. Contributions to North American ethnology. Vol. I-VII, IX. Indians of North America; Ethnology. THOMAS] EXPLANATION OF FIGURES ON PLATES XII*-XVII*. 119 have some particular significcation especial!}^ applicable to what is here sym- bolized. As some of the cognate words, especially where the aspirate is used, denote "certainty," it is possible that it is used here to signify the certainty of death. Plates XII* to XVII* undoubtedly relate to the manufacture of idols. In the second division of XII* (see Fig. 34) we see the artists painting them with the slip of yucca or maguey leaf,
. Contributions to North American ethnology. Vol. I-VII, IX. Indians of North America; Ethnology. THOMAS] EXPLANATION OF FIGURES ON PLATES XII*-XVII*. 119 have some particular significcation especial!}^ applicable to what is here sym- bolized. As some of the cognate words, especially where the aspirate is used, denote "certainty," it is possible that it is used here to signify the certainty of death. Plates XII* to XVII* undoubtedly relate to the manufacture of idols. In the second division of XII* (see Fig. 34) we see the artists painting them with the slip of yucca or maguey leaf, as described by Colonel Ste- venson, and also by Mrs. Stevenson in her admirable little pamphlet on the manners and customs of the Zuni Indians. In the third division we observe the priests consecrating the implements and the wood out of which their wooden idols are to be made. These plates, I think, refer to the manufacture of both kinds of idols, those of burnt clay and those of wood. The wooden block is here represented by the oblong figure with Cauac characters on it; the implement by the twisted figure on or against the block. My reasons for believing that this is a tool of some kind used in working wood is that in the third division of Plate XXIII*, I see it in the hands of individuals who are evidently doing some- thing to trees. The trees appear to be severed as though cut off by a rude saw of some kind. The figures in the second division of Plates XIII* and XIV* probably represent the idols in the kilns, or in their positions for baking; what the birds on them signify I am unable to say; possibly they relate to auguries. The figures of bent trees in the third and lower divisions of Plate XIII* may denote the temporary cabins in which they worked. The figures in the lower division pi-obably represent what Landa alludes to when he says, "where they placed the wood with a great urn (tinaja) for to keep shut up (or inclosed) the idols all the time they were at work up
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