Читать книгу Picture-Writing of the American Indians - Garrick Mallery - Страница 39

Dr. Franz Boas (a) published an account of a petroglyph on Vancouver island (now presented as Fig. 3) which, slightly condensed, is translated as follows:

Fig. 3.—Petroglyph on Vancouver island.

The accompanying rock picture is found on the eastern shore of Sproat lake, near its southern outlet. Sproat lake lies about 10 kilometers north of the upper end of the Alberni fiord, which cuts deep into the interior of Vancouver island. In former times this region was the territory of the Hōpetschisāth, a tribe of the Nootka or Aht, who even now have a village some miles below the lake, at the entrance of Stamp river into the main river. That tribe, according to the statement of some of its older members, was a branch of the Kowitchin, who occupy the east side of Vancouver island, some kilometers northeast of the upper end of Alberni fiord. At that time the Ts’ēschāáth, another tribe of the Nootka, are said to have ascended the fiord and mixed with the Hōpetschisāth. The present inhabitants of the region know nothing concerning the origin of the rock picture. According to their legend, the rock on which it is carved was once the house of Kwótiath. Kwótiath is the wandering divinity in Nootka mythology, and corresponds approximately to the raven of the Tlinkit and Haida, the Qäls of the Kowitchin. The picture is found on a perpendicular rock wall about 7 meters high, which drops directly into the lake, so that it was necessary to make the copy while standing in the water. The rock is traversed in the middle by a broad cleft, narrowing below, from which blocks have fallen out which bore part of the drawing. To the north and south of the rock wall the shore rises gently, but rocky portions are found everywhere. The lines of the drawing are flat grooves, about two or three fingers’ breadth, and in many places are so weathered as to be hardly recognizable. They have been scraped into the rock probably by the points of sticks rubbing moist sand against it. No marks of blows of any kind are found. The figures are here given in the same relative position in which they are found on the rock, except that the upper one on the right hand is at a distance from all the others, at the southern end of the rock. The objects represented are evidently fishes or marine monsters. The middle figure to the left of the cleft may be a manned boat, the fore part of which is probably destroyed.

Dr. Boas says that the copy as found in the Verhandlungen is incorrect. The design on the right hand is reversed and is now corrected.

Mr. G. M. Sproat (a) mentions this petroglyph:

It is rudely done and apparently not of an old date. There are half a dozen figures intended to represent fishes or birds—no one can say which. The natives affirm that Quawteaht made them. In their general character these figures correspond to the rude paintings sometimes seen on wooden boards among the Ahts, or on the seal-skin buoys that are attached to the whale and halibut harpoons and lances. The meaning of these figures is not understood by the people; and I dare say if the truth were known, they are nothing but feeble attempts on the part of individual artists to imitate some visible objects which they had strongly in their minds.