44 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
The Indians of the present day have no traditions about these inscriptions 
beyond the supposition that they must have been made by the ‘‘old people” long ago. 
The sketches published as copies of these glyphs show spirals, 
concentric circles, crosses, horseshoe forms, arrow shapes, and other 
characters similar to those found on rocks-in the southwestern part of 
the United States, and also to petroglyphs in Brazil, examples from 
both of which regions are presented in this work, under their appro- 
priate headings. 
BRITISH COLUMBIA. 
Dr. Franz Boas (a) published an account of a petroglyph on Van- 
couver island (now presented as Fig. 3) which, slightly condensed, is 
translated as follows: 
Fic. 3.—Petroglyph on Vancouver island. 
The accompanying rock picture is found on the eastern shore of 
Sproat lake, near its southern outlet. Sproat lake lies about 10 kilom- 
eters north of the upper end of the Alberni fiord, which cuts deep 
into the interior of Vancouver island. In former times this region was 
the territory of the Hopetschisath, a tribe of the Nootka or Aht, who 
even now have a village some miles below the lake, at the entrance of 
Stamp river into the main river. That tribe, according to the state- 
ment of some of its older members, was a branch of the Kowitchin, who 
occupy the east side of Vancouver island, some kilometers northeast 
of the upper end of Alberni fiord. At that time the Ts’éschaath, 
another tribe of the Nootka, are said to have ascended the fiord and 
mixed with the Hopetschisath. The present inhabitants of the region 
know nothing concerning the origin of the rock picture. According to 
their legend, the rock on which it is carved was once the house of 
Kwotiath. Kwotiath is the wandering divinity in Nootka mythology, 
and corresponds approximately to the raven of the Tlinkit and Haida, 
the Qiils of the Kowitchin. The picture is found on a perpendicular 
rock wall about 7 meters high, which drops directly into the lake, so 
that it was necessary to make the copy while standing in the water. 
The rock is traversed in the middle by a broad cleft, narrowing below, 
from which blocks have fallen out which bore part of the drawing. To 
the north and south of the rock wall the shore rises gently, but rocky 
portions are found everywhere. The lines of the drawing are flat 
EEO eo 
