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 is a figure roughly representing a man, undraped, and with
a club in his right hand; the height is 180 feet, and the outlines
are marked out by a trench 2 feet wide and of about the same depth.
It covers nearly an acre of ground. Hutchin imagines this figure to
represent the Saxon god, Heil, and places its date as anterior to
A. D. 600. * * * Britton, on the other hand, tells us that “vulgar
tradition makes this figure commemorate the destruction of a giant
who, having feasted on some sheep in Blackmoor and laid himself
to sleep on this hill, was pinioned down like another Gulliver
and killed by the enraged peasants, who immediately traced his
dimensions for the information of posterity.” There were formerly
discernible some markings between the legs of the figure rather
above the level of the ankles, which the country folk took for the
numerals 748, and imagined to indicate the date. We need, perhaps,
scarcely remark that Arabic numerals were unknown in Europe until at
least six centuries later than this period.
SWEDEN.
Mr. Paul B. Du Chaillu (_a_) gives the following (condensed) account
describing, among many more “rock tracings,” as he calls them, those
reproduced as Figs. 137 and 138:
There are found in Sweden large pictures engraved on the rocks
which are of great antiquity, long before the Roman period.
These are of different kinds and sizes, the most numerous being
the drawings of ships or boats, canoe-shaped and alike at both ends
(with figures of men and animals), and of fleets fighting against
each other or making an attack upon the shore. The hero of the
fight, or the champion, is generally depicted as much larger than
the other combatants, who probably were of one people, though of
different tribes, for their arms are similar and all seem without
clothing, though in some cases they are represented as wearing a
helmet or shield.
On some rocks are representations of cattle, horses, reindeer,
turtles, ostriches, and camels, the latter showing that in earlier
times these people were acquainted with more southern climes. The
greatest number and the largest and most complicated in detail of
the tracings occur, especially in the present Sweden, in Bohuslän,
“the ancient Viken of the Sagas,” on the coast of the peninsula
washed by the Cattegat. They are also found in Norway, especially in
Smaalenene, a province contiguous to that of Bohuslän, but become
more scarce in the north, though found on the Trondhjem fjord.
[Illustration: FIG. 137.--Petroglyph in Bohuslän, Sweden.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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