C represents the peninsula between the fiords Sermiligak and Kangerdluarsikajik.
SECTION 3.
NOTICE OF CONDITION.
In the curious manuscript of Gideon Lincecum, written with Roman characters in the Choctaw language about 1818, and referring to the ancient customs of that tribe, appears the following passage (p. 276):
They had a significant and very ingenious method of marking the stakes so that each iksa could know its place as soon as they saw the stake that had been set up for them. Every clan had a name, which was known to all the rest. It was a species of heraldry, each iksa having its coat of arms. The iksas all took the name of some animal—buffalo, panther, dog, terrapin, any race of animals—and a little picture of whatever it might be, sketched on a blazed tree or stake, indicated the clan to which it belonged. They could mark a tree when they were about to leave a camp, in their traveling or hunting excursions, with a set of hieroglyphs, that any other set of hunters or travelers who might pass that way could read, telling what iksa they belonged to, how long they had remained at that camp, how many there were in the company, if any were sick or dead, and if they had been successful or otherwise in the hunt. Thus, drawn very neatly on a peeled tree near the camp, a terrapin; five men marching in a row, with bows ready strung in their hands, large packs on their backs, and one man behind, no pack, bow unstrung; one circle, half circle, and six short marks in front of the half circle; below, a bear’s head, a buffalo head, and the head of an antelope. The reading is, “Terrapin iksa, 6 men in company, one sick; successful hunt in killing bear, buffalo, and antelope; that they remained at the camp a moon and a half and six days, and that they have gone home.”
Among the Abnaki of the Province of Quebec, as reported by Masta, their chief, cutting the bark off from a tree on one, two, three, or four sides near the butt means “Have had poor, poorer, poorest luck.” Cutting it off all around the tree means “I am starving.” Smoking a piece of birch bark and hanging it on a tree means “I am sick.”
Tanner’s Narrative (c) mentions regarding the Ojibwa that, in cases where the information to be communicated is that the party mentioned is starving, the figure of a man is sometimes drawn, and his mouth is painted white, or white paint may be smeared about the mouth of the animal, if it happens to be one, which is his totem.
Fig. 456.—Passamaquoddy wikhegan.
Fig. 456 is a copy of a drawing incised on birch bark by the old Passamaquoddy chief, Sapiel Selmo, who made comments upon it as follows: Two hunters followed the river a until it branches off b, c. Indian d takes one river and its lakes and small branches, and the other hunter (not figured in the chart) follows the other branch and also claims its small streams and lakes. Sometimes during the winter they visit one another. If it happen that the other hunter was away from his wigwam e and if the visiting hunter wishes to leave word with his friend and wishes to inform him of his luck, he makes a picture on a piece of birch bark and describes such animals he has killed with the number of animals as seen in f and g (figure of moose’s head) which, with two crosses to each, means 20 moose. He killed in each hunt altogether 40. h is a whole moose, also with two crosses, and means 20, and also the figure of a caribou i with one cross means 10 caribou, and also a figure of a bear with four crosses j means 40 bears, and k shows a figure of bear with one cross which means 10 bears, and also a sable l with five crosses means 50 sables. If he wish to inform him he is in poor luck and hungry, he marked a figure of an Indian with a pot on one hand, the pot upside down; this means hunger. A figure of an Indian in lying position means sickness.