And he said:  “Behold, your grave-posts
Have no mark, no sign, nor symbol,
Go and paint them all with figures;
Each one with its household symbol,
With its own ancestral Totem;
So that those who follow after
May distinguish them and know them.” 
  And they painted on the grave-posts
On the graves yet unforgotten,
Each his own ancestral Totem,
Each the symbol of his household;
Figures of the Bear and Reindeer,
Of the Turtle, Crane, and Beaver,
Each inverted as a token
That the owner was departed,
That the chief who bore the symbol
Lay beneath in dust and ashes. 
  And the Jossakeeds, the Prophets,
The Wabenos, the Magicians,
And the Medicine-men, the Medas,
Painted upon bark and deer-skin
Figures for the songs they chanted,
For each song a separate symbol,
Figures mystical and awful,
Figures strange and brightly colored;
And each figure had its meaning,
Each some magic song suggested. 
  The Great Spirit, the Creator,
Flashing light through all the heaven;
The Great Serpent, the Kenabeek,
With his bloody crest erected,
Creeping, looking into heaven;
In the sky the sun, that listens,
And the moon eclipsed and dying;
Owl and eagle, crane and hen-hawk,
And the cormorant, bird of magic;
Headless men, that walk the heavens,
Bodies lying pierced with arrows,
Bloody hands of death uplifted,
Flags on graves, and great war-captains
Grasping both the earth and heaven! 
  Such as these the shapes they painted
On the birch-bark and the deer-skin;
Songs of war and songs of hunting,
Songs of medicine and of magic,
All were written in these figures,
For each figure had its meaning,
Each its separate song recorded. 
  Nor forgotten was the Love-Song,
The most subtle of all medicines,
The most potent spell of magic,
Dangerous more than war or hunting! 
Thus the Love-Song was recorded,
Symbol and interpretation. 
  First a human figure standing,
Painted in the brightest scarlet;
’T is the lover, the musician,
And the meaning is, “My painting
Makes me powerful over others.” 
  Then the figure seated, singing,
Playing on a drum of magic,
And the interpretation, “Listen! 
’T is my voice you hear, my singing!”
  Then the same red figure seated
In the shelter of a wigwam,
And the meaning of the symbol,
“I will come and sit beside you
In the mystery of my passion!”
  Then two figures, man and woman,
Standing hand in hand together
With their hands so clasped together
That they seemed in one united,
And the words thus represented
Are, “I see your heart within you,
And your cheeks are red with blushes!”
  Next the maiden on an island,
In the centre of an island;
And the song this shape suggested
Was, “Though you were at a distance,
Were upon some far-off island,