96 DANIEL WILSON ON THE AETISTIC 



resembling a ship with sails ; then comes a horse with gay trappings, a man with a long 

 speaking-trumpet being mounted upon him, while a little bare-legged Indian stands in 

 wonder behind. Below this group are several singular-looking figures : men with the 

 horns of an ox, with arms, hands and fingers extended as if in astonishment, and with 

 clawed feet. Following the curved line we come to the circle, enclosing a Spanish cabal- 

 lero, who extends his hands in amity to the naked Indian standing withovit. Next appears 

 a group with an officer, and a priest bearing the emblem of Christianity." The Pueblo 

 Indians who still worship the sun, recognized in those picturings records of the thoughts 

 and deeds of their ancestors. They pointed to representations of Montezuma, whom they 

 still expect to return, and who is regarded as a divine power ; and recognized in the horned 

 men a representation of the buffalo-dance, from time immemorial a national festival at 

 which they crowned themselves with horns and corn-shiicks. The drawing is in all pro- 

 bability an historical record executed at a date not long subsequent to the first intrusion 

 of the Spaniards. 



Lieutenant Whipple next describes the carvings found at El Moro inscription rock 

 where, he says, " Spanish adventurers and explorers, from as early a period as the first 

 settlement of Plymouth, have been in the habit of recording their expeditions to and from 

 Zuni." He refers for those to Captain Simpson's report upon the Navajo expedition ; but 

 specimens of the Indian drawings are given, which, he says, " are evidently more ancient 

 than the oldest of the Spanish incriptions." ' The latter are, for the most part, regular literal 

 records in the Spanish or Latin language, with names, and, in a few instances, the date of 

 their engraving. But the European epigraphists appear at times to have borrowed the 

 ideographic art of their Indian guides, from the way several of their inscriptions are 

 accompanied with pictorial devices, or rebuses, somewhat after the native fashion of 

 writing. One, for example, which reads Pilo Vaca ye Jarde, has also the symbol of the 

 Vaca, or "cow." Another group, consisling of certain initials interwoven into a monogram, 

 accompanied by an open hand with a double thumb, all enclosed in cartouch-fashion, is 

 supposed by the transcriber to be, even more than the previous bit of pictorial symbolism, 

 a pictured pun. " The characters," he remarks, " in the double rectangle seem to be liter- 

 ally a sign-«ia«M«/, and may possibly bè symbolical of Francisco Manuel, though the double 

 thumb would seem to indicate something more." The Provincial Secretary, Donaciauo Vigil, 

 after noting for Lieutenant Simpson some data relative to the Spanish inscriptions, adds : 

 " The other signs or characters are traditional remembrances, by means of which the 

 Indians transmit historical accounts of all their remarkable successes. To discover (or 

 interpret) these sets by themselves, is A'ery difficult. Some of the Indians make trifling 

 indications, which divulge, with a great deal of reserve, something of the history, to per- 

 sons in whom they have entire confidence." 



On the summit of the cliff the ruins of a pueblo of bold native masonry formed a 

 rectangle of two hundred and six by three hundred and seven feet, around which lay an 

 immense accumulation of broken pottery of novel and curious patterns. At Los Ojos 

 Calientes, Lieutenant Simpson visited the esLuffas, buildings one story high, called the 

 churches of Montezuma. "On the walls were representations of plants, birds, and ani- 

 mals : the turkey, the deer, the wolf, the fox, and the dog, being plainly depicted ; none 



' Reports of Explorations and Surveys for route for a Railroad to Pacitîc Ocean, 1S85. Part iii. p. 39. 



