Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256Mallery, Garrick
History
Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper: Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256
Mallery, Garrick
Haida Indians; Picture-writing, Indian; Tattooing
An obvious division can be made between characters etched or pecked and
those painted without incision. This division in execution coincides to
a certain extent with geographic areas. So far as ascertained, painted
characters prevail perhaps exclusively throughout Southern California,
west and southwest of the Sierra Nevada. Pictures, either painted or
incised, are found in perhaps equal frequency in the area extending
eastward from the Colorado River to Georgia, northward into West
Virginia, and in general along the course of the Mississippi River. In
some cases the glyphs are both incised and painted. The remaining parts
of the United States show rock-etchings almost exclusive of paintings.
It is proposed with the accumulation of information to portray the
localities of these records upon a chart accompanied by a full
descriptive text. In such chart will be designated their relative
frequency, size, height, position, color, age, and other particulars
regarded as important. With such chart and list the classification and
determination now merely indicated may become thorough.
In the present paper a few only of the more important localities will
be mentioned; generally those which are referred to under several
appropriate heads in various parts of the paper. Notices of some of
these have been published; but many of them are publicly mentioned for
the first time in this paper, knowledge respecting them having been
obtained by the personal researches of the officers of the Bureau of
Ethnology, or by their correspondents.
NORTHEASTERN ROCK CARVINGS.
A large number of known and described pictographs on rocks occur
in that portion of the United States and Canada at one time in the
possession of the several tribes constituting the Algonkian linguistic
stock. This is particularly noticeable throughout the country of the
great lakes, and the Northern, Middle, and New England States.
The voluminous discussion upon the Dighton Rock, Massachusetts,
inscription, renders it impossible wholly to neglect it.
The following description, taken from Schoolcraft’s History, Condition,
and Prospect of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. IV, p.
119, which is accompanied with a plate, is, however, sufficient. It
is merely a type of Algonkin rock-carving, not so interesting as many
others:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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