156 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXII. No. 555 



PETEOGEAPHS AT LAKE PEND D'OEEILLE, 

 IDAHO. 



BY JOHN B. LEIBEIiG, HOPEj IDAHO. . 



Aeoriginal rock carvings or inscriptions are quite rare 

 throughout northern Idaho. The dense forests and gen- 

 erally inaccessible character of the country together with 

 a constant scarcity of natural food products furnished un- 

 suitable conditions to sustain any considerable number of 

 inhabitants, and those that made the country their abode 

 appear to have been either too indolent to endure the 

 labor required to leave any records on the rocks, or their 

 lives did not furnish any events worth noting, in their 

 judgment. 



The records we find consist mainly of carvings on trees, 

 or of rocks of small dimensions, raised to perpendicular 

 l^ositions, on the summits of high bare peaks or, in rare in- 

 stances, in similar situations, of small flat stones arranged 

 in certain geometrical designs, as circles, triangles or cir- 

 cles within circles, or circles and triangles variously inter- 

 mixed. The carvings on trees all belong to recent 

 years, as very many of them are simply Latin crosses, 

 showing the influence of the missionaries. These crosses 



schists are rather thinly bedded, have a dip of about 85° , 

 and the wear of the lake in former ages, when its waters 

 stood at a much higher level, has broken the strata apart 

 and left numerous large slabs standing in an upright po- 

 sition. On the face of one of these tablets of rock occur 

 the carvings as delineated in the accompanying illustra- 

 tion. They oocujoy a space eighteen feet in length, and 

 from two feet to seven feet in height. 



There are twenty-eight figures evidently representing 

 the footprints of the bear, three of the tracks with double 

 sets of toes, three with but four toes, and one with but 

 three toes. Three figures which may represent tracks of 

 the cougar. One arrow head. Three points within cir- 

 cles. One mountain goat. Two sets of circles com2DOsed 

 of five and six respectively, and three large figures of 

 unknown meaning. Besides these figures there are evi- 

 dences of manj' light scratches, but the lines are too dim 





Scale one-twenty-fourtli natural size. 



are quite common around favorite hunting or camping 

 spots in the mountains, and appear to be made with the 

 object in view of warding off malign influences from the 

 camping grounds. These crosses are not to be con- 

 founded with the sign plus, so commonly made by hunters 

 and trappers throughout the deep forests, and which 

 merely serve to attract attention to trails, locations of 

 traps, etc. 



The raised stones, so common on high peaks, merely de- 

 note the passing of some individual, and may be quite 

 recent or date back a long time. Sometimes white men 

 raise these rocks. The symmetrical arrangements of 

 rocks appear to be quite ancient. The stones composing 

 them lie quite flat and are comjjletely covered with slow- 

 growing saxicoline lichens on all exposed portions. The 

 import of these figures is unknown. 



There is but one locality known to me in northern 

 Idaho with true rock-carvings. It is located opposite the 

 outlet of the Clark's Fork of the Columbia into Lake Pend 

 d'Oreille, about one-quarter mile north from the shore. 

 A rocky point of land rises abruptly to a height of 250- 

 300 feet above the extensive marshes bordering the river 

 at this point. The rock is a highly silicious magnesian 

 schist, extremely hard and difiicult to chisel with even 

 the most carefully tempered modern steel tools. The 



to be traced with certainty. Nearly all the figures are 

 thickly overgrown with close-clinging rock-lichens, ren- 

 dering the whole quite inconspicuous. Close and dili- 

 gent search has failed to bring any further inscriptions to 

 light in the neighborhood. 



One of the most interesting features in connection with 

 this petrograj)h lies in the manner of its execution. The 

 lines of the figures are not mere scratches, but are deep, 

 wide grooves cut smoothly into this excessivelj' hard rock, 

 many of the grooves forming the representations of the 

 bear tracks. Figs. 2 are 3.2 cm. in width and 1.2 cm. in 

 depth, while the cutting forming fig. 3 is, in its broad- 

 est portion, 5.5 cm. wide and 2.5 cm. deep. The appear- 

 ance of the grooves, the smoothness of the sides and free- 

 dom from signs of chij^ping give cause for the belief that 

 they "were cut into the rock by friction and not by chisel- 

 ing. A piece of wood properly shaped and constantly 

 charged with water and sharp sand could be used to cut 

 such grooves, while the same manner of tool rotated by a 

 bow would cut round holes such as make up fig. 10. 

 Will some of the readers of Science acquainted with the 

 methods of the aborigines in making their rock inscrip- 

 tions, inform us if such tools were in use elsewhere for 

 doing this kind of work and the meaning of this petro- 

 graph ? 



