear is the same apparently as the upper, 
though turned to the right. The hearts are drawn below the line, i. e., 
down, to denote sadness, grief, remorse, as it would be expressed in 
gesture langwage, and to atone for the misdeed committed the pipe 
is brought and offering made for peace. 
Altogether the act depicted appears to have been accidental, the 
woman belonging to the same tribe, as can be learned from the gens of 
which she was a member. The regret or sorrow signified in the bear, 
next to the last figure, corresponds with that supposition, as such 
feelings would not be manifested on the death of an enemy. 
The point of interest in this drawing is, that the figures are very 
skillfully copied from the numerous characters of the same kind repre- 
senting Ojibwa pictographs, and given by Schooleraft. The arrange- 
ment of these copied characters is precisely what would be common in 
the similar work of Indians. In fact, the group constitutes an intelli- 
gent pictograph and affords a good illustration of the manner in which 
one can be made. The fact that it was sold under false representations 
is its objectionable feature. 
Another case brought officially to the Bureau of Ethnology shows 
evidence of a more determined fraud. In 1888 and earlier a so-called 
“Shawnee doctor” had displayed as a chart in the nature of an aborig- 
inal diploma, a brightly colored picture 36 by 40 inches, a copy of 
which was sent, to be deciphered, to the Bureau by a gentleman who is 
not supposed to have been engaged in fraud or hoax. The mystic chart 
is copied in Fig. 1289. There was little difficulty in its explanation. 
The large figures on the border can not be pretended to be of Indian 
origin. The smaller interior figures constituting the body of the chart 
are all, with trifling exceptions, exact copies of figures published and 
fully explained in G. Copway’s “Traditional History, ete., of the 
Ojibway Nation.” op. cit. Several of the same figures appear above in 
the present work. The principal exceptions are, first, a modern knife; 
second, a bird with a decidedly un-Indian human head, and, third, a 
cross with two horizontal arms of equal length. The figures from 
Copway are not in the exact order given in his list and it is possible 
