PETROGLYPHS OF THE UNITED STATES 



By JuuAN H. Stewabd 

 Bweau of American Ethnology 



[With 12 plates] 



More than three centuries ago men began to wrinkle their brows 

 over the origin of the American aborigines. Learned and even bitter 

 discussion, often participated in by the earliest American colonists, 

 sought to connect the Indians and their archeological remains with 

 every race and civilization on the face of the earth. In the course 

 of time, however, when the development of anthropology injected 

 scientific method into the study of the Indian, this riot of fancy 

 began to yield to ordered and sane theories. The question of racial 

 origins was satisfactorily settled by the theory of early migrations 

 of a predominantly mongoloid people from Asia into Alaska and 

 America. The assumption that Old World civilizations were brought 

 to America was supplanted by archeological reconstruction which 

 traced the development of American cultures on native soil. 



But there was one class of American antiquities to which the bless- 

 ings of scientific method came but slowly — the carved and painted 

 petroglyphs ^ which are found on rocks in all parts of the United 

 States. Here amateur speculation retained its hold and, zealous in 

 its last stand, even today stoutly resists the threats of science. Popu- 

 lar fancy musters petroglyphs in support of theories abandoned by 

 science half a century ago. It offers them as proof that Egyptians, 

 Scythians, Chinese, and a host of other Old World peoples, including 

 the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, whose fate continues to have absorb- 

 ing interest to many persons, invaded America in ancient days. It 

 claims them to be markers of buried treasure, signs of ancient astro- 

 logy, records of vanished races, symbols of diabolical cults, worl« of 

 the hand of God, and a hundred other things conceived by feverish 

 brains. Devotees of the subject have written voluminously, argued 

 bitterly, and even fought duels. 



* In an earlier paper, the writer called the carved rock figures petroglyphs, the painted 

 ones plctographs. It seems preferable, however, to designate all designs and figures on 

 rocl£S petroglyphs (literally, rock glyphs) and to reserve pictograph for that primitive 

 type of writing in which objects and events are represented pictorlally on all kinds of 

 materials. 



405 



