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perfectly objectless scratches. If ever I spoke to them about the 

 hieroglyphs, their invariable answer was " Mo-keetch ; " they knew 

 no more. Besides, I have seen hundreds of these inscriptions in 

 various parts of the Rocky Mountain region, and I do not remem- 

 ber ever examining a single group that was not to a certainty 

 ancient. There may be a very few instances where an Indian who 

 has had much intercourse with whites, in an idle moment scratched 

 a meagre design on some convenient rock ; or some white hunter, 

 or trapper, or teamster, may have done the same thing; or the latter 

 may have drawn rude caricatures on rocks close by his camp, with 

 the blackened grease from the wheels of his wagon ; but there is 

 no more danger of confounding these things than there is of con- 

 founding a dime novel with a volume of standard history. 



