Читать книгу Picture-Writing of the American Indians - Garrick Mallery - Страница 73

Carvings and paintings on rocks are found in such numbers in the southern interior of Utah that a locality there has been named Pictograph rocks.

Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the U. S. Geological Survey, collected in 1875 a number of copies of inscriptions in Temple creek canyon, southeastern Utah, and noted their finding as follows:

The drawings were found only on the northeast wall of the canyon, where it cuts the Vermillion cliff sandstone. The chief parts are etched, apparently by pounding with a sharp point. The outline of a figure is usually more deeply cut than the body. Other marks are produced by rubbing or scraping, and still others by laying on colors. Some, not all, of the colors are accompanied by a rubbed appearance, as though the material had been a dry chalk.

I could discover no tools at the foot of the wall, only fragments of pottery, flints, and a metate.

Several fallen blocks of sandstone have rubbed depressions that may have been ground out in the sharpening of tools. There have been many dates of inscriptions, and each new generation has unscrupulously run its lines over the pictures already made. Upon the best protected surfaces, as well as the most exposed, there are drawings dimmed beyond restoration and others distinct. The period during which the work accumulated was longer by far than the time which has passed since the last. Some fallen blocks cover etchings on the wall, and are themselves etched.

Colors are preserved only where there is almost complete shelter from rain. In two places the holes worn in the rock by swaying branches impinge on etchings, but the trees themselves have disappeared. Some etchings are left high and dry by a diminishing talus (15 to 20 feet), but I saw none partly buried by an increasing talus (except in the case of the fallen block already mentioned).

The painted circles are exceedingly accurate, and it seems incredible that they were made without the use of a radius.

In the collection contributed by Mr. Gilbert there are at least fifteen series or groups of figures, most of which consist of the human form (from the simplest to the most complex style of drawing), animals, either singly or in long files—as if driven—bird tracks, human feet and hands, etc. There are also circles, parallel lines, and waving or undulating lines, spots, and other characters.

Mr. Gilbert also reports the discovery, in 1883, of a great number of pictographs, chiefly in color, though some are only incised, in a canyon of the Book cliff containing Thompson’s spring, about 4 miles north of Thompson’s station, on the Denver and Colorado Railroad, Utah. He has also furnished a collection of drawings of pictographs at Black rock spring, on Beaver creek, north of Milford, Utah. A number of fallen blocks of basalt at a low escarpment are filled with etchings upon the vertical faces. The characters generally are of an “unintelligible” nature, though the human figure is drawn in complex forms. Footprints and circles abound.

Mr. I. C. Russell, of the U. S. Geological Survey, furnished rude drawings of pictographs at Black rock spring, Utah (see Fig. 1093). Mr. Gilbert Thompson also discovered pictographs at Fool creek canyon, Utah (see Fig. 1094).

Mr. Vernon Bailey, in a letter dated January 18, 1889, reports that in the vicinity of St. George “all along the sandstone cliffs are strange figures like hieroglyphics and pictures of animals cut in the rocks, but now often worn dim.”

Mr. George Pope, of Provo city, Utah county, in a letter, kindly gives an account of an inscription on a rock in a canyon at the mouth of Provo river, about 7 miles from the city named. There is no paint seen, the inscription being cut. A human hand is conspicuous, being cut (probably pecked) to a depth of at least one-third of an inch, and so with representations of animals.

Dr. Rau (c) gives the design of a portion of a group carved on a cliff in the San Pete valley at the city of Manti, Utah, now reproduced as Fig. 81. He says:

Fig. 81.—Petroglyphs near Manti, Utah.

A line drawn horizontally through the middle of the parallel lines connecting the concentric circles would divide the figure into two halves, each bearing a close resemblance to Prof. Simpson’s fifth type of cup stones. A copy of the group in question was made and published by Lieut. J. W. Gunnison, in The Mormons or Latter-Day Saints, etc., Philadelphia, 1853, p. 63. The illustration is taken from Bancroft’s Native Races (Vol. IV, p. 717). In accordance with Lieut. Gunnison’s design, the position of the grotesque human figure is changed to the left of the concentric circle. He also says that the Mormon leaders made this aboriginal inscription subservient to their religion by giving the following translation of it: “I, Mahanti, the second king of the Lamanites, in five valleys of the mountains, make this record in the twelve hundredth year since we came out of Jerusalem. And I have three sons gone to the south country to live by hunting antelope and deer.” * * * Schoolcraft attempts (Vol. III, p. 494) something like an interpretation which appears to me fanciful and unsatisfactory.

The following extract is made from The Shinumos by F. S. Dellenbaugh (a).

Some of the least disintegrated ruins are situated on the Colorado river, only a short distance below the mouth of the Dirty Devil river. * * * A level shelf varying from about 6 to 10 feet in width ran along for 150 feet or more. In most places the rocks above protruded as far as the edge of the lower rocks, sometimes farther, thus leaving a sort of gallery, generally 7 or 8 feet high. Walls that extended to the roof had been built along the outer edge of the natural floor, and the inclosed space being subdivided by stone partitions to suit the convenience of the builders, the whole formed a series of rather comfortable rooms or houses. The back walls of the houses—the natural rock—had on them many groups of hieroglyphics, and farther along where there was no roof rock at all the vertical faces had been inscribed with seeming great care. Some of the sheltered groups were painted in various dull colors, but most of them were chiseled.

The figure [82] gives a chiseled group. It is easy to see that these are signs of no low order. Considering their great age, their exposure, many of the delicate touches must be obliterated.

Fig. 82.—Petroglyphs on Colorado river, Utah.

The inscriptions on this ruin might possibly be the history of the defense of the crossing, the stationing of the garrison, the death of officers of rank, etc.

The following sketches of petroglyphs, with the references attached, are taken from the sketch book of Mr. F. S. Dellenbaugh, before referred to.

The petroglyph, of which Fig. 83 is a copy, appears on a horizontal rock 5 miles below the mouth of the Dirty Devil river, Utah.

Fig. 83.—Petroglyphs on Colorado river, Utah.

The characters in Fig. 84 from rocks near the preceding group are painted red, with the imprint of a hand (on the larger figure) in white.