Frank La Flèche, of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in February, 1886, communicated the following:
Ingnanχe gikáχa-ina is the Omaha name of a rock ledge on the banks of the Missouri river, near the Santee agency, Nebraska. This ledge contains pictographs of men who passed to the happy hunting grounds, of life size, the sandstone being so soft that the engravings would be made with a piece of wood. They are represented with the special cause (arrow, gun, etc.), which sped them to hades. The souls themselves are said to make these pictographs before repairing “to the spirits.”
Fig. 53.—Characters from Nebraska petroglyphs.
Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, of the Bureau of Ethnology, says that the probable rendering of the term when corrected is, “Spirit(s) they-made-themselves the (place where).”
NEVADA.
Petroglyphs have been found by members of the U. S. Geological Survey at the lower extremity of Pyramid lake, Nevada, though no accurate reproductions are available. These characters are mentioned as incised upon the surface of basalt rocks.
Petroglyphs also occur in considerable numbers on the western slope of Lone Butte, in the Carson desert. All of these appear to have been produced on the faces of bowlders and rocks by pecking and scratching with some hard mineral material like quartz.
A communication from Mr. R. L. Fulton, of Reno, Nevada, tells that the drawing now reproduced as Fig. 54 is a pencil sketch of curious petroglyphs on a rock on the Carson river, about 8 miles below old Fort Churchill. It is the largest and most important one of a group of similar characters. It is basaltic, about 4 feet high and equally broad.
