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 pictographs, which are principally of men and animals,
occupy a zone some 60 feet long and 5 feet broad, about midway of
the face of the rock; they are painted in blood-red characters, much
darker than the color of the cliff itself.
He also, later, incloses a letter received by himself from Mr. Newton
Flanagan, of the Hudson Bay Company, an extract from which is as follows:
About the dimensions of the red rock in Nipigon bay, upon which
appear the Indian painted pictures, as near as I can give you at
present, the face of the rock fronting the water is about 60 feet,
rising to a greater height as it runs inland. The width along the
water is something like 900 yards, depth quite a distance inland.
The pictures are from 10 to 15 or perhaps 20 feet above the water;
the pictures are representations of human figures, Indians in
canoes, and of wild animals. They are supposed to have been painted
ages ago, by what process or for what reason I am unable to tell
you, nor do I know how the paint is made indelible.
As far as I can gather, the Indians here have no traditions
in regard to those paintings, which I understand occur in several
places throughout the country, and none of the Indians hereabouts
nowadays practice any such painting.
MANITOBA.
Mr. Hallock also furnishes information regarding a petroglyph, the
locality of which he gives as follows: Roche Percée, on the Souris
river, in Manitoba, near the international boundary, 270 miles west of
Dufferin, and nearly due north from Bismarck. This is an isolated rock
in the middle of a plain, covered with pictographs of memorable events.
It stands back from the river a half mile.
Mr. A. C. Lawson (_a_) gives an illustrated account of petroglyphs
on the large peninsula extending into the Lake of the Woods and on
an island adjacent to it. Strictly speaking this peninsula is in the
district of Keewatin, but it is very near the boundary line of Manitoba,
to which it is attached for administrative purposes. The account is
condensed as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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