MAU.EKY ] FORCED INTERPRETATIONS. 251 



" finds." This course was pursued by Mr. Horatio N. Bust, of Pasadena, 

 California, regarding the much-discussed Davenport Tablets, in the 

 genuineness of which he believes, and which is not here placed in ques- 

 tion Mr. Rust exhibited the drawings to Dakotas, with the result 

 made public at the late Montreal meeting of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, and also in a letter, an extract from 

 which is as follows : 



As I made the acquaintance of several of the older and more intelligent members 

 of the tribe, I took tile opportunity to show them the drawings. Explaining that 

 they were pictures copied from stones found in a mound, I asked what they meant. 

 They readily gave me the same interpretation (and in no instance did either inter- 

 preter know that another had seen the pictures, so there could be no collusion). In 

 Plate I, of the Davenport Inscribed Tablets [so numbered in the Proceedings of the 

 Davenport Academy, Vol. II], the lower central figure represents a dome-shaped 

 lodge, with smoke issuing from the top, behind and to either side of which appears a 

 number of individuals with hands joined, while three persons are depicted as lying 

 upon the ground. Upon the right and left central margins are the sun and moon, 

 the whole surmounted by three arched lines, between each of which, as well as above 

 them, are numerous unintelligible characters. * * * The central figure, which 

 has been supposed by some to represent a funeral pile, was simply the picture of a 

 dirt lodge. The irregular markings apparently upon the side and to the left of the 

 lodge represent a fence made of sticks and brush set in the ground. The same style 

 of fence may be seen now in any Sioux village. 



The lines of human figures standing hand-in-hand indicate that a dance was being 

 conducted in the lodge. The three prostrate forms at right and left sides of the lodge 

 represent two men and a woman who, being overcome by the excitement and fatigue 

 of the dance, had been carried out in the air to recover. The difference in the shape 

 of the prostrate forms indicates the different sexes. 



The curling figures or rings above the lodge represent smoke, and indicates that the 

 dance was held in winter, when fire was used. 



An example of forced interpretation of a genuine petroglyph is given 

 by Lieutenant J. W. Gunnison, U. S.Top. Engineers, in his work entitled 

 The Mormons, or, Latter-day Saints, in the Valley of the Great Salt 

 Lake, etc., Philadelphia, 1852, pp. G2, 63. He furnishes two illustrations 

 of petroglyph s taken from the cliff in Sam Pete Valley, Utah, not repro- 

 duced in this paper, which resemble the general type of the Shoshonian 

 system. On account of various coincidences which have occurred to 

 strikingly keep alive in the mountain brethren their idea of being the 

 chosen of the Lord, these etchings confirm them in the belief of the in- 

 spiration of the Look of Mormon. One of their Regents has translated 

 one of them as follows: 



I, Mahanti, the 2nd Kiug of the Lamanites, in five valleys in the mountains, make 

 this record in the 12 hundredth year since we came out of Jerusalem. Aud I have 

 three sons gone to the South country to live by hunting antelope aud deer. 



Among the curiosities of literature in connection with the interpreta- 

 tion of pictographs may be mentioned La Verite stir le Livre des Sauv- 

 ages, par L'Abb6 Em. Domenech, Paris, 1861, aud Researches into the 

 Lost Histories of America, by W. S. Blacket, London and Philadelphia, 



1881. 



