Читать книгу Picture-Writing of the American Indians - Garrick Mallery - Страница 63

The following is extracted from Schoolcraft (c):

There is a pictographic Indian inscription [now obliterated] in the valley of the Hudson, above the Highlands, which from its antiquity and character appears to denote the era of the introduction of firearms and gunpowder among the aboriginal tribes of that valley. This era, from the well-known historical events of the contemporaneous settlement of New Netherlands and New France, may be with general accuracy placed between the years 1609, the date of Hudson’s ascent of that stream above the Highlands, and the opening of the Indian trade with the Iroquois at the present site of Albany, by the erection of Fort Orange, in 1614. * * *

In a map published at Amsterdam, in Holland, in 1659, the country, for some distance both above and below Esopus creek, is delineated as inhabited by the Waranawankongs, who were a totemic division or enlarged family clan of the Mohikinder. They spoke a well-characterized dialect of the Mohigan, and have left numerous geographical names on the streams and physical peculiarities of that part of the river coast quite to and above Coxsackie. The language is Algonquin.

Esopus itself appears to be a word derived from Seepu, the Minsi-Algonquin name for a river.

* * * The inscription may be supposed, if the era is properly conjectured, to have been made with metallic tools. The lines are deeply and plainly impressed. It is in double lines. The plumes from the head denote a chief or man skilled in the Indian medico-magical art. The gun is held at rest in the right hand; the left appears to support a wand. [The position of the arm may be merely a gesture.]

The reproduction here as Fig. 60 is from a rock on the western bank of the Hudson, at Esopus landing. It is presented mainly on account of the frequent allusions to it in literature.

Fig. 60.—Petroglyph at Esopus, New York.