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
The place is 20 miles southeast of Rio Del Norte, at the entrance of
the cañon of the Piedra Pintada (Painted Rock) Creek. The carvings
are found on the right of the cañon, 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 cañon, 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 merits them with additional interest, as
they are quite distinct from the carvings I saw in New Mexico and
Arizona on soft sand-stone. 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.
ROCK CARVINGS IN NEW MEXICO.
On the north wall of Cañon de Chelly, one fourth of a mile east of
the mouth of the cañon, are several groups of pictographs, 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 cañon, in the vicinity of cliff-dwellings, are numerous
small groups of pictographic characters, consisting of men and animals,
waving or zigzag lines, and other odd and “unintelligible” figures.
Lieut. J. H. Simpson gives several illustrations of pictographs copied
from rocks in the northwest part of New Mexico in his Report of an
Expedition into the Navajo Country. (Sen. Ex. Doc. No. 64, 31st Cong.,
1st sess., 1856, Pl. 23, 24, 25.)
Inscriptions have been mentioned as occurring at El Moro, consisting
of etchings of human figures and other unintelligible characters. This
locality is better known as Inscription Rock. Lieutenant Simpson’s
remarks upon it, with illustrations, are given in the work last cited,
on page 120. He states that most of the characters are no higher than
a man’s head, and that some of them are undoubtedly of Indian origin.
At Arch Spring, near Zuñi, figures are cut upon a rock which Lieutenant
Whipple thinks present some faint similarity to those at Rocky Dell
Creek. (Rep. Pac. R. R, Exped., Vol. III, 1856, Pt. III, p. 39, Pl. 32.)
Near Ojo Pescado, in the vicinity of the ruins, are pictographs,
reported in the last mentioned volume and page, Plate 31, which are
very much weather-worn, and have “no trace of a modern hand about
them.”
ROCK-CARVINGS IN ARIZONA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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