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
In particular, a copious extract is given from the recent work Among
the Indians of Guiana, by Everard F. im Thurn: London, 1883. His
account is so suggestive for comparison with the similar discoveries
made in North America that there is a temptation to extract from it
even more liberally than has been done.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Deep carvings in Guiana.]
The following is taken from pages 391, _et seq._, of that author:
The pictured rocks, which are certainly the most striking and
mysterious of the antiquities of Guiana, are--and this has apparently
never yet been pointed out--not all of one kind. In all cases various
figures are rudely depicted on larger or smaller surfaces of rocks.
Sometimes these figures are painted, though such cases are few and,
as will be shown, of little moment; more generally they are graven on
the rock, and these alone are of great importance. Rock sculptures
may, again, be distinguished into two kinds, differing in the depth
of incision, the apparent mode of execution, and, most important of
all, the character of the figures represented.
Painted rocks in British Guiana are mentioned by Mr. C. Barrington
Brown, well known as a traveler in the colony. He says, for instance,
that in coming down past Amailah fall (in the same district and
range as the Kaieteur), on the Cooriebrong River, he passed ‘a large
white sandstone rock ornamented with figures in red paint.’ When in
the Pacaraima mountains, on the Brazilian frontier, I heard of the
existence of similar paintings in that neighborhood, but was unable
to find them. Mr. Wallace, in his account of his ‘Travels on the
Amazons,’ mentions the occurrence of similar drawings in more than
one place near the Amazons; and from these and other accounts it
seems probable that they occur in various parts of South America.
If, as seems likely, these figures are painted with either of the
red pigments which the Indians use so largely to paint their own
bodies as well as their weapons and other implements, or, as is also
possible, with some sort of red earth, they must be modern, the work
of Indians of the present day; for these red pigments would not long
withstand the effects of the weather, especially where, as in the
case quoted from Mr. Brown, the drawings are on such an unenduring
substance as sandstone. Some further account of these paintings is,
however, much to be desired; for, though they are probably modern,
it would be very interesting to know whether the designs resemble
those depicted on the engraved rocks, or are of the kind with which
the Indian at the present time ornaments both his own skin and his
household utensils and paddles. It may be mentioned that in the
Christy collection there is a stone celt from British Guiana on which
are painted lines very closely resembling in character those which
the Indian commonly paints on his own body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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