Among several Indian tribes a black hand on a garment or ornament means “the wearer of this has killed an enemy.” The decoration appears upon Ojibwa bead belts, and the Hidatsa and Arikara state that it is an old custom of showing bravery. The character was noticed at Fort Berthold, and the belt bearing it had been received from Ojibwa Indians of northern Minnesota. The mark of a black hand drawn of natural size or less, and sometimes made by the impress of an actually blackened palm, was also noticed, with the same significance, on articles among the Hidatsa and Arikara in 1881.
Schoolcraft (x) says of the Dakota on the St. Peters river that a red hand indicates that the wearer has been wounded by his enemy, and a black hand that he has slain his enemy.
Irving (b) remarks, in Astoria, of the Arikara warriors: “Some had the stamp of a red hand across their mouths, a sign that they had drunk the life-blood of a foe.”
In other parts of the present paper the significance of the mark is mentioned and may be briefly summarized here.
Among the Sioux a red hand painted on a warrior’s blanket or robe means that he has been wounded by the enemy, and a black hand that he has been in some way unfortunate. Among the Mandan a yellow hand on the breast signifies that the wearer had captured prisoners.
Among the Titon Dakota a hand displayed meant that the wearer had engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with an enemy. The impress of a hand, stained or muddy, upon the body or horse was the Winnebago mark that the wearer had killed a man.
The drawing of linked fingers or joined hands has been before discussed, p. [643], and in several petroglyphs illustrated in this paper the single hand appears. It is a common device on rocks, and doubtless with varieties of signification, as above mentioned in other forms of pictograph.
Fig. 1177.—Joined hands. Moki.
It will suffice now to add that the figure of a hand with extended fingers is very common in the vicinity of ruins in Arizona as a rock etching, and is also frequently seen daubed on the rocks with colored pigments or white clay. But Mr. Thomas V. Keam explains the Arizona drawings of hands on the authority of the living Moki. In his MS., in describing Fig. 1177, he says: