46 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
are two general groupings, distinguished by typical styles, one in the 
north Atlantic states and the other in the south Pacific states. 
The north Atlantic group is in the priscan habitat of the tribes of the 
Algonquian linguistic family, and extends from Nova Scotia southward 
to Pennsylvania, where the sculpturings are frequent, especially on the 
Susquehanna, Monongahela, and Alleghany rivers, and across Ohio from 
Lake Erie to the Kanawha river, in West Virginia. Isolated localities 
bearing the same type are found westward on the Mississippi river 
and a few of its western tributaries, to and including the Wind river 
mountains, in Wyoming, the former habitat of the Blackfeet Indians. 
All of these petroglyphs present typical characters, sometimes unde- 
fined and complicated. From their presumed authors, they have been 
termed the Algonquian type. Upon close study and comparison they 
show many features in common which are absent in extra-limital areas. 
Immediately south of the Kanawha river, in West Virginia, and ex- 
tending southward into Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, the 
pecked or sculptured petroglyphs are replaced by painted figures of a 
style differing from the Algonquian. These are in the area usually de- 
signated as Cherokee territory, but there is no evidence that they are 
the work of that tribe; indeed, there is no indication of their author- 
ship. The absence of pecked characters in this area is certainly not 
due to an absence of convenient material upon which to record them 
as the country is as well adapted to the mode of incision as is the 
northern Atlantic area. 
Upon the Pacific slope a few pecked as well as colored petroglyphs 
occur scattered irregularly throughout the extreme northern area west 
of the Sierra Nevada, but on the eastern side of that range of moun- 
tains petroglyphs appear in Idaho, which have analogues extending 
south to New Mexico and Arizona, with remarkable groups at intervals 
between these extremes. All of these show sufficient similarity of form 
to be considered as belonging to a type which is here designated 
‘“Shoshonean.” Tribes of that linguistic family still occupy, and for a 
long time have occupied, that territory. Most of this Shoshonean group 
consists of pecked or incised characters, though in the southern area 
unsculptured paintings predominate. 
On the western side of the Sierra Nevada, from Visalia southward, 
at Tulare agency, and thence westward and southward along the Santa 
Barbara coast, are other groups of colored petroglyphs showing typical 
features resembling the Shoshonean. This resemblance may be merely 
accidental, but it is well known that there was intercourse between the 
tribes on the two sides of the Sierra Nevada, and the Shoshonean fam- 
ily is also represented on the Pacific slope south of the mountain range 
extending from San Bernardino west to Point Conception. In this man- 
ner the artistic delineation of the Santa Barbara tribes may have been 
influenced by contact with others. 
Petroglyphs have seldom been found in the central area of the United 
