This is one of the many customs to be remembered in the attempted interpretations of pictographs. The present writer does not know that a skunk skin, or a strip of skin which might be supposed to be a skunk skin, attached to a human heel, has ever been used pictorially as the ideograph of courage or steadfastness, but with the knowledge of this objective use of the skins, if they were found so represented pictorially, as might well be expected, the interpretation would be suggested, without any direct explanation from Indians.
IDENTIFICATION OF THE PICTOGRAPHERS.
The first point in the examination of a pictograph is to determine by what body of people it was made. This is not only because the marks or devices made by the artists of one tribe, or perhaps of one linguistic stock if not disintegrated into separated divisions distant from each other, may have a different significance from figures virtually the same produced by another tribe or stock, but because the value of the record is greatly enhanced when the recorders are known. In arriving at the identification mentioned it is advisable to study: 1st. The general style or type. 2d. The presence of characteristic objects. 3d. The apparent subject-matter. 4th. The localities with reference to the known habitat of tribes.
GENERAL STYLE OR TYPE.
Although the collection of pictographs, particularly of petroglyphs, is not complete, and their study, therefore, is only commenced, it is possible to present some of the varieties in general style and type.
Figure 147 is presented as a type of the Eastern Algonkian pictographs. It was copied by Messrs. J. Sutton Wall and William Arison, in 1882, from a rock opposite Millsborough, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and is mentioned on page [20], supra, in connection with the local distribution of petroglyphs. The locality is within the area once occupied by the tribes of the Algonkian linguistic family, and there is apparent a general similarity to the well-known Dighton Rock inscription.
Fig. 147.—Algonkian petroglyph. Millsborough, Pennsylvania.
Mr. J. Sutton Wall, of Monongahela City, Pennsylvania, who has kindly furnished the drawing of the etchings, states that the outlines of figures are formed by grooves carved or cut in the rock from an inch to a mere trace in depth. The footprints are carved depressions. The character marked Z (near the lower left-hand corner) is a circular cavity 7 inches deep. The rock is sandstone, of the Waynesburg series.