764 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. 
“You will likewise find among the drawings a copy of what purports to be ‘a 
faithtul and accurate representation of the inscription,’ taken by Dr. Danforth in 
1680. This is not sent with any idea that it will prove serviceable in your present 
inquiry, but simply to show what strange things have been conjured up by travelers 
and sent to Europe for examination. We are, indeed, at times almost compelled to 
believe there must have been some other inscription rock seen; and yet from the 
accompanying accounts it would appear that all refer to the same one; besides, there 
is a degree of similarity in the complicated triangular figures which appear on all.” 
See, also, the illustration from Schoolcraft, Fig. 49, supra, with fur- 
ther account. The fact was mentioned on p. 87 that the characters on 
the Dighton Rock strongly resembled those on the Indian God Rock, 
Pennsylvania, and some others specified. Lately some observers have 
noticed the same fact with a different deduction. They presuppose 
that the Dighton inscription is Runic, and therefore that the one in 
Pennsylvania was carved by the Norsemen. This logic would bring 
the Vikings very far inland into West Virginia and Ohio. 
SECTION 3. 
IMITATIONS AND FORCED INTERPRETATIONS. 
From considerations mentioned elsewhere, and others that are obvi- 
ous, any inscriptions purporting to be pre-Columbian, showing apparent 
use of alphabetic characters, signs of the zodiac, or other evidences of 
a culture higher than that known among the North American Indians, 
must be received with caution, but the pictographs may be altogether 
genuine, and their erroneous interpretation may be the sole ground for 
discrediting them. 
The course above explained, viz, to attempt the interpretation of all 
unknown American pictographs by the aid of actual pictographers 
among the living Indians, should be adopted regarding all remarkable 
“finds.” This course was pursued by Mr. Horatio N. Rust, of Pasa- 
dena, California, regarding the much-discussed Davenport Tablets, in 
the genuineness of which he believes. Mr. Rust exhibited the draw- 
ings to Dakotas with the result made public at the Montreal meeting 
of the American Association for the Advancement of Scienze, 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 the 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 1, of the Davenport Inscribed Tablets [so numbered in the Proceedings of the 
Davenport Academy, vol. Ir], 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 
