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
Many other places on the Truckee river have such rocks all very
much alike, and yet each bearing its own distinct features in the
marking. Near a rock half a mile east of Verdi, a station on the
Central Pacific railroad, 10 miles east of Reno, lie two others,
the larger of which has lines originating in a hole at the upper
right-hand corner, all running in tangents and angles, making a
double-ended kind of an arrangement of many-headed arrows, pointing
three ways. A snail-like scroll lies between the two arms, but does
not touch them. Below are blotches, as if the artist had tried his
tools.
This region has been roamed over by the Washoe Indians from a
remote period, but none of them know anything of these works. One
who has gray hair and more wrinkles than hairs, who is bent with
age and who is said to be a hundred years old, was led to the spot.
He said he saw them a heap long time ago, when he was only a few
summers old, and they looked then just as they do now.
Mr. Lovejoy, a well-known newspaper man, took up, in 1854, the
ranche where the rocks lie, and said just before his death that they
were in exactly the same condition when he first saw them as they
are to-day. Others say the same, and they are certainly of a date
prior to the settlement of this coast by Americans and probably by
the Spanish.
They are very peculiar in many respects, and the rock is
wonderfully adapted to the uses to which it has been put. Wherever
the surface has been broken the color has changed to gray, and no
amount of wear or weather seems to turn it back. The indentation is
so shallow as to be imperceptible to sight or touch, and yet the
marks are as plain as they could be made, and can be seen as far as
the rock can be distinguished from its fellows.
It is hardly likely that the work was done without some motive
besides the simple love of doing it, and it was well and carefully
done, too, showing much patience and doubtless consumed a good deal
of time, as the tools were poor.
A large ledge is marked near Meadow lake in Nevada county, and
in the state of Nevada the petroglyphs cover a route extending
from the southeast to the northwest corner of the state, crossing
the line into California in Modoc county, and leaving a string of
samples clear across the Madeline plains.
Eight miles below Belmont, in Nye county, Nevada, an immense
rock which at some time has fallen into the canyon from the porphyry
ledge above it has a patch of marks nearly 20 feet square. It is so
high that a man on horseback can not reach the top.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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