Dr. G. W. Barnes, of San Diego, California, has kindly furnished sketches of pictographs prepared for him by Mrs. F. A. Kimball, of National City, California, which were copied from records 25 miles northeast of the former city. Many of them found upon the faces of large rocks are almost obliterated, though sufficient remains to permit tracing. The only color used appears to be red ocher. Many of the characters, as noticed upon the drawings, closely resemble those in New Mexico, at Ojo de Benado, south of Zuñi, and in the cañon leading from the cañon at Stewart’s ranch, to the Kanab Creek Cañon, Utah. This is an indication of the habitat of the Shoshonian stock apart from the linguistic evidence with which it agrees.
The power of determining the authorship of pictographs made on materials other than rocks, by means of their general style and type, can be estimated by a comparison of those of the Ojibwa, Dakota, Haida, and Innuit of Alaska presented in various parts of this paper.
PRESENCE OF CHARACTERISTIC OBJECTS.
With regard to the study of the individual characters themselves to identify the delineators of pictographs, the various considerations of fauna, religion, customs, tribal signs, indeed, most of the headings of this paper will be applicable. It is impracticable now to give further details in this immediate connection, except to add to similar particulars before presented the following notes with regard to the arrangement of hair and display of paint in identification.
A custom obtains among the Absaroka, which, when depicted in pictographs, as is frequently done, serves greatly to facilitate identification of the principal actors in events recorded. This consists in wearing false hair, attached to the back of the head and allowed to hang down over the back. Horse hair, taken from the tail, is arranged in 8 or 10 strands, each about as thick as a finger, and laid parallel with spaces between them of the width of a single strand. Pine gum is then mixed with red ocher, or vermilion, when the individual can afford the expense, and by means of other hair, or fibers of any kind laid cross-wise, the strands are secured, and around each intersection of hair a ball of gum is plastered to hold it in place. About 4 inches further down, a similar row of gum balls and cross strings are placed, and so on down to the end. The top of the tail ornament is then secured to the hair on the back of the head. The Indians frequently incorporate the false hair with their own so as to lengthen the latter without any marked evidence of the deception. Nevertheless the transverse fastenings with their gum attachments are present. The Arikara have adopted this custom of late, and they have obtained it from the Hidatsa, who, in turn, learned it of the Absaroka.
In picture-writing this is shown upon the figure of a man by the presence of parallel lines drawn downward from the back of the head, with cross lines, the whole appearing like small squares or a piece of net.
Dr. George Gibbs mentions a pictograph made by one of the Northwestern tribes (of Oregon and Washington) upon which “the figure of a man, with a long queue, or scalp-lock, reached to his heels, denoted a Shoshonee, that tribe being in the habit of braiding horse- or other hair into their own in that manner.” See Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., Vol. I, p. 222.
This may have reference to the Shoshoni Indians among the extreme Northwestern tribes, but it can by no means be positively affirmed that the mark of identification could be based upon the custom of braiding with their own hair that of animals to increase the length and appearance of the queue, as this custom also prevails among the Absaroka and Arikara Indians of Montana and Dakota, respectively, as above described.
Pictures drawn by some of the northern tribes of the Dakota, the Titon, for instance, show the characteristic and distinctive features for a Crow Indian to be the distribution of the red war paint, which covers the forehead. A Dakota upon the same picture is designated by painting the face red from the eyes down to the end of the chin. Again, the Crow is designated by a top-knot of hair extending upward from the forehead, that lock of hair being actually worn by that tribe and brushed upward and slightly backward. See the seated figure in the record of Running-Antelope in Fig. 127, page [210].
The Pueblos generally, when accurate and particular in delineation, designate the women of that tribe by a huge coil of hair over either ear. This custom prevails also among the Coyotèro Apaches, the women wearing the hair in a coil to denote a virgin or an unmarried person, while the coil is absent in the case of a married woman.