Picture-Writing of the American Indians: Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822Mallery, Garrick
History
Picture-Writing of the American Indians: Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-89, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1893, pages 3-822
Mallery, Garrick
Picture-writing, Indian
The petroglyphs are found upon the face of a sandstone cliff in
a deep ravine at a point where two watercourses (dry for the most
part), meet about 20 miles south of Sioux City, Iowa, but in Dakota
county, in the State of Nebraska. At this point the range of bluffs
which bounds the Missouri river bottom is deeply cut through by the
above-mentioned ravine, which runs in a northerly direction towards
the Missouri. Another ravine coming from the southwest leaves this
narrow point of land between the two ravines, rising to a height of
50 to 75 feet above the bottom of the ravines. For some distance
from the point this cape, if I may so term it, shows ledges of
sandstone cropping out on both sides. And exactly at the point and
for some rods back on the east side are found the pictographs under
consideration.
The rocks are of two kinds, a few feet of hard jasperous
sandstone superimposed on about the same thickness of sandstone so
soft that it can be crumbled to pieces in the fingers. The lower
soft strata have been worn away, leaving the upper harder layers
jutting out to a distance of several feet over and completely
sheltering them. And on the smooth surface of these lower soft
strata, protected by the overhanging ledge above, shut in by bluffs
200 feet high on the east and sheltered from the winds by dense
underwood and scrubby forest trees, are carved these pictographs.
These safeguards, combined with the advantage of a very secluded
situation, have combined to preserve them, very little marred by
careless and mischievous hands.
The eagle or “thunder-bird” figures are quite numerous. There
are also many of the “buffalo track” and of the “turkey track”
figures. I call them “turkey tracks” because they all show a spur
and seem to represent some of the large _gallinaciæ_.
In one of the groups, which I will call the “bear-fight group,”
we are at a loss to determine whether the figure of the small animal
was a part of the original design or a subsequent interpolation. It
seemed genuine, but was not so deeply carved as the other figures.
The same may be said of the diagonal bars across the figure of the
bear.
In the other group, which I will term the “turkey-track group,”
there are some figures of which we could not even imagine the
meaning. But they are undoubtedly genuine, and seem to belong to the
same design as the other figure.
The “bear-track” figures are very numerous and of several
different sizes. A cat-like figure, which we call a panther, shows
faintly. It is about effaced by time. Other figures reminded us of a
crab or crawfish, but we were unable to determine whether the line
running back just below belongs to it or not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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