FACULTY IN ABOEICIINAL EACES. 95 



ings and pictograplis aboviud. Wherever large surfaces of rock, or slabs of stone, offer a 

 favourable opportunity for such records, they are found, at times executed with great elabo- 

 ration of detail. But less diirable records are in use, dependent on the materials most avail- 

 able to the scribe. The Algonkins and Iroquois ordinarily resort to birch bark ; the Crées, 

 Blackfeet, and other prairie Indians, substitute the dressed skins of the buffalo ; while, as 

 already noted, the tribes on the Pacific Coast, as well as the Inniiit and Eskimo, employ 

 deer-horu, and ivory. In the South-west, in the Sierra Nevada and Southern California, 

 the sculptured pictograph, after .being incised on the surface of a rock, or the wall of a 

 cave, is frequently finished by colouring in much the same way as was the custom with 

 the ancient Egyptian chroniclers. 



Among a series of reports to the Topographical Bureau, issued from the "War Depart- 

 ment at Washington, in 18-")0, is the journal of a military reconuoissance from Santa Fé, 

 New Mexico, to the Navajo Country, by Lieutenant James K. Simpson of the Corps of 

 Topographical Engineers. His narrative is accompanied with a map and illustrations of 

 a remarkable series of inscriptions, engraved on the smooth surface of a rock called the 

 Moro. They are of two classes, the native pictograplis, and also numerous Spanish 

 inscriptions and devices ; one of which records the hasty visit of an old Spanish explorer 

 to the Moro Eock in 1606. The route of Lieutenant Simpson lay np the valley of the 

 Rio de Zuni, where he met an old trader among the Navajos, who was waiting to offer 

 his services as guide to a rock, upon the face of which were, according to his repeated as- 

 sertions, "half an acre of inscriptions." After travelling about eight miles, through a 

 country diversified by cliffs of basalt and red and white sandstone, in every variety of 

 bold and fantastic form, they came in sight of a quadrangular mass of white sandstone 

 rock, from two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in height. This was the Moro, or 

 Inscription Eock, on ascending a low mound at the base of which, the journalist states, 

 " sure enough here were inscriptions, and some of them very beautiful ; and although, 

 with those we afterwards examined on the south face of the rock, there could not be said 

 to be half an acre of them, yet the hyperbole was not near as extravagant as I was pre- 

 pared to find it." The inscriptions, some in SiDauish, and others in Latin, apparently 

 include examples nearly coeval with the conquest of this region, by Juan de Onate, in 

 1595 ; and from their historical intei'est they naturally received greater attention from the 

 topographical corps than the Indian hieroglyphics. But the same locality was visited at 

 a later date by surveyors appointed to ascertain the most practicable route for a railroad to 

 the Pacific Coast ; and in a Eeport of explorations and surveys, published by the Senate 

 of the United States in 1856, Lieutenant Whipple furnishes an interesting series of Indian 

 hieroglyphics or pictographs seen on his route. " The first of the Indian hieroglyphics," 

 he remarks, "were at Eocky Dell Creek, between the edge of the Llano Estacado and the 

 Canadian. The stream flows through a gorge, upon one side of which a shelving sand- 

 stone rock forms a sort of cave. The roof is covered with paintings, some evidently 

 ancient ; and beneath are innumerable carvings of footprints, animals, and symmetrical 

 lines." ' Examples of the.se are given ; but of one series, the sketches of which had been 

 lost, Lieutenant Whipple remarks : " This series, more than the others, seems to represent 

 a chain of historical events, being embraced by serpentine lines. First is a rude sketch, 



' Roports of Explorations and Surveys for route for a Railroad to Pacific Ocean, 1885. Part iii. p. 39. 



