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
In the collection contributed by Mr. Gilbert there are at least fifteen
series or groups of figures, most of which consist of the human form
(from the simplest to the most complex style of drawing), animals,
either singly or in long files--as if driven--bird tracks, human feet
and hands, etc. There are also circles, parallel lines, and waving or
undulating lines, spots, and other characters.
Mr. Gilbert also reports the discovery, in 1883, of a great number of
pictographs, chiefly in color, though some are only incised, in a canyon
of the Book cliff containing Thompson’s spring, about 4 miles north of
Thompson’s station, on the Denver and Colorado Railroad, Utah. He has
also furnished a collection of drawings of pictographs at Black rock
spring, on Beaver creek, north of Milford, Utah. A number of fallen
blocks of basalt at a low escarpment are filled with etchings upon the
vertical faces. The characters generally are of an “unintelligible”
nature, though the human figure is drawn in complex forms. Footprints
and circles abound.
Mr. I. C. Russell, of the U. S. Geological Survey, furnished rude
drawings of pictographs at Black rock spring, Utah (see Fig. 1093). Mr.
Gilbert Thompson also discovered pictographs at Fool creek canyon, Utah
(see Fig. 1094).
Mr. Vernon Bailey, in a letter dated January 18, 1889, reports that in
the vicinity of St. George “all along the sandstone cliffs are strange
figures like hieroglyphics and pictures of animals cut in the rocks, but
now often worn dim.”
Mr. George Pope, of Provo city, Utah county, in a letter, kindly gives
an account of an inscription on a rock in a canyon at the mouth of Provo
river, about 7 miles from the city named. There is no paint seen, the
inscription being cut. A human hand is conspicuous, being cut (probably
pecked) to a depth of at least one-third of an inch, and so with
representations of animals.
Dr. Rau (_c_) gives the design of a portion of a group carved on a cliff
in the San Pete valley at the city of Manti, Utah, now reproduced as
Fig. 81. He says:
[Illustration: FIG. 81.--Petroglyphs near Manti, Utah.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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