Fig. 10.—Petroglyph in Mound canyon, Arizona.
CALIFORNIA.
In the foothills of California, wherever overhanging and rain-protected rocks occur, they are covered with paintings of various kinds made by Indians. Those on Rocky hill, some 15 miles east of Visalia, are especially interesting. The sheltered rocks are here covered with images of men, animals, and various inanimate objects, as well as curious figures. The paint used is red, black, and white, and wherever protected it has stood the ravages of time remarkably well. In many places the paintings are as vivid as the day they were laid on. Deer, antelope, coyotes, birds, and turtles are figured quite frequently, and may indicate either names of chiefs or tribes, or animals slain in the hunt. Here are also circles, spirals, crowns or bars, etc., signs the meaning of which is yet doubtful.
Mr. H. W. Turner, in a letter dated June 3, 1891, furnishes sketches (Fig. 11) from this locality, and a description of them as follows:
Fig. 11.—Petroglyphs near Visalia, California.
I send herewith a rough sheet of drawings of figures on the sheltered face of a huge granite cropping in Tulare county, California. One-half of the cropping had split off, leaving a nearly plane surface, on which the figures were drawn in red, white, and black pigments. The locality is known as Rocky point. They are now quarrying granite at the place. It lies about 12 miles nearly due east of Visalia, in the first foothills and south of Yokall creek. The figures appear to have been drawn many years ago, and numbers of them are now indistinct.
During the summer of 1882 Dr. Hoffman visited the Tule river agency, California, where he found a large rock painting, of which Fig. [983], infra, is a copy made by him. His description of it is as follows: