CHAPTER II.

PETROGLYPHS IN NORTH AMERICA.

SECTION 1.

CANADA.

The information thus far obtained about petroglyphs in Canada is meager. This may be partly due to the fact that through the region of the Dominion now most thoroughly known the tribes have generally resorted for their pictographic work to the bark of birch trees, which material is plentiful and well adapted for the purpose. Indeed the same fact affords an explanation of the paucity of rock-carvings or paintings in the lands immediately south of the boundary line separating the United States from the British possessions. It must also be considered that the country on both sides of that boundary was in general heavily timbered, and that even if petroglyphs are there they may not even yet have been noticed. But that the mere plenty of birch bark does not evince the actual absence of rock-pictures in regions where there was also an abundance of suitable rocks, and where the native inhabitants were known to be pictographers, is shown by the account given below of the multitudes of such pictures lately discovered in a single district of Nova Scotia. It is confidently believed that many petroglyphs will yet be found in the Dominion. Others may be locally known and possibly already described in publications which have escaped the researches of the present writer. In fact, from correspondence and oral narrations, there are indications of petroglyphs in several parts of the Dominion besides those mentioned below, but their descriptions are too vague for presentation here. For instance, Dr. Boas says that he has seen a large number of petroglyphs in British Columbia, of which neither he nor any other traveler has made distinct report.

NOVA SCOTIA.

The only petroglyphs yet found in the peninsula of Nova Scotia are in large numbers within a small district in Queens county, and they comprise objects unique in execution and in interest. They were examined by the present writer in the field seasons of 1887 and 1888, and some were copied by him, but many more copies were taken in the last-mentioned year by Mr. George Creed, of South Rawdon, Nova Scotia, who had guided the writer to the locality. Attention was at first confined to Fairy lake and its rocks. This lake is really a bay of a larger lake which is almost exactly on the boundary line between Annapolis and Queens counties, one of those forming the chain through which the Liverpool river runs, and called Cegemacaga in More’s History of Queens County (_a_), but according to Dr. Silas Rand in his Reading Book in the Micmac Language (_a_), Kejimkoojik, translated by him as “swelled parts,” doubtless referring to the expansion of the Maitland river at its confluence with the Liverpool river.

The Fairy rocks, as distinct from others in the lake, are three in number, and are situated on the east side of Kejimkoojik lake and south of the entrance to Fairy lake. The northernmost of the three rocks is immediately at the entrance, the westernmost and central rock showing but a small surface at high water and at the highest stage of the water being entirely submerged. Three other inscribed rocks are about 2 miles south of these, at Piels (a corruption of Pierre’s) point, opposite an island called Glodes or Gload island, so named from a well-known Micmac family. These rocks are virtually a continuation of the same formation with depressions between them. Two other localities in the vicinity where the rocks are engraved, as hereafter described, are at Fort Medway river and Georges lake. As they are all of the same character, on the same material, and were obviously made by the same people, they are all classed together, when referred to in this paper, as at Kejimkoojik lake. All of these rocks are of schistose slate of the Silurian formation, and they lie with so gentle a dip that their magnitudes vary greatly with a slight change in the height of the water. On August 27, 1887, when, according to the reports of the nearest residents, the water was one foot above the average summer level, the unsubmerged portion of the central rock then surrounded by water was an irregular oval, the dimensions of which were 47 by 60 feet. The highest points of the Fairy rocks at that date were no more than three and few were more than two feet above the surface of the water. The inclination near the surface is so small that a falling of the water of one foot would double the extent of that part of the surface which, by its smoothness and softness, is adapted to engraving. The inclination at Piels point is steeper, but still allows a great variation of exposed surface in the manner mentioned.

Mr. Creed first visited the Fairy rocks in July, 1881. His attention was directed exclusively to the northernmost rock, which was then more exposed than it was in September, 1887, and much of the inscribed portion seen by him in 1881 was under water in 1887. The submerged parts of the rocks adjoining those exposed are covered with incisions. Many inscriptions were seen in 1881 by Mr. Creed through the water, and others became visible through a water glass in 1887. His recollection of the inscribed dates seen in 1881 is that some with French names attached were of years near 1700, and that the worn appearance of the figures and names corresponded with the lapse of time indicated by those dates. A number of markings were noticed by him which are not found in the parts now exposed, and were evidently more ancient than most of the engravings on the latter. From other sources of information it is evident that either from a permanent rise in the water of the lake or from the sinking of the rocks, they formerly showed, within the period of the recollection of people now living, a much larger exposed surface than of late years, and that the parts long since permanently submerged were covered with engravings. The inference is that those engravings were made before Europeans had visited the locality.

It is to be specially remarked that the exposed surfaces where the rocks were especially smooth were completely marked over, no space of 3 inches square being unmarked, and over nearly all of those choice parts there were two, and in many cases three, sets of markings, above one another, recognizable by their differing distinctness. It also seemed that the second or third marking was upon plane surfaces where the earlier markings had been nearly obliterated by time. With pains and skill the earlier markings can be traced, and these are the outlines which from intrinsic evidence are Indian, whereas the later and more sharply marked outlines are obviously made by civilized men or boys, the latest being mere initials or full names of persons, with dates attached. Warning must be given that the ancient markings, which doubtless were made by the Micmacs, will probably not only escape the attention of the casual visitor, but even that an intelligent expert observer who travels to the scene with some information on the subject, and for the express purpose of finding the incisions, may fail to see anything but names, ships, houses, and similar figures of obviously modern design. This actually occurred within the week when the present writer was taking copies of the drawings by a mode of printing which left no room for fancy or deception. Indeed, frequently the marks were not distinctly apparent until after they had been examined in the printed copies.

The mode in which the copies were taken was by running over and through their outlines a blue aniline pencil, and then pressing a wetted sheet of ordinary printing paper upon them, so that the impression was actually taken by the process of printing. During the two field seasons mentioned, with the aid of Mr. Creed, three hundred and fifty different engravings and groups of engravings were thus printed. Some of these prints were of large dimensions, and included from ten to fifty separate characters and designs.

On the parts exposed in 1887 there were dates from 1800 to the current year, the number for the last year being much the greatest, which was explained by the fact that the wonderfully beautiful lake had been selected for a Sunday-school excursion. Over the greater part of the surface visible in 1887 there were few levels specially favorable for marking, and when these were found the double or treble use was in some instances noticed.

After the writer had inspected the rocks and discovered their characteristics, and learned how to distinguish and copy their markings, it seemed that, with the exception of a few designs recently dug or chipped out by lumbermen or visitors, almost always initials, the only interesting or ancient portions were scratchings which could be made on the soft slate by any sharp instrument. The faces of the rocks were immense soft and polished drawing-slates, presenting to any person who had ever drawn or written before an irresistible temptation to draw or write. The writer, happening to have with him an Indian stone arrow which had been picked up in the neighborhood, used its point upon the surface, and it would make as good scratches as any found upon the rocks except the very latest, which were obviously cut by the whites with metal knives.

As is above suggested, the peculiar multiplication of the characters upon the most attractive of the slates affords evidence as to their relative antiquity superior to that generally found in petroglyphs. The existence of two or three different sets of markings, all visible and of different degrees of obliteration or distinctness, is in itself important; but, in addition to that, it is frequently the case that the second and third in the order of time have associated with them dates, from which the relative antiquity of the faintest, the dateless, can be to some extent estimated. Dates of the third and most recent class are attached to English names and are associated with the forms of English letters; those of the second class accompany French names, and in some cases have French designs. Figs. 1 and 2, about one-fourth original size, are presented to give an idea of these peculiar palimpsests.

For examples of other copies printed from the rocks at Kejimkoojik lake, see Figs. 549, 550, 654, 655, 656, 657, 658, 717, 718, 739, 740, 741, 1254, 1255, and 1262. These offer intrinsic evidence of the Micmac origin of the early class of engravings.

The presence of French names and styles of art in the drawings is explained by a story which was communicated by Louis Labrador, whose great-grandfather, old Ledore, according to his account, guided a body of French Acadians who, at the time of the expulsion, were not shipped off with the majority. They escaped the English in 1756 and traveled from the valley of Annapolis to Shelbourne, at the extreme southeast of the peninsula. During that passage they halted for a considerable time to recruit in the beautiful valley along the Kejimkoojik lake, on the very ground where these markings appear, which also was on the ancient Indian trail. Another local tradition, told by a resident of the neighborhood, gives a still earlier date for the French work. He says that after the capture of Port Royal, now Annapolis, in 1710, a party of the defeated Frenchmen, with a number of Indians as guides, went with their cattle to the wide meadows upon Kejimkoojik lake and remained there for a long time. It is exceedingly probable that the French would have been attracted to scratch on this fascinating smooth slate surface whether they had observed previous markings or not, but it seems evident that they did scratch over such previous markings. The latter, at least, antedated the beginning of the eighteenth century.

A general remark may be made regarding the Kejimkoojik drawings, that the aboriginal art displayed in them did not differ in any important degree from that shown in other drawings of the Micmacs and the Abnaki in the possession of the Bureau of Ethnology. Also that the rocks there reveal pictographic tendencies and practices which suggest explanations of similar work in other regions where less evidence remains of intent and significance. The attractive material of the slates and their convenient situation tempted past generations of Indians to record upon them the images of their current thoughts and daily actions. Hence the pictographic practice went into operation at this locality with unusual vigor and continuity. Although at Kejimkoojik lake there is an exceptional facility for determining the relative dates of the several horizons of scratchings, the suggestion there evoked may help to ascertain similar data elsewhere.

ONTARIO.

Mr. Charles Hallock kindly communicates information concerning pictographs on Nipigon bay, which is a large lake in the province of Ontario, 30 miles northwest of Lake Superior, with which it is connected by Nipigon river. He says:

The pictographs, which are principally of men and animals, occupy a zone some 60 feet long and 5 feet broad, about midway of the face of the rock; they are painted in blood-red characters, much darker than the color of the cliff itself.

He also, later, incloses a letter received by himself from Mr. Newton Flanagan, of the Hudson Bay Company, an extract from which is as follows:

About the dimensions of the red rock in Nipigon bay, upon which appear the Indian painted pictures, as near as I can give you at present, the face of the rock fronting the water is about 60 feet, rising to a greater height as it runs inland. The width along the water is something like 900 yards, depth quite a distance inland. The pictures are from 10 to 15 or perhaps 20 feet above the water; the pictures are representations of human figures, Indians in canoes, and of wild animals. They are supposed to have been painted ages ago, by what process or for what reason I am unable to tell you, nor do I know how the paint is made indelible.

As far as I can gather, the Indians here have no traditions in regard to those paintings, which I understand occur in several places throughout the country, and none of the Indians hereabouts nowadays practice any such painting.

MANITOBA.

Mr. Hallock also furnishes information regarding a petroglyph, the locality of which he gives as follows: Roche Percée, on the Souris river, in Manitoba, near the international boundary, 270 miles west of Dufferin, and nearly due north from Bismarck. This is an isolated rock in the middle of a plain, covered with pictographs of memorable events. It stands back from the river a half mile.

Mr. A. C. Lawson (_a_) gives an illustrated account of petroglyphs on the large peninsula extending into the Lake of the Woods and on an island adjacent to it. Strictly speaking this peninsula is in the district of Keewatin, but it is very near the boundary line of Manitoba, to which it is attached for administrative purposes. The account is condensed as follows:

On the north side of this peninsula, i. e., on the south shore of the northern half of the lake, about midway between the east and west shores, occurs one of the two sets of hieroglyphic markings. Lying off shore at a distance of a quarter to a half a mile, and making with it a long sheltered channel, is a chain of islands, trending east and west. On the south side of one of these islands, less than a mile to the west of the first locality, is to be seen the other set of inscriptions. The first set occurs on the top of a low, glaciated, projecting point of rock, which presents the characters of an ordinary roche moutonnée. The rock is a very soft, foliated, green, chloritic schist, into which the characters are more or less deeply carved. The top of the rounded point is only a few feet above the high-water mark of the lake, whose waters rise and fall in different seasons through a range of ten feet. The antiquity of the inscriptions is at once forced upon the observer upon a careful comparison of their weathering with that of the glacial grooves and striæ, which are very distinctly seen upon the same rock surface. Both the ice grooves and carved inscriptions are, so far as the eye can judge, identical in extent of weathering, though there was doubtless a considerable lapse of time between the disappearance of the glaciers and the date of the carving.

The island on which were found the other inscriptions is one of the many steep rocky islands known among the Indians as Ka-ka-ki-wa-bic min-nis, or Crow-rock island. The rock is a hard greenstone, not easily cut, and the inscriptions are not cut into the rock, but are painted with ochre, which is much faded in places. The surface upon which the characters are inscribed forms an overhanging wall protected from the rain, part of which has fallen down.

The Indians of the present day have no traditions about these inscriptions beyond the supposition that they must have been made by the “old people” long ago.

The sketches published as copies of these glyphs show spirals, concentric circles, crosses, horseshoe forms, arrow shapes, and other characters similar to those found on rocks in the southwestern part of the United States, and also to petroglyphs in Brazil, examples from both of which regions are presented in this work, under their appropriate headings.

BRITISH COLUMBIA.

Dr. Franz Boas (_a_) published an account of a petroglyph on Vancouver island (now presented as Fig. 3) which, slightly condensed, is translated as follows:

The accompanying rock picture is found on the eastern shore of Sproat lake, near its southern outlet. Sproat lake lies about 10 kilometers north of the upper end of the Alberni fiord, which cuts deep into the interior of Vancouver island. In former times this region was the territory of the Hōpetschisāth, a tribe of the Nootka or Aht, who even now have a village some miles below the lake, at the entrance of Stamp river into the main river. That tribe, according to the statement of some of its older members, was a branch of the Kowitchin, who occupy the east side of Vancouver island, some kilometers northeast of the upper end of Alberni fiord. At that time the Ts’ēschāáth, another tribe of the Nootka, are said to have ascended the fiord and mixed with the Hōpetschisāth. The present inhabitants of the region know nothing concerning the origin of the rock picture. According to their legend, the rock on which it is carved was once the house of Kwótiath. Kwótiath is the wandering divinity in Nootka mythology, and corresponds approximately to the raven of the Tlinkit and Haida, the Qäls of the Kowitchin. The picture is found on a perpendicular rock wall about 7 meters high, which drops directly into the lake, so that it was necessary to make the copy while standing in the water. The rock is traversed in the middle by a broad cleft, narrowing below, from which blocks have fallen out which bore part of the drawing. To the north and south of the rock wall the shore rises gently, but rocky portions are found everywhere. The lines of the drawing are flat grooves, about two or three fingers’ breadth, and in many places are so weathered as to be hardly recognizable. They have been scraped into the rock probably by the points of sticks rubbing moist sand against it. No marks of blows of any kind are found. The figures are here given in the same relative position in which they are found on the rock, except that the upper one on the right hand is at a distance from all the others, at the southern end of the rock. The objects represented are evidently fishes or marine monsters. The middle figure to the left of the cleft may be a manned boat, the fore part of which is probably destroyed.

Dr. Boas says that the copy as found in the Verhandlungen is incorrect. The design on the right hand is reversed and is now corrected.

Mr. G. M. Sproat (_a_) mentions this petroglyph:

It is rudely done and apparently not of an old date. There are half a dozen figures intended to represent fishes or birds--no one can say which. The natives affirm that Quawteaht made them. In their general character these figures correspond to the rude paintings sometimes seen on wooden boards among the Ahts, or on the seal-skin buoys that are attached to the whale and halibut harpoons and lances. The meaning of these figures is not understood by the people; and I dare say if the truth were known, they are nothing but feeble attempts on the part of individual artists to imitate some visible objects which they had strongly in their minds.

SECTION 2.

UNITED STATES.

Drawings or paintings on rocks are distributed generally over the greater part of the territory of the United States.

They are found on bowlders formed by the sea waves or polished by ice of glacial epochs; on the faces of rock ledges adjoining lakes and streams; on the high walls of canyons and cliffs; on the sides and roofs of caves; in short, wherever smooth surfaces of rock appear. Yet, while they are so frequent, there are localities to be distinguished in which they are especially abundant and noticeable. They differ markedly in character of execution and apparent subject-matter.

An obvious division can be made between the glyphs bearing characters carved or pecked and those painted without incision. There is also a third, though small, class in which the characters are both incised and painted. This division seems to coincide to a certain extent with geographic areas and is not fully explained by the influence of materials; it may, therefore, have some relation to the idiosyncrasy or development of the several authors, and consequently to tribal habitat and migrations.

In examining a chart of the United States in use by the Bureau of Ethnology, upon which the distribution of the several varieties of petroglyphs is marked, two facts are noticeable: First, the pecked and incised characters are more numerous in the northern and those expressed in colors more numerous in the southern areas. Second, there are two general groupings, distinguished by typical styles, one in the north Atlantic states and the other in the south Pacific states.

The north Atlantic group is in the priscan habitat of the tribes of the Algonquian linguistic family, and extends from Nova Scotia southward to Pennsylvania, where the sculpturings are frequent, especially on the Susquehanna, Monongahela, and Alleghany rivers, and across Ohio from Lake Erie to the Kanawha river, in West Virginia. Isolated localities bearing the same type are found westward on the Mississippi river and a few of its western tributaries, to and including the Wind river mountains, in Wyoming, the former habitat of the Blackfeet Indians. All of these petroglyphs present typical characters, sometimes undefined and complicated. From their presumed authors, they have been termed the Algonquian type. Upon close study and comparison they show many features in common which are absent in extra-limital areas.

Immediately south of the Kanawha river, in West Virginia, and extending southward into Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, the pecked or sculptured petroglyphs are replaced by painted figures of a style differing from the Algonquian. These are in the area usually designated as Cherokee territory, but there is no evidence that they are the work of that tribe; indeed, there is no indication of their authorship. The absence of pecked characters in this area is certainly not due to an absence of convenient material upon which to record them as the country is as well adapted to the mode of incision as is the northern Atlantic area.

Upon the Pacific slope a few pecked as well as colored petroglyphs occur scattered irregularly throughout the extreme northern area west of the Sierra Nevada, but on the eastern side of that range of mountains petroglyphs appear in Idaho, which have analogues extending south to New Mexico and Arizona, with remarkable groups at intervals between these extremes. All of these show sufficient similarity of form to be considered as belonging to a type which is here designated “Shoshonean.” Tribes of that linguistic family still occupy, and for a long time have occupied, that territory. Most of this Shoshonean group consists of pecked or incised characters, though in the southern area unsculptured paintings predominate.

On the western side of the Sierra Nevada, from Visalia southward, at Tulare agency, and thence westward and southward along the Santa Barbara coast, are other groups of colored petroglyphs showing typical features resembling the Shoshonean. This resemblance may be merely accidental, but it is well known that there was intercourse between the tribes on the two sides of the Sierra Nevada, and the Shoshonean family is also represented on the Pacific slope south of the mountain range extending from San Bernardino west to Point Conception. In this manner the artistic delineation of the Santa Barbara tribes may have been influenced by contact with others.

Petroglyphs have seldom been found in the central area of the United States. In the wooded region of the Great lakes characters have been depicted upon birch bark for at least a century, while in the area between the Mississippi river and the Rocky mountains the skins of buffalo and deer have been used. Large rocks and cliffs favorably situated are not common in that country, which to a great extent is prairie.

In the general area of these typical groups characters are frequently found which appear intrusive, i. e., they have a strong resemblance not only to those found in other American groups, but are nearly identical with characters in other parts of the world. This fact, clearly established, prevents the adoption of any theory as to the authorship of many of the petroglyphs and thwarts attempts to ascertain their signification.

ALASKA.

Ensign Albert P. Niblack, U. S. Navy, (_a_) gives a brief account, with sketches, reproduced here as Fig. 4, of petroglyphs in Alaska, which were taken from rocks from the ancient village of Stikine, near Fort Wrangell. Others were found on rocks just above high-water mark around the sites of ruined and abandoned villages.

In the upper character the Alaskan typical style of human faces is noticeable. The lower gives a representation of the orca or whale killer, which the Haida believe to be a demon called Skana, about which there are many mythic tales. Mr. Niblack remarks:

In their paintings the favorite colors used are black, light green, and dark red. Whether produced in painting, tattooing, or relief carving, the designs are somewhat conventional. However rude the outline, there are for some animals certain conventional signs that clearly indicate to the initiated what figure is meant. With the brown bear it is the protruding tongue; with the beaver and wolf it is the character of the teeth; with the orca, the fin; with the raven, the sharp beak; with the eagle, the curved beak, etc.

ARIZONA.

Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey, gives the following information concerning petroglyphs observed by him in the vicinity of San Francisco mountain, Arizona:

The localities of the sketches Figs. 5, 6, and 7 are about 35 miles east and southeast of San Francisco mountain, the material being a red sandstone, which stands in low buttes upon the plain. About these are mealing stones, fragments of pottery and chipped flints, giving evidence of the residence of sedentary Indians. So many localities of petroglyphs were seen that I regard it as probable that a large number could be found by search. The drawings in every case but one were produced by blows upon the surface of the rocks, breaking through the film of rock discolored by weathering so as to reveal (originally) the color of the interior of the rock. The single exception is the first pattern in Fig. 6, similar to the patterns on pottery and blankets, produced by painting with a white pigment on red rock. The original arrangement of the drawings upon the rock was not as a rule preserved, but they have approximately the original arrangement. I neglected to record the scale of the drawings, but the several pictures are drawn on approximately the same scale.

All of these figures partake of the general type designated as the Shoshonean, and it is notable that close repetitions of some of the characters appear in petroglyphs in Tulare valley and Owens valley, California, which are described and illustrated in this section.

The object resembling a centipede, in Fig. 6, is a common form in various localities in Santa Barbara county, California, as will be observed by comparing the illustrations given in connection with that locality. In other of the Arizona and New Mexican petroglyphs similar outlines are sometimes engraved to signify the maize stalk.

Mr. Paul Holman, of the U. S. Geological Survey, reports that eight miles below Powers butte, on a mesa bordering on the Gila river and rising abruptly to the height of 150 feet, are pictographs covering the entire vertical face. Also on the summit of a spur of Oatman mountain, 200 yards from the Gila and 300 feet above it, are numbers of pictographs. Many of them are almost obliterated where they are on exposed surfaces.

Lieut. Col. Emory (_a_) reports that on a table-land near the Gila bend is a mound of granite bowlders, blackened by augite and covered with unknown characters, the work of human hands. On the ground near by were also traces of some of the figures, showing that some of the pictographs, at least, were the work of modern Indians. Others were of undoubted antiquity. He also reports in the same volume (_b_) that characters upon rocks of questionable antiquity occur on the Gila river at 32° 38′ 13″ N. lat. and 190° 7′ 30″ long. According to the plate, the figures are found upon bowlders and on the face of the cliff to the height of 30 feet.

Lieut. Whipple (_a_) remarks upon petroglyphs at Yampais spring, Williams river, as follows:

The spot is a secluded glen among the mountains. A high shelving rock forms a cave, within which is a pool of water and a crystal stream flowing from it. The lower surface of the rock is covered with pictographs. None of the devices seem to be of recent date.

Many of the country rocks lying on the Colorado plateau of northern Arizona, east of Peach springs, bear petroglyphs of considerable artistic workmanship. Some figures, observed by Dr. W. J. Hoffman in 1872, were rather elaborate and represented the sun, human beings in various styles approaching the grotesque, and other characters not understood. All of those observed were made by pecking the surface of basalt with a harder variety of stone.

Mr. Gilbert also obtained sketches of etchings in November, 1878, on Partridge creek, northern Arizona, at the point where the Beale wagon road comes to it from the east. He says: “The rock is cross-laminated Aubrey sandstone and the surfaces used are faces of the laminæ. All the work is done by blows with a sharp point. (Obsidian is abundant in the vicinity.) Some inscriptions are so fresh as to indicate that the locality is still resorted to. No Indians live in the immediate vicinity, but the region is a hunting ground of the Wallapais and Avasupais (Cosninos).”

Notwithstanding the occasional visits of the above named tribes, the characters submitted more nearly resemble those of other localities known to have been made by the Moki Pueblos.

Rock drawings are of frequent occurrence along the entire extent of the valley of the Rio Verde, from a short distance below Camp Verde to the Gila river.

Mr. Thomas V. Keam reports drawings on the rocks in Canyon Segy, and in Keam’s canyon, northeastern Arizona. Some forms occurring at the latter locality are found also upon Moki pottery.

Petroglyphs are reported by Lieut. Theodore Mosher, Twenty-second Infantry, U. S. Army, to have been discovered by Lieut. Casey’s party in December, 1887, on the Chiulee (or Chilalí) creek, 30 or 40 miles from its confluence with San Juan river, Arizona. A photograph made by the officer in charge of the party shows the characters to have been outlined by pecking, the designs resembling the Shoshonean type of pictographs, and those in Owens valley, California, a description of which is given below.

A figure, consisting of two concentric circles with a straight line running out from the larger circle, occurs, among other carvings, on one of the many sculptured bowlders seen by Mr. J. R. Bartlett (_a_) in the valley of the Gila river in Arizona. His representation of this bowlder is here copied as Fig. 8. His language is as follows:

I found hundreds of these bowlders covered with rude figures of men, animals, and other objects of grotesque forms, all pecked in with a sharp instrument. Many of them, however, were so much defaced by long exposure to the weather and by subsequent markings, that it was impossible to make them out. Among these rocks I found several which contained sculptures on the lower side, in such a position that it would be impossible to cut them where they then lay. Some weighed many tons each and would have required immense labor to place them there, and that, too, without an apparent object. The natural inference was that they had fallen down from the summit of the mountain after the sculptures were made on them. A few only seemed recent; the others bore the marks of great antiquity.

In the collections of the Bureau of Ethnology is an album or sketch book, which contains many drawings made by Mr. F. S. Dellenbaugh, from which the following sketches of petroglyphs in Arizona are selected, together with the brief references attached to each sheet.

Fig. 9 is a copy of characters appearing in Shinumo canyon, Arizona. They are painted, the middle and right hand figures being red, the human form having a white mark upon the abdomen; the left-hand figure of a man is painted yellow, the two plumes being red.

The petroglyphs in Fig. 10 are rather indistinct and were copied from the vertical wall of Mound canyon. The most conspicuous forms appear to be serpents.

CALIFORNIA.

In the foothills of California, wherever overhanging and rain-protected rocks occur, they are covered with paintings of various kinds made by Indians. Those on Rocky hill, some 15 miles east of Visalia, are especially interesting. The sheltered rocks are here covered with images of men, animals, and various inanimate objects, as well as curious figures. The paint used is red, black, and white, and wherever protected it has stood the ravages of time remarkably well. In many places the paintings are as vivid as the day they were laid on. Deer, antelope, coyotes, birds, and turtles are figured quite frequently, and may indicate either names of chiefs or tribes, or animals slain in the hunt. Here are also circles, spirals, crowns or bars, etc., signs the meaning of which is yet doubtful.

Mr. H. W. Turner, in a letter dated June 3, 1891, furnishes sketches (Fig. 11) from this locality, and a description of them as follows:

I send herewith a rough sheet of drawings of figures on the sheltered face of a huge granite cropping in Tulare county, California. One-half of the cropping had split off, leaving a nearly plane surface, on which the figures were drawn in red, white, and black pigments. The locality is known as Rocky point. They are now quarrying granite at the place. It lies about 12 miles nearly due east of Visalia, in the first foothills and south of Yokall creek. The figures appear to have been drawn many years ago, and numbers of them are now indistinct.

During the summer of 1882 Dr. Hoffman visited the Tule river agency, California, where he found a large rock painting, of which Fig. 983, infra, is a copy made by him. His description of it is as follows:

“The agency is upon the western side of the Sierra Nevada, in the headwater canyons of the branches of the south fork of Tule river. The country is at present occupied by several tribes of the Mariposan linguistic stock, and the only answer made to inquiries respecting the age or origin of the painting was that it was found there when the ancestors of the present tribes arrived. The local migrations of the various Indian tribes of this part of California are not yet known with sufficient certainty to determine to whom the records may be credited, but all appearances with respect to the weathering and disintegration of the rock upon which the record is engraved, the appearance of the coloring matter subsequently applied, and the condition of the small depressions made at the time for mixing the pigments with a viscous substance, indicate that the work was performed about a century ago.

“The Indians now at Tule river have occupied that part of the state for at least one hundred years, and the oldest now living state that the records were found by their ancestors, though whether more than two generations ago could not be ascertained.

“The drawings were outlined by pecking with a piece of quartz or other siliceous rock, the depth varying from a mere visible depression to a third of an inch. Having thus satisfactorily depicted the several ideas, colors were applied which appear to have penetrated the slight interstices between the crystalline particles of the rock, which had been bruised and slightly fractured by hammering with a piece of stone. It appears probable, too, that to insure better results the hammering was repeated after application of the colors.

“Upon a small bowlder, under the natural archway formed by the breaking of the large rock, small depressions were found which had been used as mortars for grinding and mixing the colors. These depressions average 2 inches in diameter and about 1 inch in depth. Traces of color still remain, mixed with a thin layer of a shining substance resembling a coating of varnish and of flinty hardness. This coating is so thin that it can not be removed with a steel instrument, and appears to have become a part of the rock itself.

“From the animals depicted upon the ceiling it seems that both beaver and deer were found in the country, and as the beaver tail and the hoofs of deer and antelope are boiled to procure glue, it is probable that the tribe which made these pictographs was as far advanced in respect to the making of glue and preparing of paints as most other tribes throughout the United States.

“Examination shows that the dull red color is red ocher, found in various places in the valley, while the yellow was an ocherous clay, also found there. The white color was probably obtained there, and is evidently earthy, though of what nature can only be surmised, not sufficient being obtainable from the rock picture to make satisfactory analysis with the blow-pipe. The composition of the black is not known, unless it was made by mixing clay and powdered charcoal. The latter is a preparation common at this day among other tribes.

“An immense granite bowlder, about 20 feet in thickness and 30 in length, is so broken that a lower quarter is removed, leaving a large square passageway through its entire diameter almost northwest and southeast. Upon the western wall of this passageway is a collection of the colored sketches of which Fig. 983 is a reduced copy. The entire face of the rock upon which the pictograph occurs measures about 12 or 15 feet in width and 8 in height. The largest human figure measures 6 feet in height, from the end of the toes to the top of the head, the others being in proportion as represented.

“Upon the ceiling are a number of well executed drawings of the beaver, bear, centipede (Fig. 12), and bald eagle (Fig. 13). Many of the other forms indicated appear to represent some variety of insects, several of which are drawn with exaggerated antennæ, as in Fig. 14. It is curious to note the gradual blending of forms, as, for instance, that of the bear with those resembling the human figure, often found among the Shoshonean types in Arizona and New Mexico, some of which are described and figured infra.

“Fig. 15 embraces a number of characters on the ceiling. The left hand upper figure is in black, with a narrow line of red surrounding it. The drawing is executed neatly and measures about 18 inches in length. The remaining characters are in dull red, probably ocher, though the two on the left hand, beneath the one just mentioned, are more yellowish.

“The first three forms in Fig. 16 are copies of human-like figures painted on the ceiling. They are each about 12 inches in length. The other form in Fig. 16 is white and is on the southern vertical wall of the passageway facing the north. It resembles some of the human forms occurring elsewhere in the same series of petroglyphs.”

OWENS VALLEY.

In the range of mountains forming the northwestern boundary of Owens valley are extensive groups of petroglyphs, apparently dissimilar to those found west of the Sierra Nevada. Dr. Hoffman, of the Bureau of Ethnology, hastily examined them in 1871 and more thoroughly in the autumn of 1884. They are now represented in Pls. I to XI. So large a space is given to these illustrations because of their intrinsic interest, and also because it is desirable to show for one locality what is true of some others, viz, the very large number of petroglyphs still to be found in groups and series. Even with the present illustrations, the petroglyphs in Owens valley are by no means exhaustively shown.

Dr. Hoffman’s report is as follows:

One of the most important series of groups is that in the northern portion of Owens valley, between the White mountains on the east and the Benton range on the west. On the western slope of the latter, at Watterson’s ranch, is a detached low butte or mesa, upon the blackened basaltic bowlders and cliffs of which are numerous deeply cut characters, the most interesting of which are reproduced in Pls. I and II. The illustrations are, approximately, one-twelfth real size. The designs of footprints, in the lower left-hand corner of Pl. I, vary in depth from half an inch to 1-1/2 inches. They appear to have been pecked and finally worked down to a uniform and smooth surface by rubbing, as if with a piece of stone or with wood and sand.

In almost all, if not all, instances throughout the entire series referred to in this description the sculptured surfaces have assumed the same shining blackened luster as the original and undisturbed surface of the bowlder, caused by gradual oxidation of the iron present. This would seem to indicate considerable antiquity of the petroglyphs.

On the northeast angle of the mesa referred to were found the remains of an old camp, over which were scattered large quantities of arrowheads, knives, and flakes of obsidian. This in itself would be insignificant, but the fact that many of the specimens of this material have been lying exposed to the elements until the upper surface has undergone change in color, so as to become bleached and friable, in some instances to the depth of from one-tenth to one-fourth of an inch, warrants the inference that the relics may have been made by the same people who made the petroglyphs, as the worked relics generally differ from those of the present Indians by being larger and less elaborately finished.

At the lower end of the southeastern slope of the mesa are a number of flat rocks bearing mortar holes, which have no doubt been used in grinding grass seed and other grains.

In general type these petroglyphs correspond very closely to those of other areas, in which the so-called Shoshonian types occur, the most common, apart from those presented in Pls. I and II, consisting of concentric circles, rings, footprints of the bear and of man, and various outlines of the human form, beside numerous unintelligible forms.

Southeastward of this locality there is a low divide leading across the Benton range into the broad, arid, sloping sand desert of Owens valley proper, but it is not until a point 12 miles south of Benton, along the line of the old stage road, is reached that petroglyphs of any consequence are met with. From this point southward, for a distance of 6 miles, large exposures and bowlders of basalt are scattered, upon which are great numbers of petroglyphs, pecked into the rock to depths of from half an inch to 1-1/2 inches, and representing circles, footprints, human forms, etc.

The first series of illustrations, selected from numerous closely-connected bowlders, are here presented on Pls. III to VII. The designs marked _a_ on Pl. III resemble serpents, while that at _d_ is obviously such. This device is on the horizontal surface, and is pecked to the depth of about 1 inch. The scale of the drawing is one-thirtieth of the original petroglyph. The characters indicating the human form in _e_, _g_, and _h_ resemble the ordinary Shoshonian type, and are like those from various localities in Arizona and southern Utah and Colorado.

The upper characters in A on Pl. IV represent the trail of a grizzly bear--as indicated by the immense claws--followed by a human footprint. The original sculpturings are clearly cut, the toes of the man’s foot being cup-like, as if drilled with a blunt piece of wood and sand. The tracks average 15 inches in length and vary in depth from half an inch to more than an inch. The course of direction of the tracks, which are cut upon a horizontal surface, is from north-northeast to south-southwest.

In E is the semblance of an apparently two-headed snake, as also in _a_ on Pl. VII. It is possible that this was pecked into the rock to record the finding of such an anomaly. The occurrence of double-headed serpents is not unique, five or six instances having been recorded, one of which is from California, and a specimen may be seen in the collection of the U. S. National Museum.

In Pl. V, _c_, _e_, _g_ are characters resembling some from the Canary islands [see Figs. 144 and 145], as well as many of the cupstones and dumb-bell forms from Scotland [see Figs. 149 and 150].

An interesting specimen is presented in _d_, on Pl. VI, resembling the Ojibwa thunder bird, as well as etchings of Innuit workmanship to denote man [as shown in Fig. 1159]. The figures presented in Pl. III are the northernmost of the series, of which those on Pl. VII form the southernmost examples, the distance between these two points being about 2 miles.

For the space of 4 miles southward there are a few scattered petroglyphs, to which reference will be made below, and the greatest number of characters are not found until the southernmost extremity of the entire series is reached. These are over the surface of immense bowlders lying on the east side of the road where it passes through a little valley known locally as the Chalk grade, probably on account of the whitened appearance of the sand and of some of the embankments. A general view of the faces of the bowlders upon which the chief sculpturings occur is presented in Fig. 17. The petroglyphs are represented in Pls. VIII to XI.

The figures presented in Pl. VIII are, with one exception, each about one-thirtieth the size of the original. The animal character in _e_ is upon the top of the largest bowlder shown on Fig. 17, and is pecked to the depth of from one-fourth to one-half an inch. Portions of it are much defaced through erosion by sand blown by the strong summer winds. The characters in _g_ are only one-tenth of the original size, but of depth similar to the preceding.

On Pl. IX, _a_ is one-twentieth the size of the original, while the remaining sculpturings are about one-tenth size. The cross in _a_ is singularly interesting because of the elaborateness of its execution. The surface within the circle is pecked out so as to have the cross stand out bold and level with the original surface. This is true also of _f_ on Pl. VIII. Pl. IX, _b_, contains some animal forms like those reported from New Mexico and Arizona, and Brazil [and presented in this work], especially that character to the right resembling a guanaco couchant, although, from its relationship to the figure of an antelope, in the same group, it no doubt is intended to represent one of the latter species.

On Pl. X, as well as on others of this collection, are found many forms of circles with interior decoration, such as lines arranged by pairs, threes, etc., zigzag and cross lines, and other seemingly endless arrangements. They are interesting from the fact of the occurrence of almost identical forms in remote localities, as in the Canary islands and in Brazil. [These are figured and described infra.]

It is probable that they are not meaningless, because the disposition of the Indian, as he is to-day, is such that no time would be spent upon such laborious work without an object, and only motives of a religious or ceremonial nature would induce him to expend the time and labor necessary to accomplish such results as are still presented. On Pl. XI, _a_, are more footprints and animal forms of the genus _cervus_ or _antelocapra_. The figures in _b_ and _d_, having an upright line with two crossing it at right angles, may signify either a lizard or man, the latter signification being probably the true one, as similar forms are drawn in petroglyphs of a Shoshonian type, as in Arizona. [See supra.]

The country over which these records are scattered is arid beyond description and destitute of vegetation. Watterson’s ranch group is more favorably located, there being an abundance of springs and a stream running northward toward Black lake.

The only Indians found in this vicinity are Pai Utes, but they are unacquainted with the significance of the characters, and declare that they have no knowledge of the authors.

As to the age of the sculpturings nothing can be learned. The external surface of all the bowlders, as well as the surface of the deepest figures, is a glistening brownish black, due, possibly, to the presence of iron. The color of a freshly broken surface becomes lighter in tint as depth is attained, until at about one-half or three-fourths of an inch from the surface the rock is chocolate brown. How long it would take the freshly broken surface of this variety of rock to become thoroughly oxidized and blackened it is impossible even to conjecture, taking into consideration the physical conditions of the region and the almost entire absence of rainfall.

Upon following the most convenient course across the Benton range to reach Owen valley proper drawings are also found, though in limited numbers, and seem to partake of the character of indicators as to course of travel. By this trail the northernmost of the several groups of drawings above mentioned is the nearest and most easily reached.

The pictures upon the bowlders at Watterson’s are somewhat different from those found elsewhere. The number of specific designs is limited, many of them being reproduced from two to six or seven times, thus seeming to partake of the character of personal names.

In a communication dated Saratoga Springs, at the lower part of Death valley, California, February 5, 1891, Mr. E. W. Nelson says that about 200 yards from the springs, and on the side of a hill, he found several petroglyphs. He also furnished a sketch as an example of their general type, now presented as Fig. 18. The locality is in the lower end of Death valley. Mr. Nelson says:

The spring here is in a basin some 60 to 80 acres in extent in which are ponds and tule marsh. Close by is an extensive ancient Indian camping ground, over which are scattered very many “chips” made from manufacturing arrow points from quartz crystal, chert, chalcedony, flint, and other similar material.

The figures in the sketch inclosed are situated relatively, as to size and location, as they occur on the rock. The latter is cracked and slopes at different angles, but the figures are all visible from a single point of view. There are several other figures in this group that are too indistinct to copy owing to age, or weather wearing. The group copied is the most extensive one seen, but many smaller groups and single figures are to be found on the rocks near by.

The Shoshoni inhabit this region and a few families of Shoshoni live about the Panamint mountains at present.

Dr. C. Hart Merriam, of the Department of Agriculture, on his return from the exploration of Death valley, kindly furnished a photograph of a ledge in Emigrant canyon, Panamint mountains, which was received too late for insertion in this work. This is much regretted, as a large number of petroglyphs are represented in groups. The characters are of the Shoshonean type. Among them are “Moki goats,” tridents, the Greek Φ, many crosses, and other figures shown in this chapter as found in the same general region.

In the Mojave desert, about 2 miles north of Daggett station, according to the Mining and Scientific Press (_a_) is a small porphyritic butte known as “Rattlesnake rock,” “so named by reason of the immense number of these reptiles that find shelter in this mass of rock.” The accompanying Fig. 19 is a reproduction of that given in the paper quoted. The author states that “the implement used in making these characters was evidently a dull-pointed stone, as the lines are not sharp, and the sides of the indentation show marks of striation.”

Lieut. Whipple reports the discovery of pictographs at Piute creek, about 30 miles west of the Mojave villages. These are carved upon a rock, “are numerous, appear old, and are too confusedly obscured to be easily traceable.” They bear great general resemblance to drawings scattered over northeast Arizona, southern Utah, and western New Mexico.

From information received from Mr. Alphonse Pinart, pictographic records exist in the hills east of San Bernardino, somewhat resembling those at Tule river in the southern spurs of the Sierra Nevada, Kern county.

Mr. Willard J. Whitney, of Elmhurst, Lackawanna county, Pennsylvania, gives information regarding nearly obliterated pecked petroglyphs upon two flat granite rocks, or bowlders, on the summit of a mountain 4 miles directly west of Escondido, San Diego county, California. The designs are not colored, and are not more than one-eighth or one-fourth of an inch in depth. There is a good lookout from the eminence, but there are no indications of either trails or burials in the vicinity.

This may be the locality mentioned by Mr. Barnes, of San Diego, who furnished information relating to petroglyphs in San Diego county.

Dr. Hoffman reports the following additional localities in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties. Fifteen miles west of Santa Barbara, on the northern summit of the Santa Ynez range, and near the San Marcos pass, is a group of paintings in red and black. Fig. 20 resembles a portion of a checker-board in the arrangement of squares.

Serpentine and zigzag lines occur, as also curved lines with serrations on the concave sides; figures of the sun; short lines and groups of short parallel lines, and figures representing types of insect forms also appear, as shown in Figs. 21 and 22.

These paintings are in a cavity near the base of an immense bowlder, over 20 feet in height. A short distance from this is a flat granitic bowlder, containing twenty-one mortar holes, which had evidently been used by visiting Indians during the acorn season. Oaks are very abundant, and their fruit formed one of the sources of subsistence.

Three miles west-northwest of this locality, in the valley near the base of the mountain, are indistinct figures in faded red, painted upon a large rock. The characters appear similar, in general, to those above mentioned.

Forty-three miles west of Santa Barbara, in the Najowe valley, is a promontory, at the base of which is a large shallow cavern, the opening being smaller than the interior, upon the roof and back of which are many designs, some of which are reproduced in Fig. 23, of forms similar to those observed at San Marcos pass. Several characters appear to have been drawn at a later date than others, such as horned cattle, etc. The black used was a manganese compound, while the red pigments consist of ferruginous clays, abundant at numerous localities in the mountain canyons.

Some of the human figures are drawn with the hands and arms in the attitude of making the gestures for _surprise_ or _astonishment_, and _negation_, as in Fig. 24.

The characters in Fig. 25 resemble forms which occur at Tulare valley, and in Owens valley, respectively, and insect forms also occur as in Fig. 26.

Other designs abounding at this locality are shown in Figs. 27 and 28.

One of the most extensive groupings, and probably the most elaborately drawn, is in the Carisa plain, near Mr. Oreña’s ranch, 60 or 70 miles due north of Santa Barbara. The most conspicuous figure is that of the sun, resembling a human face, with ornamental appendages at the cardinal points, and bearing striking resemblance to some Moki masks and pictographic work. Serpentine lines and anomalous forms also abound.

Four miles northeast of Santa Barbara, near the residence of Mr. Stevens, is an isolated sandstone bowlder measuring about 20 feet high and 30 feet in diameter, upon the western side of which is a slight cavity bearing designs shown in Fig. 29, which correspond in general form to others in Santa Barbara county. The gesture for negation appears in the attitude of the human figures.

Half a mile farther east, on Dr. Coe’s farm, is another smaller bowlder, in a cavity of which various engravings appear shown in Fig. 30. Parts of the drawings have disappeared through disintegration of the rock, which is called “Pulpit rock,” on account of the shape of the cavity, its position at the side of the narrow valley, and the echo observed upon speaking a little above the ordinary tone of voice.

Painted rocks also occur in the Azuza canyon, about 30 miles northeast of Los Angeles, of which Fig. 31 gives copies.

Just before his departure from the Santa Barbara region, Dr. Hoffman was informed of the existence of eight or nine painted records in that neighborhood, which up to that time had been observed only by a few sheep-herders and hunters.

Mr. L. L. Frost, of Susanville, California, reports the occurrence of pictographs (undoubtedly petroglyphs) 15 miles south of that town, on Willow creek, and at Milford, in the lower end of the valley. No details were furnished as to their general type and condition.

On Porter creek, 9 miles southwest of Healdsburg, on a large bowlder of hornblende syenite, petroglyphs similar to those found in Arizona and Nevada are to be seen. They are generally oblong circles or ovals, some of which contain crosses.

Figs. 32 and 33 are reduced copies 1/32 of original size of colored petroglyphs found by Dr. Hoffman in September, 1884, 12 miles west-northwest of the city of Santa Barbara, California. The locality is almost at the summit of the Santa Ynez range of mountains; the gray sandstone rock on which they are painted is about 30 feet high and projects from a ridge so as to form a very marked promontory extending into a narrow mountain canyon. At the base of the western side of this bowlder is a rounded cavity, measuring on the inside about 15 feet in width and 8 feet in height. The floor ascends rapidly toward the back of the cave, and the entrance is rather smaller in dimensions than the above measurements of the interior. About 40 yards west of this rock is a fine spring of water. One of the four old Indian trails leading northward across the mountains passes by this locality, and it is probable that this was one of the camping places of the tribe which came south to trade, and that some of its members were the authors of the paintings. The three trails beside the one just mentioned cross the mountains at several points east of this, the most distant being about 15 miles. Other trails were known, but these four were most direct to the immediate vicinity of the Spanish settlement which sprang up shortly after the establishment of the Santa Barbara mission in 1786. The appearance and position of these and other pictographs in the vicinity appear to be connected with the several trails. The colors used in the paintings are red and black.

The circles figured in _b_ and _d_ of Fig. 32, and _c_, _r_, and _w_ of Fig. 33, together with other similar circular marks bearing cross lines upon the interior, were at first unintelligible, as their forms among various tribes have very different signification. The character in Fig. 32, above and projecting from _d_, resembles the human form, with curious lateral bands of black and white, alternately. Two similar characters appear, also, in Fig. 33, _a_, _b_. In _a_ the lines from the head would seem to indicate a superior rank or condition of the person depicted.

At the private ethnologic collection of Mr. A. F. Coronel, of Los Angeles, California, Dr. Hoffman discovered a clue to the general import of the above petroglyphs, as well as the signification of some of their characters. In a collection of colored illustrations of old Mexican costumes he found blankets bearing borders and colors nearly identical with those shown in the circles in Fig. 32, _d_, and Fig. 33, _c_, _r_, _w_. It is probable that the circles represent bales of blankets which early became articles of trade at the Santa Barbara mission. If this supposition is correct, the cross lines would seem to represent the cords used in tying the blankets into bales, which same cross lines appear as cords in _l_, Fig. 33. Mr. Coronel also possesses small figures of Mexicans, of various conditions of life, costumes, trades, and professions, one of which, a painted statuette, is a representation of a Mexican lying down flat upon an outspread serape, similar in color and form to the black and white bands shown in the upper figure of _d_, Fig. 32, and _a_, _b_, of Fig. 33, and instantly suggesting the explanation of those figures. Upon the latter the continuity of the black and white bands is broken, as the human figures are probably intended to be in front, or on top, of the drawings of the blankets.

The small statuette above mentioned is that of a Mexican trader, and if the circles in the petroglyphs are considered to represent bales of blankets, the character in Fig. 32, _d_, is still more interesting, from the union of one of these circles with a character representing the trader, i. e., the man possessing the bales. Bales, or what appear to be bales, are represented to the top and right of the circle in _d_, in that figure. In Fig. 33, _l_, a bale is upon the back of what appears to be a horse, led in an upward direction by an Indian whose headdress and ends of the breechcloth are visible. To the right of the bale are three short lines, evidently showing the knot or ends of the cords used in tying a bale of blankets without colors, therefore of less importance, or of other goods. Other human forms appear in the attitude of making gestures, one also in _j_, Fig. 33, probably carrying a bale of goods. In the same figure _u_ represents a centipede, an insect found occasionally south of the mountains, but reported as extremely rare in the immediate northern regions. For remarks upon _x_ in the same figure see Chapter XX, Section 2, under the heading The Cross.

Mr. Coronel stated that when he first settled in Los Angeles, in 1843, the Indians living north of the San Fernando mountains manufactured blankets of the fur and hair of animals, showing transverse bands of black and white similar to those depicted, which were sold to the inhabitants of the valley of Los Angeles and to Indians who transported them to other tribes.

It is probable that the pictographs are intended to represent the salient features of a trading expedition from the north. The ceiling of the cavity found between the paintings represented in the two figures has disappeared, owing to disintegration, thus leaving a blank about 4 feet long, and 6 feet from the top to the bottom between the paintings as now presented.

COLORADO.

Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. Cyrus F. Newcomb as found upon cliffs on Rock creek, 15 miles from Rio Del Norte, Colorado. Three small photographs, submitted with this statement, indicate the characters to have been pecked; they consist of men on horseback, cross-shaped human figures, animals, and other designs greatly resembling those found in the country of the Shoshonean tribes, examples of which are given infra.

Another notice of the same general locality is made by Capt. E. L. Berthoud (_a_) as follows:

The place is 20 miles southeast of Rio Del Norte, at the entrance of the canyon of the Piedra Pintada (Painted rock) creek. The carvings are found on the right of the canyon or valley and upon volcanic rocks. They bear the marks of age and are cut in, not painted, as is still done by the Utes everywhere. They are found for a quarter of a mile along the north wall of the canyon, on the ranches of W. M. Maguire and F. T. Hudson, and consist of all manner of pictures, symbols, and hieroglyphics done by artists whose memory even tradition does not now preserve. The fact that these are carvings done upon such hard rock invests them with additional interest, as they are quite distinct from the carvings I saw in New Mexico and Arizona on soft sandstone. Though some of them are evidently of much greater antiquity than others, yet all are ancient, the Utes admitting them to have been old when their fathers conquered the country.

Mr. Charles D. Wright, of Durango, Colorado, in a communication dated February 20, 1885, gives an account of some “hieroglyphs” on rocks and upon the walls of cliff houses near the boundary line between Colorado and New Mexico. He says:

The following were painted in red and black paints on the wall (apparently the natural rock wall) of a cliff house: At the head was a chief on his horse, armed with spear and lance and wearing a pointed hat and robe; behind this character were some twenty characters representing people on horses lassoing horses, etc. In fact the whole scene represented breaking camp and leaving in a hurry. The whole painting measured about 12 by 16 feet.

Mr. Wright further reports characters on rocks near the San Juan river. Four characters represent men as if in the act of taking an obligation, hands extended, and wearing a “kind of monogram on breast, and at their right are some hieroglyphics written in black paint covering a space 3 by 4 feet.”

The best discussed and probably the most interesting of the petroglyphs in the region are described and illustrated by Mr. W. H. Holmes (_a_), of the Bureau of Ethnology. The illustrations are here reproduced in Figs. 34 to 37, and the remarks of Mr. Holmes, slightly condensed, are as follows:

The forms reproduced in Fig. 34 occur on the Rio Mancos, near the group of cliff houses. They are chipped into the rock evidently by some very hard implement and rudely represent the human figure. They are certainly not attempts to represent nature, but have the appearance rather of arbitrary forms, designed to symbolize some imaginary being.

The forms shown in Fig. 35 were found in the same locality, not engraved, but painted in red and white clay upon the smooth rocks. These were certainly done by the cliff-builders, and probably while the houses were in process of construction, since the material used is identical with the plaster of the houses. The sketches and notes were made by Mr. Brandegee. The reproduction is approximately one-twelfth the size of the original.

The examples shown in Fig. 36 occur on the Rio San Juan about 10 miles below the mouth of the Rio La Plata and are actually in New Mexico. A low line of bluffs, composed of light-colored massive sandstones that break down in great smooth-faced blocks, rises from the river level and sweeps around toward the north. Each of these great blocks has offered a very tempting tablet to the graver of the primitive artist, and many of them contain curious and interesting inscriptions. Drawings were made of such of these as the limited time at my disposal would permit. They are all engraved or cut into the face of the rock, and the whole body of each figure has generally been chipped out, frequently to the depth of one-fourth or one-half of an inch.

The work on some of the larger groups has been one of immense labor, and must owe its completion to strong and enduring motives. With a very few exceptions the engraving bears undoubted evidence of age. Such new figures as occur are quite easily distinguished both by the freshness of the chipped surfaces and by the designs themselves. The curious designs given in the final group have a very perceptible resemblance to many of the figures used in the embellishment of pottery.

The most striking group observed is given in Fig. 37 A, same locality. It consists of a great procession of men, birds, beasts, and fanciful figures. The whole picture as placed upon a rock is highly spirited and the idea of a general movement toward the right, skillfully portrayed. A pair of winged figures hover about the train as if to watch, or direct its movements; behind these are a number of odd figures, followed by an antlered animal resembling a deer, which seems to be drawing a notched sledge containing two figures of men. The figures forming the main body of the procession appear to be tied together in a continuous line, and in form resemble one living creature about as little as another. Many of the smaller figures above and below are certainly intended to represent dogs, while a number of men are stationed about here and there as if to keep the procession in order.

As to the importance of the event recorded in this picture, no conclusions can be drawn; it may represent the migration of a tribe or family or the trophies of a victory. A number of figures are wanting in the drawing at the left, while some of those at the right may not belong properly to the main group. The reduction is, approximately, to one-twelfth.

Designs B and C of the same figure represent only the more distinct portions of two other groups. The complication of figures is so great that a number of hours would have been necessary for their delineation, and an attempt to analyze them here would be fruitless.

It will be noticed that the last two petroglyphs are in New Mexico, but they are so near the border of Colorado and so connected with the series in that state that they are presented under the same heading.

CONNECTICUT.

The following account is extracted from Rafn’s Antiquitates Americanæ (_a_):

In the year 1789 Doctor Ezra Stiles, D. D., visited a rock situated in the Township of Kent in the State of Connecticut, at a place called Scaticook, by the Indians. He thus describes it: “Over against Scaticook and about one hundred rods East of Housatonic River, is an eminence or elevation which is called Cobble Hill. On the top of this stands the rock charged with antique unknown characters. This rock is by itself and not a portion of the Mountains; it is of White Flint; ranges North and South; is from twelve to fourteen feet long; and from eight to ten wide at base and top; and of an uneven surface. On the top I did not perceive any characters; but the sides all around are irregularly charged with unknown characters, made not indeed with the incision of a chisel, yet most certainly with an iron tool, and that by pecks or picking, after the manner of the Dighton Rock. The Lacunae or excavations are from a quarter to an inch wide; and from one tenth to two tenths of an inch deep. The engraving did not appear to be recent or new, but very old.”

GEORGIA.

Charles C. Jones, jr., (_a_) describes a petroglyph in Georgia as follows:

In Forsyth county, Georgia, is a carved or incised bowlder of fine grained granite, about 9 feet long, 4 feet 6 inches high, and 3 feet broad at its widest point. The figures are cut in the bowlder from one-half to three-fourths of an inch deep. It is generally believed that they are the work of the Cherokees.

The illustration given by him is here reproduced in Fig. 38. It will be noted that the characters in it are chiefly circles, including plain, nucleated, and concentric, sometimes two or more being joined by straight lines, forming what is now known as the “spectacle shaped” figure. The illustrations should be compared with the many others presented in this paper under the heading of Cup Sculptures, see Chapter V, infra.

Dr. M. F. Stephenson (_a_) mentions sculptures of human feet, various animals, bear tracks, etc., in Enchanted mountain, Union county, Georgia. The whole number of sculptures is reported as one hundred and forty-six.

Mr. Jones (_b_) gives a different résumé of the objects depicted, as follows:

Upon the Enchanted mountain, in Union county, cut in plutonic rock, are the tracks of men, women, children, deer, bears, bisons, turkeys, and terrapins, and the outlines of a snake, of two deer, and of a human hand. These sculptures--so far as they have been ascertained and counted--number one hundred and thirty-six. The most extravagant among them is that known as the footprint of the “Great Warrior.” It measures 18 inches in length and has six toes. The other human tracks and those of the animals are delineated with commendable fidelity.

IDAHO.

Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey, has furnished a small collection of drawings of Shoshonean petroglyphs from Oneida, Idaho, shown in Fig. 39. Some of them appear to be totemic characters, and possibly were made to record the names of visitors to the locality.

Mr. Willard D. Johnson, of the U. S. Geological Survey, reports pictographic remains observed by him near Oneida, Idaho, in 1879. The figures represent human beings and were on a rock of basalt.

A copy of another petroglyph found in Idaho appears in Fig. 1092, infra.

ILLINOIS.

Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava, Jackson county, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo, Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology. Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but from the general appearance of the sketches the originals of which they are copies were probably made by one of the middle Algonquian tribes of Indians.

The “Piasa” rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by the missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immediately above the city of Alton, Illinois.

Marquette’s remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman (_a_) as follows:

On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and green, a pair of monsters, each “as large as a calf, with horns like a deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression of countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body covered with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely round the body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like that of a fish.”

Another version, by Davidson and Struvé (_a_), of the discovery of the petroglyph is as follows:

Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad bosom of the unknown stream. Passing the mouth of the Illinois, they soon fell into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great astonishment beheld the representation of two monsters painted on its lofty limestone front. According to Marquette, each of these frightful figures had the face of a man, the horns of a deer, the beard of a tiger, and the tail of a fish so long that it passed around the body, over the head, and between the legs. It was an object of Indian worship and greatly impressed the mind of the pious missionary with the necessity of substituting for this monstrous idolatry the worship of the true God.

A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the following description of the same rock:

Near the mouth of the Piasa creek, on the bluff, there is a smooth rock in a cavernous cleft, under an overhanging cliff, on whose face, 50 feet from the base, are painted some ancient pictures or hieroglyphics, of great interest to the curious. They are placed in a horizontal line from east to west, representing men, plants, and animals. The paintings, though protected from dampness and storms, are in great part destroyed, marred by portions of the rock becoming detached and falling down.

Mr. McAdams (_a_), of Alton, Illinois, says “The name Piasa is Indian and signifies, in the Illini, ‘The bird which devours men.’” He furnishes a spirited pen-and-ink sketch, 12 by 15 inches in size and purporting to represent the ancient painting described by Marquette. On the picture is inscribed the following in ink: “Made by Wm. Dennis, April 3d, 1825.” The date is in both letters and figures. On the top of the picture in large letters are the two words, “FLYING DRAGON.” This picture, which has been kept in the old Gilham family of Madison county and bears the evidence of its age, is reproduced as Fig. 40.

He also publishes another representation (Fig. 41) with the following remarks:

One of the most satisfactory pictures of the Piasa we have ever seen is in an old German publication entitled “The Valley of the Mississippi Illustrated. Eighty illustrations from nature, by H. Lewis, from the Falls of St. Anthony to the Gulf of Mexico,” published about the year 1839 by Arenz & Co., Düsseldorf, Germany. One of the large full-page plates in this work gives a fine view of the bluff at Alton, with the figure of the Piasa on the face of the rock. It is represented to have been taken on the spot by artists from Germany. We reproduce that part of the bluff (the whole picture being too large for this work) which shows the pictographs. In the German picture there is shown just behind the rather dim outlines of the second face a ragged crevice, as though of a fracture. Part of the bluff’s face might have fallen and thus nearly destroyed one of the monsters, for in later years writers speak of but one figure. The whole face of the bluff was quarried away in 1846-’47.

Under Myths and Mythic Animals, Chapter XIV, Section 2, are illustrations and descriptions which should be compared with these accounts, and Chapter XXII gives other examples of errors and discrepancies in the description and copying of petroglyphs.

Mr. A. D. Jones (_a_) says of the same petroglyph:

After the distribution of firearms among the Indians, bullets were substituted for arrows, and even to this day no savage presumes to pass the spot without discharging his rifle and raising his shout of triumph. I visited the spot in June (1838) and examined the image and the ten thousand bullet marks on the cliff seemed to corroborate the tradition related to me in the neighborhood.

Mr. McAdams, loc. cit., also reports regarding Fig. 42:

Some twenty-five or thirty miles above the mouth of the Illinois river, on the west bank of that stream, high up on the smooth face of an overhanging cliff, is another interesting pictograph sculptured deeply in the hard rock. It remains to-day probably in nearly the same condition it was when the French voyagers first descended the river and got their first view of the Mississippi. The animal-like body, with the human head, is carved in the rock in outline. The huge eyes are depressions like saucers, an inch or more in depth, and the outline of the body has been scooped out in the same way; also the mouth.

The figure of the archer with the drawn bow, however, is painted, or rather stained with a reddish brown pigment, over the sculptured outline of the monster’s face.

Mr. McAdams suggests that the painted figure of the human form with the bow and arrows was made later than the sculpture.

The same author (_b_) says, describing Fig. 43:

Some 3 or 4 miles above Alton, high up beneath the overhanging cliff, which forms a sort of cave shelter on the smooth face of a thick ledge of rock, is a series of paintings, twelve in number. They are painted or rather stained in the rock with a reddish brown pigment that seems to defy the tooth of time. It may be said, however, that their position is so sheltered that they remain almost perfectly dry. We made sketches of them some thirty years ago and on a recent visit could see that they had changed but little, although their appearance denotes great age.

These pictographs are situated on the cliff more than a hundred feet above the river. A protruding ledge, which is easily reached from a hollow in the bluff, leads to the cavernous place in the rock.

Mr. James D. Middleton, formerly of the Bureau of Ethnology, mentions the occurrence of petroglyphs on the bluffs of the Mississippi river, in Jackson county, about 12 miles below Rockwood. Also of others about 4 or 5 miles from Prairie du Rocher, near the Mississippi river.

IOWA.

Mr. P. W. Norris, of the Bureau of Ethnology, found numerous caves on the banks of the Mississippi river, in northeastern Iowa, 4 miles south of New Albion, containing incised petroglyphs. Fifteen miles south of this locality paintings occur on the cliffs. He also discovered painted characters upon the cliffs on the Mississippi river, 19 miles below New Albion.

KANSAS.

Mr. Edward Miller reports in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. X, 1869, p. 383, the discovery of a petroglyph near the line of the Union Pacific railroad, 15 miles southeast of Fort Harker, formerly known as Fort Ellsworth, Kansas. The petroglyph is upon a formation belonging to No. 1, Lower Cretaceous group, according to the classification of Meek and Hayden.

The parts of the two plates VII and VIII of the work cited, which bear the inscriptions, are now presented as Fig. 44, being from two views of the same rock.

KENTUCKY.

Mr. James D. Middleton, formerly of the Bureau of Ethnology, in a letter dated August 14, 1886, reports that at a point in Union county, Kentucky, nearly opposite Shawneetown, Illinois, petroglyphs are found, and from the description given by him they appear to resemble those in Jackson county, Illinois, mentioned above.

Mr. W. E. Barton, of Wellington, Ohio, in a communication dated October 4, 1890, writes as follows:

At Clover Bottom, Kentucky, on a spur of the Big Hill, in Jackson county, about 13 miles from Berea, is a large rock which old settlers say was covered with soil and vegetation within their memory. Upon it are representations of human tracks, with what appear to be those of a bear, a horse, and a dog. These are all in the same direction, as though a man leading a horse, followed the dog upon the bear’s track. Crossing these is a series of tracks of another and larger sort which I can not attempt to identify. The stone is a sandstone in the subcarboniferous. As I remember, the strata are nearly horizontal, but erosion has made the surface a slope of about 20°. The tracks ascending the slope cross the strata. I have not seen them for some years.

The crossing of the strata shows that the tracks are the work of human hands, if indeed it were not preposterous to think of anything else in rocks of that period. Still the tracks are so well made that one is tempted to ask if they can be real. They alternate right and left, though the erosion and travel have worn out some of the left tracks. A wagon road passes over the rock and was the cause of the present exposure of the stone. It can be readily found a fourth of a mile or less from the Pine Grove schoolhouse.

MAINE.

A number of inscribed rocks have been found in Maine and information of others has been obtained. The most interesting of them and the largest group series yet discovered in New England is shown in Pl. XII.

The rock upon which the glyphs appear is in the town of Machiasport, Maine, at Clarks point, on the northwestern side of Machias bay, 2 miles below the mouth of Machias river. The rock or ledge is about 50 feet long from east to west and about fifteen feet in width, nearly horizontal for two-thirds its length, from the bank or western end at high water, thence inclining at an angle of 15° to low-water mark. Its southern face is inclined about 40°. The formation is schistose slate, having a transverse vein of trap dike extending nearly across its section. Nearly the entire ledge is of blue-black color, very dense and hard except at the upper or western end, where the periodical formation of ice has scaled off thin layers of surface and destroyed many figures which are remembered by persons now living. The ebb and flow of tides, the abrasion of moving beach stones or pebble wash and of ice-worn bowlders, have also effaced many figures along the southern side, until now but one or two indentations are discernible. Visitors, in seeking to remove some portion of the rock as a curiosity or in striving to perpetuate their initials, have obscured several of the most interesting, and until recently the best defined figures. It was also evident to the present writer, who carefully examined the rock in 1888, that it lay much deeper in the water than once had been the case. At the lowest tides there were markings seen still lower, which could not readily have been made if that part of the surface had not been continuously exposed. The depression of a rock of such great size, which was so gradual that it had not been observed by the inhabitants of the neighboring settlement, is an evidence of the antiquity of the peckings.

The intaglio carving of all the figures was apparently made by repeated blows of a pointed instrument--doubtless of hard stone; not held as a chisel, but working by a repetition of hammerings or peckings. The deepest now seen is about three-eighths of an inch. The amount of patient labor bestowed upon these figures must have been great, considering the hardness of the rock and the rude implement with which they were wrought.

There is no extrinsic evidence of their age. The place was known to traders early in the seventeenth century, and much earlier was visited by Basque fishermen, and perhaps by the unfortunate Cortereals in 1500 and 1503. The descendants of the Mechises Indians, a tribal branch of the Abnaki, who once occupied the territory between the St. Croix and Narraguagus rivers, when questioned many years ago, would reply in substance that “all their old men knew of them,” either by having seen them or by traditions handed down through many generations.

Several years ago Mr. H. R. Taylor, of Machias, who made the original sketch in 1868 and kindly furnished it to the Bureau of Ethnology, applied to a resident Indian there (Peter Benoit, then nearly 80 years old) for assistance in deciphering the characters. He gave little information, but pointed out that the figures must not all be read “from one side only,” thus, the one near the center of the sketch, which seen from the south was without significance, became from the opposite point a squaw with sea fowl on her head, denoting, as he said, “that squaw had smashed canoe, saved beaver-skin, walked one-half moon all alone toward east, just same as heron wading alongshore.” Also that the three lines below the figure mentioned, which together resemble a bird track or a trident, represent the three rivers, the East, West, and Middle rivers of Machias, which join not far above the locality. The mark having a rough resemblance to a feather, next on the right of this river-sign, is a fissure in the rock. Most of the figures of human beings and other animals are easily recognizable.

Peckings of a character similar to those on the Picture rock at Clarks point, above described, were found and copied 600 feet south of it at high-water mark on a rock near Birch point. Others were discovered and traced on a rock on Hog island, in Holmes bay, a part of Machias bay. All these petroglyphs were without doubt of Abnaki origin, either of the Penobscot or the Passamaquoddy divisions of that body of Indians. The rocks lay on the common line of water communication between those divisions and were convenient as halting places.

MARYLAND.

In the Susquehanna river, about half a mile south of the state line, is a group of rocks, several of the most conspicuous being designated as the “Bald Friars.” Near by are several mound-shaped bowlders of the so-called “nigger-head” rock, which is reported as a dark-greenish chlorite schist. Upon the several bowlders are deep sculpturings, apparently finished by rubbing the depression with stone, or wood and sand, thus leaving sharp and distinct edges to the outlines. Some of these figures are an inch in depth, though the greater number are becoming more and more eroded by the frequent freshets, and by the running ice during the breaking up in early spring of the frozen river.

The following account is given by Prof. P. Frazer (_a_):

Passing the Pennsylvania state line one reaches the southern barren serpentine rocks, which are in general tolerably level for a considerable distance.

About 700 yards, or 640 meters, south of the line, on the river shore, are rocks which have been named the Bald Friars. French’s tavern is here, at the mouth of a small stream which empties into the Susquehanna. About 874 yards (800 meters) south of this tavern are a number of islands which have local names, but which are curious as containing inscriptions of the aborigines.

The material of which most of these islands are composed is chlorite schist, but as this rock is almost always distinguished by the quartz veins which intersect it, so in this case some of the islands are composed of this material almost exclusively, which gives them a very striking white appearance.

One of these, containing the principal inscriptions, is called Miles island.

The figures, which covered every part of the rocks that were exposed, were apparently of historical or at least narrative purport, since they seemed to be connected. Doubtless the larger portion of the inscription has been carried away by the successive vicissitudes which have broken up and defaced, and in some instances obliterated, parts of which we find evidence of the previous existence on the islands.

Every large bowlder seems to contain some traces of previous inscription, and in many instances the pictured side of the bowlder is on its under side, showing that it has been detached from its original place. The natural agencies are quite sufficient to account for any amount of this kind of displacement, for the rocks in their present condition are not refractory and offer no great resistance to the wear of weather and ice; but in addition to this must be added human agencies.

Amongst other things, they represent the conventional Indian serpent’s head, with varying numbers of lines.

Some of the signs next frequently recurring were concentric circles, in some cases four and in other cases a lesser number.

Fig. 45 is a reproduction of Prof. Frazer’s illustration.

This region was also referred to by Dr. Charles Rau (_a_), his cut from the specimen in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution (Mus. No. 39010) being here reproduced as Fig. 46.

During the autumn of the years 1888 and 1889 Dr. Hoffman visited these rocks, securing sketches and measurements, the former of which are reproduced in Figs. 47 and 48. The figures are deeply cut, as if rubbed down with sand and a round stick of green wood. The deepest channels, varying from three-fourths to 1-1/4 inches across and almost as deep as they are wide, appear as if cut out with a gouge, and for this reason bear a strong resemblance to the petroglyphs in Owens valley, California. In whatever manner these sculpturings were made, it is evident that much time and great labor were expended upon them, as this variety of rock, locally termed “Nigger-head,” is extremely hard.

Fig. 45 represents a bird’s-eye view of the top of the rock, bearing the greater amount of workmanship. The petroglyphs cover a surface measuring about 5 feet by 4 feet 6 inches. The extreme ends of the figures extend beyond the irregular horizontal surface and project over the rounded edge of the rock, so that the line, at the left-hand lower part of the illustration, dips at an angle of about 45°. The two short lines at the extreme right are upon the side of the upper edge of the rock, where the surface inclines at an angle of 30°.

Some of the figures are indefinite, which is readily accounted for by the fact that the rock is in the river, a considerable distance from shore, and annually subjected to freshets and to erosion by floating logs and drift material. The characters at the right end of the upper row resemble those near Washington, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. (See Fig. 73.)

Fig. 48 presents three characters, selected from other portions of the rock, to illustrate the variety of designs found. They are like some found at Owens valley, California, as will be observed by comparing them with the descriptions and plates under that heading in this section. The left-hand figure is 4 inches in diameter, the middle one 6 inches wide and about 15 inches in height, and the third, or right-hand, is composed of concentric rings, measuring about 10 inches across.

MASSACHUSETTS.

The following description of the much-discussed Dighton rock is taken from Schoolcraft (_b_), where it is accompanied with a plate, now reproduced as Fig. 49:

The ancient inscription on a bowlder of greenstone rock lying in the margin of the Assonet or Taunton river, in the area of ancient Vinland, was noticed by the New England colonists so early as 1680, when Dr. Danforth made a drawing of it. This outline, together with several subsequent copies of it, at different eras, reaching to 1830, all differing considerably in their details, but preserving a certain general resemblance, is presented in the Antiquatés Americanes [_sic_] (Tables XI, XII), and referred to the same era of Scandinavian discovery. The imperfections of the drawings (including that executed under the auspices of the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1839, Table XII), and the recognition of some characters bearing more or less resemblance to antique Roman letters and figures, may be considered to have misled Mr. Magnusen in his interpretation of it. From whatever cause, nothing could, it would seem, have been wider from the purport and true interpretation of it. It is of purely Indian origin, and is executed in the peculiar symbolic character of the Kekeewin.

A number of copies of the inscriptions on this rock, taken at different times by different persons, are given below in Chapter XXII, sec. 2, with remarks upon them.

Dr. Hoffman visited the locality in 1886, and found that the surface was becoming rapidly destroyed from the frequent use of scrubbing with broom and water to remove the film of sand and dirt which is daily deposited by every tide, the rock being situated at a short distance inshore. Visitors are frequent, and the guide or ferryman does not interfere with them so long as he can show his passengers the famous inscription.

The resemblance between the characters on this rock and those found in western Pennsylvania, near Millsboro, Fig. 75, and south of Franklin, on the “Indian God rock,” Fig. 74, will be noted.

In Rafn’s Antiq. Amer. (_b_) is the following account:

A large stone, on which is a line of considerable length in unknown characters, has been recently found in Rutland, Worcester county, Massachusetts; they are regularly placed, and the strokes are filled with a black composition nearly as hard as the rock itself. The Committee also adds that a similar rock is to be found in Swanzy, county of Bristol and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, perhaps ten miles from the Dighton Rock.

MINNESOTA.

The late Mr. P. W. Norris, who was connected with the Bureau of Ethnology, reported large numbers of pecked totemic characters on the horizontal faces of the ledges of rock at Pipestone quarry in Minnesota, and presented some imitations of the peckings. There is a tradition that it was formerly the custom for each Indian who gathered stone (catlinite) for pipes, to inscribe his totem (whether clan or tribal or personal totem is not specified) upon the rock before venturing to quarry upon this ground. Some of the cliffs in the immediate vicinity were of too hard a nature to admit of pecking or scratching, and upon these the characters were placed in colors. Mr. Norris distinguished bird tracks, the outline of a bird resembling a pelican, deer, turtle, a circle with an interior cross, and a human figure.

Examples of so-called totemic designs from this locality are given in Fig. 50, which are reproduced from the work of R. Cronau (_a_):

The same petroglyphs and also others at the Pipestone quarry are described and illustrated by Prof. N. H. Winchell (_a_). A part of his remarks is as follows:

On the glaciated surface of the quartzite about the “Three Maidens,” which is kept clean by the rebound of the winds, are a great many rude inscriptions, which were made by pecking out the rock with some sharp-pointed instrument or by the use of other pieces of quartzite. They are of different sizes and dates, the latter being evinced by their manner of crossing and interfering and by the evident difference in the weight of the instruments used. They generally represent some animal, such as the turtle, bear, wolf, buffalo, elk, and the human form. The “crane’s foot” is the most common; next is the image of men; next the turtle. It would seem as if any warrior or hunter who had been successful and happened to pass here left his tribute of thanks to the great spirit in a rude representation of his game and perhaps a figure of himself on the rocks about these bowlders, or perhaps had in a similar way invoked the good offices of the spirits of his clan when about to enter on some expedition. In some cases there is a connection of several figures by a continuous line, chipped in the surface of the rock in such a manner as if some legend or adventure were narrated, but for the most part the figures are isolated. This is the “sacred ground” of the locality. Such markings can be seen at no other place, though there is abundance of bare, smooth rock. (Similar inscriptions are found on the red quartzite in Cottonwood county). The excavation of the surface of the rock is very slight, generally not exceeding a sixteenth of an inch, and sometimes only enough to leave a tracing of the designed form. The hardness of the rock was a barrier to deep sculpturing with the imperfect instruments of the aborigines; but it has effectually preserved the rude forms that were made. The fine glacial scratches that are abundantly scattered over this quartzite indicate the tenacity with which it retains all such impressions, and will warrant the assignment of any date to these inscriptions that may be called for within the human period. Yet it is probable that they date back to no very great antiquity. They pertain, at least, to the dynasty of the present Indian tribes. The totems of the turtle and the bear, which are known to have been powerful among the clans of the native races in America at the time of the earliest European knowledge of them, and which exist to this day, are the most frequent objects represented. The “crane’s foot,” or “turkey foot,” or “bird track,” terms which refer perhaps to the same totem sign--the snipe--is not only common on these rocks, but is seen among the rock inscriptions of Ohio, and was one of the totems of the Iroquois, of New York.

In June, 1892, Mr. W. H. Holmes, of the Bureau of Ethnology, visited the Pipestone quarry and took a number of tracings of the petroglyphs, which unfortunately were received too late for insertion in the present work. Some of his remarks are as follows:

The trouble with the figures copied and published by Prof. Winchell is that they are not arranged in the original order. It will now be impossible to correct this entirely, as most of the stones have been taken up and removed. * * * The Winchell drawings were evidently drawn by eye and have a very large personal equation; besides, they are mixed up while appearing to be in some order. The few groups that I was able to get are, it seems to me, of more interest than all the single figures you could put in a book. There can be little doubt that in the main this great group of pictures was arranged in definite order, agreeing with the arrangements of mythical personages and positions usual in the aboriginal ceremonials of the region. It is a great pity that the original order has been destroyed, but the inroads of relic hunters and inscription cranks made it necessary to take up the stones. One large stone was taken to Minneapolis by Prof. Winchell. There are a few pieces still in place. All were near the base of one of the great granite bowlders, and it is said here that formerly, within the memory of the living, the place was visited by Indians who wished to consult the gods.

The following description is extracted from the account of Mr. James W. Lynd (_b_):

Numerous high bluffs and cliffs surround it; the Pipestone quarry and the alluvial flat below these, in which the quarry is situated, contains a huge bowlder that rests upon a flat rock of glistening, smooth appearance, the level of which is but a few inches above the surface of the ground. Upon the portions of this rock not covered by the bowlder above and upon bowlder itself are carved sundry wonderful figures--lizards, snakes, otters, Indian gods, rabbits with cloven feet, muskrats with human feet, and other strange and incomprehensible things--all cut into the solid granite, and not without a great deal of time and labor expended in the performance. * * *

A large party of Ehanktonwanna and Teetonwan Dakotas, says the legend, had gathered together at the quarry to dig the stone. Upon a sultry evening, just before sunset, the heavens suddenly became overclouded by a heavy rumbling thunder and every sign of an approaching storm, such as frequently arises on the prairie without much warning. Each one hurried to his lodge, expecting a storm, when a vivid flash of lightning, followed immediately by a crashing peal of thunder, broke over them, and, looking towards the huge bowlder beyond their camp, they saw a pillar or column of smoke standing upon it, which moved to and fro, and gradually settled down into the outline of a huge giant, seated upon the bowlder, with one long arm extended to heaven and the other pointing down to his feet. Peal after peal of thunder, and flashes of lightning in quick succession followed, and this figure then suddenly disappeared. The next morning the Sioux went to this bowlder and found these figures and images upon it, where before there had been nothing, and ever since that the place has been regarded as wakan or sacred.

Mr. T. H. Lewis (_b_) gives a description of Fig. 51.

This bowlder is in the edge of the public park, on the north end of the plateau at Brown’s valley, Minnesota. The bowlder has a flat surface with a western exposure, is irregular in outline, and is about 5 feet 8 inches in diameter, and firmly imbedded in the terrace.

The central figure, _a_, undoubtedly represents a man, although the form is somewhat conventional; _b_ represents a bird; _c_ represents a tortoise; _d_ is a cross and circle combined, but the circle has a groove extending from it; _e_, _f_, and _g_, although somewhat in the shape of crosses, probably represent bird tracks; _h_ and _i_ are nondescript in character, although there must be some meaning attached to them; _k_ and _l_ are small dots or cups cut into the bowlder.

The figures as illustrated are one-eighth of their natural size, and are also correct in their relative positions one to the other. The work is neatly done although the depth of the incisions is very slight.

MONTANA.

Mr. Charles Hallock, of Washington, D. C., reports the occurrence of pictured rocks near Fort Assiniboin, Montana, but does not mention whether they are colored or incised, and also fails to describe the general type of the characters found.

NEBRASKA.

The following (condensed) description of petroglyphs found in Dakota county, Nebraska, is furnished by Mr. J. H. Quick, of Sioux City, Iowa:

The petroglyphs are found upon the face of a sandstone cliff in a deep ravine at a point where two watercourses (dry for the most part), meet about 20 miles south of Sioux City, Iowa, but in Dakota county, in the State of Nebraska. At this point the range of bluffs which bounds the Missouri river bottom is deeply cut through by the above-mentioned ravine, which runs in a northerly direction towards the Missouri. Another ravine coming from the southwest leaves this narrow point of land between the two ravines, rising to a height of 50 to 75 feet above the bottom of the ravines. For some distance from the point this cape, if I may so term it, shows ledges of sandstone cropping out on both sides. And exactly at the point and for some rods back on the east side are found the pictographs under consideration.

The rocks are of two kinds, a few feet of hard jasperous sandstone superimposed on about the same thickness of sandstone so soft that it can be crumbled to pieces in the fingers. The lower soft strata have been worn away, leaving the upper harder layers jutting out to a distance of several feet over and completely sheltering them. And on the smooth surface of these lower soft strata, protected by the overhanging ledge above, shut in by bluffs 200 feet high on the east and sheltered from the winds by dense underwood and scrubby forest trees, are carved these pictographs. These safeguards, combined with the advantage of a very secluded situation, have combined to preserve them, very little marred by careless and mischievous hands.

The eagle or “thunder-bird” figures are quite numerous. There are also many of the “buffalo track” and of the “turkey track” figures. I call them “turkey tracks” because they all show a spur and seem to represent some of the large _gallinaciæ_.

In one of the groups, which I will call the “bear-fight group,” we are at a loss to determine whether the figure of the small animal was a part of the original design or a subsequent interpolation. It seemed genuine, but was not so deeply carved as the other figures. The same may be said of the diagonal bars across the figure of the bear.

In the other group, which I will term the “turkey-track group,” there are some figures of which we could not even imagine the meaning. But they are undoubtedly genuine, and seem to belong to the same design as the other figure.

The “bear-track” figures are very numerous and of several different sizes. A cat-like figure, which we call a panther, shows faintly. It is about effaced by time. Other figures reminded us of a crab or crawfish, but we were unable to determine whether the line running back just below belongs to it or not.

I am informed by the same gentleman who saw these petroglyphs in 1857 that there were at one time many more some 3 or 4 miles from this place, near Homer, Nebraska, in the vicinity of a large spring, but he also said that as it is a favorite picnic ground for the country people the carvings are probably destroyed. I presume others may be found in these bluffs.

I surmise that the almost cave-like nature of the place where the carvings I have above attempted to describe are situated rendered it a favorite camping ground and resting place; and also that the ravines above mentioned made easy trails from the Missouri bottom up to the higher grounds farther from the river, because it obviated the ascent of the very steep bluffs.

The Winnebago Indian reservation is a few miles south of this locality, but they were placed here by the Government as late as from 1860 to 1865. Previous to that time I think this ground was occupied by the Omahas. I have been unable to gain any information as to the Indians who carved these figures or as to their meaning.

The most instructive of the petroglyphs, copies of which are kindly furnished by Mr. Quick, is presented as Pl. XIII, and selected sketches from that and the other petroglyphs copied are shown as Figs. 52 and 53.

Frank La Flèche, of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in February, 1886, communicated the following:

Ingna^nχe gikáχa-ina is the Omaha name of a rock ledge on the banks of the Missouri river, near the Santee agency, Nebraska. This ledge contains pictographs of men who passed to the happy hunting grounds, of life size, the sandstone being so soft that the engravings would be made with a piece of wood. They are represented with the special cause (arrow, gun, etc.), which sped them to hades. The souls themselves are said to make these pictographs before repairing “to the spirits.”

Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, of the Bureau of Ethnology, says that the probable rendering of the term when corrected is, “Spirit(s) they-made-themselves the (place where).”

NEVADA.

Petroglyphs have been found by members of the U. S. Geological Survey at the lower extremity of Pyramid lake, Nevada, though no accurate reproductions are available. These characters are mentioned as incised upon the surface of basalt rocks.

Petroglyphs also occur in considerable numbers on the western slope of Lone Butte, in the Carson desert. All of these appear to have been produced on the faces of bowlders and rocks by pecking and scratching with some hard mineral material like quartz.

A communication from Mr. R. L. Fulton, of Reno, Nevada, tells that the drawing now reproduced as Fig. 54 is a pencil sketch of curious petroglyphs on a rock on the Carson river, about 8 miles below old Fort Churchill. It is the largest and most important one of a group of similar characters. It is basaltic, about 4 feet high and equally broad.

Mr. Fulton gives the following description:

The rock spoken of has an oblong hole about 2 inches by 4 and 16 inches deep at the left end, which has been chipped out before the lines were drawn, if it was not some form of the ancient mill which is so common, as it seems to be the starting point for the whole scheme of the artist. The rock lies with a broad, smooth top face at an angle towards the south, and its top and southeast side are covered with lines and marks that convey to the present generation no intelligence whatever, so far as I can learn.

A line half an inch wide starts at the hole on the left and sweeping downward forms a sort of border for the work until it reaches midway of the rock, when it suddenly turns up and mingles with the hieroglyphics above. Two or three similar lines cross at the top of the stone, and one runs across and turns along the north side, losing itself in a coating of moss that seems as hard and dry and old as the stone itself. From the line at the bottom a few scallopy looking marks hang that may be a part of the picture, or it may be a fringe or ornament. The figures are not pictures of any animal, bird, or reptile, but seem to be made up of all known forms and are connected by wavy, snake-like lines. Something which might be taken for a dog with a round and characterless head at each end of the body, looking towards you, occupies a place near the lower line. The features are all plain enough. A deer’s head is joined to a patchwork that has something that might be taken for 4 legs beneath it. Bird’s claws show up in two or three places, but no bird is near them. Snaky figures run promiscuously through the whole thing. A circle at the right end has spokes joining at the center which run out and lose themselves in the maze outside.

The best known and largest collection of marks that I know of covers a large smooth ledge at Hopkins Soda Springs, 12 miles south of the summit on the Central Pacific railroad. The rock is much the same in character as those I have described, but the groundwork in this case is a solid ledge 10 feet one way and perhaps 40 the other, all closely covered with rude characters, many of which seem to point to human figures, animals, reptiles, etc. The ledge lies at an angle of 45°, and must have been a tempting place for a lazy artist who chanced that way.

Many other places on the Truckee river have such rocks all very much alike, and yet each bearing its own distinct features in the marking. Near a rock half a mile east of Verdi, a station on the Central Pacific railroad, 10 miles east of Reno, lie two others, the larger of which has lines originating in a hole at the upper right-hand corner, all running in tangents and angles, making a double-ended kind of an arrangement of many-headed arrows, pointing three ways. A snail-like scroll lies between the two arms, but does not touch them. Below are blotches, as if the artist had tried his tools.

This region has been roamed over by the Washoe Indians from a remote period, but none of them know anything of these works. One who has gray hair and more wrinkles than hairs, who is bent with age and who is said to be a hundred years old, was led to the spot. He said he saw them a heap long time ago, when he was only a few summers old, and they looked then just as they do now.

Mr. Lovejoy, a well-known newspaper man, took up, in 1854, the ranche where the rocks lie, and said just before his death that they were in exactly the same condition when he first saw them as they are to-day. Others say the same, and they are certainly of a date prior to the settlement of this coast by Americans and probably by the Spanish.

They are very peculiar in many respects, and the rock is wonderfully adapted to the uses to which it has been put. Wherever the surface has been broken the color has changed to gray, and no amount of wear or weather seems to turn it back. The indentation is so shallow as to be imperceptible to sight or touch, and yet the marks are as plain as they could be made, and can be seen as far as the rock can be distinguished from its fellows.

It is hardly likely that the work was done without some motive besides the simple love of doing it, and it was well and carefully done, too, showing much patience and doubtless consumed a good deal of time, as the tools were poor.

A large ledge is marked near Meadow lake in Nevada county, and in the state of Nevada the petroglyphs cover a route extending from the southeast to the northwest corner of the state, crossing the line into California in Modoc county, and leaving a string of samples clear across the Madeline plains.

Eight miles below Belmont, in Nye county, Nevada, an immense rock which at some time has fallen into the canyon from the porphyry ledge above it has a patch of marks nearly 20 feet square. It is so high that a man on horseback can not reach the top.

A number at Reveillé, in the same county, are also marked. On the road to Tybo every large rock is marked, one of the figures being a semicircle with a short vertical spoke within the curve. At Reno a heavy black rock a couple of feet across is beautifully engraved to represent a bull’s eye of 4 rings, an arrow with a very large feather, and one which may mean a man. In a steep canyon 15 miles northeast of Reno, in Spanish Spring mountains, several cliffs are well marked, and an exposed ledge, where the Carson river has cut off the point of a hill below Big Bend, is covered with rings and snakes by the hundred. Several triangles, a well-formed square and compass, a woman with outstretched arms holding an olive branch, etc., are there.

Humboldt county has its share, the best being on a bluff below the old Sheba mine. Ten miles south of Pioche are about 50 figures cut into the rock, many of them designed to represent mountain sheep. Eighty miles farther south, near Kane’s Spring, the most numerous and perfect specimens of this prehistoric art are found. Men on horseback engaged in the pursuit of animals are among the most numerous, best preserved, and carefully executed.

The region I have gone over is of immense size, and must impress everyone with the importance of a set of symbols which extends in broken lines from Arizona far into Oregon.

Fig. 55 exhibits engravings at Reveillé, Nevada. Great numbers of incised characters of various kinds are also reported from the walls of rocks flanking Walker river, near Walker lake, Nevada. Waving lines, rings, and what appear to be vegetable forms are of frequent occurrence. The human form and footprints are also depicted.

Fig. 56 is a copy of a drawing made by Lieut. A. G. Tassin, Twelfth U. S. Infantry, in 1877, of an ancient rock-carving at the base and in the recesses of Dead mountain and the abode of dead bad Indians according to the Mohave mythology. This drawing and its description is from a manuscript report on the Mohave Indians, in the library of the Bureau of Ethnology, prepared by Lieut. Tassin.

He explains some of the characters as follows:

(_a_) Evidently the two different species of mesquite bean.

(_b_) Would seem to refer to the bite of the cidatus, and to the use of a certain herb for its cure.

(_c_) Presumably the olla or water cooler of the Mohaves.

The whole of this series of petroglyphs is regarded as being Shinumo or Moki. They show a general resemblance to drawings in Arizona, known to have been made by the Moki Indians. The locality is within the territory of the Shoshonean linguistic division, and the drawings are in all probability the work of one or more of the numerous tribes comprised within that division.

NEW MEXICO.

On the north wall of Canyon de Chelly, one-fourth of a mile east of its mouth, are several groups of petroglyphs, consisting chiefly of various grotesque forms of the human figure, and also numbers of animals, circles, etc. A few of them are painted black, the greater portion consisting of rather shallow lines, which are in some places considerably weathered. Further up the canyon, in the vicinity of the cliff dwellings, are numerous small groups of pictographic characters, consisting of men and animals, waving or zigzag lines, and other odd figures.

Lieut. James H. Simpson (_a_), in his Journal of a Military Reconnoissance, etc., presents a number of plates bearing copies of inscriptions on rocks in the northwestern part of New Mexico, among which are those on the so-called “Inscription rock” at El Moro, here reproduced as Fig. 57. The petroglyphs are selected from the south face of the rock. Lieut. Simpson states that most of the characters are no higher than a man’s head, and that some of them are undoubtedly of Indian origin.

Among the many colored etchings and paintings on rock discovered by the Pacific railroad expedition in 1853-’54, Lieut. Whipple (_c_) notes those at Rocky dell creek, New Mexico, which were found between the edge of the Llano Estacado and the Canadian river. The stream flows through a gorge, upon one side of which a shelving sandstone rock forms a sort of cave. The roof is covered with paintings, some evidently ancient, and beneath are innumerable carvings of footprints, animals, and symmetrical lines. He also remarks (_d_) that figures cut upon a rock at Arch spring, near Zuñi, present some faint similarity to those at Rocky dell creek.

Near Ojo Pescado, in the vicinity of the ruins, are petroglyphs, also reported by Lieut. Whipple (_d_), which are very much weather-worn and have “no trace of a modern hand about them.”

Mr. Edwin A. Hill, of Indianapolis, in a letter, notes petroglyphs on the Denver and Rio Grande railroad, between Antonite and Espanola. Below Tres Piedras and near Espanola are rude sculptures, lining the valley on both sides of the road for a long distance, at least several miles. The canyon has a slope of about 45° and contains many bowlders, and on every available face pictographs are cut. Figures of arrows, hatchets, circles, triangles, bows, spears, turtles, etc., are outlined as if with some cutting-tool. The country had two years before been occupied by Apaches, but far greater age is attributed to the petroglyphs.

Other petroglyphs actually within the geographical area of New Mexico are so near the border that they are treated of in connection with those of Colorado.

Prof. E. D. Cope (_a_) gives a copy of figures which he found on the side of a ravine near Abiquiu, on the river Chama. They are cut in Jurassic sandstone of medium hardness, and are quite worn and overgrown with the small lichen which is abundant on the face of the rock.

Mr. Gilbert Thompson, of the U. S. Geological Survey, reports his observation of petroglyphs at San Antonio springs, 30 miles east of Fort Wingate, New Mexico. The human figure, in various forms, occurs, as well as numerous other characters, strikingly similar to those frequent in the country farther west occupied by the Moki Indians. The peculiarity of these figures is that the outlines are incised and that the depressions thus formed are filled with red, blue or white pigments. The interior of the figures is simply painted with one or more of the same colors.

Figs. 58 and 59 are reproductions of drawings of petroglyphs from Ojo de Benado, south of Zuñi, New Mexico. The manuscripts which once accompanied them, and which were forwarded to the Bureau of Ethnology in the usual official manner, have become separated from the sketches, and on those there are no indications of the collectors’ names.

The characters are very like others from several localities in the territory and in the adjacent region. The type is that of the Pueblos generally.

Mr. Bandelier, in conversation, reported having seen and sketched a petroglyph at Nambe, in a canyon about 2 miles east of the pueblo, also another at Cueva Pintada, about 17 miles by the trail northwest of Cochiti.

NEW YORK.

The following is extracted from Schoolcraft (_c_):

There is a pictographic Indian inscription [now obliterated] in the valley of the Hudson, above the Highlands, which from its antiquity and character appears to denote the era of the introduction of firearms and gunpowder among the aboriginal tribes of that valley. This era, from the well-known historical events of the contemporaneous settlement of New Netherlands and New France, may be with general accuracy placed between the years 1609, the date of Hudson’s ascent of that stream above the Highlands, and the opening of the Indian trade with the Iroquois at the present site of Albany, by the erection of Fort Orange, in 1614. * * *

In a map published at Amsterdam, in Holland, in 1659, the country, for some distance both above and below Esopus creek, is delineated as inhabited by the Waranawankongs, who were a totemic division or enlarged family clan of the Mohikinder. They spoke a well-characterized dialect of the Mohigan, and have left numerous geographical names on the streams and physical peculiarities of that part of the river coast quite to and above Coxsackie. The language is Algonquin.

Esopus itself appears to be a word derived from Seepu, the Minsi-Algonquin name for a river.

* * * The inscription may be supposed, if the era is properly conjectured, to have been made with metallic tools. The lines are deeply and plainly impressed. It is in double lines. The plumes from the head denote a chief or man skilled in the Indian medico-magical art. The gun is held at rest in the right hand; the left appears to support a wand. [The position of the arm may be merely a gesture.]

The reproduction here as Fig. 60 is from a rock on the western bank of the Hudson, at Esopus landing. It is presented mainly on account of the frequent allusions to it in literature.

NORTH CAROLINA.

Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reports petroglyphs upon a gray gneissoid rock, a short distance east of Caney river, on the north side of the road from Asheville to Burnsville, North Carolina. The face of the surface is at an angle of 30° toward the south, and the sculptured area covers about 10 feet square. The characters consist chiefly of cup-shaped depressions, some about 2 inches deep, some being also connected. There are a few markings which appear to have been intended to represent footprints. The characters resemble, to some extent, those at Trap Rock gap, Georgia, and at the Juttaculla rock, North Carolina, on a branch of the Tuckasegee river, above Webster.

The above-described sculptured rock is on the property of Ellis Gardner, and is known as Gardner’s, or the “Garden rock.”

Mr. Mooney also reports that at Webster, North Carolina, there is one large rock bearing numerous petroglyphs, rings, cup-shaped depressions, fish-bone patterns, etc. He further states, upon the authority of Dr. J. M. Spainhour, of Lenoir, that upon a light gray rock measuring 4 feet by 30 are numerous cup-shaped petroglyphs, he having counted 215. The rock is on the Yadkin river, 4 miles below Wilkesboro, and is at times partly under water.

Dr. Hoffman, who in 1886 visited western North Carolina, gives the following account of colored pictographs found there by him.

“The locality known as ‘Paint rock’ is situated on the east or right bank of the French Broad river, about 100 yards above the Tennessee and North Carolina state line. The limestone cliff, which terminates abruptly near the river, measures about 100 feet in height and covers an area from side to side of exposure of at least 100 yards. The accompanying view (Fig. 61), taken from across the river, presents the wall of limestone rock and the position of the petroglyph, which is delineated in proper proportion nearly in the center of the illustration.

“The property belongs to Mr. J. W. Chockley, who has been living in the vicinity for about fifteen years. He states that during this time the pictograph has undergone some change on account of gradual disintegration or fracture of the rock. The first knowledge of the pictograph, according to local tradition, dates back about sixty years, and no information as to its import could be learned, either from the white residents, who are few in number, or the straggling Cherokee Indians who visit the railway station at odd intervals.”

The pictograph is peculiar in design, no animal forms being apparent but an indefinite number of short, straight lines at right angles to one another, as shown in Fig. 62. One-thirty-sixth actual size.

The characters are in dark red, probably a ferrous oxide, quantities of which are found in the neighborhood. The color appears to have penetrated the softer portions of the limestone, though upon the harder surfaces it has been removed by exposure to the elements. The lowermost figure appears to resemble a rude outline of a human form, with one arm lowered and reaching forward, though this is only a suggestion.

Upon the face of the rock, a few yards to the right of the above, are indistinct outlines of circles, several of which indicate central spots, and one, at least, has a line extending from the center downward for about 8 inches.

OHIO.

A large number of petroglyphs are reported from this state. It is sufficient to present the following examples extracted, with reproduced illustrations and abbreviated descriptions, from the Report of the Committee of the State Archæological Society, published in the Report of the Ohio State Board of Centennial Managers.

Fig. 63 is a copy of the petroglyph on the Newark Track rock.

It is described in the volume cited, pages 94, 95, as follows:

The inscriptions near Newark, in Licking county, Ohio, originally covered a vertical face of conglomerate rock, 50 or 60 feet in length, by 6 and 8 feet in height. This rock is soft and, therefore, the figures are easily erased * * *. About the year 1800 it became a place where white men sought to immortalize themselves by cutting their names across the old inscription * * *.

On the rock faces and detached sandstone blocks of the banks of the Ohio river there are numerous groups of intaglios, but in them the style is quite different from those to which I have referred, and which are located in the interior. Those on the Ohio river resemble the symbolical records of the North American Indians, such as the Kelley Island stone, described in Schoolcraft by Capt. Eastman, the Dighton rock, the Big Indian rock of the Susquehanna, and the “God rock” of the Allegheny river. In those the supposed bird track is generally wanting. The large sculptured rock near Wellsville, which is only visible at low water of the Ohio, has among the figures one that is prominent on the Barnesville stones. This is the fore foot of the bear, with the outside toe distorted and set outward at right angles.

Other sculptured rocks of a similar character have been found in Fairfield, Belmont, Cuyahoga, and Lorain counties.

That the ancient bird-track character belonged to the mound-builders is evident from the fact that it is found among their works, constructed of soil on a large scale.

One of these bird-track mounds occurs in the center of the large circular inclosure near Newark, Ohio, now standing in the Licking county fair grounds. Among the characters will be noticed the human hand. In one instance the hand is open, the palm facing the observer, and in the other the hand is closed, except the index finger which points downward to the base of the cliff. Of the bird-track characters there are many varieties. There is also a character resembling a cross and another bearing some resemblance to an arrow.

Fig. 64 is an illustration of the Independence stone, which is described in the same volume, pp. 98, 99, as follows:

Great care has been taken to obtain a correct sketch of what remains of this inscription. A very rude drawing of it was published in Schoolcraft’s great work upon the Indian tribes, in 1854.

The rock here described only contains a portion of the inscription. The balance was destroyed in quarrying. The markings on the portion of the rock preserved consist of the human foot, clothed with something like a moccasin or stocking; of the naked foot; of the open hand; of round markings one in front of the great toe, of each representation of the clothed foot; the figure of a serpent, and a peculiar character which might be taken for a rude representation of a crab or crawfish, but which bears a closer resemblance to an old-fashioned spearhead used in capturing fish.

Fig. 65 is a copy of the drawings on the Track rock, near Barnesville, Belmont county, Ohio, the description of which is in the same volume, pp. 89-93.

The rude cuts of the human faces, part of the human feet, the rings, stars, serpents, and some others, are evidently works of art, as in the best of them the marks of the engraving instrument are to be seen. In all cases, whether single or in groups, the relative dimensions of the figures are preserved. The surface of this block is 8 by 11 feet.

At the south end of the petroglyphs occurs a figure of several concentric rings, a design by no means confined to Ohio. The third figure right of this resembles others in the same group, and evidently indicates the footprints of the buffalo. Human footprints are generally indicated by the pronounced toe marks, either detached as slight depressions or attached to the foot, and are thus recognized as different from bear tracks, which frequently have but slight indications of toes or perhaps claw marks, and in which also the foot is shorter or rounder. The arrow-shaped figures are no doubt intended for turkey tracks, characters common to many petroglyphs of the middle and eastern Algonquian area.

Fig. 66 gives several of the above characters enlarged from the preceding figure.

In Fig. 67, referring to another block mentioned in the same report, lying 20 feet south of the one first mentioned, there is a duplication of the characters before noted--human footprints, bear and turkey tracks, and the indication of what may be intended to represent a serpent.

Fig. 68, from p. 105 of the same volume, gives copies of sketches from the rocks near Wellsville, Ohio, with remarks as follows:

On the Ohio side of the river, 1 mile above Wellsville, there is a large group of sculptures on a flat sand rock of the coal series, scarred by floating ice and flood wood. They are only visible in low water, as they are only 2 or 3 feet above the extreme low stage of the river. * * * They are made in double outline and not by a single deep channel. The outlines are a series of dots made with a round-pointed instrument, seldom more than half an inch deep.

The upper design is a rattlesnake with a fancy head and tail. Its length is 4-1/2 feet, a very clumsy affair, but intended for the common yellow rattlesnake of the West. The head of the snake, which occupies a space 6 inches square, is represented in the second character, which is reduced from a tracing size of nature. It brings to mind the horned snake of the Egyptians, which was an object of worship by them.

The character at the left hand of the lower line may be an uncouth representation of a demon or evil spirit. The right-hand character is probably an otter carrying a vine or string in his month.

It is more probable that the lines from the mouth of the animal indicate magic or supernatural power, of which many examples appear in this paper, as also of the device in the region of the animal’s heart, from which a line extends to the mouth. These characteristics connect the glyph with the Ojibwa drawings on bark.

OREGON.

Many bowlders and rock escarpments at and near the Dalles of the Columbia river, Oregon, are covered with incised or pecked glyphs. Some of them are representations of human figures, but characters of other forms predominate.

Mr. Albert S. Gatschet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reports the discovery by him, in 1878, of rock etchings 4 miles from Gaston, Oregon, and 2-1/2 miles from the ancient settlement of the Tuálati (or Atfálati) Indians. These etchings are about 100 feet above the valley bottom on six rocks of soft sandstone, projecting from the grassy hillside of Patten’s valley, opposite Darling Smith’s farm, and are surrounded with timber on two sides.

This sandstone ledge extends for one-eighth of a mile horizontally along the hillside, upon the projecting portions of which the inscriptions are found. These rocks differ greatly in size, and slant forward so that the inscribed portions are exposed to the frequent rains of that region. The first rock, or that one nearest the mouth of the canyon, consists of horizontal zigzag lines and a detached straight line, also horizontal. On another side of the same rock is a series of oblique parallel lines. Some of the most striking characters found upon other exposed portions of the rock appear to be human figures, i. e., circles to which radiating lines are attached, and bear indications of eyes and mouth, long vertical lines running downward as if to represent the body, and terminating in a furcation, as if intended for legs, toes, etc. To the right of one figure is an arm and three-fingered hand (similar to some of the Moki characters), bent downward from the elbow, the humerus extending at a right angle from the body. Horizontal rows of short vertical lines are placed below and between some of the figures, probably numerical marks of some kind.

Other characters occur of various forms, the most striking being an arrow pointing upward, with two horizontal lines drawn across the shaft, and with vertical lines having short oblique lines attached thereto.

Mr. Gatschet remarks that the Tuálati tell a trivial story to explain the origin of these pictures, the substance of which is as follows: The Tillamuk warriors living on the Pacific coast were often at variance with the several Kalapuya tribes. One day, passing through Patten’s valley to invade the country of the Tuálati, they inquired of a woman how far they were from their camp. The woman, desirous not to betray her own countrymen, said they were yet at a distance of one (or two?) days’ travel. This made them reflect over the intended invasion, and, holding a council, they decided to withdraw. In commemoration of this the inscription, with its numeration marks, was incised by the Tuálati.

Dr. Charles Rau received from Dr. James S. Denison, physician at the Klamath agency, Lake county, Oregon, a communication relative to the practice of painting figures on rocks in the territory of the Klamath Indians in Oregon. There are in that neighborhood many rocks bearing painted figures; but Dr. Rau’s (_b_) description refers specially to a single rock, called Ktá-i Tupákshi (standing rock), situated about 50 yards north of Sprague river and 150 yards from the junction of Sprague and Williamson rivers. It is about 10 feet high, 14 feet long, and 12 or 14 feet deep. Fig. 69, drawn one-twelfth of the natural size, illustrates the character of the paintings seen on the smooth southern surface of this rock. The most frequent designs are single or concentric circles, like Fig. 69, _a_, which consists of a dark red circle surrounded by a white one, the center being formed by a round red spot. Fig. 69, _b_, painted in dark red and white colors, exhibits a somewhat Mahadeo-like shape; the straight appendage of the circle is provided on each side with short projecting lines, alternately red and white, and almost producing the effect of the so-called herring-bone ornament.

Fig. 69, _c_ and _d_, executed in dark red, are other designs seen on the standing rock above mentioned. The colors, which, as the informant thinks, are rubbed in with grease, appear quite distinct on the dark surface of the rock.

PENNSYLVANIA.

Along the river courses in northern and western Pennsylvania many rocks are found bearing traces of carvings, though, on account of the character of the geological formations, some of them are nearly obliterated.

In 1875 Mr. P. W. Shafer published in a historical map of Pennsylvania several groups of pictographs. These had before appeared in a rude and crowded form in the Transactions of the Anthropological Institute of New York, 1871-’72, page 66, where the localities are mentioned as “Big” and “Little” Indian rocks, respectively. One of these rocks is in the Susquehanna river, below the dam at Safe harbor, and the drawing clearly shows its Algonquian origin. The characters are nearly all either animals or various forms of the human body. Birds, bird tracks, and serpents also occur. A part of this pictograph is presented below, Fig. 1089.

Dr. W. J. Hoffman visited this place during the autumn of 1889 and made sketches of the petroglyphs. The Algonquian type of delineation of objects is manifest.

The rock known as “Big Indian rock” is in the Susquehanna river, three-fourths of a mile below the mouth of Conestoga creek and about 400 yards from the eastern bank of the Susquehanna. It is one of many, but larger than any other in the immediate vicinity, measuring about 60 feet in length, 30 feet in width, and an average height of about 20 feet. The upper surface is uneven, though smoothly worn, and upon this are pecked the characters, shown in Fig. 70.

The characters, through exposure to the elements, are becoming rather indistinct, though a few of them are pecked so deep that they still present a depression of from one-fourth to one-half an inch in depth. The most conspicuous objects consist of human figures, thunder birds, and animals resembling the panther.

“Little Indian rock” is also situated in the Susquehanna river, one-fourth of a mile from the eastern bank and a like distance below the mouth of Conestoga creek. This rock, also of hard micaceous schist, is not so large as the one above mentioned, but bears more interesting characters, the most conspicuous being representations of the thunder bird, serpents, deer and bird tracks, etc.

Prof. Persifor Frazer, jr., (_b_) remarks upon the gradual obliteration of these pictographs, and adds:

In addition to these causes of obliteration it is a pity to have to record another, which is the vandalism of some visitors to the locality who have thought it an excellent practical joke to cut spurious figures alongside of and sometimes over those made by the Indians. It is not unlikely, too, that the “fish pots” here, as in the case of the Bald Friar’s inscriptions, a few miles below the Maryland line, may have been constructed in great part out of fragments of rock containing these hieroglyphics, so that the parts of the connected story which they relate are separated and the record thus destroyed.

Others have cut their initials or full names in these rocks, thus for an obscure record whose unriddling would award the antiquarian, substituting one, the correct deciphering of which leads to obscurity itself.

At McCalls ferry, on the Susquehanna river, in Lancaster county, and on the right shore near the water’s edge, is a gray gneissoid flat rock, bearing petroglyphs that have been pecked upon the surface. It is irregular in shape, measuring about 3-1/2 by 4 feet in superficial area, upon which is a circle covering nearly the entire surface, in the middle of which is a smaller circle with a central point. On one side of the inner space, between the outer and inner circles, are a number of characters resembling human figures and others of unintelligible form. The petroglyph is represented in Fig. 72.

The resemblance between these drawings and those on Dighton rock is to be noted, as well as that between both of them and some in Ohio. All those localities are within the area formerly occupied by tribes of the Algonquian stock.

Near Washington, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, on “Mill stream,” one-fourth of a mile above its junction with the Susquehanna river, is a large bowlder of gray sandstone (Fig. 73), the exposed portion of which bears several deeply incised lines which appear to have served as topographic indicators, as several others of like kind occur farther downstream. The longest incision is about 28 inches in length, the next one parallel to it, about 14 inches, while the third character is V-shaped, one arm of which is about 10 inches in length and the other 12. The apex of this character points in a southeast direction.

One-eighth of a mile farther down is another bowlder, also near the water, which bears shorter lines than the preceding, but in general pointing almost southeast and northwest.

The workmanship is similar to that at Conowingo, Maryland, at the site of the Bald Friar rocks. The marks appear to have been chipped to a considerable depth and then rubbed with sand and some hard substance so as to present a smooth and even surface, removing all or nearly all of the pecked surface.

Mr. P. W. Shafer, on the same historical map of Pennsylvania before mentioned, presents also a group of pictures copied from the originals on the Alleghany river, in Venango county, 5 miles south of Franklin, on what is known as the Indian God rock. There are but six characters furnished in his copy, three of which are variations of the human form, while the others are undetermined.

This rock was visited in 1886 by Dr. Hoffman, who made a number of drawings of objects represented, of which only those in Fig. 74 are here reproduced. The face of the bowlder bearing the original petroglyphs has been much disfigured by visitors who, in endeavoring to display their skill by pecking upon the surface names, dates, and other designs, have so injured it that it is difficult to trace the original characters.

Fig. 74, _a_, represents, apparently, a panther. Above and beneath it are markings resembling wolf tracks, while farther down is a turkey track, and in the left-hand lower corner is a human form, such as is usually found upon rocks in the areas represented by Shoshonian tribes.

The design at _b_ is much mutilated and eroded, and may originally have been a character like _a_, the first of this series.

The characters at _c_ and _d_ are evidently human faces, the former representing that of the sun, the latter being very much like a mask. That at _e_ is found upon other Algonquian rocks, notably those called “Bald Friar,” Maryland, in the Susquehanna river, immediately below the state line of Pennsylvania.

The bowlder upon which these petroglyphs are engraved lies at the water’s edge, and during each freshet the lower half of the surface and sometimes even more is under water. At these times floating logs, impelled according to the curve in the river immediately above, are directed toward this rock, which may explain the worn surface and the eroded condition of the sculpture.

Mr. J. Sutton Wall, of Monongahela city, describes in correspondence a rock bearing pictographs opposite the town of Millsboro, in Fayette county, Pennsylvania. This rock is about 390 feet above the level of the Monongahela river, and belongs to the Waynesburg stratum of sandstone. It is detached and rests somewhat below its true horizon. It is about 6 feet in thickness, and has vertical sides; only two figures are carved on the sides, the principal inscriptions being on the top, and all are now considerably worn. Mr. Wall mentions the outlines of animals and some other figures formed by grooves or channels cut from an inch to a mere trace in depth. No indications of tool marks were discovered. The footprints are carved depressions. The character marked z, near the lower left-hand corner, is a circular cavity 7 inches deep. A copy of the inscription made in 1882 by Mr. Wall and Mr. William Arison is reproduced as Fig. 75.

Again the resemblance between these drawings, those on Dighton rock, and some of those in Ohio, introduced above, is to be noted, and the fact that all these localities are within the area formerly occupied by tribes of the Algonquian stock.

Mr. Wall also contributes a group of glyphs on what is known as the “Geneva Picture rock,” in the Monongahela valley, near Geneva. These are footprints and other characters similar to those from Hamilton farm, West Virginia, which are shown in Fig. 1088.

Mr. L. W. Brown, of Redstone, Fayette county, Pennsylvania, mentions a rock near Layton, in that county, which measures about 15 by 25 feet in area, upon the surface of which occur a number of petroglyphs consisting of the human figure, animals, and footprints, some of which are difficult to trace. From a rough sketch reproduced as Fig. 76, made by Mr. Brown, these appear to be Algonquian in type.

Mr. Brown also submitted for examination two pieces of chocolate-colored, smooth, fine grained slate, of hard texture, bearing upon the several sides outlines of incised figures. The specimens were found in Indian graves in Fayette county, Pennsylvania. The outline of the incisions, although they are not strictly petroglyphs, are reproduced in Figs. 77 and 78.

The designs are made in delicate lines, as if scratched with a sharply pointed piece of quartz, or possibly metal. The character _d_ on Fig. 78 is the representation of a fish, which has been accentuated by additional cutting since found. The characters resemble the Algonquian type, many of them being frequently found among those tribes living along the Great Lakes.

RHODE ISLAND.

In C. C. Rafn’s Antiq. Amer. (_c_), is the following account:

_Portsmouth rocks._--The rocks, for there are several of them, are situated on the western side of the island of Rhode Island, in the town of Portsmouth, on the shore, about 7 miles from Newport, taking the western road, and 4 miles from Bristol ferry. * * * They are partially, if not entirely, covered by water at high tide; and such was the state of the tide and the lateness of the hour when the location was ascertained, that I was unable to make a thorough examination of them. I saw sufficient, however, to satisfy me that they were formerly well covered with characters, although a large portion of them have become obliterated by the action of air and moisture, and probably still more by the attrition of masses of stone against them in violent storms and gales, and by the ruthless ravages of that most destructive power of all, the hand of man.

_Tiverton rocks_ [op. cit. _d_].--Their situation may be thus known: by tracing along the east side of the map of Rhode Island until you strike Tiverton, and then following along to the southwest extremity of that town, the Indian name Puncoteast, also the English names Almy and High Hill, will be seen. The inscriptions are on masses of Graywacke. * * * We can only state they were occupied with some kind of characters.

These two inscriptions are pictured, op. cit., Table XIII.

SOUTH DAKOTA.

Mr. T. H. Lewis (_c_), gives a description of Fig. 79 as follows:

This bowlder is on a high terrace on the west side of the Minnesota river, 1-1/2 miles south of Browns valley, and is in Roberts county, South Dakota. It is oblong in form, being 3-1/2 feet in length, 2 feet in width, and is firmly imbedded in the ground.

Of the characters _a_ and _b_ are undoubtedly tortoises; _c_ is probably intended to represent a bird track; _d_ represents a man, and is similar to the one at Browns valley, Minnesota, [Fig. 51, supra;] _e_ is a nondescript of unusual form; _f_ is apparently intended to represent a headless bird, in that respect greatly resembling certain earthen effigies in the regions to the southeast.

The figures are about one-fourth of an inch in depth and very smooth, excepting along their edges, which roughness is caused by a slight unevenness of the surface of the bowlder.

The same authority, op. cit., describes Fig. 79, _g_.

This bowlder, 4 miles northwest of Browns valley, Minnesota, is in Roberts county, South Dakota.

The figures here represented are roughly pecked into the stone, and were never finished; for the grooves that form the pictograph on other bowlders in this region have been rubbed until they are perfectly smooth. The face of the bowlder upon which these occur is about 2 feet long and 1-1/2 feet in width.

TENNESSEE.

Mr. John Haywood (_a_) gives the following account:

About 2 miles below the road which crosses the Harpeth river from Nashville to Charlotte is a large mound 30 or 40 feet high. About 6 miles from it is a large rock, on the side of the river, with a perpendicular face of 70 or 80 feet altitude. On it, below the top some distance and on the side, are painted the sun and moon in yellow colors, which have not faded since the white people first knew it. The figure of the sun is 6 feet in diameter; that of the moon is of the old moon. The sun and moon are also painted on a high rock on the side of the Cumberland river, in a spot which several ladders placed upon each other could not reach, and which is also inaccessible except by ropes let down the summit of the rock to the place where the painting was performed. * * * The sun is also painted on a high rock on the side of the Cumberland river, 6 or 7 miles below Clarksville; and it is said to be painted also at the junction of the Holston and French Broad rivers, above Knoxville, in East Tennessee; also on Duck river, below the bend called the Devil’s Elbow, on the west side of the river, on a bluff; and on a perpendicular flat rock facing the river, 20 feet below the top of the bluff and 60 above the water, out of which the rock rises, is the painted representation of the sun in red and yellow colors, 6 feet in circumference, yellow on the upper side and a yellowish red on the lower. The colors are very fresh and unfaded. The rays, both yellow and red, are represented as darting from the center. It has been spoken of ever since the river was navigated and has been there from time immemorial. * * *

The painting on Big Harpeth, before spoken of, is more than 80 feet from the water and 30 or 40 below the summit. All these paintings are in unfading colors, and on parts of the rock inaccessible to animals of every description except the fowls of the air. The painting is neatly executed, and was performed at an immense hazard of the operator.

Mr. W. M. Clarke, in Smithsonian Report for 1877, page 275, says:

On the bluffs of the Big Harpeth many pictures of Indians, deer, buffalo, and bows and arrows are to be seen. These pictures are rudely drawn, but the coloring is as perfect now as when first put on.

Haywood (_b_) says:

At a gap of the mountains and near the head of Brasstown creek, which is toward the head of the Hiawassee, and among the highlands, is a large horizontal rock on which are engraved the tracks of deer, bears, horses, wolves, turkeys, and barefooted human beings of all sizes. Some of the horses’ tracks appear to have slipped forward. The direction of them is westward. Near them are signs of graves.

He also (_c_) gives the following account:

On the south bank of the Holston, 5 miles above the mouth of French Broad, is a bluff of limestone opposite the mounds and a cave in it. The bluff is 100 feet in height. On it are painted in red colors, like those on the Paint rock, the sun and moon, a man, birds, fishes, etc. The paintings have in part faded within a few years. Tradition says these paintings were made by the Cherokees, who were accustomed in their journeys to rest at this place. Wherever on the rivers of Tennessee are perpendicular bluffs, on the sides, and especially if caves be near, are often found mounds near them, inclosed in intrenchments, with the sun and moon painted on the rocks, and charcoal and ashes in the smaller mounds. These tokens seem to be evincive of a connection between the mounds, the charcoal and ashes, the paintings and the caves.

TEXAS.

Mr. J. R. Bartlett (_b_) gives the following account:

About 30 miles from El Paso del Norte, in Texas, very near the boundary line of Mexico, there is an overhanging rock, extending for some distance, the whole surface of which is covered with rude paintings and sculptures, representing men, animals, birds, snakes, and fantastic figures. The colors used are black, red, white, and a brownish yellow. The sculptures are mere peckings with a sharp instrument just below the surface of the rock. The accompanying engravings [reproduced in Fig. 80] show the character of the figures and the taste of the designers. Hundreds of similar ones are painted on the rocks at this place. Some of them, evidently of great age, had been partly defaced to make room for more recent devices.

The overhanging rock, beneath which we encamped, seemed to have been a favorite place of resort for the Indians, as it is at the present day for all passing travelers. The recess formed by this rock is about 15 feet in length by 10 in width. Its entire surface is covered with paintings, one laid on over the other, so that it is difficult to make out those which belong to the aborigines. I copied a portion of these figures, about which there can be no doubt as to the origin. They represent Indians with shields and bows, painted with a brownish earth; horses, with their riders; uncouth looking animals, and a large rattlesnake. Similar devices cover the rock in every part, but are much defaced. Near this overhanging rock is the largest and finest tank or pool of water to be found about here. It is only reached by clambering on the hands and knees 15 or 20 feet up a steep rock. Over it projects a gigantic bowlder, which, resting on or wedged between other rocks, leaves a space of about 4 feet above the surface of the water. On the underside of this bowlder are fantastic designs in red paint, which could only have been made by persons lying on their backs in this cool and sheltered spot.

Mr. Charles Hallock, of Washington, District of Columbia, gives information that there is a locality termed the Painted caves, “on the Rio Grande, near Devil’s river, in Crockett county, Texas, on the line of the ‘Sunset’ railroad. Here the rock is gray limestone and the petroglyphs are for the most part sculptured. They are in great variety, from a manifest antiquity to the most recent date; for these cliff caverns have been from time immemorial the refuge and resort of all sorts of wayfarers, marauders, and adventurers, who have painted, cut, and carved in every geometrical and grotesque form imaginable.”

UTAH.

Carvings and paintings on rocks are found in such numbers in the southern interior of Utah that a locality there has been named Pictograph rocks.

Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey, collected in 1875 a number of copies of inscriptions in Temple creek canyon, southeastern Utah, and noted their finding as follows:

The drawings were found only on the northeast wall of the canyon, where it cuts the Vermillion cliff sandstone. The chief parts are etched, apparently by pounding with a sharp point. The outline of a figure is usually more deeply cut than the body. Other marks are produced by rubbing or scraping, and still others by laying on colors. Some, not all, of the colors are accompanied by a rubbed appearance, as though the material had been a dry chalk.

I could discover no tools at the foot of the wall, only fragments of pottery, flints, and a metate.

Several fallen blocks of sandstone have rubbed depressions that may have been ground out in the sharpening of tools. There have been many dates of inscriptions, and each new generation has unscrupulously run its lines over the pictures already made. Upon the best protected surfaces, as well as the most exposed, there are drawings dimmed beyond restoration and others distinct. The period during which the work accumulated was longer by far than the time which has passed since the last. Some fallen blocks cover etchings on the wall, and are themselves etched.

Colors are preserved only where there is almost complete shelter from rain. In two places the holes worn in the rock by swaying branches impinge on etchings, but the trees themselves have disappeared. Some etchings are left high and dry by a diminishing talus (15 to 20 feet), but I saw none partly buried by an increasing talus (except in the case of the fallen block already mentioned).

The painted circles are exceedingly accurate, and it seems incredible that they were made without the use of a radius.

In the collection contributed by Mr. Gilbert there are at least fifteen series or groups of figures, most of which consist of the human form (from the simplest to the most complex style of drawing), animals, either singly or in long files--as if driven--bird tracks, human feet and hands, etc. There are also circles, parallel lines, and waving or undulating lines, spots, and other characters.

Mr. Gilbert also reports the discovery, in 1883, of a great number of pictographs, chiefly in color, though some are only incised, in a canyon of the Book cliff containing Thompson’s spring, about 4 miles north of Thompson’s station, on the Denver and Colorado Railroad, Utah. He has also furnished a collection of drawings of pictographs at Black rock spring, on Beaver creek, north of Milford, Utah. A number of fallen blocks of basalt at a low escarpment are filled with etchings upon the vertical faces. The characters generally are of an “unintelligible” nature, though the human figure is drawn in complex forms. Footprints and circles abound.

Mr. I. C. Russell, of the U. S. Geological Survey, furnished rude drawings of pictographs at Black rock spring, Utah (see Fig. 1093). Mr. Gilbert Thompson also discovered pictographs at Fool creek canyon, Utah (see Fig. 1094).

Mr. Vernon Bailey, in a letter dated January 18, 1889, reports that in the vicinity of St. George “all along the sandstone cliffs are strange figures like hieroglyphics and pictures of animals cut in the rocks, but now often worn dim.”

Mr. George Pope, of Provo city, Utah county, in a letter, kindly gives an account of an inscription on a rock in a canyon at the mouth of Provo river, about 7 miles from the city named. There is no paint seen, the inscription being cut. A human hand is conspicuous, being cut (probably pecked) to a depth of at least one-third of an inch, and so with representations of animals.

Dr. Rau (_c_) gives the design of a portion of a group carved on a cliff in the San Pete valley at the city of Manti, Utah, now reproduced as Fig. 81. He says:

A line drawn horizontally through the middle of the parallel lines connecting the concentric circles would divide the figure into two halves, each bearing a close resemblance to Prof. Simpson’s fifth type of cup stones. A copy of the group in question was made and published by Lieut. J. W. Gunnison, in The Mormons or Latter-Day Saints, etc., Philadelphia, 1853, p. 63. The illustration is taken from Bancroft’s Native Races (Vol. IV, p. 717). In accordance with Lieut. Gunnison’s design, the position of the grotesque human figure is changed to the left of the concentric circle. He also says that the Mormon leaders made this aboriginal inscription subservient to their religion by giving the following translation of it: “I, Mahanti, the second king of the Lamanites, in five valleys of the mountains, make this record in the twelve hundredth year since we came out of Jerusalem. And I have three sons gone to the south country to live by hunting antelope and deer.” * * * Schoolcraft attempts (Vol. III, p. 494) something like an interpretation which appears to me fanciful and unsatisfactory.

The following extract is made from The Shinumos by F. S. Dellenbaugh (_a_).

Some of the least disintegrated ruins are situated on the Colorado river, only a short distance below the mouth of the Dirty Devil river. * * * A level shelf varying from about 6 to 10 feet in width ran along for 150 feet or more. In most places the rocks above protruded as far as the edge of the lower rocks, sometimes farther, thus leaving a sort of gallery, generally 7 or 8 feet high. Walls that extended to the roof had been built along the outer edge of the natural floor, and the inclosed space being subdivided by stone partitions to suit the convenience of the builders, the whole formed a series of rather comfortable rooms or houses. The back walls of the houses--the natural rock--had on them many groups of hieroglyphics, and farther along where there was no roof rock at all the vertical faces had been inscribed with seeming great care. Some of the sheltered groups were painted in various dull colors, but most of them were chiseled.

The figure [82] gives a chiseled group. It is easy to see that these are signs of no low order. Considering their great age, their exposure, many of the delicate touches must be obliterated.

The inscriptions on this ruin might possibly be the history of the defense of the crossing, the stationing of the garrison, the death of officers of rank, etc.

The following sketches of petroglyphs, with the references attached, are taken from the sketch book of Mr. F. S. Dellenbaugh, before referred to.

The petroglyph, of which Fig. 83 is a copy, appears on a horizontal rock 5 miles below the mouth of the Dirty Devil river, Utah.

The characters in Fig. 84 from rocks near the preceding group are painted red, with the imprint of a hand (on the larger figure) in white.

The petroglyphs reproduced in Fig. 85 are copied from the vertical walls near the two groups immediately before mentioned.

The characters presented in Fig. 86 are copied from a vertical surface 10 by 16 feet in area and halfway up the ascent to the geodetic point west of “Windsor castle,” Pipe Spring. The human forms are similar in general design to the greater number of such representations made by the Shinumo Indians.

The human forms represented in Fig. 87 are from the vicinity of Colorado river, 5 miles below the mouth of the Dirty Devil river. Mr. Dellenbaugh notes that the darkest portions of the figures indicate a chiseled surface.

Fig. 88 represents a number of petroglyphs obtained at the same locality as the one last mentioned. The greater number of the characters appear to represent snakes.

Fig. 89 shows characters from the Shinumo canyon, which, according to the draftsman’s general notes, are painted.

VIRGINIA.

In 1886 Dr. Hoffman visited a local field 9 miles southwest of Tazewell, Tazewell county, Virginia, which can be designated as follows: The range of hills bounding the western side of the valley presents at various points low cliffs and exposures of Silurian sandstone. About 4 miles below the village, known as Knob post-office, there is a narrow ravine leading up toward a depression in the range, forming a pass to the valley beyond, near the summit of which is a large irregular exposure of rock facing west-southwest, upon the eastern extremity of which are a number of pictographs, many of which are still in good preservation. Fig. 90 is a representation. The westernmost object, i. e., the one on the extreme left, appears to be a circle about 16 inches in diameter, from the outer side of which are short radiating lines giving the whole the appearance of a sun. Beneath and to the right of this is the outline of an animal resembling a doe.

Other figures, chiefly human, follow in close succession to the eastern edge of the vertical face of the rock, nearly all of which present the arms in various attitudes, i. e., extended or raised as in extreme surprise or adoration. Concentric rings appear at one point, while a thunder-bird is shown not far away. About 12 feet east of this place are several figures resembling the thunder-bird.

All of the characters, with one exception, are drawn in heavy or solid lines of dark red paint, presumably a ferruginous coloring material prepared in the neighborhood, which abounds in iron compounds. The exception is one object which appears to have been black, but is now so faded or eroded as to seem dark gray.

The following account of the Tazewell county, Virginia, pictographs is taken from Coale’s Life, etc., of Waters: (_a_)

In August, 1871, the writer went to visit Tazewell county by way of the saltworks. Upon this place are found those strangely painted rocks which have been a wonder and a mystery to all who have seen them. The grandfather of Gen. Bowen settled the cove in 1766, one hundred and ten years ago, and the paintings were there then, and as brilliant to-day as they were when first seen by a white man. They consist of horses, elk, deer, wolves, bows and arrows, eagles, Indians, and various other devices. The mountain upon which these rocks are based is about 1,000 feet high, and they lie in a horizontal line about halfway up and are perhaps 75 feet broad upon their perpendicular face.

When it is remembered that the rock is hard, with a smooth white surface, incapable of absorbing paint, it is a mystery how the coloring has remained undimmed under the peltings of the elements for how much longer than a hundred years no one can tell. This paint is found near the rocks, and Gen. Bowen informed the writers that his grandmother used it for dyeing linsey, and it was a fadeless color.

As there was a battle fought on a neighboring mountain, between 1740 and 1750, between the Cherokees and Shawnees for the possession of a buffalo lick, the remains of the rude fortifications being still visible, it is supposed the paintings were hieroglyphics conveying such intelligence to the red man as we now communicate to each other through newspapers.

It was a perilous adventure to stand upon a narrow, inclined ledge without a shrub or a root to hold to, with from 50 to 75 feet of sheer perpendicular descent below to a bed of jagged bowlders and the home of innumerable rattlesnakes, but I didn’t make it. I crawled far enough along that narrow slanting ledge with my fingers inserted in the crevices of the rocks to see most of the paintings, and then “coon’d” it back with equal care and caution.

Five miles east of the last-noted locality and 7 west of Tazewell, high up against a vertical cliff of rock, is visible a lozenge-shaped group of red and black squares, known in the locality as the “Handkerchief rock,” because the general appearance of the colored markings suggests the idea of an immense bandana handkerchief spread out. The pictograph is on the same range of hills as the preceding, but neither is visible from any place near the other. The objects can not be viewed upon Handkerchief rock excepting from a point opposite to it and across the valley, as the locality is so overgrown with large trees as to obscure it from any position immediately beneath. The lozenge or diamond-shaped figure appears to cover an area about 3 feet in diameter.

WASHINGTON.

Capt. Charles Bendire, U. S. Army, in a letter dated Fort Walla-walla, Washington, May 18, 1881, mentions a discovery made by Col. Henry C. Merriam, then lieutenant-colonel Second United States Infantry, as thus quoted:

While encamped at the lower end of Lake Chelan, lat. 48° N., he made a trip to the upper end of said lake, where he found a perpendicular cliff of granite with a perfectly smooth surface, from 600 to 1,000 feet high, rising out of the lake. On the cliff he found Indian picture-writings, painted evidently at widely different periods, but evidently quite old. The oldest was from 25 to 30 feet above the present water level, and could at the time they were executed only be reached by canoe. The paintings are figures, black and red in color, and represent Indians with bows and arrows, elk, deer, bear, beaver, and fish, and are from 1 foot to 18 inches in size. There are either four or five rows of these figures, quite a number in each row. The Indians inhabiting this region know nothing of the origin of these pictures, and say that none of their people for the past four generations knew anything about them.

Since the preceding letter was written a notice of the same rock has been published, together with an illustration, by Mr. Alfred Downing, of Seattle, Washington, in “The Northwest,” VII, No. 10, October, 1889, pp. 3, 4. The description, condensed, is as follows:

In that part of Washington territory until recent years known as the Moses Indian reservation lies the famous Lake Chelan, 70 miles in length with an average width of 2 miles.

About half a mile from its head, on the western shore and rising from the water, as an abrupt and precipitous wall of granite, stands “Pictured rock.”

The most remarkable feature of the Chelan picture is that the figures representing Indians, bear, deer, birds, etc., are painted upon the surface of the smooth granite, nearly horizontal, but about 17 feet above the lake; the upper portion of the picture being about 2 feet higher. The figures depicted are 5 to 10 inches long.

The difference between high and low stage of water at any period during the year does not exceed 4 feet, and this high-water mark being well defined along the shore, it becomes self-evident that these signs were placed there ages ago, when the water was 17 feet higher than it is now. The granite bluff or walls in this instance are smooth, being weather and water worn, and afford no hold for hand or foot either from above or below, and from careful observation it would appear to be a physical impossibility for either a white or red man to show his artistic skill on those rocks unless at the ancient stage of water and with the aid of a canoe or a “dugout.”

The paint or color used was black and red, the latter resembling venetian. How wonderfully the color has stood the test in the face of the storms to which the lake is subject is apparent; only in one or two instances does it to-day show any signs of fading or weather-wearing. The signs impressed me as intending to convey the idea of the prowess of an Indian chief in the hunt, or as being a page in the history of a tribe, the small perpendicular strokes seen in the lower portion indicating probably the number of bear, deer, or other animals slain.

When referring, in Pacific Railroad Report, vol. I, page 411, to a locality on the Columbia river in Washington, between Yakima and Pisquouse counties, Mr. George Gibbs mentioned pecked and colored petroglyphs which he found there as follows:

It was a perpendicular rock, on the face of which were carved sundry figures, most of them intended for men. They were slightly sunk into the sandstone and colored, some black, others red, and traces of paint remained more or less distinctly on all of them. These also, according to their [the Indians’] report, were the work of the ancient race; but from the soft nature of the rock, and the freshness of some of the paint, they were probably not of extreme antiquity.

For another example of petroglyphs from Washington see Fig. 679.

WEST VIRGINIA.

Mr. John Haywood (_d_) gives the following account:

In the county of Kenhaway [Kanawha] about 4 miles below the Burning spring, and near the mouth of Campbell’s creek, in the state of Virginia, is a rock of great size, on which, in ancient times, the natives engraved many representations. There is the figure of almost every indigenous animal--the buffalo, the bear, the deer, the fox, the hare, and other quadrupeds of various kinds; fish of the various productions of the western waters, fowls of different descriptions, infants scalped, scalps alone, and men as large as life. The rock is in the river Kenhaway, near its northern shore, accessible only at low water unless by the aid of water craft.

The following notice of the same locality, but perhaps not of the same rock, was published by James Madison (_a_), bishop of Virginia, in 1804:

I cannot conclude this letter without mentioning another curious specimen of Indian labour, and of their progress in one of the arts. This specimen is found within 4 miles of the place whose latitude I endeavoured to take, and within 2 of what are improperly called Burning springs, upon a rock of hard freestone, which sloping to the south, touching the margin of the river, presents a flat surface of above 12 feet in length and 9 in breadth, with a plane side to the east of 8 or 9 feet in thickness.

Upon the upper surface of this rock, and also upon the side, we see the outlines of several figures, cut without relief, except in one instance, and somewhat larger than the life. The depth of the outline may be half an inch; its width three-quarters, nearly, in some places. In one line ascending from the part of the rock nearest the river there is a tortoise; a spread eagle, executed with great expression, particularly the head, to which is given a shallow relief, and a child, the outline of which is very well drawn. In a parallel line there are other figures, but among them that of a woman only can be traced. These are very indistinct. Upon the side of the rock there are two awkward figures which particularly caught my attention. One is that of a man with his arms uplifted, and hands spread out as if engaged in prayer. His head is made to terminate in a point, or rather, he has the appearance of something upon the head of a triangular or conical form; near to him is another similar figure suspended by a cord fastened to his heels. I recollected the story which Father Hennepin relates of one of the missionaries from Canada who was treated in a somewhat similar manner, but whether this piece of seemingly historical sculpture has reference to such an event can be only a matter of conjecture. A turkey, badly executed, with a few other figures may also be seen. The labour and the perseverance requisite to cut those rude figures in a rock so hard that steel appeared to make but little impression upon it, must have been great; much more so than making of enclosures in a loose and fertile soil.

Another petroglyph, a copy of which is presented in Fig. 1088, is thus described in a letter from Morgantown, West Virginia:

The famous pictured rocks on the Evansville pike, about 4 miles from this place, have been a source of wonder and speculation for more than a century, and have attracted much attention among the learned men of this country and Europe. The cliff upon which these drawings exist is of considerable size and within a short distance of the highway above mentioned. The rock is a white sandstone, which wears little from exposure to the weather, and upon its smooth surface are delineated the outlines of at least fifty [?] species of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, embracing in the number panthers, deer, buffalo, otters, beavers, wildcats, foxes, wolves, raccoons, opossums, bears, elk, crows, eagles, turkeys, eels, various sorts of fish, large and small, snakes, etc. In the midst of this silent menagerie of specimens of the animal kingdom is the full length outline of a female form, beautiful and perfect in every respect. Interspersed among the drawings of animals, etc., are imitations of the footprints of each sort, the whole space occupied being 150 feet long by 50 feet wide. To what race the artist belonged or what his purpose was in making these rude portraits must ever remain a mystery, but the work was evidently done ages ago.

The late P. W. Norris, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reported that he found petroglyphs in many localities along the Kanawha river, West Virginia. Engravings are numerous upon smooth rocks, covered during high water, at the prominent fords in the river, as well as in the niches or long shallow caves high in the rocky cliffs of this region. Rude representations of men, animals, and some characters deemed symbolic were found, but none were observed superior to, or essentially differing from those of modern Indians.

On the rocky walls of Little Coal river, near the mouth of Big Horse creek, are cliffs which display many carvings. One of the rocks upon which a mass of characters appear, is 8 feet in length and 5 feet in height.

About 2 miles above Mount Pleasant, Mason county, on the north side of the Kanawha river, are numbers of characters, apparently totemic. These are at the foot of the hills flanking the river.

On the cliffs near the mouth of the Kanawha river, opposite Mount Carbon, Nicholas county, are numerous pictographs. These appear to be cut into the sandstone rock.

Pictographs were lately seen at various points on the banks of the Kanawha river, both above and below Charleston, but since the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad some of the rocks bearing them have been destroyed. About 6 miles above Charleston there was formerly a rock lying near its water’s edge upon which, it is reported by old residents, were depicted the outline of a bear, turkey tracks, and other markings. Tradition told that this was a boat or canoe landing, used by the Indians in their travels when proceeding southward. The tribe was not designated. From an examination of the locality it was learned that this rock had been broken and used in the construction of buildings. It is said that a trail passing there led southward, and at a point 10 miles below the Kanawha river stood several large trees upon which were marks of red ocher or some similar pigment, at which point the trail spread or branched out in two directions, one leading southward into Virginia, the other southwest toward Kentucky.

On a low escarpment of sandstone facing Little Coal river, 6 or 8 miles above its confluence with Coal river and about 18 miles south of the Kanawha river, are depicted the outlines of animals, such as the deer, panther (?), etc., and circles, delineated in dark red, but rather faint from disintegration of the surface. The characters are similar in general appearance to those in Tazewell county, Virginia, and appear as if they might have been made by the same tribe. There are no peculiarities in the topography of the surrounding region that would suggest the idea of their having served as topographic indications, but they rather appear to be a record of a hunting party, and to designate the kinds of game abounding in the region.

Mr. L. V. McWhorter reports pictographs in a cave near Berlin, Lewis county, West Virginia. No details are given.

A petroglyph found in a rock shelter in West Virginia is also presented in Pl. XXXI.

WISCONSIN.

A large number of glyphs are incised on the face of a rock near Odanah, now a village of the Ojibwa Indians, 12 miles northeast from Ashland, on the south shore of lake Superior, near its western extremity. The characters were easily cut on the soft stone, so were also easily worn by the weather, and in 1887 were nearly indistinguishable. Many of them appeared to be figures of birds. An old Ojibwa Indian in the vicinity told the present writer that the site of the rock was formerly a well-known halting place and rendezvous, and that on the arrival of a party, or even of a single individual, the appropriate totemic mark or marks were cut on the rock, much as white men register their names at a hotel.

The Pictured cave of La Crosse valley, called Brown’s cave, is described by Rev. Edward Brown (_a_) as follows:

This curious cavern is situated in the town of Barre, 4 miles from West Salem and 8 miles from La Crosse. * * *

Before the landslide it was an open shelter cavern, 15 feet wide at the opening and 7 feet at the back end; greatest width, 16 feet; average, 13; length, 30 feet; height, 13 feet, and depth of excavation after clearing out the sand of the landslide, 5 feet. The pictures are mostly of the rudest kind, but differing in degree of skill. Except several bisons, a lynx, rabbit, otter, badger, elk, and heron, it is perhaps impossible to determine with certainty what were intended or whether they represented large or small animals, no regard being had to their relative sizes.

[Examples of the figures are here presented as Fig. 91.]

Perhaps _a_ indicates a bison or buffalo, and is the best executed picture of the collection. Its size is 19 inches long by 15-1/2 inches from tip of the horns to the feet.

_b_ represents a hunter, with a boy behind him, in the act of shooting an animal with his bow and arrow weapon. The whole representation is 25 inches long; the animal from tip of tail to end of horn or proboscis 12 inches, and from top of head to feet 7 inches; the hunter 11 inches high, the boy 4-1/2.

_c_ represents a wounded animal, with the arrow or weapon near the wound. This figure is 21-3/4 inches from the lower extremity of the nose to the tip of the tail, 8-3/4 inches from fore shoulders to front feet, and 8 inches from the rump to the hind feet. The weapon is 4-1/2 inches long by 5 inches broad from the tip of one prong or barb to that of the other.

_d_ represents a chief with eight plumes and a war club, 11 inches from top of head to the lower extremity, and 6-3/4 inches from the tip of the upper finger to the end of the opposite arm; the war club 6-1/2 inches long.

Dr. Hoffman made a visit to this cave in August, 1888, to compare the pictographic characters with others of apparently similar outline and of known signification. He found but a limited number of the figures distinct, and these only in part, owing to the rapid disintegration of the sandstone upon which they were drawn. Many names and inscriptions had been incised in the soft surface by visitors, who also, by means of the smoke of candles, added grotesque and meaningless figures over and between the original paintings, so as to seriously injure the latter.

Mr. T. H. Lewis (_d_) describes the petroglyphs, a part of which is reproduced in Fig. 92, as follows:

Last November my attention was called to some rock sculptures located about 2-1/2 miles northwest from Trempealeau, Wisconsin. There is at the point in question an exposed ledge of the Potsdam sandstone extending nearly one-eighth of a mile along the east side of the lower mouth of the Trempealeau river, now known as the bay. Near its north end there is a projection extending out about 7 feet from the top of the ledge and overhanging the base about 10 feet. The base of the ledge is 40 feet back from the shore, and the top of the cliff at this point is 30 feet above the water. On the face of the projection, and near the top, are the sculpture figures referred to.

The characters designated _a_ _a_ are two so-called canoes, somewhat crescent-shaped, but with some variation in outline; _b_ has the same form, but the additional upright portion overlaps it; _c_ and _d_ are also of the same form as _a_, but _c_ is cut in the bottom of _d_; _e_ probably represents a fort, and its length is 18-1/2 inches; _f_ is a nondescript, and it partly overlaps _d_; _g_ is a nondescript four-legged animal, its length in a straight line from the end of the nose to the tip of the tail being 10-1/2 inches; _h_ may be intended to represent a foot, but possibly it may be a hand; it is 7-1/2 inches in length; _i_ is an outspread hand, a little over 13 inches long; _j_ undoubtedly represents a foot and is 4-1/2 inches long; _k_ _k_ are of the same class as _a_.

The figures are not mere outlines, but intaglio, varying in depth from a quarter of an inch to fully 1 inch. Although the surface of the rock is rough the intaglios were rubbed perfectly smooth after they had been engraved by pecking or cutting.

WYOMING.

Several pictographs in Wyoming are described by Capt. William A. Jones, U. S. Army (_a_). They are reproduced here as Figs. 93, 94, and 95.

Fig. 93, found in the Wind river valley, Wyoming, was interpreted by members of a Shoshoni and Banak delegation to Washington in 1880 as “an Indian killed another.” The latter is very roughly delineated in the horizontal figure, but is also represented by the line under the hand of the upright figure, meaning the same dead person. At the right is the scalp taken and the two feathers showing the dead warrior’s rank. The arm nearest the prostrate foe shows the gesture for killed; concept, to put down, flat.

The same gesture appears in Fig. 94, from the same authority and locality. The scalp is here held forth, and the numeral (1) is indicated by the lowest stroke.

Fig. 95, from the same locality and authority, was also interpreted by the Shoshoni and Banak. It appears from their description that a Blackfoot had attacked the habitation of some of his own people. The right-hand upper figure represents his horse, with the lance suspended from the side. The lower figure illustrates the log house built against a stream. The dots are the prints of the horse’s hoofs, while the two lines running outward from the upper inclosure show that two thrusts of the lance were made over the wall of the house, thus killing the occupant and securing two bows and five arrows, as represented in the left-hand group. The right-hand figure of that group shows the hand raised in the attitude of making the gesture for kill.

The Blackfeet, according to the interpreters, were the only Indians in the locality mentioned who constructed log houses, and therefore the drawing becomes additionally interesting, as an attempt appears to have been made to illustrate the crossing of the logs at the corners, the gesture for which (log house) is as follows:

Both hands are held edgewise before the body, palms facing, spread the fingers, and place those of one hand into the spaces between those of the other, so that the tips of each protrude about an inch beyond.

Another and more important petroglyph was discovered on Little Popo-Agie, northwestern Wyoming, by members of Capt. Jones’s party in 1873. The glyphs are upon a nearly vertical wall of the yellow sandstone in the rear of Murphy’s ranch, and appear to be of some antiquity. Further remarks, with specimens of the characters, are presented below in this paper. (See Fig. 1091.)

Dr. William H. Corbusier, U. S. Army, in a letter to the writer, mentions the discovery of drawings on a sandstone rock near the headwaters of Sage creek, in the vicinity of Fort Washakie, Wyoming, and gives a copy which is presented as Fig. 96. Dr. Corbusier remarks that neither the Shoshoni nor the Arapaho Indians know who made the drawings. The two chief figures appear to be those of the human form, with the hands and arms partly uplifted the whole being inclosed above and on either side by an irregular line.

The method of grouping, together with various accompanying appendages, as irregular lines, spirals, etc., observed in Dr. Corbusier’s drawing, show great similarity to the Algonquian type, and resemble some engravings found near the Wind river mountains, which were the work of Blackfeet (Satsika) Indians, who, in comparatively recent times, occupied portions of the country in question, and probably also sketched the designs near Fort Washakie.

Fig. 97 is also reported from the same locality.

SECTION 3.

MEXICO.

No adequate attention can be given in the present paper to the distribution and description of the petroglyphs of Mexico. In fact very little accurate information is accessible regarding them. The distinguished explorer, Mr. A. Bandelier, in a conversation mentioned that he had sketched but not published two petroglyphs in Sonora. One, very large and interesting, was at Cara Pintada, 3 miles southwest of Huassavas, and a smaller one was at Las Flechas, 1 mile west of Huassavas. He also sketched one in Chihuahua on the trail from Casas Grandes to the Cerro de Montezuma. From the accounts of persons met in his Mexican travels he gave it as his opinion that a large number of petroglyphs still remained in the region of the Sierra Madre.

The following mention of the paintings of the ancient inhabitants of Lower California is translated from an anonymous account, in Documentos para la Historia de Mexico (_a_), purporting to have been written in 1790:

Throughout civilized California, from south to north, and especially in the caves and smooth rocks, there remain various rude paintings. Notwithstanding their disproportion and lack of art, the representations of men, fish, bows and arrows, can be distinguished and with them different kind of strokes, something like characters. The colors of these paintings are of four kinds; yellow, a reddish color, green and black. The greater part of them are painted in high places, and from this it is inferred by some that the old tradition is true, that there were giants among the ancient Californians. Be this as it may, in the Mission of Santiago, which is at the south, was discovered on a smooth rock of great height, a row of hands stamped in red. On the high cliffs facing the shore are seen fish painted in various shapes and sizes, bows, arrows, and some unknown characters. In other parts are Indians armed with bows and arrows, and various kinds of insects, snakes, and mice, with lines and characters of other forms. On a flat rock about 2 yards in length were stamped insignia or escutcheons of rank and inscriptions of various characters.

Towards Purmo, about 30 leagues beyond the Mission of Santiago del Sur, is a bluff 8 yards in height and on the center of it is seen an inscription which resembles Gothic letters interspersed with Hebrew and Chaldean characters [?].

Though the Californian Indians have often been asked concerning the significance of the figures, lines, and characters, no satisfactory answer has been obtained. The most that has been established by their information is that the paintings were their predecessors, and that they are absolutely ignorant of the signification of them. It is evident that the paintings and drawings of the Californians are significant symbols and landmarks by which they intended to leave to posterity the memory, either of their establishment in this country, or of certain wars or political or natural triumphs. These pictures are not like those of the Mexicans, but might have the same purpose.

Several petroglyphs in Sonora are described and illustrated infra in