There has been discovered in Sumner county, Tennessee, near the stone graves and mounds of Castalian springs, a valuable pictograph, the ancient engraved stone which we have taken the liberty to entitle a Group of Tennessee Mound Builders.
This engraved stone, the property of the Tennessee Historical Society, is a flat, irregular slab of hard limestone, about 19 inches long and 15 inches wide. It bears every evidence of very great age. * * * The stone was found on Rocky creek, in Sumner county, and was presented, with other relics, to the Tennessee Historical Society about twelve years ago. * * *
It is evidently an ideograph of significance, graven with a steady and skillful hand, for a specific purpose, and probably records or commemorates some important treaty or public or tribal event. * * * Indian chiefs fully equipped with the insignia of office, are arrayed in fine apparel. Two leading characters are vigorously shaking hands in a confirmatory way. The banner or shield, ornamented with the double serpent emblem and other symbols, is, doubtless, an important feature of the occasion. Among the historic Indians, no treaty was made without the presence or presentation of the belt of wampum. This, the well-dressed female of the group appears to grasp in her hand, perhaps as a pledge of the contract. The dressing of the hair, the remarkable scalloped skirts, the implements used, the waistbands, the wristlets, the garters, the Indian leggings and moccasins, the necklace and breastplates, the two banners, the serpent emblem, the tattoo stripes, the ancient pipe, all invest this pictograph with unusual interest. * * * The double serpent emblem or ornament upon the banner may have been the badge or totem of the tribe, clan, or family that occupied the extensive earthworks at Castalian springs in Sumner county, near where the stone was found. The serpent was a favorite emblem or totem of the Stone Grave race of Tennessee, and is one of the common devices engraved on the shell gorgets taken from the ancient cemeteries. * * * The circles or sun symbol ornaments on the banners and dresses are the figures most frequently graven on the shell gorgets found near Nashville.
The following summary of the translation, kindly furnished by Mr. Pom K. Soh of an article, “Pictures of Dokatu or so-called bronze bell,” by Mr. K. Wakabayashi (a), in the Bulletin of the Tōkyō Anthropological Society, refers to Pl. LII. The author saw the bell described at the town of Takoka, Japan, in August, 1891. The “pictures” on it were fourteen in number, cast in the metal of the bell, each one occupying a separate compartment and running around the bell in several bands. The author took rubbings of the pictures, lithographs of which are published as illustrations of his article, and from these the eight pictures now presented in actual size are selected, the remainder being of the same general character, and some of them nearly identical with those selected. The information obtained is that the bell, which is iron and not bronze, was procured before, and perhaps long before, the present century from Jisei, in the village of Sasakura in the state of Yetsin, and had been excavated from a mountain at Samki. Copies of the markings upon it were taken in 1817 to a high authority at Yedo, now Tōkyō. It is believed that the markings illustrate or are related to a national story, “Kanden Ko Hitsu,” written by Ban Kokei. A few similar bells or fragments of them, some being bronze, have been found in various parts of the Japanese empire. One, which is bronze, height about 3½ feet, and diameter somewhat more than 1 foot, was dug up in Hanina in the year A. D. 821.
BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY TENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. LII
PICTURES ON DŌTAKU, JAPAN.
The interest of the drawings on Pl. LII, in the present connection, consists in their remarkable similarity, both in form and apparent motive, with several of those found in the western continent and figured in the present work. Thus, a is to be compared with characters on Figs. [437] and [1227] and others referring to the human form, the cross, and the dragon-fly; b with Figs. [57], [165] b and [1261] l; the two characters in c, respectively, with Fig. [1262]; the mantis, and Fig. [1129], one form of star; d with a common turtle form, as in Fig. [50]; e with Fig. [166], an Ojibwa human form, and also exhibiting gesture, and Fig. [113] a Brazilian petroglyph; and f with Fig. [657], a north-eastern Algonquian drawing. The three last-mentioned pictures, e and f and g, exhibit the peculiar internal life organ (often the conventionalized heart), noticed in Figs. [50], [700], and [701], and it is to be remarked that the largest quadruped in g has the life organ connected with the mouth, while the other quadrupeds, and those in h, show no depiction of internal organs. The human figure in g is noticeable for the American form of bow, and the upper character of h is to be compared with Figs. [104] and [148].
SECTION 3.
COMPOSITE FORMS.
The figures in this group are selected from a larger number in which the union of two animals of different kinds or that of an animal and another object indicates the union of the several qualities or attributes supposed to belong to those animals or objects. The form and use of such composite figures are familiar from the publication of the inscriptions on Egyptian monuments and papyri.