Part 8

On the other side are drawings of the sun, clouds with rain descending therefrom, lightning, stars, arrows, foot-prints of the bear, and several other undeterminable characters.

No history of the origin and import of this tablet has been obtained.

Other materials may be mentioned as follows:

BONE.

For instances of the use of bone, refer to several Alaska ivory carvings in this paper, _e. g._, Figure 111, page 192; Comanche buffalo shoulder blade, Figure 137, page 216; Hidatsa shoulder blade, page 151; New Zealand human bone, Figure 34, page 74.

THE LIVING TREE.

An example is to be found in Schoolcraft, IV, p. 253; Pl. 33, Fig. A, where it is stated that Mr. Richard H. Kern furnished a copy of an Indian drawing, which was “found on the trunk of a cottonwood tree in the valley of King’s River, California, and evidently represents the manner of catching different wild animals with the lasso.”

The use of the lasso, and the characters being upon the bark of a living tree, show sufficient reason to believe that this record was of modern workmanship.

WOOD.

The Indians of the Northwest Coast generally employ wood upon which to depict objects of various kinds. These appear to partake of a mythical nature, sometimes becoming absurdly grotesque. Totem posts (Plate LXXXIII, page 199), boats, boat paddles, the boards constituting the front wall of a house, and masks are among the objects used upon which to display artistic skill.

Ottawa drawings are also found upon pipe-stems made of wood, usually ash. Figure 120, page 204, is an example of this.

Among the Arikara boat paddles are used upon which marks of personal distinction are reproduced, as shown in Figure 80, page 182.

Wooden dancing ornaments, such as fanciful representations of the human figure, idols, etc., are generally ornamented with a variety of colors, having them sometimes arranged to represent designs closely related to, if not actually signifying, marks of gentile distinction.

In Alaska, mortuary records are drawn upon slabs of wood. See Figures 113 and 114, page 198. Mnemonic devices, notices of departure, distress, etc., are also drawn upon thin narrow slips of wood, averaging an inch in width, and of sufficient length. See Figures 58 and 59, page 154. A circular piece of wood or board is sometimes drawn upon, showing the human face, and placed upon a pole, and facing in a certain direction, to show the course taken by the survivors of a settlement which has been attacked by an enemy. See Figure 50, page 152.

BARK.

The Ojibwa have, until very recently, been in the habit of tracing characters of various kinds upon the inner surface of birch bark. These records are usually mnemonic, though many pertain to personal exploits. An illustration is given in Figure 139, page 218. The lines appear to have been traced with a sharply-pointed instrument, probably bone, and in some examples the drawings are made by simple puncturing. Sometimes color is applied to the objects delineated, and apparently with reference to specific signification. The strips of bark, varying from an inch to several feet in length, roll up upon drying, and are straightened out for examination by heating near the fire.

SKINS.

This includes scalps. A large number of records upon the hides of animals are mentioned in the present paper. Plate VI with its description in the Dakota Winter Counts is one instance.

FEATHERS.

The Sacramento tribes of California are very expert in weaving blankets of feathers, many of them having really beautiful figures worked upon them. This is reported by Edward M. Kern in Schoolcraft, V, 649, 650.

The feather work in Mexico, Central America and the Hawaiian Islands is well known, often having designs properly to be considered among pictographs, though in general not, at least in modern times, passing beyond ornamentation.

GOURDS.

After gourds have dried the contents are removed and handles are attached; they serve as rattles in dances, and in religious and shamanistic rites. The representations of natural or mythical objects for which the owner may have special reverence are often depicted upon their surfaces. This custom prevails among the Pueblos generally, and, also, among many other tribes, notably those constituting the Siouan linguistic stock.

HORSE HAIR.

The Hidatsa, Arikara, Dakota, and several other tribes of the Northwest plains, use horse hair dyed red as appendages to feathers worn as personal marks of distinction. Its arrangement is significant.

SHELLS, INCLUDING WAMPUM.

The illustrated and exhaustive paper of Mr. W. H. Holmes, in the Second Annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, removes all necessity for present extended mention under this head.

EARTH AND SAND.

Papers by Dr. Washington Matthews, U. S. A., Dr. W. H. Corbusier, U. S. A., and Mr. James Stevenson were read in the Anthropological Society of Washington during the season of 1884-5, giving account of important and entirely novel paintings by the Navajo, Yuman, and Zuni Indians. These paintings were made upon the ground by means of sand, ashes, and powdered vegetable matter of various colors. These were highly elaborate, made immediately preceding certain ceremonies, at the close of which they were obliterated.

Dr. W. J. Hoffman states that when the expedition under command of Capt. G. M. Wheeler, U. S. A., passed through Southern Nevada in 1871, the encampment for one night was at Pai-Uta Charlie’s rancheria, where it was visited by many of the Pai-Uta Indians of that vicinity. On leaving camp the following morning representations of many mounted men, the odometer cart and pack animals were found depicted upon the hard, flat surface of the sand. The Indians had drawn the outlines in life size with sticks of wood, and the work was very artistically done. A mounted expedition was a new thing in that part of the country and amused them not a little.

The well-known animal mounds, sometimes called effigy mounds, of Wisconsin come in this category.

THE HUMAN PERSON.

Pictographs upon the human person may be divided into, 1st, paint on the face; 2d, paint on the body; and, 3d, tattooing, which is also divided into tattoo marks upon the head and tattoo marks upon the body.

PAINT.

Dr. Hoffman, who visited the Hualpai Indians of northern Arizona in 1871, gives an account (see _ante_, p. 52) of their habit of besmearing their bodies and faces with the blood of game killed.

A colored plate, facing page 33 of the report of the Pacific Railroad Expedition, 1856, pt. III, shows the designs adopted by the Mojave Indians for painting the body. These designs consist of transverse lines extending around the body, arms, and legs, or horizontal lines, or different parts may partake of different designs. Clay is now generally used, as was observed by Dr. Hoffman, who visited Camp Mojave in 1871.

For other notices of paint on head and body and the significance of color see _ante_, page 53 _et seq._

Everard F. im Thurn, in his work before cited, page 196, describes the painting of the Indians of Guiana as follows:

The paint is applied either in large masses or in patterns. For example, a man, when he wants to dress well, perhaps entirely coats both his feet up to the ankles with a crust of red; his whole trunk he sometimes stains uniformly with blue-black, more rarely with red, or covers it with an intricate pattern of lines of either colour; he puts a streak of red along the bridge of his nose; where his eyebrows were till he pulled them out he puts two red lines; at the top of the arch of his forehead he puts a big lump of red paint, and probably he scatters other spots and lines somewhere on his face. The women, especially among the Ackawoi, who use more body-paint than other ornament, are more fond of blue-black than of red; and one very favorite ornament with them is a broad band of this, which edges the mouth, and passes from the corners of that to the ears. Some women especially affect certain little figures, like Chinese characters, which look as if some meaning were attached to them, but which the Indians are either unable or unwilling to explain.

The Serranos, near Los Angeles, California, formerly cut lines upon the trees and posts, marking boundaries of land, these lines corresponding to those adopted by the owner as facial decorations. See page 182.

During his connection with the Yellowstone expedition of 1873, under the command of General Stanley, Dr. Hoffman found elaborate narratives of hostile encounters between the Absaroka and Dakota Indians incised upon the bark of cotton-wood trees, in the valley of the Musselshell River. The Absaroka were shown by having the bark in the forehead removed, thus corresponding to their war custom of painting that portion of the face red, while the Dakota were denoted by having only the part of the face from the eyes down to the chin removed, referring to their custom of painting that part of the face. The number of individuals was shown by the outline of one individual of either tribe, with added short lines. The total number of arms was shown by drawing one gun and the requisite number of spots. The number of horses was indicated in a similar manner.

See also with reference to paint on the human person, pages 165 and 167.

The present writer, when reading the magnificent work of Conte Giovanni Gozzadini, Di Ulteriori Scoperte Nell’ Antica Necropoli a Marzabotto nel Bolognese, Bologna, 1870, noticed in Plate XII, Figure 1, the representation of a human head in bronze of great antiquity, and that it shows incised lines over the superior malar region, below and outward from the outer canthus of the eye. To any one recently familiar with tattooing and the lines of face painting this gives a decided suggestion, and is offered as such.

The head is reproduced in Figure 22.

A less distinct suggestion arose from the representation of a “Fragment of a lustrous black bowl, with an incised decoration filled with white chalk,” pictured in Troja, etc., by Dr. Henry Schliemann, New York, 1884, p. 31, No. 1, and here presented, Figure 23. In the absence of knowledge as to the connection of the two sets of parallel lines on each side of the face, with the remainder of the bowl, it is not possible to form any decision as to whether there was any intention to portray face painting or tattooing, or whether the lines merely partook of the general pattern of the bowl. The lines, however, instantly caught the present writer’s eye as connected with the subject now under consideration.

TATTOOING.

Tattooing, a permanent marking of the skin as distinguished from the temporary painting, and accomplished by the introduction of coloring matter under the cutaneous epidermis, was formerly practiced extensively among the Indians of North America. Some authorities for this statement are here quoted, as also some descriptions of the custom where still practiced.

Capt. John Smith, in “The True Travels, Adventures, etc.,” Richmond, 1819, Vol. I, page 130, is made to say of the Virginia Indians:

“They adorne themselues most with copper beads and paintings. Their women, some haue their legs, hands, breasts and face cunningly imbrodered with divers workes, as beasts, serpents, artificially wrought into their flesh with blacke spots.”

The Innuit, according to Cook, practiced tattooing perpendicular lines upon the chin of women, and sometimes similar lines extending backward from near the outer portions of the eyes.

Mr. Gatschet reports that very few Klamath men now tattoo their faces, but such as are still observed have but a single line of black running from the middle of the lower lip to the chin. The women have three lines, one from each corner of the mouth and one down over the center of the chin.

The Modoc women tattoo three blue lines, extending perpendicularly from the center and corners of the lower lip to the chin. See Bancroft, Native Races, I, p. 332.

Stephen Powers says (Contrib. N. A. Ethnol., III, p. 20) that the Karol, California, squaws tattoo in blue three narrow fern leaves perpendicularly on the chin, one falling from each corner of the mouth and one in the middle. For this purpose, they are said to employ soot gathered from a stone, mingled with the juice of a certain plant.

The same author reports, page 76: “Nearly every (Hupâ, California) man has ten lines tattooed across the inside of the left arm, about half way between the wrist and the elbow; and in measuring shell-money, he takes the string in his right hand, draws one end over his left thumbnail, and if the other end reaches to the uppermost of the tattoo lines, the five shells are worth $25 in gold or $5 a shell. Of course it is only one in ten thousand that is long enough to reach this high value.”

The same author, on page 96, says: The squaws (Pat´awāt, Cal.) tattoo in blue three narrow pinnate leaves perpendicularly on their chins, and also lines of small dots on the backs of their hands.

He reports, page 148, of the Kas´tel Pomo: The women of this and other tribes of the Coast Range frequently tattoo a rude representation of a tree or other object, covering nearly the whole abdomen and breast.

Of the Wintūns of California the same author says (page 233) that the squaws all tattoo three narrow lines, one falling from each corner of the mouth, and one between.

See also page 167 _infra_.

Rev. M. Eells says (Bull. U. S. Geol. and Geog. Survey, III, p. 75) of the Twana Indians: A little of this tattooing is done, but much less than formerly, and chiefly now among the children.

Blue marks tattooed upon a Mojave woman’s chin denotes that she is married. See Pacific R. R. Exped., III, 1856, p. 33.

The only remarkable instance of tattooing now among the Hidatsa is that of Lean-Wolf, the present second chief of the tribe. The ornamentation consists of horizontal stripes, from one-third to one-half an inch broad, running from the middle of the breast around the right side of the body to the spinal column. The right arm and the right leg are encircled by similar bands, between which there are spaces of equal width. Lean-Wolf professed not to be able to give the origin and history of this ornamentation, although, he represents himself with it upon pictographs relating to personal events of warfare and the chase.

Bancroft (Native Races, Vol. I, p. 48) says of the Eskimo, that the females tattoo lines on their chins; the plebeian female of certain bands has one vertical line in the center and one parallel to it on either side. The higher classes mark two vertical lines from each corner of the mouth. On page 72 he says that young Kadiak wives tattoo the breast and adorn the face with black lines. The Kuskoquim women sew into their chin two parallel blue lines. This color is applied by drawing a thread under the skin or pricking it with a needle. On page 117 he says that the Chippewyans have tattooed cheeks and foreheads. Both sexes have blue or black bars or from one to four straight lines to distinguish the tribe to which they belong; they tattoo by entering an awl or needle under the skin and on drawing it out, immediately rubbing powdered charcoal into the wounds. On page 127 he states that on the Yukon River among the Kutchins, the men draw a black stripe down the forehead and the nose, frequently crossing the forehead and cheeks with red lines and streaking the chin, alternately with red and black, and the women tattoo the chin with a black pigment.

It will be observed that these statements by Bancroft, about tattooing among the Hyperboreans, seem to be confined to the face, except as is mentioned among the Kadiak, where the women tattoo the breast, and that these tattoo marks seem to be simple straight lines, either vertical or horizontal.

* * * * *

In this place is properly inserted the following report of original research among the Haidas on this subject, by Mr. James G. Swan, of Port Townsend, Washington, for which the thanks of this Bureau are tendered to him.

TATTOO MARKS OF THE HAIDA INDIANS OF QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS, B. C., AND THE PRINCE OF WALES ARCHIPELAGO, ALASKA.

By JAMES G. SWAN.

H. H. Bancroft, in his “Native Races, Pacific States,” Vol. I, p. 155, includes in the Haida family the nations occupying the coast and islands from the southern extremity of Prince of Wales Archipelago to the Bentinck Arms in about 52° N.

Their territory is bounded on the north and east by the Thlinkeet and Carrier nations of the Hyperboreans, and on the south by the Nootka family of the Columbians.

Its chief nations, or, more correctly speaking, bands, whose boundaries, however, can rarely be fixed with precision, are the Massets, Skiddegates, Cumshawas, Laskeets, and the Skringwai, of Queen Charlotte Islands: the Kaigani, Howkan, Klemakoan, and Kazan, of Prince of Wales Archipelago; the Chimsyans, about Fort Simpson and on Chatham Sound; the Nass and the Skenas, on the rivers of the same name; the Sebasses, on Pitt Archipelago and the shores of Gardiner Channel, and the Millbank Sound Indians, including the Hailtzas, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, etc.

Among all the tribes or bands belonging to the Haida family, the practice of tattooing the person in some manner is common; but the most marked are the Haidas proper, or those living on Queen Charlotte Islands, and the Kaiganis, of Prince of Wales Archipelago, Alaska. Of the Haida tribe, H. H. Bancroft says (Works 1882, Vol. I, p. 159), “Besides the regular lip piece, ornaments various in shape and material, of shell, bone, wood, or metal, are worn, stuck in the lips, nose, and ears, apparently according to the caprice or taste of the wearer, the skin being sometimes, though more rarely, tattooed to correspond.” The authors quoted by Bancroft for this information are Mayne’s British Columbia, p. 282; Barrett-Lennard’s Travels, pp. 45, 46; Poole’s Queen Charlotte Islands, pp. 75-311; Dunn’s Oregon, pp. 279, 285, and Reed, who says, “The men habitually go naked, but when they go off on a journey they wear a blanket.”

How this latter writer, presuming he speaks from personal experience, could have seen naked Haida men without noticing tattoo marks, I cannot understand. On page 182 of the same volume of Bancroft, footnote, is the following: “‘The habit of tattooing the legs and arms is common to all the women of Vancouver’s Island; the men do not adopt it.’ Grant, in Lond. Geog. Soc. Jour., Vol. XXVII, p. 307. ‘No such practice as tattooing exists among these natives.’ Sproat’s Scenes, p. 27.”

What Grant says applies not to the women of Vancouver’s Island, but to those of Queen Charlotte Islands. Sproat seems to have given more of his attention to some fancied terminal in their language, upon which he builds his theory of the “Aht” nation, than to the observance of their personal peculiarities. I am of the opinion, judging from my own observation of over twenty years among the coast tribes, that but few females can be found among the Indians, not only on Vancouver’s Island, but all along the coast to the Columbia River, and perhaps even to California, that are _not_ marked with some device tattooed on their hands, arms, or ankles, either dots or straight lines; but of all the tribes mentioned, the Haidas stand pre-eminent for tattooing, and seem to be excelled only by the natives of the Fiji Islands or the King’s Mills Group in the South Seas. The tattoo marks of the Haidas are heraldic designs or the family totem, or crests of the wearers, and are similar to the carvings depicted on the pillars and monuments around the homes of the chiefs, which casual observers have thought were idols.

In a memoir written by me on the Haida Indians, for the Smithsonian Institution, and published as No. 267 of Contributions to Knowledge, I have given illustrations of various tattoo designs and heraldic carvings in wood and stone, but did not attempt to delineate the position or appearance of those designs upon their bodies or limbs, although all the tattoo marks represented in that memoir were copied by me directly from the persons of the Haidas, as stated in the illustrations.

The publication of this memoir, with its illustrations, which I showed to the Haidas and Kaiganis in 1875, during my cruise to Alaska in the United States revenue steamer Wolcott, gave them confidence in me that I had not made the drawings from idle curiosity, and in February, 1879, I was fortunate enough to meet a party of Haida men and women in Port Townsend, Washington, who permitted me to copy their tattoo marks again.

These designs are invariably placed on the men between the shoulders, just below the back of the neck, on the breast, on the front part of both thighs, and on the legs below the knee. On the women they are marked on the breast, on both shoulders, on both fore-arms, from the elbow, down over the back of the hands, to the knuckles, and on both legs below the knee to the ankle.

When the Haidas visit Victoria or the towns on Puget Sound they are dressed in the garb of white people and present a respectable appearance, in marked contrast with the Indians from the west coast of Vancouver’s Island, or the vicinity of Cape Flattery, who dress in a more primitive manner, and attract notice by their more picturesque costumes than do the Haidas, about whom there is nothing outwardly of unusual appearance, except the tattoo marks on the hands of the women, which show their nationality at a glance of the most careless observer.

As I before remarked, almost all of the Indian women of the northwest coast have tattoo marks on their hands and arms, and some on the face; but as a general thing these marks are mere dots or straight lines, having no particular significance. With the Haidas, however, every mark has its meaning; those on the hands and arms of the women indicate the family name, whether they belong to the bear, beaver, wolf, or eagle totems, or any of the family of fishes. As one of them quaintly remarked to me, “If you were tattooed with the design of a swan, the Indians would know your family name.”

Although it is very easy to distinguish the Haida women from those of other tribes by seeing the tattoo marks on the backs of their hands, yet very few white persons have cared to know the meaning of these designs, or are aware of the extent of the tattoo marks on the persons of both sexes.

In order to illustrate this tattooing as correctly as possible, I inclose herewith a view (Figure 24) taken at Massett, Queen Charlotte Island, of the carved columns in front of the chief’s residence; and also sketches of the tattoo marks on two women and their husbands taken by me at Port Townsend.

It should be borne in mind that during their festivals and masquerade performances the men are entirely naked and the women have only a short skirt reaching from the waist to the knee; the rest of their persons are exposed, and it is at such times that the tattoo marks show with the best effect, and the rank and family connection known by the variety of designs.

Like all the other coast tribes, the Haidas are careful not to permit the intrusion of white persons or strangers to their Tomanawos ceremonies, and as a consequence but few white people, and certainly none of those who have ever written about those Indians, have been present at their opening ceremonies when the tattoo marks are shown.

My information was derived from the Haidas themselves, who explained to me while I was making the drawings, and illustrated some of the positions assumed in their dances by both sexes.