Fig. 235.
Fig. 235, 1850-’51.—The character is a distinct drawing of a buffalo containing a human figure. Clément translated that “a buffalo cow was killed in that year and an old woman found in her belly;” also that all the Indians believed this. Good-Wood, examined through another interpreter, could or would give no explanation except that it was “about their religion.” The Dakotas have long believed in the appearance from time to time of a monstrous animal that swallows human beings. This superstition was perhaps suggested by the bones of mastodons, often found in the territory of those Indians; and, the buffalo being the largest living animal known to them, its name was given to the legendary monster, in which nomenclature they were not wholly wrong, as the horns of the fossil Bison latifrons are 10 feet in length. Major Bush suggests that perhaps some old squaw left to die sought the carcass of a buffalo for shelter and then died. He has known this to occur.
Fig. 236.
Fig. 236, 1851-’52.—Peace with the Crows. Two Indians, with differing arrangement of hair, showing two tribes, are exchanging pipes for a peace smoke.
Fig. 237.
Fig. 237, 1852-’53.—The Nez Percés came to Lone-Horn’s lodge at midnight. The device shows an Indian touching with a pipe a tipi, the top of which is black or opaque, signifying night.
Touch-the-Clouds, a Minneconjou, son of Lone-Horn, when this chart was shown to him by the present writer, designated this character as being particularly known to him from the fact of its being his father’s lodge. He remembered all about it from talk in his family, and said it was the Nez Percés who came.