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
The lower character is more complicated and more difficult
to describe. The first, or left-hand portion, represents a stone
hatchet with a shaft; there is no doubt as to this, in my mind,
as the outlines are perfectly clear, the design of the hatchet
being very distinct. This hatchet measures 0^{m}, 108 in length
and 38^{mm} in width to the edge of the blade. These are precisely
the most common dimensions of the hatchets of our country. As to
the remainder of the character, I think an interpretation of it
difficult and premature.
On the whole, the result of an examination of these inscriptions
leaves the impression that the author did not seek to cover a stone
with ornamentation, for these outlines have nothing whatever of
the ornamental, but that he wished to represent to his people, by
intelligible symbols, some particular idea.
É. Cartailhac (_a_) begins an account of petroglyphs in the Department
of Morbihan, in the old province of Brittany, translated and condensed
as follows:
It is hardly possible to give a description of the designs in
the covered way of Gavr’ inis. They are various linear combinations,
the lines being straight, curved, undulating, isolated, or parallel,
ramified like a fern, segments of concentric circles, limited or
not, and decorating certain compartments with close winding spirals,
recalling vividly the figures produced by the lines on the skin in
the hollow of the hand and on the tips of the fingers.
In the midst of accumulated and very oddly grouped lines, which
no doubt are merely decorative, there are found signs which must
have had a meaning, and some figures easy to determine.
The hatchet, the stone hatchet and no other, the large
hatchet of Tumiac, of Mané-er-Hroèg, and of Mont Saint Michel, is
represented in intaglio or in relief, real size. A single pillar of
Gavr’ inis bears eighteen of them. Less numerous groups are seen on
some other blocks of the same covered way.
On a little block placed under the ceiling in order to wedge
up one of the covering slabs, is seen the image of a hatchet with
handle, conformable to a type found in the marsh of Ehenside in
Cumberland, England. On many other monuments the presence of
the same figures of hatchets, with handles or without, has been
observed. The most curious slab is certainly that of Mané-er-Hroèg.
It had been broken, and its three pieces had been thrown in disorder
before the threshold of the crypt. One of its faces, very well
smoothed off, bears a cartouche in the form of a stirrup, filled
with enigmatic signs and surrounded above and below by a dozen
hatchets with handles, all engraved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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