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
This curious cavern is situated in the town of Barre, 4 miles
from West Salem and 8 miles from La Crosse. * * *
Before the landslide it was an open shelter cavern, 15 feet
wide at the opening and 7 feet at the back end; greatest width, 16
feet; average, 13; length, 30 feet; height, 13 feet, and depth of
excavation after clearing out the sand of the landslide, 5 feet. The
pictures are mostly of the rudest kind, but differing in degree of
skill. Except several bisons, a lynx, rabbit, otter, badger, elk,
and heron, it is perhaps impossible to determine with certainty what
were intended or whether they represented large or small animals, no
regard being had to their relative sizes.
[Examples of the figures are here presented as Fig. 91.]
Perhaps _a_ indicates a bison or buffalo, and is the best
executed picture of the collection. Its size is 19 inches long by
15-1/2 inches from tip of the horns to the feet.
_b_ represents a hunter, with a boy behind him, in the act
of shooting an animal with his bow and arrow weapon. The whole
representation is 25 inches long; the animal from tip of tail to
end of horn or proboscis 12 inches, and from top of head to feet 7
inches; the hunter 11 inches high, the boy 4-1/2.
_c_ represents a wounded animal, with the arrow or weapon near
the wound. This figure is 21-3/4 inches from the lower extremity of
the nose to the tip of the tail, 8-3/4 inches from fore shoulders to
front feet, and 8 inches from the rump to the hind feet. The weapon
is 4-1/2 inches long by 5 inches broad from the tip of one prong or
barb to that of the other.
_d_ represents a chief with eight plumes and a war club, 11
inches from top of head to the lower extremity, and 6-3/4 inches
from the tip of the upper finger to the end of the opposite arm; the
war club 6-1/2 inches long.
Dr. Hoffman made a visit to this cave in August, 1888, to compare the
pictographic characters with others of apparently similar outline and
of known signification. He found but a limited number of the figures
distinct, and these only in part, owing to the rapid disintegration of
the sandstone upon which they were drawn. Many names and inscriptions
had been incised in the soft surface by visitors, who also, by means of
the smoke of candles, added grotesque and meaningless figures over and
between the original paintings, so as to seriously injure the latter.
Mr. T. H. Lewis (_d_) describes the petroglyphs, a part of which is
reproduced in Fig. 92, as follows:
[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Petroglyphs at Trempealeau, Wisconsin.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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