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
It is singular that, thousands of miles away, in a remote corner
of tropical America, we should find the concentric rings and several
other characters typically identical with those engraved on the
British rocks.
The characters in Chiriqui are, like those of Great Britain,
incised on large stones, the surface of which has not previously
undergone any smoothing process. The incised stones occur in a
district of Veraguas (Chiriqui or Alanje), which is now thinly
inhabited, but which, judging from the numerous tombs, was once
densely peopled.
From information received during my two visits to Chiriqui and
from what has been published since I first drew attention to this
subject, I am led to believe that there are a great many inscribed
rocks in that district. But I myself have seen only one, the now
famous _piedra pintal_ (i. e., painted stone), which is found on
a plain at Caldera, a few leagues from the town of David. It is
15 feet high, nearly 50 feet in circumference, and rather flat on
the top. Every part, especially the eastern side, is covered with
incised characters about an inch or half an inch deep. The first
figure on the left hand side represents a radiant sun, followed
by a series of heads or what appear to be heads, all with some
variation. It is these heads, particularly the appendages (perhaps
intended for hair?), which show a certain resemblance to one of the
most curious characters found on the British rocks, and calling to
mind the so-called “Ogham characters.” These “heads” are succeeded
by scorpion-like or branched and other fantastic figures. The top
of the stone and the other sides are covered with a great number of
concentric rings and ovals, crossed by lines. It is especially these
which bear so striking a resemblance to the Northumbrian characters.
[Illustration: FIG. 151.--Cup sculptures in Chiriqui.]
Fig. 151 presents five selected characters from the rock mentioned: _a_
attached to the respective numbers always refers to the Chiriqui and
_b_ to the British type of the several designs; 1_a_ and 1_b_ represent
radiant suns; 2_a_ and 2_b_ show several grooves, radiating from an
outer arch, resembling, as Dr. Seeman thinks, the Ogham characters; 3_a_
and 3_b_ show the completely closed concentric circles; 4_a_ and 4_b_
show how the various characters are connected by lines; 5_a_ and 5_b_
exhibit the groove or outlet of the circle.
Mr. G. H. Kinahan, in Journal of the Anthropological Institute of
Great Britain and Ireland, 1889, p. 171, gives an account of Barnes’s
Inscribed Dallâus, County Donegal, Ireland. One of his figures bears
four cups joined together by lines forming a cross. The remainder of the
illustrations consist of concentric rings and cups resembling others
already figured in this paper.
Marcano (_c_) describes Fig. 152 as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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