Many examples of masks, dance ornaments, and fetiches used in ceremonies are reported and illustrated in the several papers of Messrs. Cushing, Holmes, and Stevenson in the Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. Paintings or drawings of many of them have been found on pottery, on shells, and on rocks.
In this connection the following extract from a letter dated Port Townsend, Washington, June 1, 1883, from Mr. James G. Swan, will be acceptable: “You may remember my calling your attention about a year since to the fact that a gentleman who had been employed on a preliminary survey for the Mexican National Construction Company had called on me and was astonished at the striking similarity between the wooden-carved images of the Haida Indians and the terra-cotta images he had found in the railroad excavations in Mexico.
“I have long entertained the belief that the coast tribes originated among the Aztecs, and have made it a subject of careful study for many years. I received unexpected aid by the plates in Habel’s Investigations in Central and South America. I have shown them to Indians of various coast tribes at various times, and they all recognize certain of those pictures. No. 1, Plate 1, represents a priest cutting off the head of his victim with his stone knife. They recognize this, because they always cut off the heads of their enemies slain in battle; they never scalp. The bird of the sun is recognized by all who have seen the picture as the thunder bird of the coast tribes. But the most singular evidence I have seen is in Cushing’s description of the Zuñi Indian, as published in the Century Magazine. The Haidas recognize the scenes, particularly the masquerade scenes in the February [1883] number, as similar to their own tomanawos ceremonies. I have had at least a dozen Haida men and women at one time looking at those pictures and talk and explain to each other their meaning. One chief who speaks English said to me after he had for a long time examined the pictures, ‘Those are our people; they do as we do. If you wish, I will make you just such masks as those in the pictures.’
“These Indians know nothing, and recognize nothing in the Hebrew or Egyptian, the Chinese or Japanese pictures, but when I show them any Central or South American scenes, if they do not understand them they recognize that they are ‘their people.’”
According to Stephen Powers (in Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol. III, p. 140), there is at the head of Potter Valley, California, “a singular knoll of red earth which the Tátu or Hūchnom believe to have furnished the material for the creation of the original coyote-man. They mix this red earth into their acorn bread, and employ it for painting their bodies on divers mystic occasions.” Mr. Powers supposed this to be a ceremonial performance, but having found the custom to extend to other tribes he was induced to believe the statements of the Indians “that it made the bread sweeter and go further.”
See also the mnemonic devices relative to Songs, page [82], and to Traditions, page [84]; also page [237].
Plate LXXXII represents stone heaps surmounted by buffalo skulls found near the junction of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers by Prince Maximilian zu Wied, and described in his Reise in das Innere Nord-America. Coblenz, 1841, II, p. 435. Atlas plate 29. The description by him, as translated in the London edition, is as follows: “From the highest points of this ridge of hills, curious signals are perceived at certain distances from one another, consisting of large stones and granite blocks, piled up by the Assiniboins, on the summits of each of which are placed Buffalo skulls, and which were erected by the Indians, as alleged, for the purpose of attracting the Bison herds, and to have a successful hunt.”
BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LXXXII
BUFFALO-HEAD MONUMENT.