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
Figs. 32 and 33 are reduced copies 1/32 of original size of colored
petroglyphs found by Dr. Hoffman in September, 1884, 12 miles
west-northwest of the city of Santa Barbara, California. The locality
is almost at the summit of the Santa Ynez range of mountains; the gray
sandstone rock on which they are painted is about 30 feet high and
projects from a ridge so as to form a very marked promontory extending
into a narrow mountain canyon. At the base of the western side of this
bowlder is a rounded cavity, measuring on the inside about 15 feet in
width and 8 feet in height. The floor ascends rapidly toward the back
of the cave, and the entrance is rather smaller in dimensions than the
above measurements of the interior. About 40 yards west of this rock
is a fine spring of water. One of the four old Indian trails leading
northward across the mountains passes by this locality, and it is
probable that this was one of the camping places of the tribe which
came south to trade, and that some of its members were the authors of
the paintings. The three trails beside the one just mentioned cross the
mountains at several points east of this, the most distant being about
15 miles. Other trails were known, but these four were most direct to
the immediate vicinity of the Spanish settlement which sprang up shortly
after the establishment of the Santa Barbara mission in 1786. The
appearance and position of these and other pictographs in the vicinity
appear to be connected with the several trails. The colors used in the
paintings are red and black.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--Petroglyph in Santa Barbara county, California.]
The circles figured in _b_ and _d_ of Fig. 32, and _c_, _r_, and _w_
of Fig. 33, together with other similar circular marks bearing cross
lines upon the interior, were at first unintelligible, as their forms
among various tribes have very different signification. The character
in Fig. 32, above and projecting from _d_, resembles the human form,
with curious lateral bands of black and white, alternately. Two similar
characters appear, also, in Fig. 33, _a_, _b_. In _a_ the lines from the
head would seem to indicate a superior rank or condition of the person
depicted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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