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 localities of the sketches Figs. 5, 6, and 7 are about 35
miles east and southeast of San Francisco mountain, the material
being a red sandstone, which stands in low buttes upon the plain.
About these are mealing stones, fragments of pottery and chipped
flints, giving evidence of the residence of sedentary Indians.
So many localities of petroglyphs were seen that I regard it as
probable that a large number could be found by search. The drawings
in every case but one were produced by blows upon the surface of the
rocks, breaking through the film of rock discolored by weathering
so as to reveal (originally) the color of the interior of the rock.
The single exception is the first pattern in Fig. 6, similar to the
patterns on pottery and blankets, produced by painting with a white
pigment on red rock. The original arrangement of the drawings upon
the rock was not as a rule preserved, but they have approximately
the original arrangement. I neglected to record the scale of the
drawings, but the several pictures are drawn on approximately the
same scale.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Petroglyph in Arizona.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Petroglyph in Arizona.]
All of these figures partake of the general type designated as the
Shoshonean, and it is notable that close repetitions of some of the
characters appear in petroglyphs in Tulare valley and Owens valley,
California, which are described and illustrated in this section.
The object resembling a centipede, in Fig. 6, is a common form in
various localities in Santa Barbara county, California, as will be
observed by comparing the illustrations given in connection with that
locality. In other of the Arizona and New Mexican petroglyphs similar
outlines are sometimes engraved to signify the maize stalk.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Petroglyph in Arizona.]
Mr. Paul Holman, of the U. S. Geological Survey, reports that eight
miles below Powers butte, on a mesa bordering on the Gila river and
rising abruptly to the height of 150 feet, are pictographs covering
the entire vertical face. Also on the summit of a spur of Oatman
mountain, 200 yards from the Gila and 300 feet above it, are numbers
of pictographs. Many of them are almost obliterated where they are on
exposed surfaces.
Lieut. Col. Emory (_a_) reports that on a table-land near the Gila
bend is a mound of granite bowlders, blackened by augite and covered
with unknown characters, the work of human hands. On the ground near
by were also traces of some of the figures, showing that some of the
pictographs, at least, were the work of modern Indians. Others were
of undoubted antiquity. He also reports in the same volume (_b_) that
characters upon rocks of questionable antiquity occur on the Gila river
at 32° 38′ 13″ N. lat. and 190° 7′ 30″ long. According to the plate,
the figures are found upon bowlders and on the face of the cliff to the
height of 30 feet.
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