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
Esopus itself appears to be a word derived from Seepu, the
Minsi-Algonquin name for a river.
* * * The inscription may be supposed, if the era is properly
conjectured, to have been made with metallic tools. The lines are
deeply and plainly impressed. It is in double lines. The plumes from
the head denote a chief or man skilled in the Indian medico-magical
art. The gun is held at rest in the right hand; the left appears to
support a wand. [The position of the arm may be merely a gesture.]
The reproduction here as Fig. 60 is from a rock on the western bank of
the Hudson, at Esopus landing. It is presented mainly on account of the
frequent allusions to it in literature.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--Petroglyph at Esopus, New York.]
NORTH CAROLINA.
Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reports petroglyphs upon
a gray gneissoid rock, a short distance east of Caney river, on the
north side of the road from Asheville to Burnsville, North Carolina.
The face of the surface is at an angle of 30° toward the south, and the
sculptured area covers about 10 feet square. The characters consist
chiefly of cup-shaped depressions, some about 2 inches deep, some being
also connected. There are a few markings which appear to have been
intended to represent footprints. The characters resemble, to some
extent, those at Trap Rock gap, Georgia, and at the Juttaculla rock,
North Carolina, on a branch of the Tuckasegee river, above Webster.
The above-described sculptured rock is on the property of Ellis Gardner,
and is known as Gardner’s, or the “Garden rock.”
Mr. Mooney also reports that at Webster, North Carolina, there is one
large rock bearing numerous petroglyphs, rings, cup-shaped depressions,
fish-bone patterns, etc. He further states, upon the authority of Dr. J.
M. Spainhour, of Lenoir, that upon a light gray rock measuring 4 feet by
30 are numerous cup-shaped petroglyphs, he having counted 215. The rock
is on the Yadkin river, 4 miles below Wilkesboro, and is at times partly
under water.
Dr. Hoffman, who in 1886 visited western North Carolina, gives the
following account of colored pictographs found there by him.
“The locality known as ‘Paint rock’ is situated on the east or right
bank of the French Broad river, about 100 yards above the Tennessee
and North Carolina state line. The limestone cliff, which terminates
abruptly near the river, measures about 100 feet in height and covers
an area from side to side of exposure of at least 100 yards. The
accompanying view (Fig. 61), taken from across the river, presents the
wall of limestone rock and the position of the petroglyph, which is
delineated in proper proportion nearly in the center of the illustration.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--Paint rock, North Carolina.]
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