6 BULLETIN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SUEVEY. 



in some inauner resembling the system so long and widely used of 

 counting in numbers from an era, such as the Birth of Christ, the Hegira, 

 the Ab Urbe Condita, the First Olympiad, and the like. But the chart 

 shows nothing of this nature. The earliest symbol (Fig. 1, in the center) 

 merely represents the killing of a small number of Dakotas by their 

 enemies, an event of frequent recurrence, and neither so important nor 

 interesting as many others of the seventy-one shown in the chart, more 

 than one of which, indeed, might well have been selected as a notable 

 fixed point before and after which simple arithmetical notation could 

 have been used to mark the years. Instead of any i^lan that civilized 

 advisers would naturally have introduced, the one actually adopted — 

 to individualize each year by a specific recorded symbol, or totem, ac- 

 cording to the decision of a single designated officer and his successors, 

 whereby confusion was prevented — should not suffer denial of its orig- 

 inality merely because it was ingenious, and showed more of scientific 

 method than has often been attributed to the northern tribes of Amer- 

 ica. The symbolic record, being preserved and understood by many, 

 could be used and referred to with sufficient ease and accuracy for or- 

 dinary purposes. Definite signs for the first appearance of the small- 

 pox and for the first capture of wild horses may be dates as satisfactory 

 to the Sioux as the corresponding expressions A. D. 1801 and 1812 to 

 the Christian world, and far more certain than much of the chronolog- 

 ical tables of Eegiomontanus and Archbishop Usher in terms of A. M. and 

 B. C. The careful arrangement of distinctly separate characters in an 

 outward spiral starting from a central point is a clever expedient to 

 dispense with the use of numbers for noting the years, yet allowing 

 every date to be.determined by counting backwards or forwards from any 

 other that might be known ; and it seems unlikely that any such device, 

 so different from that common among the white visitors or settlers, 

 should have been prompted by them. The whole conception seems one 

 strongly characteristic of our "aborigines", as we have been in the habit, 

 perhaps wrongly, of styling the i^orth American Indians, who, the au- 

 tochthonic theory being now disputed, are classed by late writers with 

 the Turanian or Mongolian race, for their membership in which this 

 very use of symbols is no unimportant evidence. 



Efforts were made to ascertain if the occurrences selected and repre- 

 sented were those peculiar to the clan or tribe of the recorder, or were 

 either of general concern to, or notoriety throughout, the nation. This 

 would tend to determine whether the undertaking was of a voluntary 

 and individual nature, limited by personal knowledge or special inter- 

 ests, or whether the scope was national, and the work was so recognized 

 as to become what might be termed official. All inquiries led to the 

 latter supposition. The persons examined were of different tribes, and 

 far apart from each other, yet all knew what the document was, i. e., 

 that "some one thing was put down for each year"; that it was the 

 work of Lone Dog; and that he was the onlv one who " could" or was 



