Fig. 3. Symbols used in War Records.
The capture of the enemies’ property, or a deed, is indicated by pictures of the objects recognized as worth considering. While naturally, there is difference of opinion, the following may be taken as the approximate list of captures conferring ceremonial rights:—horses, guns, shields, lances, bows and quivers, shot-pouches and powder horns, daggers, war-bonnets, and all medicine objects. The following order or rank, was given by an informant recognized by the Piegan as an authority in heraldry:—gun, lance, bow, the enemy’s life, cutting a horse loose from a tipi, leading a war party, acting as a scout, shields, war-bonnets, a medicine pipe, and driving off loose horses. The most significant point is that while the life of an enemy is fourth, the capture of his gun is first. When a man was seen to fall with a gun, it was not unusual for one or more young men to rush boldly out to snatch the prize. To ride up, jerk a gun from an enemy’s hand and get away without injury to either party was the greatest deed possible. While in picturing such deeds realistic forms are used, as the symbol for a shield (Fig. 3d), they are often greatly conventionalized. Blankets, if counted, are shown as rectangles with one or two cross lines for the stripes on most trade blankets. Horses taken in open fight, when not pictured, are represented by track symbols, Fig. 5d and under the sketch of a mule in Fig. 1. The rectangular variant as found among many other tribes is not used as an equivalent.
Fig 4. Methods of recording the capture of Horses.
Stealing a horse tied up in the enemies’ camp is a deed of special importance and naturally has a definite symbolism. This case is of some interest here because we find among our collection practically all the steps between the full pictured form and the bare symbol. Thus, we find drawings showing the adventurer cutting loose horses picketed near the tipis, Fig. 4; again, the cutting represented by a knife and a hand, the pickets alone representing the horses so taken, and finally, a series of crossed lines. The last is the simplest form but may be said to be an alternate with the preceding one, some persons representing the picket stake one way, some the other. The Hidatsa[[35]] are reported to use the crossed lines for a coup and the Teton use it as a rescue symbol (a coup saved from the enemy); hence, its substitution in Blackfoot records for the more realistic form of picket stake may have been due to suggestion.
A war party intrenched is indicated by a circle (Fig. 5c); sheltered in a wind brake, by an open circle (Fig. 2). A camp may be represented by a series of tripods, signs for tipis (Fig. 1).
Two functions of the warpath are honored by distinct symbols; that of leader and scout. The symbol for leader is shown in Fig. 5a and is given once for each party led. In like manner, the sign in Fig. 5b indicates having been detailed as a scout. The origin of these cannot be definitely traced, but the second is said to be a diagrammatic representation of the course taken by a scout with reference to the main body. Thus, the curve represents the war party waiting and the zigzag line the course always taken by the scout to conceal their true position. This seems probable, but no rational theory for the origin of the leader’s sign was encountered.
The coup stick, striped like a barber’s pole, used by the Cheyenne, seems not to have been known among the Blackfoot except its analogous form in a boy’s game. The Dakota stick made by binding together two long rods with spiral decorations and four pendants of feathers with scalp locks was seen in the hands of an old man; he, however, frankly avowed having made it in imitation of those seen by him when visiting the Assiniboine.
Fig. 5. Highly conventionalized symbols.