Fig. 444.—Alaskan notice of direction.
This device is used by coast natives of Southern Alaska and Kadiak. He explained Fig. 444 as follows:
When hunters become separated, the one first returning to the forks of the trail puts a piece of wood in the ground, on the top of which he makes an incision, into which a short piece of wood is secured horizontally, so as to point in the direction taken.
Maj. Long—Keating’s Long (a)—says:
When we stopped to dine, White Thunder (the Winnebago chief that accompanied me), suspecting that the rest of his party were in the neighborhood, requested a piece of paper, pen, and ink, to communicate to them the intelligence of his having come up with me. He then seated himself and drew three rude figures, which, at my request, he explained to me. The first represented my boat with a mast and flag, with three benches of oars and a helmsman. To show that we were Americans, our heads were represented by a rude cross, indicating that we wore hats. The representation of himself was a rude figure of a bear over a kind of cipher, representing a hunting ground. The second figure was designed to show that his wife was with him; the device was a boat with a squaw seated in it; over her head lines were drawn in a zigzag direction, indicating that she was the wife of White Thunder. The third was a boat with a bear sitting at the helm, showing that an Indian of that name [or of the bear gens] had been seen on his way up the river and had given intelligence where the party were. This paper he set up at the mouth of Kickapoo creek, up which the party had gone on a hunting trip.
An ingenious mode of giving intelligence is practiced at this day by the Abnaki, as reported by H. L. Masta, chief of that tribe, lately living at Pierreville, Quebec. When they are in the woods, to say “I am going to the east,” a stick is stuck in the ground pointing in that direction, Fig. 445, a. “I am not gone far,” another stick is stuck across the former, close to the ground, same figure, b. “Gone far” is the reverse, same figure, c. The number of days’ journey of proposed absence is shown by the same number of sticks across the first; thus, same figure, d, signifies five days’ journey.
Fig. 445.—Abnaki notice of direction.
Fig. 446, scratched on birch bark, was given to the present writer at Fredericton, New Brunswick, in August, 1888, by Gabriel Acquin, an Amalecite, then 66 years old, who spoke English quite well. The circumstances under which it was made and used are in the Amalecite’s words, as follows: