Читать книгу Picture-Writing of the American Indians - Garrick Mallery - Страница 43

In the foothills of California, wherever overhanging and rain-protected rocks occur, they are covered with paintings of various kinds made by Indians. Those on Rocky hill, some 15 miles east of Visalia, are especially interesting. The sheltered rocks are here covered with images of men, animals, and various inanimate objects, as well as curious figures. The paint used is red, black, and white, and wherever protected it has stood the ravages of time remarkably well. In many places the paintings are as vivid as the day they were laid on. Deer, antelope, coyotes, birds, and turtles are figured quite frequently, and may indicate either names of chiefs or tribes, or animals slain in the hunt. Here are also circles, spirals, crowns or bars, etc., signs the meaning of which is yet doubtful.

Mr. H. W. Turner, in a letter dated June 3, 1891, furnishes sketches (Fig. 11) from this locality, and a description of them as follows:

Fig. 11.—Petroglyphs near Visalia, California.

I send herewith a rough sheet of drawings of figures on the sheltered face of a huge granite cropping in Tulare county, California. One-half of the cropping had split off, leaving a nearly plane surface, on which the figures were drawn in red, white, and black pigments. The locality is known as Rocky point. They are now quarrying granite at the place. It lies about 12 miles nearly due east of Visalia, in the first foothills and south of Yokall creek. The figures appear to have been drawn many years ago, and numbers of them are now indistinct.

During the summer of 1882 Dr. Hoffman visited the Tule river agency, California, where he found a large rock painting, of which Fig. 983, infra, is a copy made by him. His description of it is as follows:

“The agency is upon the western side of the Sierra Nevada, in the headwater canyons of the branches of the south fork of Tule river. The country is at present occupied by several tribes of the Mariposan linguistic stock, and the only answer made to inquiries respecting the age or origin of the painting was that it was found there when the ancestors of the present tribes arrived. The local migrations of the various Indian tribes of this part of California are not yet known with sufficient certainty to determine to whom the records may be credited, but all appearances with respect to the weathering and disintegration of the rock upon which the record is engraved, the appearance of the coloring matter subsequently applied, and the condition of the small depressions made at the time for mixing the pigments with a viscous substance, indicate that the work was performed about a century ago.

“The Indians now at Tule river have occupied that part of the state for at least one hundred years, and the oldest now living state that the records were found by their ancestors, though whether more than two generations ago could not be ascertained.

“The drawings were outlined by pecking with a piece of quartz or other siliceous rock, the depth varying from a mere visible depression to a third of an inch. Having thus satisfactorily depicted the several ideas, colors were applied which appear to have penetrated the slight interstices between the crystalline particles of the rock, which had been bruised and slightly fractured by hammering with a piece of stone. It appears probable, too, that to insure better results the hammering was repeated after application of the colors.

“Upon a small bowlder, under the natural archway formed by the breaking of the large rock, small depressions were found which had been used as mortars for grinding and mixing the colors. These depressions average 2 inches in diameter and about 1 inch in depth. Traces of color still remain, mixed with a thin layer of a shining substance resembling a coating of varnish and of flinty hardness. This coating is so thin that it can not be removed with a steel instrument, and appears to have become a part of the rock itself.

“From the animals depicted upon the ceiling it seems that both beaver and deer were found in the country, and as the beaver tail and the hoofs of deer and antelope are boiled to procure glue, it is probable that the tribe which made these pictographs was as far advanced in respect to the making of glue and preparing of paints as most other tribes throughout the United States.

“Examination shows that the dull red color is red ocher, found in various places in the valley, while the yellow was an ocherous clay, also found there. The white color was probably obtained there, and is evidently earthy, though of what nature can only be surmised, not sufficient being obtainable from the rock picture to make satisfactory analysis with the blow-pipe. The composition of the black is not known, unless it was made by mixing clay and powdered charcoal. The latter is a preparation common at this day among other tribes.

“An immense granite bowlder, about 20 feet in thickness and 30 in length, is so broken that a lower quarter is removed, leaving a large square passageway through its entire diameter almost northwest and southeast. Upon the western wall of this passageway is a collection of the colored sketches of which Fig. 983 is a reduced copy. The entire face of the rock upon which the pictograph occurs measures about 12 or 15 feet in width and 8 in height. The largest human figure measures 6 feet in height, from the end of the toes to the top of the head, the others being in proportion as represented.

Fig. 12.—Petroglyph at Tule river, California.

“Upon the ceiling are a number of well executed drawings of the beaver, bear, centipede (Fig. 12), and bald eagle (Fig. 13). Many of the other forms indicated appear to represent some variety of insects, several of which are drawn with exaggerated antennæ, as in Fig. 14. It is curious to note the gradual blending of forms, as, for instance, that of the bear with those resembling the human figure, often found among the Shoshonean types in Arizona and New Mexico, some of which are described and figured infra.

Fig. 13.—Petroglyph at Tule river, California.

Fig. 14.—Petroglyph at Tule river, California.

“Fig. 15 embraces a number of characters on the ceiling. The left hand upper figure is in black, with a narrow line of red surrounding it. The drawing is executed neatly and measures about 18 inches in length. The remaining characters are in dull red, probably ocher, though the two on the left hand, beneath the one just mentioned, are more yellowish.

Fig. 15.—Petroglyph at Tule river, California.

“The first three forms in Fig. 16 are copies of human-like figures painted on the ceiling. They are each about 12 inches in length. The other form in Fig. 16 is white and is on the southern vertical wall of the passageway facing the north. It resembles some of the human forms occurring elsewhere in the same series of petroglyphs.”

Fig. 16.—Petroglyph at Tule river, California.