fewkesI PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES,, AND TOWERS 65 



PICTOGRAPHS 



At many places covered by this reconnoissance there were found 

 interesting collections of engraved figures of ancient date cut 

 on bowlders or vertical cliffs. These are generally situated in 

 the neighborhood of ruins, but sometimes exist far from human 

 remains. They generally have geometrical forms, rectangular and 

 spiral predominating. Associated with these occur also representa- 

 tions of human beings, birds, and animals, and figures of bird tracks, 

 human hands, and bear claws. There is a remarkable similarity in 

 all these figures which sometimes occur on the stones composing the 

 masonry of the buildings which indicates they were contemporaneous. 

 They were pecked on the stones with rude stone chisels, but as a 

 rule show no indication of paint. None of these figures could be 

 regarded, without the wildest flights of the imagination, as letters or 

 hieroglyphics, and there is no indication that inscriptions were 

 intended. Their general character, as shown in a cluster (pi. 33), 

 indicates rather clan symbols; in some instances spiral forms were 

 probably made to indicate the presence of water. The incised figures 

 on the walls of buildings were probably decorative in character, the 

 first efforts of primitive man to embellish the walls of his dwelling 

 an art which reached a very high development in Mexico and Central 

 America. There are, however, indications that these figures were 

 covered with plaster and were therefore invisible, so that we might 

 suppose them to be masons' signs, indicating the clan kinship of 

 those who constructed the walls. Perhaps the largest group of these 

 pictographs occurs on an eroded bowlder near the mouth of the 

 Yellow Jacket Canyon, just below the great promontory separating 

 it from the McElmo, on the surface of which are the remarkable 

 dwellings composed of slabs of stone set on edge. Another large 

 cluster, the members of which are of the same general style as that 

 already mentioned, was seen in Sandstone Canyon, a few miles 

 south of the road from Dolores to Monticello. There are several 

 groups of pictographs in the neighborhood of the large towers else- 

 where described. The most noteworthy of these is situated at the 

 head of the south fork of Square Tower Canyon on a vertical cliff 

 below the ruined Tower No. 4. The face of the cliff is very much 

 eroded, and the figures are in places almost illegible. They consist of 

 bird designs, accompanied with figures of snakes, rain clouds, and 

 other designs, portions of which are obliterated and impossible of 

 determination. As a rule, these pictographs resemble very closely 

 those in the cliff -houses of the Mesa Verde and add their evidence 

 of a uniformity of art design in these two regions. 



In addition to pictographs cut on the surface of the cliff, we also 

 find in sheltered caves others not incised but with indications of 

 10SS52 — 19— Bull. 70 -5 



