Petroglyphs are now most frequently found in those parts of the world which are still, or recently have been, inhabited by savage or barbarian tribes. Persons of these tribes when questioned about the authorship of the rock drawings have generally attributed them to supernatural beings. Statements to this effect from many peoples of the three Americas and of other regions, together with the names of rockwriting deities, are abundantly cited in the present work. This is not surprising, nor is it instructive, except as to the mere fact that the drawings are ancient. Man has always attributed to supernatural action whatever he did not understand. Also, it appears that in modern times shamans have encouraged this belief and taken advantage of it to interpret for their own purposes the drawings, some of which have been made by themselves. But notwithstanding these errors and frauds, a large proportion of the petroglyphs in America are legitimately connected with the myths and the religious practices of the authors. The information obtained during late years regarding tribes such as the Zuñi, Moki, Navajo, and Ojibwa, which have kept up on the one hand their old religious practices and on the other that of picture writing, is conclusive on this point. The rites and ceremonies of these tribes are to some extent shown pictorially on the rocks, some of the characters on which have until lately been wholly meaningless, but are now identified as drawings of the paraphernalia used in or as diagrams of the drama of their rituals. Unless those rituals, with the creeds and cosmologies connected with them had been learned, the petroglyphs would never have been interpreted. The fact that they are now understood does not add any new information, except that perhaps in some instances their age may show the antiquity and continuity of the present rites.
A potent reason for caution in making deductions based only on copies of figures published incidentally in works of travel is that it can seldom be ascertained with exactness what is the true depiction of those figures as actually existing or as originally made. The personal equation affects the drawings and paintings intended to be copies from the rock surfaces and also the engravings and other forms of reproductions, and the student must rely upon very uncertain reproductions for most of his material. The more ancient petroglyphs also require the aid of the imagination to supply eroded lines or faded colors. Travelers and explorers are seldom so conscientious as to publish an obscure copy of the obscure original. It is either made to appear distinct or is not furnished at all, and if the author were conscientious the publisher would probably overrule him.
Thorough knowledge of the historic tribes, including their sociology, sophiology, technology, and especially their sign language, will probably result in the interpretation of many more petroglyphs than are now understood, but the converse is not true. The rock characters studied independently will not give much primary information about customs and concepts, though it may and does corroborate what has been obtained by other modes of investigation. A knowledge of Indian customs, costumes, including arrangement of hair, paint, and all tribal designations, and of their histories and traditions, is essential to the understanding of their drawings; for which reason some of those particulars known to have influenced pictography have been set forth in this work and objects have been mentioned which were known to have been portrayed graphically with special intent.
Other objects are used symbolically or emblematically which, so far as known, have never appeared in any form of pictographs, but might be found in any of them. For instance, Mr. Schoolcraft says of the Dakotas that “some of the chiefs had the skins of skunks tied to their heels to symbolize that they never ran, as that animal is noted for its slow and self-possessed movements.” 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 separately used pictorially as the ideogram of courage or steadfastness, but with the knowledge of this objective use of the skins, if they were found so represented pictorially, the interpretation would be suggested without any direct explanation from Indians.
A partial view of petroglyphs has excited hope that by their correlation the priscan homes and migrations of peoples may be ascertained. Undoubtedly striking similarities are found in regions far apart from as well as near to each other. A glance at the bas-reliefs of Boro Boudour in Java, now copied and published by the Dutch authorities, at once recalls figures of the lotus and uræus of Egypt, the horns of Assyria, the thunderbolt of Greece, the Buddhist fig tree, and other noted characters common in several parts of the world. If the petroglyphs of America are considered as the texts with which all others may be compared, it is believed that the present work shows illustrations nearly identical with many much-discussed carvings and paintings on the rocks of the eastern hemisphere, those in Siberia being most strongly suggestive of connection. But from the present collection it would seem that the similarity of styles in various regions is more worthy of study than is the mere resemblance or even identity of characters, the significance of which is unknown and may have differed in the intent of the several authors. Indeed it is clear that even in limited areas of North America, diverse significance is attached to the same figure and differing figures are made to express the same concept.
The present work shows a surprising resemblance between the typical forms among the petroglyphs found in Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Guiana, part of Mexico, and those in the Pacific slope of North America. This similarity includes the forms in Guatemala and Alaska, which, on account of the material used, are of less assured antiquity. Indeed it would be safe to include Japan and New Zealand in this general class. In this connection an important letter from Mr. James G. Swan, respecting the carved wooden images of the Haidas, accentuates the deduction derived only from comparison. Mr. Swan says that he showed to the Indians of various coast tribes the plates of Dr. Habel’s work on sculptures in Guatemala, and that they all recognized several of the pictures which he notes. They also recognized and understood the pictures of the Zuñi ceremonials, masks, and masquerades scenes published by Mr. F. H. Cushing.
Without entering upon the discussion whether America was peopled from east to west, or from either, or from any other part of the earth, it is for the present enough to suggest that the petroglyphs and other pictographs in the three Americas indicate that their pre-Columbian inhabitants had at one time frequent communication with each other, perhaps not then being separated by the present distances of habitat. Styles of drawing and painting could thus readily be diffused, and, indeed, to mention briefly the extralimital influence, if as many Japanese and Chinese vessels were driven upon the west American coast in prehistoric times as are known by historic statistics to have been so driven, the involuntary immigrants skilled in drawing and painting might readily have impressed their styles upon the Americans near their landing place to be thence indefinitely diffused. This hypothesis would not involve migration.
Interest has been felt in petroglyphs, because it has been supposed that if interpreted they would furnish records of vanished peoples or races, and connected with that supposition was one naturally affiliated that the old rock sculptures were made by peoples so far advanced in culture as to use alphabets or at least syllabaries, thus supporting the theory about the mythical mound builders or some other supposititious race. All suggestions of this nature should at once be abandoned. The practice of pictography does not belong to civilization and declines when an alphabet becomes popularly known. Neither is there the slightest evidence that an alphabet or syllabary was ever used in pre-Columbian America by the aborigines, though there is some trace of Runic inscriptions. The fact that the Maya and Aztec peoples were rapidly approaching to such modes of expressing thought, and that the Dakota and Ojibwa had well entered upon that line of evolution, shows that they had proceeded no farther, and it is admitted that they were favorable representatives of the tribes of the continent in this branch of art. The theory mentioned requires the assumption, without a particle of evidence, that the rock sculptures are alphabetic, and therefore were made by a supposititious and extinct race. Topers of the mysterious may delight in such dazing infusions of perverted fancy, but they are repulsive to the sober student.
The foregoing remarks apply mainly to rock inscriptions and not to pictographs on other substances, the discussion and illustration of which occupy the greater part of the present work. In that division there is no need of warning against wild theories or uncertain data. The objects are in hand and their current use as well as their significance is understood. Their description and illustration by classes is presented in the above chapters with such detail that further discussion here would be mere repetition.
One line of thought, however, is so connected with several of the classifications that it may here be mentioned with the suggestion that the preceding headings, with the illustrations presented under each, may be reviewed in reference to the methodical progress of pictography toward a determined and convenient form of writing. This exhibition of evolution was arrested by foreign invasion before the indirect signs of sound had superseded the direct presentments of sight for communication and record. Traces of it appear throughout the present paper, but are more intelligently noticed on a second examination than in cursory reading. In the Winter Counts of Battiste Good there are many characters where the figure of a human being is connected with an object, which shows his tribal status or the disease of which he died, and the characters representing the tribe or disease are purely determinative.