English names of the figures in Red-Cloud’s census.

The remark made above (page [176]) in connection with the Ogalala Roster, acknowledging the paucity of direct information as to details while presenting the pictographs as sufficiently interpreted for the present purposes by the translation of the personal names, may be here repeated. The following notes are, however, subjoined as of some assistance to the reader:

No. 2. Top-man, or more properly “man above,” is drawn a short distance above a curved line, which represents the character for sky inverted. The gesture for sky is sometimes made by passing the hand from east to west describing an arc. The Ojibwa pictograph for the same occurs in [Plate IV], No. 1, beneath which a bird appears.

No. 9. The character is represented with two waving lines passing upward from the mouth, in imitation of the gesture-sign good talk, spiritual talk, as made by passing two extended and separated fingers (or all fingers separated) upward and forward from the mouth. This gesture is made when referring either to a shaman or to a christian clergyman, or to a house of worship, and the name seems to have been translated here as “good,” without sufficient emphasis, being probably more with the idea of “mystic.”

No. 15. The gesture for come or to call to one’s self is shown in this figure.

No. 24. The semicircle for cloud is the reverse in conception to that shown above in No. 2.

No. 26. Arapaho, in Dakota, magpiyato—blue cloud—is here shown by a circular cloud, drawn in blue in the original, inclosing the head of a man.

No. 38. Night appears to be indicated by the black circle around the head, suggested by the covering over with darkness, as shown in the gesture for night by passing both flat hands from their respective sides inwards and downwards before the body. The sign for kill is denoted here by the bow in contact with the head, a custom in practice among the Dakota of striking the dead enemy with the bow or coup stick. See also Figure 130, page [211].

No. 43. Night is here shown by the curve for sky, and the suspension, beneath it, of a star, or more properly in Dakota signification, a night sun—the moon.