88 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
quartzite in Cottonwood county). The excavation of the surface of the rock is very 
slight, generally not exceeding a sixteenth of an inch, and sometimes only enough 
to leave a tracing of the designed form. The hardness of the rock was a barrier to 
deep sculpturing with the imperfect instruments of the aborigines; but it has effect- 
ually preserved the rude forms that were made. The fine glacial scratches that are 
abundantly seattered over this quartzite indicate the tenacity with which it retains 
all such impressions, and will warrant the assignment of any date to these inserip- 
tions that may be called for within the human period. Yet it is probable that 
they date back to no very great antiquity. They pertain, at least, to the dynasty 
of the present Indian tribes. The totems of the turtle and the bear, which are 
known to have been powerful among the clans of the native races in America at the 
time of the earliest European knowledge of them, and which exist to this day, are 
the most frequent objects represented. The ‘‘crane’s foot,” or ‘turkey foot,” or 
“bird track,” terms which refer perhaps to the same totem sign—the snipe—is not 
only common on these rocks, but is seen among the rock inscriptions of Ohio, and 
was one of the totems of the Iroquois, of New York. 
Fic. 50.—Petroglyphs at Pipestone, Minn. 
In June, 1892, Mr. W. H. Holmes, of the Bureau of Ethnology, visited 
the Pipestone quarry and took a number of tracings of the petroglyphs, 
which unfortunately were received too late for insertion in the present 
work. Some of his remarks are as follows: 
The trouble with the figures copied and published by Prof. Winchell is that they 
are not arranged in the original order. It will now be impossible to correct this 
entirely, as most of the stones have been taken upand removed. * * * The Win- 
chell drawings were evidently drawn by eye and have a very large personal equa- 
tion; besides, they are mixed up while appearing to be in some order. The few 
groups that Iwas able to get are, it seems to me, of more interest than all the single 
figures you could put in a book. There can be little doubt that in the main this 
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