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
I will not attempt here to give a formal explanation of these
inscriptions, but may we not regard the spot in which they are found
as having served for a rendezvous for the ancient Borrinqueños
where they performed their sacrifices or the ceremonies of their
religion? On the other hand, the appearance of these inscriptions
is very peculiar. One of them might be considered a representation
of those little figurines and statuettes of stone found in Mexico,
in Mixteca, and in the country to the south. In another a head
is curiously decorated with a diadem of feathers, and apparently
represents one presiding at a feast served in the small circular
basin set before him. The most noticeable thing in this group of
inscriptions is the frequency of the grinning faces in a circle,
often alone, often accompanied by two others placed at the sides,
which are universally met with in every inscription found in the
Greater and Lesser Antilles. The same may be said of the human
figure apparently swaddled in cloths like a very young infant, the
head and body more or less decorated, which is also very frequently
found.
Following these petroglyphs of Islote, we present a list of
others discovered at Puerto Rico, hastily describing them and giving
a particular description only of those which are of the greatest
interest.
In the above-mentioned grotto of Cueva de los Archillas, near
the village of Ciales, we observed the curious figures bearing
traces of a crown and peculiar ear ornaments. In la Cueva de los
Conejos, some distance from Arecibo, on the road from Utauado, we
found a figure partly incised and partly painted in a dark red; it
is very artistically fashioned, and represents the famous “guava,”
the monster spider of the Greater Antilles, of which the natives
have a great dread. It is probable that the ancient Borrinqueños
also considered it with a certain awe, and we find images of the
same animal in la Cueva del Templo on the coast of Haiti, at Santo
Domingo. A solitary rock of a reddish color, in a field of the
hacienda of Don Pedro Pavez at la Carolina, a short distance from
the Rio Pedras, bears a series of grimacing faces in circles. On a
granitic rock of large dimensions, superimposed on a heap of rocks
of the same character, in the midst of a grove of Indian trees
and at the entrance of the Cano del Indio into Rio la Ceiba, near
Fajardo, on the east side, are found three swaddled human figures,
the heads decorated with various ornaments. On a black rock in
the Rio Arriba, one of the branches of the Rio de la Ceiba, is a
petroglyph which presents but little that is of interest.
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