a is a stream to be followed to a lake b, where the hunter will erect his lodge c, during his stay. The do-dém (totem) is added, used between persons or parties communicating, to show who was the one that drew it. It is in the nature of a signature.
Fig. 449 shows a still existing use of the wikhegan between a Penobscot Indian and his nephew. It is copied from the original, incised on birch bark, by Nicholas Francis, a Penobscot, of Oldtown, Maine, which was obtained and kindly presented by Miss A. L. Alger of Boston.
Fig. 449.—Penobscot notice of direction.
Pitalo (Roaring Lion), English name, Noel Lyon, and his old uncle, aged over 70 years, went trapping for beaver in 1885 and camped at d, near Moosehead Lake h, having their supply tent at e. They visited the ponds a and b and knew there were beaver there, and set traps for them, f f. The beaver dams are also shown extending across the outlets of the streams. Noel came back from pond b one day to the camping tent and found this birch-bark wikhegan made by the old uncle, who still used the pictographic method, as he does not know how to write, and by this Noel knew his uncle had gone to pond c to see if there were any beaver there and would be gone one night, the latter expressed by one line g drawn between the two arrows pointing in opposite directions, showing the going and returning on the same trail.
The notable part of the above description is that the wikhegan consisted of the chart of the geographic features before traversed by the two trappers, with the addition of new features of the country undoubtedly known to both of the Indians, but not before visited in the present expedition. This addition exhibited the departure, its intent, direction, and duration.
Fig. 450.—Passamaquoddy notice of direction.
Sapiel Selmo, a chief of the Passamaquoddy tribe, who gave to the writer the wikhegan copied as Fig. 450, in 1887, was then a very aged man and has since died. He lived at Pleasant point, 7 miles north of Eastport, Maine. He was the son of a noted chief, Selmo Soctomah (a corruption of St. Thomas), who, as shown by a certificate exhibited, commanded 600 Passamaquoddy Indians in the Revolutionary war. When a young man Sapiel, with his father, had a temporary camp, a, at Machias Lake. He left his father and went to their permanent home at Pleasant Point, b, to get meat, and then returned to the first camp (route shown by double track) and found that his father had gone, but that he had left in the temporary wigwam the wikhegan on birch bark, showing that he had killed one moose, the meat of which Sapiel found in the snow, and that the father was going to hunt moose on the other lake (East Machias lake) and would camp there three days, shown by the same number of strokes at c; so he waited for him until he came back.
Josiah Gregg (a) says of the Plains tribes: