n the other bowls for a figure of the bird itself. This
interpretation, however, is highly speculative, and should be accepted
only with limitations. I have sometimes thought that the prayer-stick
or paho may originally have represented a bird, and the use of it is
an instance of the substitution[146] of a symbolic effigy of a bird, a
direct survival of the time when a bird was sacrificed to the deity
addressed.

[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXLI

FOOD BOWLS WITH FIGURES OF BIRDS AND FEATHERS FROM SIKYATKI]

[Illustration: BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT PL. CXLII

VASES, BOWLS, AND LADLE, WITH FIGURES OF FEATHERS, FROM SIKYATKI]

The studies of the conventional bird figures which are developed in
the preceding pages make it possible to interpret one of the two
pictures on the food bowl represented in plate CLII, while the
realistic character of the smaller figure leaves no question that we
can rightly identify this also as a bird. In the larger figure the
wings are of unequal size and are tipped with appendages of a more or
less decorative nature. The posterior part of the body is formed of
two triangular extensions, to which feathers are suspended, and the
tail is composed of three large pointed feathers. The head bears the
terraced rain-cloud designs almost universal in pictographs of birds.

It is hardly necessary for me to indicate the head, body, wings, and
legs of the smaller figure, for they are evidently avian, while the
character of the beak would indicate that a parrot or raptorial genus
was intended. The same beak is found in the decoration of a vase with
a bird design, which will later be considered.

From an examination of the various figures of birds on the Sikyatki
pottery, and an analysis of the appendages to the wings, body, and
legs, it is possible to determine the symbolic markings characteristic
of two different kinds of feathers, the large wing or tail feathers
and the so-called breath or body feathers. There is therefore no
hesitation, when we find an object of pottery ornamented with these
symbols, in interpreting them as feathers. Such a bowl is that shown
in plate CXLI, _c_, in which we find a curved line to which are
appended three breast feathers. This curved band from which they hang
may take the form of a circle with two pendent feathers as in plate
CXLI, _d_.

In the design on the bowl figured in plate CXLI,