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Show MALLBBT] WINTER COUNTS OP LONE- DOG'S. SYSTEM. 95 This copy is on a smaller scale than that of Lone- Dog, being a flat and elongated spiral, 2 feet 6 inches by 1 foot 6 inches. The spiral reads from right to left. This chart, which begins as does that of Lone- Dog, ends with the years 186& J09. The present writer has had conversation and correspondence concerning other copies and other translated interpretations of what may be called for convenience and with some right, on account of priority in publication, the Lone- Dog system of wiuter counts. But it also was discovered that there were other systems iu which the same pictographic method was adopted by the Dakotas. An account of the most important of these, viz.: the charts of Baptiste or Battiste Good, American- Horse, Cloud- Shield, and White- cow- killer has been communicated by Dr. William H. Corbusier, assistant surgeon, United States Army, and is presented tn/ ra, page 127, under the title of The Corbusier Winter Counts. The study of all the charts, with their several interpretations, renders plain some points remaining in doubt while the Lone- Dog chart was the only example known. In the first place, it became clear that there was no fixed or uniform mode of exhibiting the order of continuity of the year- characters. They were arranged spirally or lineally, or in serpentine curves, by boustrophedon or direct, starting backward from the last year shown, or proceeding uniformly forward from the first year selected or remembered. Any mode that would accomplish the object of continuity with the means of regular addition seemed to be equally acceptable. So a theoiy advanced that there was some symbolism in the right to left circling of Lone- Dog's chart was aborted, especially when an obvious reproduction of that very chart was made by an Indian with the spiral reversed. It was also obvious that when copies were made, some of them probably from memory, there was no attempt at Chinese accuracy. It was enough to give the graphic or ideographic character, and frequently the character is better defined on one of the charts than on the others for the corresponding year. One interpretation or rather one translation of the interpretation would often throw light on the others. It also appeared that while different events were selected by the recorders of the different systems, there was sometimes a selection of the same event for the same year and sometimes for the next, such as would be natural in the progress of a famine or epidemic, or as an event gradually became known over a vast territory. To exhibit these points more clearly, the characters on the charts of The- Flame, Lone- Dog, and The- Swan have been placed together on Plates VII- XXXIII, and their interpretations, separately obtained and translated, have also been collated, commencing on page 100. Where any information was supplied by the charts of Mato Sapa or of Major Bush and their interpretation, or by other authorities, it is given in connection with the appropriate year. Beference is also made to some coincidences-or explanatory manner noticed in the Corbusier system. |
