mau.ehy.I PETROGMPHS IN CALIFORNIA.. HI 



those at Tule River in the southern spurs of the Sierra Nevada, Kern 

 County. 



These pictographic records are found at various localities along the 

 hill tops, but to what distance is not positively known. 



In the range of mountains forming the northeastern boundary of 

 Owen Valley are extensive groups of petroglyphs, apparently dissimi- 

 lar to tbose found west of tbe Sierra Nevada. Dr. Oscar Loew also 

 mentions a singular inscription on basaltic rocks in Black Lake Valley, 

 about i miles southwest of the town of Benton, Mono County. This is 

 scratched in the basalt surface with some sharp instrument and is evi- 

 dently of great age. (Ann. Report upon the Geog. Surveys west of the 

 100th meridian. Being Appendix J J, Ann. Report of Chief ot Engin- 

 eers for 1870. Plate facing p. 320.) 



Dr. W, J. Hoffman, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reports the occur- 

 rence of a number of series of etchings scattered at intervals for over 

 twenty miles in Owen's Valley, California. Some of these records were 

 hastily examined by him in 1871, but it was not until the autumn of 

 1884 that a thorough examination of them was made, when measure- 

 ments, drawings, etc., were obtained for study and comparison. The 

 country is generally of a sandy, desert, character, devoid of vegetation 

 and water. The occasional bowlders and croppings of rock consist of 

 vesicular basalt, upon the smooth vertical faces of which occur innumer- 

 able characters different from any hitherto reported from California, but 

 bearing marked similarity to some figures found in the country now occu- 

 pied by the Moki and Zuni, in New Mexico and Arizona, respectively. 



The southernmost group of etchings is eighteen miles south of the 

 town of Benton; the nest group, two miles almost due north, at the 

 Chalk Grade ; the third, about three miles farther north, near the stage 

 road; the fourth, half a mile north of the preceding; then a fifth, five 

 and a half miles above the last named and twelve and a half miles south 

 of Benton. The northernmost group is about ten or twelve miles north- 

 west of the last-mentioned locality and southwest from Benton, at a 

 place known as Watterson's Ranch. The principal figures consist of 

 various simple, complex, and ornamental circles, some of the simple 

 circles varying as nucleated, concentric, and spectacle-shaped, zigzag, 

 and serpentine lines, etc. Animal forms arc not abundant, those read- 

 ily identified being those of the deer, antelope, and jack-rabbits. Rep- 

 resentations of snakes and huge sculpturings of grizzly-bear tracks oc- 

 cur on one horizontal surface, twelve and a half miles south of Benton. 

 In connection with the latter, several carvings of human foot-prints 

 appear, leading in the same direction, i. c, toward the south-southwest. 



All of these figures are pecked into the vertical faces of the rocks. 

 the depths varying from one-fourth of an inch to an inch and a quarter. 

 A freshly broken surface of the rock presents various shades from a 

 cream white to a Naples yellow color, though the sculptured lines are all 

 blackened by exposure and oxidation of the iron contained therein. This 

 fact has no importance toward the determiuat ion of the age of the work. 



