Lakota winter counts, pictographic records, and record making and remaking histories

摘要

Winter counts are pictographic calendars created and used by certain Native American communities as mnemonic devices for remembering the sequence of events that mark each year, and for retelling community stories. Drawing on resources from the Smithsonian Institution's National Anthropological Archives' winter count collections and related literature, this study reviews and discusses the characteristics of pictographic records, traces their making and remaking histories, and revisits the pictorial tradition in the American history of records and record keeping.