Marcano (a) gives an account in which superstition is mixed with historic tradition. It is translated as follows:
The legend of the Tamanaques, transmitted by Father Gili, has also been invoked in favor of an ancient civilization. According to the beliefs of this nation, there took place in days of old a general inundation, which recalls the age of the great waters of the Mexicans, during which the scattered waves beat against the Encaramada. All the Tamanaques were drowned except one man and one woman, who fled to the mountain of Tamacu or Tamanácu, situated on the banks of Asiveru (Cuchivero). They threw above their heads the fruits of the palm tree, Mauritia, and saw arising from their kernels the men and women who repeopled the earth. It was during this inundation that Amalavica, the creator of mankind, arrived on a bark and carved the inscription of Tepumereme. Amalavica remained long among the Tamanaques, and dwelt in Amalavica-Jeutitpe (house). After putting everything in order he set sail and returned “to the other shore,” whence he had come. “Did you perchance meet him there?” said an Indian to Father Gili, after relating to him this story. In this connection Humboldt recalls that in Mexico, too, the monk Sahagun was asked whether he came from the other shore, whither Quetzalcoatl had retired.
The same traveler adds: “When you ask the natives how the hieroglyphic characters carved on the mountains of Urbana and Encaramada could have been traced, they reply that this was done in the age of the great waters, at the time when their fathers were able to reach the heights in their canoes.”
If these legends and these petroglyphs are proof of an extinct civilization, it is astonishing that their authors should have left no other traces of their culture. To come to the point, is it admissible that they were replaced by savage tribes without leaving a trace of what they had been, and can we understand this retrograde march of civilization when progress everywhere follows an ascending course? These destructions of American tribes in place are very convenient to prop up theories, but they are contrary to ethnologic laws.
The remarkable height of some petroglyphs has misled authors of good repute as well as savages. Petroglyphs frequently appear on the face of rocks at heights and under conditions which seemed to render their production impossible without the appliances of advanced civilization, a large outlay, and the exercise of unusual skill. An instance among many of the same general character is in the petroglyphs at Lake Chelan, Washington, where they are about 30 feet above the present water level, on a perpendicular cliff, the base of which is in the lake. On simple examination the execution of the pictographic work would seem to involve details of wharfing, staging, and ladders if operated from the base, and no less elaborate machinery if approached from the summit. Strahlenberg suggests that such elevated drawings were made by the ingenious use of stone wedges driven into the rock, thus affording support for ascent or descent, and reports that he actually saw such stone wedges in position on the Yenesei river. A very rough geological theory has been presented by others to account for the phenomena by the rise of the rocks to a height far above the adjacent surface at a time later than their carving.
But in the many cases observed in America it is not necessary to propose either the hypothesis involving such elaborate work as is suggested or one postulating enormous geological changes. The escarpment of cliffs is from time to time broken down by the action of the elements and the fragments fall to the base, frequently forming a talus of considerable height, on which it is easy to mount and incise or paint on the remaining perpendicular face of the cliff. When the latter adjoins a lake or large stream, the disintegrated débris is almost immediately carried off, leaving the drawings or paintings at an apparently inaccessible altitude. When the cliff is on dry land, the rain, which is driven against the face of the cliff and thereby increased in volume and force at the point in question, also sweeps away the talus, though more slowly. The talus is ephemeral in all cases, and the face of the cliff may change in a week or a century, as it may happen, so its aspect gives but a slight evidence of age. The presence, therefore, of the pictures on the heights described proves neither extraordinary skill in their maker nor the great antiquity which would be indicated by the emergence of the pictured rocks through volcanic or other dynamic agency. The age of the paintings and sculptures must be inferred from other considerations.
Pictures are sometimes found on the parts of rocks which at present are always, or nearly always, covered with water. On the sea shore at Machias bay, Maine, the peckings have been continued below the line of the lowest tides as known during the present generation. In such cases subsidence of the rocky formation may be indicated. At Kejimkoojik lake, Nova Scotia, incisions of the same character as those on the bare surface of the slate rocks can now be seen only by the aid of a water glass, and then only when the lake is at its lowest. This may be caused by subsidence of the rocks or by rise of the water through the substantial damming of the outlet. Some rocks on the shores of rivers, e. g., those on the Kanahwa, in West Virginia, show the same general result of the covering and concealment of petroglyphs by water, except in an unusual drought, which may more reasonably be attributed to the gradual elevation of the river through the rise of the surface near its mouth than to the subsidence of the earth’s crust at the locality of the pictured rocks.
It must be admitted that no hermeneutic key has been discovered applicable to American pictographs, whether ancient on stone or modern on bark, skins, linen, or paper. Nor has any such key been found which unlocks the petroglyphs of any other people. Symbolism was of individual origin and was soon variously obscured by conventionalizing; therefore it requires separate study in every region. No interpreting laws of general application to petroglyphs so far appear, although types and tendencies can be classified. It was hoped that in some lands petroglyphs might tell of the characters and histories of extinct or emigrated peoples, but it now seems that knowledge of the people who were the makers of the petroglyphs is necessary to any clear understanding of their work. The fanciful hypotheses which have been formed without corroboration, wholly from such works as remain, are now generally discarded.
There is a material reason why the interpretation of petroglyphs is attended with special difficulty. They have often become so blurred by the elements and so much defaced where civilized man has penetrated that they cease to have any distinct or at least incontrovertible features. The remarks relating to Dighton rock, infra, Chap. [XXII], are in point.
Rock-carving or picture-writing on rocks is so old among the American tribes as to have acquired a nomenclature. The following general remarks of Schoolcraft (a) are of some value, though they apply with any accuracy only to the Ojibwa and are tinctured with a fondness for the mysterious: