ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 71 



identical in many Indian tribes. The Oneida stone was described 

 as an illustration, and others were given which were formerly well- 

 known in New England and New York. 



The paper closed with a description of the standing rock in 

 Dakota Territory, and the legend of that rock was related. 



Mr. Guss spoke of the Oneida stone. He said that the word 

 Oneida meant people of the red granite stone. It was the tradition 

 that the Oneidas came out of the ground on that spot, though they 

 believed in a sort of transmigration of souls. He also mentioned 

 similar myths among Iroquois tribes clustering about the idea of a 

 standing stone, and remarked that the words Juniata and Oneida 

 were only corruptions of the same word. 



Col. Mallery then read a paper on the Dangers of Symbolic 

 Interpretation. 1 The following is an abstract of the paper: 



Few writers on the pictographs, customs, or religious rites of the 

 North American Indians have successfully resisted the temptation 

 to connect them symbolically with those of certain peoples of the 

 Eastern Hemisphere. The Spanish priests found among the Mexi- 

 cans many delineations of the cross and serpent which satisfactorily 

 proved to them the former introduction of Christianity ; Adair 

 delighted to show the existence of Israelite ceremonials among the 

 Muskoki ; and Lafiteau traced the customs of the Iroquois to the 

 pre-Hellenic inhabitants of Greece. Schoolcraft is full of symbols of 

 a more abstract and supposed original character, such as power, 

 deity, and prophesy. The frequent recurrence on this continent 

 of the number four has become a new mine of treasure to writers 

 infatuated with the mysticism of numbers. Alphabets, Runic, 

 Akkad, Phoenician, and of all other imaginable origins, have been 

 distorted from the Dighton Rock and multitudinous later precious 

 " finds," while other inscriptions are photographed and lectured 

 upon to exhibit the profound knowledge by some race supposed, 

 sometime to have existed in North America, in the arbitrary 



1 This paper was in part repeated under the title " Spurious Symbolism," in 

 ■"International Review," Vol. XII, pp. 45-52. 



