It may be desirable also to note, to avoid misconception, that where, throughout this work, mention is made of particulars under the headings of customs, religion, etc., which might be made the subject of graphic illustration in pictographs, and for that reason should be known as preliminary to the attempted interpretation of the latter, the suggestion is not given as a mere hypothesis. Such objective marks and conceptions of the character indicated which can readily be made objective, are in fact frequently found in pictographs and have been understood by means of the preliminary information to which reference is made. When interpretations obtained through this line of study are properly verified, they can take places in the card catalogue little inferior to those of interpretations derived directly from aboriginal pictographers.
The interpretation by means of gesture-signs has already been discussed, Chap. XVIII, Sec. [4].
Capt. Carver (b) describes how an Ojibwa drew the emblem of his own tribe as a deer, a Sioux as a man dressed in skins, an Englishman as a human figure with a hat on his head, and a Frenchman as a man with a handkerchief tied around his head.
In this connection is the quotation from the Historical Collections of Louisiana, Part III, 1851, p. 124, describing a pictograph, as follows: “There were two figures of men without heads, and some entire. The first denoted the dead and the second the prisoners. One of my conductors told me on this occasion that when there are any French among either, they set their arms akimbo, or their hands upon their hips, to distinguish them from the savages, whom they represent with their arms hanging down. This distinction is not purely arbitrary; it proceeds from these people having observed that the French often put themselves in this posture, which is not used among them.”
It is also said suggestively, by C. H. Read (f) in Jour. of the Anthrop. Inst. of Gr. Br. and I., that in the carvings of the West African negroes, the typical white man is constantly figured with a brandy bottle in one hand and a large glass in the other.
Fig. 1261.—Moki characters. The following is the explanation:
a. A beaver.
b. A bear.
c. A mountain sheep (Ovis montana).
d. Three wolf heads.
e. Three jackass rabbits.
f. Cottontail rabbit.
g. Bear tracks.
h. An eagle.
i. Eagle tails.
j. A turkey tail.
k. Horned toads (Phryosoma sp. ?).
l. Lizards.
m. A butterfly.
n. Snakes.
o. A rattlesnake.
p. Deer track.
q. Three bird tracks.
r. Bitterns (wading birds).