Making Pictures in Stone: American Indian Rock Art of the Northeast

Preface

Preface More “Picture Rocks.” In 2002, I presented the first comprehensive study of American Indian rock art covering the northeastern United States and two provinces in Atlantic Canada. Picture Rocks:American Indian Rock Art in the NortheastWoodlands documented 45 immovable petroglyph sites, 3 pictograph (painted) sites,and more than 75 specimens of portable rock art recovered from various archaeological sites and contexts. Following the publication of Picture Rocks, I continued to search for and record more of the carved images, symbols, and signs created by Indian peoples. My methods and sources were the same as those utilized in my previous study:I visited museums, libraries, historical societies, and research facilities and examined both public and private collections of documents and artifacts. An important source of information was personal contact with archaeologists , historians, and artifact collectors. Several individuals who had read Picture Rocks contacted me to tell me about other sites and decorated artifacts . As a result, more evidence of these artifacts of Native American culture , both permanent and portable petroglyphs, has come to light.This book documents and describes these images. It is a book about Native people and their rock art. The Indians of the Northeast are known to us primarily through reports and descriptions of their lifeways written by European explorers, clergy, and settlers and through archaeological evidence.An invaluable source in the interpretation of rock art images is myths and legends. I have tried to collect and analyze such information and interpret these data in relation to the rock art images.By combining data from ethnohistoric and archaeological sources with local environmental settings, I have attempted to interpret the meaning of the carvings. The images in this book connect us directly to the beliefs and culture of the Indian peoples who lived in the Northeast in the past, as well as to those xviii / Preface who still live here. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Algonquian tribes, except for the Iroquoian-speaking peoples, occupied most of the land in the Northeast.The Northeast, as defined in this book, includes eastern Pennsylvania ,Maryland and the lower Potomac River valley,NewYork,New Jersey, the six New England states, and Atlantic Canada.The Algonquian people in this region spoke different Eastern Algonquian languages but speakers of one dialect could generally understand those spoken by neighboring groups. Scholars generally believe that the Eastern Algonquian languages are not native to this region and may have originated with Indian groups in the area around the Great Lakes. I begin by briefly outlining the culture history of the Indians in the Northeast, particularly their worldview and folklore, in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2 I discuss the work of Ezra Stiles, who was a pioneer rock art researcher in eighteenth-century New England. In the late eighteenth century , Stiles, a Congregational minister, lawyer, and president of Yale College from 1777 to 1795, surveyed and recorded rock art sites in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. His meticulous notes and drawings created an important documentary record for future researchers. Stiles stands out as a major contributor to rock art research in southern New England. I examined his petroglyph drawings and interpretations and compared them to existing sites as they appeared in the late twentieth century and to current interpretations . In Chapter 3 I discuss the historical accounts of carvings and images made on trees by the Indians. These markings (sometimes referred to as dendroglyphs by present-day researchers) were a form of picture writing meant to convey a variety of messages. In Chapters 4 and 5 I present new information on nonportable petroglyph sites, sometimes referred to as permanent or parietal petroglyphs in rock art literature. Nonmoveable rock art is part of the natural landscape on which it occurs.The images were placed at a particular spot by Indian shamans, vision seekers, or others to obtain spiritual help or supernatural power, to record their dreams, or to record traditional knowledge and serve as “teaching rocks.” Chapters 6 through 11 describe the types of portable objects that display rock art, such as tools, items of personal adornment, and other artifacts, and the design motifs present on them. These artifacts were found on archaeological sites often by collectors who were surface hunting for relics or they were recovered in the course of excavations. Unfortunately, portable petroglyphs are usually treated or described briefly in archaeological reports in comparison to other artifacts found in the archaeological record. Portable Preface / xix petroglyphs constitute significant archaeological data in the interpretation of Indian cultures...