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
Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey, has furnished a small
collection of drawings of Shoshonean petroglyphs from Oneida, Idaho,
shown in Fig. 39. Some of them appear to be totemic characters, and
possibly were made to record the names of visitors to the locality.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Petroglyphs in Idaho (Shoshonean).]
Mr. Willard D. Johnson, of the U. S. Geological Survey, reports
pictographic remains observed by him near Oneida, Idaho, in 1879. The
figures represent human beings and were on a rock of basalt.
A copy of another petroglyph found in Idaho appears in Fig. 1092, infra.
ILLINOIS.
Petroglyphs are reported by Mr. John Criley as occurring near Ava,
Jackson county, Illinois. The outlines of the characters observed by him
were drawn from memory and submitted to Mr. Charles S. Mason, of Toledo,
Ohio, through whom they were furnished to the Bureau of Ethnology.
Little reliance can be placed upon the accuracy of such drawing, but
from the general appearance of the sketches the originals of which they
are copies were probably made by one of the middle Algonquian tribes of
Indians.
The “Piasa” rock, as it is generally designated, was referred to by the
missionary explorer Marquette in 1675. Its situation was immediately
above the city of Alton, Illinois.
Marquette’s remarks are translated by Dr. Francis Parkman (_a_) as
follows:
On the flat face of a high rock were painted, in red, black, and
green, a pair of monsters, each “as large as a calf, with horns like
a deer, red eyes, a beard like a tiger, and a frightful expression
of countenance. The face is something like that of a man, the body
covered with scales; and the tail so long that it passes entirely
round the body, over the head, and between the legs, ending like
that of a fish.”
Another version, by Davidson and Struvé (_a_), of the discovery of the
petroglyph is as follows:
Again they (Joliet and Marquette) were floating on the broad
bosom of the unknown stream. Passing the mouth of the Illinois,
they soon fell into the shadow of a tall promontory, and with great
astonishment beheld the representation of two monsters painted on
its lofty limestone front. According to Marquette, each of these
frightful figures had the face of a man, the horns of a deer, the
beard of a tiger, and the tail of a fish so long that it passed
around the body, over the head, and between the legs. It was an
object of Indian worship and greatly impressed the mind of the pious
missionary with the necessity of substituting for this monstrous
idolatry the worship of the true God.
A footnote connected with the foregoing quotation gives the following
description of the same rock:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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