A. Outline of a turkey.
B. Outline of a panther.
C. Outline of a rattlesnake.
D. Outline of a human form.
E. A “spiral or volute.”
F. Impression of a horse foot.
G. Impression of a human foot.
H. Outline of the top portion of a tree or branch.
I. Impression of a human hand.
J. Impression of a bear’s forefoot, but lacks the proper number of toe
marks.
K. Impression of two turkey tracks.
L. Has some appearance of a hare or rabbit, but lacks the corresponding
length of ears.
M. Impression of a bear’s hindfoot, but lacks the proper number of toe
marks.
N. Outline of infant human form, with two arrows in the right hand.
O, P. Two cup-shaped depressions.
Q. Outline of the hind part of an animal.
R. Might be taken to represent the impression of a horse’s foot were it
not for the line bisecting the outer curved line.
S. Represent buffalo and deer tracks.
The turkey A, the rattlesnake C, the rabbit L, and the “footprints” J,
M, and Q, are specially noticeable as typical characters in Algonkian
pictography.
Mr. P. W. Sheafer furnishes in his Historical Map of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, 1875, a sketch of a pictograph on the Susquehanna
River, Pennsylvania, below the dam at Safe Harbor, part of which is
reproduced in Figure 149. This appears to be purely Algonkian, and has
more resemblance to Ojibwa characters than any other petroglyph yet
noted from the Eastern United States.
[Illustration: FIG. 149.--Algonkian petroglyph. Safe Harbor,
Pennsylvania.]
The best type of Western Algonkian petroglyphs known to the writer
is reported as discovered by members of the party of Capt. William
A. Jones, United States Army, in 1873, and published in his report
on Northwestern Wyoming, including the Yellowstone National Park,
Washington, 1875, p. 267, _et seq._, Fig. 50, reproduced in this paper
by Figure 150, in which the greater number of the characters are shown
about one-fifth of their size.
[Illustration: FIG. 150.--Algonkian petroglyph. Wyoming.]
An abstract of his description is as follows:
* * Upon a nearly vertical wall of the yellow sandstones just back
of Murphy’s ranch, a number of rude figures had been chiseled,
apparently at a period not very recent, as they had become much worn.
* * * No certain clue to the connected meaning of this record was
obtained, although Pínatsi attempted to explain it when the sketch
was shown to him some days later by Mr. F. W. Bond, who copied the
inscriptions from the rocks. The figure on the left, in the upper
row, somewhat resembles the design commonly used to represent a
shield, with the greater part of the ornamental fringe omitted,
perhaps worn away in the inscription. We shall possibly be justified
in regarding the whole as an attempt to record the particulars of a
fight or battle which once occurred in this neighborhood. Pínatsi’s
remarks conveyed the idea to Mr. Bond that he understood the figure
[the second in the upper line] to signify cavalry, and the six
figures [three in the middle of the upper line, as also the three to
the left of the lower line,] to mean infantry, but he did not appear
to recognize the hieroglyphs as the copy of any record with which he
was familiar.
Several years ago Dr. W. J. Hoffman showed these (as well as other
pictographs from the same locality) to several prominent Shoshoni
Indians from near that locality, who at once pronounced them the work
of the Pawkees (Satsika, or Blackfeet), who formerly occupied that
country. The general resemblance of many of the drawings from this area
of country is similar to many of the Eastern Algonkin records. The
Satsika are part of the great Algonkian stock.
Throughout the Wind River country of Wyoming many pictographic records
have been found, and others reported by the Shoshoni Indians. These
are said, by the latter, to be the work of the “Pawkees,” as they call
the Blackfeet, or more properly Satsika, and the general style of
many of the figures bears strong resemblance to similar carvings found
in the eastern portion of the United States, in regions known to have
been occupied by other tribes of the same linguistic stock, viz., the
Algonkian.
The four specimens of Algonkian petroglyphs presented above in Figures
147-150 show gradations in type. In connection with them reference may
be made to the Ojibwa bark record, Figure 139, page 218; the Ojibwa
grave-posts, Plate LXXXIII; the Ottawa pipe-stem, Figure 120, page 204,
in this paper; and to Schoolcraft’s numerous Ojibwa pictographs; and
they may be contrasted with the many Dakota and Innuit drawings in this
paper.
Mr. G. K. Gilbert has furnished a small collection of drawings of
Shoshonian petroglyphs, from Oneida, Idaho, shown in Figure 151. Some
of them appear to be totemic characters, and to record the names of
visitors to the locality.
[Illustration: FIG. 151.--Shoshonian petroglyph. Idaho.]
Five miles northwest from this locality, and one-half mile east from
Marsh Creek, is another group of characters, on basalt bowlders,
apparently totemic, and by Shoshoni. A copy of these, also contributed
by Mr. Gilbert, is given in Figure 152.
[Illustration: FIG. 152.--Shoshonian petroglyph. Idaho.]
All of these drawings resemble the petroglyphs found at Partridge
Creek, northern Arizona, and in Temple Creek Cañon, southeastern Utah,
mentioned _ante_, pages 30 and 26 respectively.
Mr. I. C. Russell, of the United States Geological Survey, has
furnished drawings of rude pictographs at Black Rock Spring, Utah,
represented in Figure 153. Some of the other characters not represented
in the figure consist of several horizontal lines, placed one above
another, above which are a number of spots, the whole appearing like
a numerical record having reference to the figure alongside, which
resembles, to a slight extent, a melon with tortuous vines and stems.
The left-hand upper figure suggests the masks shown on Plate LXXXI.
[Illustration: FIG. 153.--Shoshonian petroglyph. Utah.]
Mr. Gilbert Thompson, of the United States Geological Survey, has
discovered pictographs at Fool Creek Cañon, Utah, shown in Figure
154, which strongly resemble those still made by the Moki of Arizona.
Several characters are identical with those last mentioned, and
represent human figures, one of which is drawn to represent a man,
shown by a cross, the upper arm of which is attached to the perinæum.
These are all drawn in red color and were executed at three different
periods. Other neighboring pictographs are pecked and unpainted, while
others are both pecked and painted.
[Illustration: FIG. 154.--Shoshonian rock-painting. Utah.]
Both of these pictographs from Utah may be compared with the Moki
pictographs from Oakley Springs, Arizona, copied in Figure 1, page 30.
Dr. G. W. Barnes, of San Diego, California, has kindly furnished
sketches of pictographs prepared for him by Mrs. F. A. Kimball, of
National City, California, which were copied from records 25 miles
northeast of the former city. Many of them found upon the faces of
large rocks are almost obliterated, though sufficient remains to permit
tracing. The only color used appears to be red ocher. Many of the
characters, as noticed upon the drawings, closely resemble those in New
Mexico, at Ojo de Benado, south of Zuñi, and in the cañon leading from
the cañon at Stewart’s ranch, to the Kanab Creek Cañon, Utah. This is
an indication of the habitat of the Shoshonian stock apart from the
linguistic evidence with which it agrees.
The power of determining the authorship of pictographs made on
materials other than rocks, by means of their general style and type,
can be estimated by a comparison of those of the Ojibwa, Dakota, Haida,
and Innuit of Alaska presented in various parts of this paper.
PRESENCE OF CHARACTERISTIC OBJECTS.
With regard to the study of the individual characters themselves to
identify the delineators of pictographs, the various considerations of
fauna, religion, customs, tribal signs, indeed, most of the headings
of this paper will be applicable. It is impracticable now to give
further details in this immediate connection, except to add to similar
particulars before presented the following notes with regard to the
arrangement of hair and display of paint in identification.
A custom obtains among the Absaroka, which, when depicted in
pictographs, as is frequently done, serves greatly to facilitate
identification of the principal actors in events recorded. This
consists in wearing false hair, attached to the back of the head and
allowed to hang down over the back. Horse hair, taken from the tail, is
arranged in 8 or 10 strands, each about as thick as a finger, and laid
parallel with spaces between them of the width of a single strand. Pine
gum is then mixed with red ocher, or vermilion, when the individual can
afford the expense, and by means of other hair, or fibers of any kind
laid cross-wise, the strands are secured, and around each intersection
of hair a ball of gum is plastered to hold it in place. About 4 inches
further down, a similar row of gum balls and cross strings are placed,
and so on down to the end. The top of the tail ornament is then secured
to the hair on the back of the head. The Indians frequently incorporate
the false hair with their own so as to lengthen the latter without
any marked evidence of the deception. Nevertheless the transverse
fastenings with their gum attachments are present. The Arikara have
adopted this custom of late, and they have obtained it from the
Hidatsa, who, in turn, learned it of the Absaroka.
In picture-writing this is shown upon the figure of a man by the
presence of parallel lines drawn downward from the back of the head,
with cross lines, the whole appearing like small squares or a piece of
net.
Dr. George Gibbs mentions a pictograph made by one of the Northwestern
tribes (of Oregon and Washington) upon which “the figure of a man, with
a long queue, or scalp-lock, reached to his heels, denoted a Shoshonee,
that tribe being in the habit of braiding horse- or other hair into
their own in that manner.” See Contrib. to N. A. Ethnol., Vol. I, p.
222.
This may have reference to the Shoshoni Indians among the extreme
Northwestern tribes, but it can by no means be positively affirmed
that the mark of identification could be based upon the custom of
braiding with their own hair that of animals to increase the length
and appearance of the queue, as this custom also prevails among the
Absaroka and Arikara Indians of Montana and Dakota, respectively, as
above described.
Pictures drawn by some of the northern tribes of the Dakota, the Titon,
for instance, show the characteristic and distinctive features for a
Crow Indian to be the distribution of the red war paint, which covers
the forehead. A Dakota upon the same picture is designated by painting
the face red from the eyes down to the end of the chin. Again, the Crow
is designated by a top-knot of hair extending upward from the forehead,
that lock of hair being actually worn by that tribe and brushed
upward and slightly backward. See the seated figure in the record of
Running-Antelope in Fig. 127, page 210.
The Pueblos generally, when accurate and particular in delineation,
designate the women of that tribe by a huge coil of hair over either
ear. This custom prevails also among the Coyotèro Apaches, the women
wearing the hair in a coil to denote a virgin or an unmarried person,
while the coil is absent in the case of a married woman.
The following remarks are extracted from the unpublished “Catalogue of
the Relics of the Ancient Builders of the Southwest Tablelands,” by Mr.
Thomas V. Keam:
“The Maltese cross is the emblem of a virgin; still so recognized by
the Mokis. It is a conventional development of a more common emblem
of maidenhood, the form in which the maidens wear their hair arranged
as a disk of three or four inches in diameter upon each side of the
head. This discoidal arrangement of their hair is typical of the
emblem of fructification, worn by the maiden in the Muingwa festival.
Sometimes the hair, instead of being worn in the complete discoid
form, is dressed from two curved twigs, and presents the form of two
semi-circles upon each side of the head. The partition of these is
sometimes horizontal and sometimes vertical. A combination of both
of these styles presents the form from which the Maltese cross was
conventionalized. The brim decorations are of ornamental locks of hair
which a maiden trains to grow upon the sides of the forehead.”
This strongly marked form of Maltese cross, the origin of which is
above explained, appears frequently in the pottery, and also in the
petroglyphs of the Moki.
* * * * *
Regarding the apparent subject matter of pictographs an obvious
distinction may be made between hunting and land scenes such as would
be familiar to interior tribes and those showing fishing and water
transportation common to seaboard and lacustrine peoples. Similar and
more perspicuous modes of discrimination are available. The general
scope of known history, traditions, and myths may also serve in
identification.
* * * * *
Knowledge of the priscan homes and of the migrations of tribes
necessary to ascertain their former habitat in connection with the
probable age of rock-etchings or paintings is manifestly desirable.
MODES OF INTERPRETATION.
It is obvious that before attempting the interpretation of pictographs,
concerning which no direct information is to be obtained, there should
be a full collection of known characters, in order that through them
the unknown may be learned. When any considerable number of objects in
a pictograph are actually known, the remainder may be ascertained by
the context, the relation, and the position of the several designs, and
sometimes by the recognized principles of the art.
The Bureau of Ethnology has been engaged, therefore, for a considerable
time in collating a large number of characters in a card-catalogue
arranged primarily by similarity in forms, and in attaching to each
character any significance ascertained or suggested. As before
explained, the interpretation upon which reliance is mainly based is
that which has been made known by direct information from Indians
who themselves were actually makers of pictographs at the time of
giving the interpretation. Apart from the comparisons obtained by this
collation, the only mode of ascertaining the meaning of the characters,
in other words, the only key yet discovered, is in the study of the
gesture-sign included in many of them. The writer several years ago
suggested that among people where a system of ideographic gesture-signs
prevailed, it would be expected that their form would appear in any
mode of artistic representation made by the same people with the object
of conveying ideas or recording facts. When a gesture-sign had been
established and it became necessary or desirable to draw a character
or design to convey the same ideas, nothing could be more natural than
to use the graphic form or delineation which was known and used in the
gesture-sign. It was but one more step, and an easy one, to fasten upon
bark, skins, or rocks the evanescent air pictures of the signs.
The industrious research of Dr. D. G. Brinton, whose recent work, The
Lenâpé and their Legends, before mentioned, is received as this paper
passes through the press, has discovered passages in Rafinesque’s
generally neglected and perhaps unduly discredited volumes, by which
that eccentric but acute writer seems to have announced the general
proposition that the graphic signs of the Indians correspond to their
manual signs. He also asserted that he had collected a large number of
them, though the statement is not clear, for if all Indian pictographs
are, in a very general sense, “based upon their language of signs,”
all of those pictographs might be included in his alleged collection,
without an ascertained specific relation between any pictograph and
any sign. It is probable, however, that Rafinesque actually had at
least valuable notes on the subject, the loss of which is greatly to be
regretted.
In the paper “Sign Language among the North American Indians,”
published in the First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, a
large number of instances were given of the reproduction of gesture
lines in the pictographs made by the North American Indians, and they
appeared to be most frequent when there was an attempt to convey
subjective ideas. These were beyond the range of an artistic skill
limited to the rough presentation of objects in outline. It was
suggested, therefore, that the part of pictographs which is the most
difficult of interpretation in the absence of positive knowledge, was
the one in the elucidation of which the study of sign-language would
assist. Many pictographs in the present paper, the meaning of which is
definitely known from direct sources, are noted in connection with the
gesture-signs corresponding with the same idea, which signs are also
understood from independent evidence.
So numerous and conclusive are these examples, that it is not necessary
to add to them save by presenting the pictograph copied in Figure 155,
as one of special importance in this connection.
During the summer of 1882 Dr. W. J. Hoffman visited the Tule River
Agency, California, where he found a large rock painting, of which
Figure 155 is a copy made by him, the following being his description:
The agency is located upon the western side of the Sierra Nevada in
the headwater cañons of the branches of the south fork of Tule River.
The country is at present occupied by several tribes of the Yokuts
linguistic stock, and the only answer received to inquiries respecting
the age or origin of the record 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 etched, 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 would indicate that the work had been performed about a
century ago.
The Tulare Indians have been residents of 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.
[Illustration: FIG. 155.--Rock-painting. Tule River, California.]
The drawings were outlined by pecking with a piece of quartz or other
silicious rock, to the depth of from a mere visible depression to a
third of an inch. Having thus satisfactorily depicted the several
ideas, colors were applied which upon examination 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 the hammering was
repeated after application of the colors to insure better results.
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, though of a flinty hardness.
This coating is so thin that it cannot be removed with a steel
instrument, and appears to have become 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 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 from
the embers. 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 Figure 155 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 ceiling also contains many
characters of birds, quadrupeds, etc. No. 1 in the 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.
The attempt at reproducing gestures is admirably portrayed, and the
following explanations are based upon such natural gestures as are
almost universally in use:
No. 1 represents a person weeping. The eyes have lines running down to
the breast, below the ends of which are three short lines on either
side. The arms and hands are in the exact position for making the
gesture for rain. It was evidently the intention of the artist to show
that the hands in this gesture should be passed downward over the face,
as probably suggested by the short lines upon the lower end of the
tears. This is a noticeable illustration of the general term used by
Indians when making the gesture for weeping; _i. e._, “eye-rain.” It is
evident that sorrow is portrayed in this illustration, grief based upon
the sufferings of others who are shown in connection therewith.
Nos. 2, 3, 4. Six individuals apparently making the gesture for
“hunger,” by passing the hands towards and backward from the sides of
the body, denoting a “gnawing sensation,” as expressed by Indians.
No. 4 occupying a horizontal position, may possibly denote a “dead
man,” dead of starvation, this position being adopted by the Ojibwa,
Blackfeet, and others as a common way of representing a dead person.
The varying lengths of head ornaments denote different degrees of
position as warriors or chiefs.
Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 are individuals in various shapes making gestures
for negation, or more specifically _nothing_, _nothing here_, a natural
and universal gesture made by throwing one or both hands outward toward
either side of the body. The hands are extended also, and, to make the
action apparently more emphatic, the extended toes are also shown on
Nos. 5, 6, 7, and 9. The several lines upon the leg of No. 9 refer
evidently to trimmings upon the leggings.
No. 10 is strikingly similar to the Alaskan pictographs (see No. 1 of
Figure 55, page 153) indicating _self_ with the right hand, and the
left pointing away, signifying _to go_.
No. 11 is an ornamented head with body and legs, and is unintelligible.
This may probably refer to a Shaman, the head being similar to like
personages as represented by the Ojibwa and Iroquois.
Similar drawings occur at a distance of about 10 miles southeast of
this locality, as well as at other places toward the northwest, and
it appears probable that the present record was made by a portion
of a tribe which had advanced for the purpose of selecting a new
camping place, but failing to find the necessary quantities of food
for sustenance, this notice was erected to advise their successors of
their misfortune and ultimate departure toward the northwest. It is
noticeable, also, that the picture is so placed upon the rock that the
extended arm of No. 10 points toward the north.