message stick

Noun

 * 1)  A piece of wood, etched with angular lines and dots, traditionally used by Australian aborigines to communicate messages between different clans and language groups.
 * 2) * 1889, A. W. Howitt, Australian Message-sticks and Messengers, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Report of the Annual Meeting, Volume 58, |%22message+sticks%22+-intitle:%22%22+-inauthor:%22%22&dq=%22message+stick%22|%22message+sticks%22+-intitle:%22%22+-inauthor:%22%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-ViuT47FMIO6iQeXo9WKCQ&redir_esc=y page 842,
 * The use of message-sticks is not universal in Australian tribes, and the degree of perfection reached in conveying information by them differs much.
 * 1) * 1956, Charles Pearcy Mountford, American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnheim [sic] Land, Art, Myth and Symbolism, |%22message+sticks%22+-intitle:%22%22+-inauthor:%22%22&dq=%22message+stick%22|%22message+sticks%22+-intitle:%22%22+-inauthor:%22%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-ViuT47FMIO6iQeXo9WKCQ&redir_esc=y page 466,
 * The scattered records of message sticks in the anthropological literature of the last seventy-five years indicate that, in one form or another, they have been, or still are being, used over most of aboriginal Australia.