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Show ABBREVIATION AND REDUCTION. 55 expression of the Canadian voyageurs, a leader of an occasional or volunteer war party, and the sign he reports as follows: " Make first the sign of the pipe, afterwards open the thumb and index- finger of the right hand, back of the hand outward, and move it forward and upward in a curve." This is explained by the author's account in a different connection, that to become recognized as a leader of such a war party as above mentioned, the first act among the tribes using the sign was the consecration, by fasting succeeded by feasting, of a medicine pipe without ornament, which the leader of the expedition afterward bore before him as his badge of authority, and it therefore naturally became an emblematic sign. There may be interest in noting that the " Calendar of the Dakota Nation" ( Bulletin U. S. G. and G. Survey, vol. iii, No 1), gives a figure ( No. 43, A. D. 1842) showing " One Feather," a Sioux chief who raised in that year a large war party against the Crows, which fact is simply denoted by his holding out demonstratively an unornamented pipe. The point urged is that while any sign or emblem can be converted by convention into a symbol, or be explained as such by perverted ingenuity, it is futile to seek for symbolism in the stage of aboriginal development, and to interpret the conception of particular signs by that form of psychologic exuberance were to fall into mooning mysticism. This was shown by a correspondent of the present writer, who enthusiastically lauded the Dakota Calendar ( edited by the latter, and a mere figuration of successive occurrences) as a numerical exposition of the great doctrines of the Sun religion in the equations of time, and proved to his own satisfaction that our Indians preserved her-meneutically the lost geometric cultus of pre- Cushito scientists. He might as well have deciphered it as the tabulated dynasties of the pre- Adamite kings. A lesson was learned by the writer as to the abbreviation of signs, and the possibility of discovering the original meaning of those most obscure, from the attempts of a Cheyenne to convey the idea of old man. He held his right hand forward, bent at elbow, fingers and thumb closed sidewise. This not conveying any sense he found a long stick, bent his back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the stick held, as was before only imagined. There at once was decrepit age dependent on a staff. The |