MALLERY ON THE DAKOTA CALENDAR. 21 



for in the same proceedings General Harney loquitur, " I told the people 

 wlio were here a hundred days ago, &c." This brought to attention the 

 earlier preliminary council held in the latter part of 1855, for which the 

 peace symbol having already been used in the chart could not be re- 

 peated or changed, though the meeting in 1856 was larger and its results 

 more momentous. 



Fig. 57, 1856. — "Four Horn" was made a calumet or medicine man. 

 This was probably the result of an important political struggle, as there 

 is much rivalry and electioneering for the office, which, with its triple 

 character of doctor, priest, and magician, is one of far greater power than 

 the chieftainship. A man with four horns holds out the same kind of 

 ornamented pipe-stem shown in Fig. 5, it being his badge of ofi&ce, and 

 not referring to any " pipe-laying " that might have occurred in the 

 election, although Four Horn, being skilled in " buffalo' medicine ", may 

 have hull-dosed some of his constituents. He was one of the sub-chiefs 

 of the Uncapapas, and was introduced to General Harney at the council 

 of this year by Bear Eib, head chief of that tribe. 



Fig. 58, 1857. — The Dakotas killed a Crow squaw. The fashion evi- 

 dently was for the stripes on the blankets of ladies to be worn horizon - 

 tally, Brave Bear's, Fig. 55, and Swan's, Fig. 67, being vertical. She is 

 pierced by four arrows, and the peace made with the Crows in 1851 

 seems to have been short-lived. 



Fig. 59, 1858. — "Lone Horn", whose solitary horn appears, made buf- 

 falo medicine, probably on account of the scarcity of that animal. 

 Again the head of an albino bison. " One Horn", doubtless the same 

 individual, is recorded as the head chief of the Minneconjous at this 

 date. 



Fig. 60, 1859. — "Big Crow", a Sioux chief, was killed by the Crows. 

 The crow, transfixed by an arrow, is drawn so as to give quite the ap- 

 pearance of a heraldic crest. To complete B. Crow's signet-ring, his 

 engraver needed only to add in a scroll, by way of motto, the fragment 

 of Juvenal's familiar line, "dat veniam corvis". 



Fig. 61, 1860. — Symbol — the head and neck of an elk, like that part of 

 the animal in Fig. 38, with a line extending from its mouth, at the ex- 

 tremity of which is the albino buffalo head. " The elk made you un- 

 derstand his voice while he was walking." 



" I cannot tell how the truth may be ; 

 I say the tale a8 't was said to me." 



The interpreter persisted in this oracular rendering, probably not being 

 able to fully catch the Indian explanation from want of thorough 

 knowledge of the language. The ignorance of i^rofessed interpreters, 

 who easily get beyond their philological depth, but are ashamed to ac- 

 knowledge it, has occasioned many official blunders. This symbol and 

 its interpretation were unintelligible to the writer until examination of 

 General Harney's report above referred to showed the name of a prom- 

 inent chief of the Minneconjous set forth as " The-Elk-that-hoUows- 



