The singer’s heart is filled with knowledge relating to sacred objects from the earth.
The song depicted in Pl. XVIII C, was drawn by “Little Frenchman,” an Ojibwa Midē' of the first degree, who reproduced it from a bark record belonging to his preceptor. “Little Frenchman” had not yet received instruction in these characters, and consequently could not sing the songs, but from his familiarity with mnemonic delineations of the order of the Grand Medicine of ideas he was able to give an outline of the signification of the figures and the phraseology which they suggested to his mind. In the following description the first line pertaining to a character is the objective description, the second being the explanation.
It is furthermore to be remarked that in this chart and the one following the interpretation of characters begins at the right hand instead of the left, contrary to rule. The song is reproduced from. Pl. XXII, A, of the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology:
From the place where I sit.
A man, seated and talking or singing.
The big tree in the middle of the earth.
Tree; inclosure represents the world as visible from a given spot of observation—horizon.