Many other weapons distinctive to their draughtsmen are shown in this paper.
Fig. 1280. Australian wommeras and clubs.
It may be well to insert here Fig. 1280, showing the wommeras and clubs of the Australians, taken from Curr (d), not only on account of their forms but of the pictorial designs on some of them, which should be compared with those of the Moki and other Indian tribes.
A large number of pictographic figures distinguishing bodies of Indians by different mode of head dress have already been given. Some additional detail may be added about the Absaroka who have in this regard been imitated by the Hidatsa and Arikara.
They wear horse hair taken from the tail, attached to the back of their heads and allowed to hang down their backs. It is arranged in eight or ten strands, each about as thick as a finger and laid parallel with spaces between them of the width of a single strand. Pine gum is then mixed with red ocher or vermilion and by means of other hair, or fibers of any kind laid crosswise, the strands are secured and around each intersection of hair a ball of gum is plastered to hold it in place, secured to the real growth of hair on the back of the head. About four inches further down a similar row of gum balls and cross strings is placed, and so on down to the end. The Indians frequently incorporate the false hair with their own so as to lengthen the latter without any marked evidence of the deception. Nevertheless the transverse fastenings with their gum attachments are present. In picture-writing this is shown upon the figure of a man by parallel lines drawn downward from the back of the head, intersected by cross lines, the whole appearing like small squares or a piece of net. See Figs. [484] and [485], supra.
A quaint account of social designation by the arrangement of the hair among the Northeastern Algonquins is recorded in the Jesuit Relations of 1639, pp. 44-5:
When a girl or woman favors some one who seeks her, she cuts the hair in the fashion adopted by the maidens of France, hanging over the forehead, which is an ugly style as well in this country as in France; St. Paul forbidding women to show their hair. The women here wear their hair in bunches at the back of the head, in the form of a truss, which they decorate with beads when they have them. If, after marrying some one, a woman leaves him without cause, or if, being promised and having accepted some present, she fails to keep her word, the presumptive husband sometimes cuts her hair, which renders her very despicable and prevents her from getting another spouse.
There is a differentiation of this usage among the Pueblos generally, who, when accurate and particular in delineation, designate the women of that tribe by a huge coil of hair over either ear. This custom prevails also among the Coyotèro Apaches, the women wearing the hair in a coil to denote a virgin, while the coil is absent in the case of a married woman.
Regarding the apparent subject matter of pictographs an obvious distinction may be made between hunting and land scenes such as would be familiar to interior tribes and those showing fishing and aquatic habits common to seaboard and lacustrine peoples. Similar and more perspicuous modes of discrimination are available. The general scope of known history, traditions, and myths may also serve in identification. Known habits and fashions of existing or historically-known tribes have the same application, e. g., the portrayal on a drawing of a human face of labrets or nose rings limits the artist to defined regions, and then other considerations may further specify the work.