90 BULLETIN OF THE 



114th Meeting. December 2, 18t6. 



The President' in the Chair. 



Forty-two members and visitors present. 



The election of Mr. David Smith, Engineer U. S. Navy, and 

 Mr, Marcus Baker, of the U. S. Coast Survey, as members of 

 the Society, was announced. 



Mr. Garrick Mallery read a paper on 



A CALENDAR OF THE DAKOTA INDIANS. 



(A photoliiJio graph of the Chart exhibited, with a detailed description and 



translation, is to he published in the Bulletin of the U. S. Geological and 



Geographical Survey of the Territories, vol. iii. No. 1, in press.) 



(abstkact.) 



Painted narratives of tribal and personal events, delineated by 

 representations of men and animals and other figures, on hides 

 or bark, are common among the nomadic tribes of North 

 America. The Eastern Algonquins also used "vi^ampum," an 

 arrangement of stringed beads fashioned from shells of different 

 colors, to note battles, treaties, and other occurrences of moment, 

 their devices being generally mnemonic only, and seldom sym- 

 bolic. The Pueblos figured their histories on tablets of wood ; 

 and the Aztecs and Toltecs have left elaborate records in pic- 

 ture writing. It is, however, submitted that in the similar pro- 

 ductions of all of these peoples, before discovered, the obvious 

 intent was either historical or biographical, that is, to chronicle 

 events as such, and there was no apparent design to symbolize 

 occurrences selected without reference to their intrinsic impor- 

 tance or connection with each other, but merely because they oc- 

 curred within successive intervals of time, and to arrange them 

 in an orderly form, specially convenient for use as a calendar and 

 valuable for no other purpose. The chart now exhibited appears 

 to be an attempt, before unsuspected, on the part of the North- 

 western Indians, to form for themselves a system of chronology. 



The copy brought by the writer from the Sioux country in 

 November, 1876, is in two colors, black and red, the^symbols 

 covering a yard square of cloth, and purports to be a fac-simile 

 of the original, which was drawn by and is believed to be still 

 in the possession of Lone Dog, an aged Indian belonging to 

 the Yanktonai tribe of the Dakotas, who, in the autumn of IStG, 

 was near Port Peck, Montana Territory, and in the then con- 

 dition of the region was not directly accessible. The authenticity 

 of the document was verified by separate examination through 



