Pictographs of the North American Indians. A preliminary paper / Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1882-83, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1886, pages 3-256

by Garrick Mallery

PETROGLYPHS IN BRAZIL.

The following is an abstract from a paper by J. Whitfield on Rock Inscriptions in Brazil, in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1874, Vol. III, p. 114:

The rock inscriptions were visited in August, 1865, during an exploring expedition for gold mines in the province of Ceará. Several similar inscriptions are said to exist in the interior of the province of Ceará, as well as in the provinces of Pernambuco and Piauhy, especially in the Sertaõs, that is, in the thinly-wooded parts of the interior, but no mention is ever made of their having been seen near the coast.

In the margin and bed only of the river are the rocks inscribed. On the margin they extend in some instances to fifteen or twenty yards. Except in the rainy season the stream is dry. The rock is a silicious schist of excessively hard and flinty texture. The marks have the appearance of having been made with a blunt heavy tool, such as might be made with an almost worn-out mason’s hammer.

The situation is about midway between Serra Grande or Ibiapaba and Serra Merioca, about seventy miles from the coast and forty west of the town Sobral. There are not any indications of works of art or other antiquarian remains, nor anything peculiar to the locality. The country is gently undulating, and of the usual character that obtains for hundreds of miles extending along the base of the Serra Ibiapaba.

The native population attribute all the ‘Letreiros’ (inscriptions), as they do everything else of which they have no information, to the Dutch as records of hidden wealth. The Dutch, however, only occupied the country for a few years in the early part of the seventeenth century. Along the coast numerous forts, the works of the Dutch, still remain; but there are no authentic records of their ever having established themselves in the interior of the country, and less probability still of their amusing themselves with inscribing puzzling hieroglyphics, which must have been a work of time, on the rocks of the far interior, for the admiration of wandering Indians.