Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper / Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256

by Garrick Mallery

MYTHIC PERSONAGES.

Reference may be made to the considerable number of pictographs of this character in Schoolcraft, more particularly in his first volume; also to the Walum-Olum or Bark-Record of the Lenni-Lenape, which was published in Beach’s “Indian Miscellany,” Albany, 1877; and since in The Lenâpé and their Legends: By Dr. D. G. Brinton. Several examples are also to be found in other parts of the present paper.

Some forms of the Thunder-Bird are here presented, as follows:

Fig. 104.—Thunder-Bird. Dakota.

Fig. 105.—Thunder-bird. Dakota.

Figures 104 and 105 are forms of the thunder-bird found in 1883 among the Dakotas near Fort Snelling, drawn and interpreted by themselves. They are both winged and have waving lines extending from the mouth downward, signifying lightning. It is noticeable that Figure 105 placed vertically, then appearing roughly as an upright human figure, is almost identically the same as some of the Ojibwa meda or spirit figures represented in Schoolcraft, and also on a bark Ojibwa record in the possession of the writer.

Figure 106 is another and more cursive form of the thunder-bird obtained at the same place and time as those immediately preceding. It is wingless, and, with changed position or point of view, would suggest a headless human figure.

Fig. 106.—Thunder-Bird. Wingless. Dakota.

The blue thunder-bird, Figure 107, with red breast and tail, is a copy of one worked in beads, found at Mendota, Minnesota. At that place stories were told of several Indians who had presentiments that the thunder-bird was coming to kill them, when they would so state the case to their friends that they might retire to a place of safety, while the victim of superstition would go out to an elevated point of land or upon the prairie to await his expected doom.

Fig. 107.—Thunder-bird. Dakota.

Frequently, no doubt on account of the isolated and elevated position of the person in a thunder storm, accidents of this kind do occur, thus giving notoriety to the presentiment above mentioned.

A still different form of the Dakota thunder-bird is reproduced in Mrs. Eastman’s Dahcotah, op. cit., page 262. See also page [181] supra.

Figure 108 is “Skam-son,” the thunder-bird, a tattoo mark copied from the back of an Indian belonging to the Laskeek village of the Haida tribe, Queen Charlotte’s Island, by Mr. James G. Swan.

Fig. 108.—Thunder-bird. Haida.

Figure 109 is a Twana thunder-bird, as reported by Rev. M. Eells in Bull. U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey, III, p. 112.

Fig. 109.—Thunder-bird. Twana.

There is at Eneti, on the reservation [Washington Territory], an irregular basaltic rock, about 3 feet by 3 feet and 4 inches, and a foot and a half high. On one side there has been hammered a face, said to be the representation of the face of the thunder bird, which could also cause storms.

The two eyes are about 6 inches in diameter and 4 inches apart and the nose about 9 inches long. It is said to have been made by some man a long time ago, who felt very badly, and went and sat on the rock, and with another stone hammered out the eyes and nose. For a long time they believed that if the rock was shaken it would cause rain, probably because the thunder bird was angry.

Graphic representations of Atotarko and of the Great Heads are shown in Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith’s Myths of the Iroquois, in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Mythic Personages are also presented in aboriginal drawing by Mr. Charles G. Leland in his work, the Algonquin Legends of New England, etc. Boston, 1884.