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2 Ezra Stiles Pioneer Rock Art Researcher in Eighteenth-Century New England In the late eighteenth century,Ezra Stiles (b.1727,d.1795),a Congregational minister, lawyer, and president of Yale College from 1777 to 1795, surveyed and recorded rock art sites in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. His meticulous notes,drawings,and interpretations of the petroglyph sites he examined are contained in six volumes of manuscripts called “Itineraries and Memoirs,” which are now preserved at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He made copious notes of his travels, meetings, and ideas in his diaries and in his voluminous correspondence with scholars in America and abroad. He produced one of the most important early records of petroglyphs and American Indian life in New England. Stiles graduated from Yale College in 1746. Three years later he received a Master of Arts degree from Yale and was licensed to preach (Mavor and Dix 1989:170).Between 1749 and 1755,he preached to the Indians at Stockbridge , Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar (1753), practiced law in New Haven,Connecticut,for two years,and tutored students atYale.In 1777 he became president of Yale College and he continued in that office until his death in 1795. Ezra Stiles was one of the most remarkable, learned, and liberal scholars in late-eighteenth-century New England (Figure 2).He had a strong interest in and curiosity regarding various branches of learning including astronomy, history, meteorology, demography, politics, alchemy, and the American Indians . Stiles studied Hebrew and throughout his presidency at Yale he taught the Hebrew language, which was part of the school’s curriculum. Stiles pursued contacts with friends, missionaries, and scholars of varying views and backgrounds seeking information on a variety of subjects. He was especially interested in the American Indians. In 1761, he visited an Indian village at Niantic, Connecticut, where he made a drawing of two Ezra Stiles, Pioneer Rock Art Researcher / 9 wigwams and recorded details of their construction and internal arrangements (Sturtevant 1975). In his “Itineraries,” he recorded linguistic, genealogical , and population data on the East Haven Indians. Stiles inquired about Indian “powaws,” that is, shamans, about whether they used idols, and about whether they recorded their events with written characters (Mavor and Dix 1989:171).Theodore D.Woolsey, a later president of Yale, wrote in 1850 that Stiles’ “curiosity was most remarkable. There was no subject which did not Figure 2. Portrait of Ezra Stiles, b. 1727, d. 1795. 10 / Chapter 2 interest him, and he dreaded no amount of labor in recording the results of his investigations” (quotation in Chiel 1974:74). To illustrate the nature of his methods,recording techniques,and interpretations,I discuss several of the sites Stiles visited and studied. Dighton Rock On June 5, 1767, Ezra Stiles visited Dighton Rock located on the east bank of the Taunton River in Berkley, Massachusetts. Here he saw an inscribed rock that was 11 feet long,5 feet high,and 9½ feet wide and whose westwardfacing surface was extensively covered with carved figures,symbols,and lines (Lenik 2002:129–134). Stiles recorded the following in his “Itineraries”: “I began to take off some of the Characters, but without Chalking first. Next day I chalked the marks and took them more distinctly. Spent the forenoon in Decyphering about Two Thirds the Inscription, which I take to be phoenician Letters & 3000 years old” (quotation in Delabarre 1928:51). Stiles returned to Dighton Rock on July 15,1767 (Figure 3).This time he washed and scrubbed the rock and then tried to make full-sized impressions of the figures by pressing paper on them (Delabarre 1928:51–52). This attempt failed. Next, he chalked the figures and made a drawing of them.This drawing shows the approximate width of the lines, shows the natural cracks in the rock by dotted lines, and indicates its dimensions in feet. (It must be noted here that chalking, which was once standard practice prior to photographing of petroglyphs, is now an unacceptable practice. Chalking causes serious damage to the rock surface.Such an enhancement technique may not accurately depict the image.) Figure 3. Drawing of Dighton Rock petroglyph by Ezra Stiles, July 15, 1767. Source: Stiles 1767–1789:I:486. Ezra Stiles, Pioneer Rock Art Researcher / 11 Stiles visited Dighton Rock again on May 16, 1783, and on October 3, 1788.He made three drawings in 1767 and one unfinished drawing in 1788. These are the...

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