For instances of the use of bone, several Alaskan and Eskimo carvings figured in this work may be referred to, e. g., Figs. [334], [459]-[462], [534], [703], [704], [742], [771], [844], and [1228].
Fig. 157.—Comanche drawing on shoulder-blade.
Fig. 157, copied from Schoolcraft (e), is taken from the shoulder-blade of a buffalo found on the plains in the Comanche country of Texas. He says:
It is a symbol showing the strife for the buffalo existing between the Indian and white races. The Indian (1) presented on horseback, protected by his ornamented shield and armed with a lance, (2) kills a Spaniard (3) after a circuitous chase (6), the latter being armed with a gun. His companion (4), armed with a lance, shares the same fate.
It may be questioned whether Mr. Schoolcraft was not too active in the search for symbols in his explanation of (6) as a circuitous chase. The device is either a lasso or a lariat, and relates to the possession or attempt to take possession of the buffalo. The design (5), however, well expresses ideographically the fact that the buffalo at the time was in contention, and therefore was the property half of the Indians and half of the whites.
SKINS.
A large number of pictographs upon the hides of animals are mentioned in the present paper. Pl. XX, with its description in the Dakota Winter Counts, infra, Chap, X, Sec. [2], is one instance. Rawhide drum-heads are also used to paint upon, as by the shamans of the Ojibwa.
The use of robes made of the hides of buffalo and other large animals, painted with biographic, shamanistic, and other devices, is also mentioned in various parts of this work. A description of very early observation is now introduced, taken from John Ribault in Hakluyt (a).
The king gaue our Captaine at his departure a plume or fanne of Hernshawes feathers died in red, and a basket made of Palmeboughes after the Indian fashion, and wrought very artificially and a great skinne painted and drawen throughout with the pictures of diuers wilde beasts so liuely drawen and pourtrayed, that nothing lacked but life.