g. I can kill a white loon, I can kill.
The white loon (rara avis nigroque similimo cygno) is certainly a rare and most difficult bird to kill; so we may infer that this boaster can kill anything, which is the amount of the meaning intended in that part of his song recorded by the five last figures. Success in hunting they look upon as a virtue of a higher character, if we may judge from this song, than the patience under suffering or the rakishness among women, or even the hospitality recommended in the former part.
h. My friends——
There seems to be an attempt to delineate a man sitting with his hands raised to address his friends; but the remainder of his speech is not remembered. This is sufficient to show that the meaning of the characters in this kind of picture writing is not well settled and requires a traditional interpretation to render it intelligible.
i. I open my wolf skin and the death struggle must follow.
This is a wolf skin used as a medicine bag and he boasts that whenever he opens it something must die in consequence.
Tanner’s Narrative (b) says of musical notation drawn on bark by Ojibwas:
Many of these songs are noted down by a method probably peculiar to the Indians, on birch bark, or small flat pieces of wood: the ideas being conveyed by emblematic figures, somewhat like those * * * used in communicating ordinary information.
Rev. P. J. De Smet (a) gives an account of the mnemonic order of songs among the Kickapoo and Pottawatomi. He describes a stick 1½ inches broad and 8 or 10 long, upon which are arbitrary characters which they follow with the finger in singing the prayers, etc. There are five classes of these characters. The first represents the heart, the second heart and flesh (chair), the third life, the fourth their names, and the fifth their families.
A. W. Howitt (b) says: