Native Life: Signing a Treaty

Treaties were part and parcel of frontier life, with treaty parleys occurring frequently, memorialized in some kind of document that required the signatures of all parties.  In addition to an Indian Agent, military commander or other representative of a colonial or federal government, the Native leaders had to sign off.  How to do this when you don't write English, French or whatever language the treaty happens to be in?

For centuries in Europe and American, the convention for a signature by someone who cannot write their name in a given language was an X, followed by an attestation "X, So-and So, his mark, attest Neighbor Who Can Write", etc.  Native signatories to treaties sometimes used the X, but more likely drew pictures of birds or animals to different their signatures.  Whether these designs represented an animal for whom they were name, or whom they wished to protect their signature is unclear.  However, it did provide a way of differentiating each man's signature and attesting to who had signed what treaty.  Nevertheless, forgeries were common.  Micanopy, Leading Chief of the Seminoles, protested that he had never signed the Treaty of Fort Gibson in 1833, stating instead that his signature, a simple X with an attestation had been forged.  Others who knew the older man well, including Osceola and Abiaka, did not doubt Micanopy's story and Ethan Allen Hitchcock's memoirs allude to Native leaders signatures being forged on the Seminole treaties, at least.