The Ottawa, by a hare.
Several other accounts of the tribal signs of the Iroquois are published, often with illustrations, e. g., in Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York (a), with the following remarks:
When they go to war, and wish to inform those of the party who may pass their path, they make a representation of the animal of their tribe, with a hatchet in his dexter paw; sometimes a saber or a club; and if there be a number of tribes together of the same party, each draws the animal of his tribe, and their number, all on a tree, from which they remove the bark. The animal of the tribe which heads the expedition is always the foremost.
Another account of interest, which does not appear to have been published, was traced and contributed by Mr. William Young, of Philadelphia. It is a deed from the representatives of the Six Nations (the Tuscaroras then being admitted) to the King of Great Britain, dated November 4, 1768, and recorded at the recorder’s office, Philadelphia, in Deed Book I, vol. 5, p. 241. Nearly all of these accounts and illustrations are confused and imperfect. An instructive blunder occurs in the translated signature representing the Mohawk tribe in the above mentioned deed. It is called “The Steel,” which could hardly have been an ancient tribal name, but after study it was remembered that the Mohawks have sometimes been called by a name properly translated the “Flint people.” By some confusion about flint and steel, which were still used in the middle of the last century to produce sparks of fire, perhaps assisted by the pantomime of striking those objects together, the one intended to be indicated, viz, the flint, was understood to be the other, the steel, and so these words were written under the figure, which was so roughly drawn that it might have been taken for a piece of flint or of steel or, indeed, anything else.
EASTERN ALGONQUIAN TRIBAL DESIGNATIONS.
The illustrations in Fig. 483 were drawn in 1888 by a Passamaquoddy Indian, in Maine, near the Canada border. The Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Amalecite are tribal divisions of the Abnaki, who formerly were also called Tarrateens by the more southern New England tribes and Owenunga by the Iroquois. The Micmacs are congeners of the Abnaki, but not classed in their tribal divisions. All the four tribes belong to the Algonquian linguistic stock.
Fig. 483.—Eastern Algonquian tribal designations.
Fig. 483 a is the tribal emblem of the Passamaquoddy. It shows two Indians in a canoe, both using paddles and not poles, following a fish, the pollock. The variation which will appear in the represented use of poles and paddles in the marks of the Algonquian tribes in Maine, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, etc., is said to have originated in the differing character of the waters, shoal or deep, sluggish or rapid, of the regions of the four bodies of Indians whose totems are indicated as next follows, thus requiring the use of pole and paddle, respectively, in a greater or less degree. The animals figured are in all cases repeated consistently by each one of the several delineators, and in all cases there is some device to show a difference between the four canoes, either in their structure or in their mode of propulsion, but these devices are not always consistent. It is therefore probable that the several animals designated constitute the true and ancient totemic emblems, and that the accompaniment of the canoes is a modern differentiation.
b The Maresquite or Amalecite emblem. Two Indians in a canoe, both with poles, following a muskrat.