Fig. 1068.—They killed a very fat buffalo bull. American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1835-’36. This figure is introduced to show an ingenious differentiation. The rough outline of the buffalo’s forequarters is given sufficiently to show that the arrow penetrates to an unusual depth, which indicates the mass of fat, into the region of the buffalo’s respiratory organs, and therefore there is a discharge of blood not only from the point of entrance of the arrow, but from the nostrils of the animal. No device of an analogous character is found among five hundred of the Dakotan pictographs studied, so that the designation of abnormal fat is made evident.
Fig. 1069.
Fig. 1069.—They killed many Gros Ventres in a village which they assaulted. American-Horse’s Winter Count, 1832-’33. The single scalped head shows the killing. This conventional sign is so common as hardly to require notice.
Fig. 1070.—Killed. Dakota.
Fig. 1070, taken from Mrs. Eastman’s Dakota (e), shows the Dakota pictograph for “killed”: a is a woman and b a man killed, and c and d a boy and girl killed.
Fig. 1071.—Life and death. Ojibwa.
Fig. 1071, taken from Copway (g), gives two characters which severally represent life and death, the black disk representing death and the simple circle life.