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
Schomburgk was not so fortunate as to rediscover the rock seen by
Hortsmann, but he has seen and described others on the banks of the
Essequibo, near the cascade of Warraputa. “This cascade,” he says,
“is celebrated not only for its height but also for the quantity of
figures cut on the rock, which have great resemblance to those which
I have seen in the island of St. John, one of the Virgin Islands,
and which I consider to be, without doubt, the work of the Caribs,
by whom that part of the Antilles was formerly inhabited. I made the
utmost efforts to detach portions of the rock which contained the
inscription, and which I desired to take with me, but the stone was
too hard and fever had taken away my strength. Neither promises nor
threats could prevail on the Indians to give a single blow with a
hammer to these rocks--the venerable monuments of the superior mental
cultivation of their predecessors. They regard them as the work of
the Great Spirit, and the different tribes who we met with, though
living at a great distance, were nevertheless acquainted with them.
Terror was painted on the faces of my Indian companions, who appeared
to expect every moment that the fire of heaven would fall on my head.
I saw clearly that my endeavors would be fruitless, and I contented
myself with bringing away a complete drawing of these memorials.” *
* * Even the veneration everywhere testified by the Indians of the
present day for these rude sculptures of their predecessors, shews
that they have no idea of the execution of similar works. There is
another circumstance which should be mentioned: between Encaramada
and Caycara, on the banks of the Orinoco, a number of these
hieroglyphical figures are sculptured on the face of precipices at a
height which could now be reached only by means of extraordinarily
high scaffolding. If one asks the natives how these figures have been
cut, they answer, laughing, as if it were a fact of which, none but
a white man could be ignorant, that “in the days of the great waters
their fathers went in canoes at that height.” Thus a geological
fancy is made to afford an answer to the problem presented by a
civilization which has long passed away.
Mr. A. Pinart has for several years past been engaged in ethnologic
researches, in which, as he explained to the present writer, orally,
he has discovered a very large number of pictographs in the islands
of the Caribbean Sea, in Venezuela, and Nicaragua, with remarkable
correspondences between some of them, and strongly demarkating lines in
regard to different types. His report will be of inestimable value in
the complete discussion of this subject.
PETROGLYPHS IN BRITISH GUIANA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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