REMARKS ON TUE SIGNS IN THE STORY. 53 



of the wick'-i-up has survived in gestures Nos. 3 and 23 (the latter referring 

 to more than one, i. e , an encampment) 



The sign for Bannock, No. 25 (also 32 and 59), has its origin from the 

 tradition among the Pah-Utes that the Bannocks were in the habit of cut- 

 ting the throats of their victims. This sign is made with the index instead 

 of the similar gesture with the flat hand, which among several tribes denotes 

 the Sioux, but the Pah-Utes examined had no specific sign for that body of 

 Indians, not having been in sufficient contact with them. 



"A stopping place," referred to in Nos. 6, 12, 52, and 54, represents 

 the settlement, station, or camp of white men, and is contradistinguished by 

 merely dotting toward the ground instead of indicating a circle. 



It will also be seen that in several instances, after indicating- the nation- 

 ality, the fingers previously used in representing the number were repeated 

 without its previously accompanying specific gesture, as in No. 6 1 , where the 

 three fingers of the left hand represented the men (white), and the three move- 

 ments toward the ground signified the camp or tents of the three (white) men. 



This also occurs in the gesture (Nos. 59, 60, and 71) employed for the 

 Bannocks, which, having been once specified, is used subsequently without 

 its specific preceding sign for the tribe represented. 



The rapid connection of the signs Nos. 57 and 58, and of Nos. 74 aud 

 75 indicates the conjunction, so that they are severally readily understood 

 as "shot and killed," and "the white men and I." The same remark applies 

 to Nos. 15 and 16, "the nine and I." 



In the examination of the sign-language it is important to form a clear 

 distinction between signs proper and symbols. All characters in Indian 

 picture-writing have been loosely styled symbols, and as there is no logical 

 distinction between the characters impressed with enduring form, and when 

 merely outlined in the ambient air, all Indian gestures, motions, and atti- 

 tudes might with equal appropriateness be called symbolic. While, how- 

 ever, all symbols come under the generic head of signs, very few signs are 

 in accurate classification symbols. S. T. Coleridge has defined a symbol 

 to be a sign included in the idea it represents. This may be intelligible if 

 it is intended that an ordinary sign is extraneous to the concept, and, rather 



