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

ROCK CARVINGS IN THE SOUTHERN STATES.

Charles C. Jones, jr., in his Antiquities of the Southern Indians, etc., New York, 1873, pp. 62, 63, gives some general remarks upon the pictographs of the southern Indians, as follows:

In painting and rock writing the efforts of the Southern Indians were confined to the fanciful and profuse ornamentation of their own persons with various colors, in which red, yellow, and black predominated, and to marks, signs, and figures depicted on skins and scratched on wood, the shoulder blade of a buffalo, or on stone. The smooth bark of a standing tree or the face of a rock was used to commemorate some feat of arms, to indicate the direction and strength of a military expedition, or the solemnization of a treaty of peace. High up the perpendicular sides of mountain gorges, and at points apparently inaccessible save to the fowls of the air, are seen representations of the sun and moon, accompanied by rude characters, the significance of which is frequently unknown to the present observer. The motive which incited to the execution of work so perilous was, doubtless, religious in its character, and directly connected with the worship of the sun and his pale consort of the night.

The same author, page 377, particularly describes and illustrates one in Georgia, as follows:

In Forsyth County, Georgia, is a carved or incised bowlder of fine-grained granite, about 9 feet long, 4 feet 6 inches high, and 3 feet broad at its widest point. The figures are cut in the bowlder from one-half to three-fourths of an inch deep. * It is generally believed that they are the work of the Cherokees.

These figures are chiefly circles, both plain, nucleated, and concentric, sometimes two or more being joined by straight lines, forming what is now known as the “spectacle-shaped” figure.

Dr. M. F. Stephenson mentions, in Geology and Mineralogy of Georgia, Atlanta, 1871, p. 199, sculptures of human feet, various animals, bear tracks, etc., in Enchanted Mountain, Union County, Georgia. The whole number of etchings is reported as one hundred and forty-six.