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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
