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
Mr. James W. Ward describes in the Journal of the Anthropological
Institute of New York, Vol. I, 1871-’72, pp. 57-64, Figs. 14-22, some
sculptured rocks. They are reported as occurring near Barnesville,
Belmont County, and consist chiefly of the tracks of birds and animals.
Serpentine forms also occur, together with concentric rings. The
author also quotes Mr. William A. Adams as describing, in a letter to
Professor Silliman in 1842, some figures on the surface of a sandstone
rock, lying on the bank of the Muskingum River. These figures are
mentioned as being engraved in the rock and consist of tracks of the
turkey, and of man.
ROCK CARVINGS IN WEST VIRGINIA.
Mr. P. W. Norris, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reports that he found
numerous localities along the Kanawha River, West Virginia, bearing
pictographs. Rock etchings are numerous upon smooth rocks, covered
during high water, at the prominent fords of the river, as well as
in the niches or long shallow caves high in the rocky cliffs of this
region. Although rude representations of men, animals, and some deemed
symbolic characters were found, none were observed superior to, or
essentially differing from, those of modern Indians.
Mr. John Haywood mentions (The Natural and Aboriginal History of
Tennessee, Nashville, 1823, pp. 332, 333) rock etchings four miles
below the Burning Spring, near the mouth of Campbell’s Creek, Kanawha
County, West Virginia. These consist of forms of various animals,
as the deer, buffalo, fox, hare; of fish of various kinds; “infants
scalped and scalps alone,” and men of natural size. The rock is said to
be in the Kanawha River, near its northern shore, accessible only at
low water, and then only by boat.
On the rocky walls of Little Coal River, near the mouth of Big Horse
Creek, are cliffs upon which are many carvings. One of these measures
8 feet in length and 5 feet in height, and consists of a dense mass of
characters.
About 2 miles above Mount Pleasant, Mason County, West Virginia, 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, West Virginia, are numerous pictographs. These
appear to be cut into the sandstone rock.
See also page 225, Figure 148.
ROCK CARVINGS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.
Charles C. Jones, jr., in his Antiquities of the Southern Indians,
etc., New York, 1873, pp. 62, 63, gives some general remarks upon the
pictographs of the southern Indians, as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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