arts, has no therapeutic significance. Very few even pretended
remedies were administered to the natives and probably never by the
professional shaman, who worked by incantation, often pulverizing and
mixing the substances mystically used, to prevent their detection.
The same mixtures were employed in divination. The author particularly
mentions Mandan ceremonies, in which a white "medicine" stone, as
hard as pyrites, was produced by rubbing in the hand snow or the white
feathers of a bird. The blowing away of the disease, considered to be
introduced by a supernatural power foreign to the body, was a common
part of the juggling performance.

A sign for _stone_ is as follows: With the back of the arched right
hand (H) strike repeatedly in the palm of the left, held horizontal,
back outward, at the height of the breast and about a foot in front;
the ends of the fingers point in opposite directions. (_Dakota_ I.)
From its use when the stone was the only hammer.

A suggestive sign for _knife_ is reported, viz: Cut past the mouth
with the raised right hand. (_Wied._) This probably refers to the
general practice of cutting off food, as much being crammed into the
mouth as can be managed and then separated from the remaining mass
by a stroke of a knife. This is specially the usage with fat and
entrails, the Indian delicacies.

An old sign for _tomahawk, ax_, is as follows: Cross the arms and
slide the edge of the right hand, held vertically, down over the left
arm. (_Wied._) This is still employed, at least for a small hatchet,
or "dress tomahawk," and would be unintelligible without special
knowledge. The essential point is laying the extended right hand in
the bend of the left elbow. The sliding down over the left arm is an
almost unavoidable but quite unnecessary accompaniment to the sign,
which indicates the way in which the hatchet is usually carried.
Pipes, whips, bows and arrows, fans, and other dress or emblematic
articles of the "buck" are seldom or never carried in the bend of the
left elbow as is the ax. The pipe is usually held in the left hand.

The following sign for _Indian village_ is given by Wied: Place the
open thumb and forefinger of each hand opposite to each other, as if
to make a circle, but leaving between them a small interval; afterward
move them from above downward simultaneously. The villages of the
tribes with which the author was longest resident, particularly the
Mandans and Arikaras, were s