The Lenape Stone; or, The Indian and the MammothMercer, Henry C.
History
The Lenape Stone; or, The Indian and the Mammoth
Mercer, Henry C.
Delaware Indians; Mammoths; Picture-writing, Indian
As to the "treatment of the sun," we find faces with rays, or divergent
curves, in Schoolcraft, vol. i., p. 362, figs. 16 and 17, and p. 409,
fig. 9; vol. iii., p. 493,--a circle with rays in the rock inscription
(Delaware perhaps) on the Susquehanna near the Maryland line, a face
without rays in the rock inscription (also Delaware, possibly) at Safe
Harbor on the Susquehanna, and a face with rays, the counterpart of the
carving in question, on a small broken tablet found near Akron, Ohio,
in the collection of the late Mr. Dupont, of Philadelphia, who had no
doubt of its authenticity.
LIGHTNING IN INDIAN PICTOGRAPHY.
The marks in the picture evidently representing forked lightning, and
directed as in the language of the tradition at the forehead of the
beast, are without parallel among the Indian pictographs within the
writer's reach. The symbolic snake, or barbed zigzag of the Moquis--the
only Indian lightning that the writer has been able to find--differs
greatly from this, yet there seems no good reason why the Indian should
not have sometimes represented lightning as he saw it.
LINES CUT BY STEEL AND FLINT INSTRUMENTS.
As to the steel-cut appearance of the lines, Dr. Brinton says: "The
lines on the Lenape Stone are obviously cut with a steel instrument,
making clean incisions, deepest in the centre and tapering to points,
quite different from the scratch of a flint point"; and Dr. M. E.
Wadsworth thinks that "the depth and regularity of the carvings
indicate that they were made with some dulled steel tool like an
awl." On the other hand Mr. J. E. Iddings does not know whether it is
possible thus to distinguish the work of steel and flint instruments,
and a series of experiments with the microscope and steel and flint
points has induced the writer to believe that lines cut on a similar
stone by "a dulled steel instrument" and a flint arrow-point cannot be
distinguished after both have been washed and scrubbed.
The appearance of such lines would of course depend much upon the
sharpness of the flint or steel point, the kind of stone used, and
whether the lines were cut by one or by a series of strokes. The single
scratch of a scissors point on a shale tablet of similar hardness
makes an incision in shape like the letter V; that of either an awl or
flint arrow-head one like the letter U; while any line made by either
instrument and consisting of a series of strokes will have its bottom
furrowed by parallel grooves, as in the case of the large lines on the
Lenape Stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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