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 UTAH.

A locality in the southern interior of Utah has been called Pictograph Rocks, on account of the numerous records of that character found there.

Mr. G. K. Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, in 1875 collected a number of copies of inscriptions in Temple Creek Cañon, Southeastern Utah, accompanied by the following notes: “The drawings were found only on the northeast wall of the cañon, where it cuts the Vermillion cliff sandstone. The chief part 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 other 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 (15-20 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 unintelligible characters.

Mr. Gilbert also reports the discovery, in 1883, of a great number of pictographs, chiefly in color, though some are etched, in a cañon of the Book Cliff, containing Thompson’s spring, about 4 miles north of Thompson’s station, on the Denver and Colorado Railroad, Utah.

Collections of drawings of pictographs at Black Rock spring, on Beaver Creek, north of Milford, Utah, have been furnished by Mr. Gilbert. A number of fallen blocks of basalt, at a low escarpment, are filled with etchings upon the vertical faces. The characters are generally of an “unintelligible” nature, though the human figure is drawn in complex forms. Foot-prints, circles, etc., also abound.

Mr. I. C. Russell, of the United States Geological Survey, furnished rude drawings of pictographs at Black Rock spring, Utah (see Figure 153). Mr. Gilbert Thompson, of the United States Geological Survey, also discovered pictographs at Fool Creek Cañon, Utah (see Figure 154). Both of those figures are on page [230].