Page:String Figures and How to Make Them.djvu/298

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ONE CHIEF
259

The finished pattern is not unlike the pattern in "Two Chiefs," but the two figures are done by entirely different methods. With the exception of the Seventh and Eighth movements, all the others are peculiar to this figure.

The opening of "One Chief" is a modification of Opening A and produces additional loops on the left thumb and the right index. We have already observed

that it is not uncommon, at some stage in the formation of a figure, for all the loops to be dropped from one hand and then new loops to be taken up again (for example in the Caroline Islands "Catch," "Two Chiefs," "Three Stars," and "Coral," the Eskimo "Mouth," the Navaho "Butterfly"); the method, however, by which this is done in the Fifth movement of "One Chief" is entirely novel. It is not usual

to find a finger loop merely turned over in such a simple way as we see it done in the Sixth movement. There is another Caroline Islands figure in which "Three Chiefs" are formed, but the native man who attempted to show it to Dr. Furness was so old and so shaken with palsy that he could not succeed in teaching it.