The Archaeology of the Yakima Valley Part 17

[354] Spinden, p. 232.

[355] Teit, (a), p. 339 and 381.

[356] Teit, (b), Pl. IX.

[357] Spinden, Plate X, Fig. 5.

The human figure with feather headdress indicated by ten lines shown in Fig. 1, Plate XIV is all in red. It is the next to the westernmost pictograph at this site. It is 457 mm. high, the ends of the legs are 279 mm. apart, the tip of the arms 254 mm., the width of the headdress 229 mm. and the height of the middle feather 101 mm. There are four horizontal red lines on the overhanging column above the figure.[358]

Fig. 2, Plate XIV shows human heads with feather headdresses in white.[359] Fig. 1, Plate XV shows similar human heads with feather headdresses also in white.[360] Fig. 2, Plate xv shows human heads with feather headdresses in white and a double star figure in white and red.[361] Plate XVI[362] shows human heads with feather headdresses in white and red. In addition, Fig. 2 shows the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a modern business man over the pictographs. Some of the pictographs at the same place have every alternate radiating line in red, while others are in white.

[358] Museum negative no. 44479, 4-4 taken from the east. First reproduced in Smith, (g), Fig. 2, Plate VIII.

[359] Museum negative no. 44483, 4-8 from the north. First reproduced _Ibid._, Fig. 1, Plate VIII.

[360] Museum negative no. 44485, 4-10 from the north.

[361] Museum negative no. 44480, 4-5 from the north.

[362] Museum negatives nos. 44486, 4-11, 44487 4-12 from the north.

Mr. G. R. Shafer informed me that he knows of painted rocks in the Teton River Valley, 20 miles above the Nelson Bridge, which crosses the Naches a short distance above the mouth of Cowiche Creek. Mr. W. H. Wilc.o.x of North Yakima stated to me that there are pictures on rocks on the west side of the Columbia River ten miles south of Wenatchee. Bancroft[363]

refers to painted and "carved" pictures on the perpendicular rocks between Yakima and Pisquouse. According to Mallery, "Capt. Charles Bendire, U. S. Army, states in a letter that Col. Henry C. Merriam, U.

S. Army, discovered pictographs on a perpendicular cliff of granite at the lower end of Lake Chelan, lat. 48 N., near old Fort O'Kinakane, on the upper Columbia River. The etchings appear to have been made at widely different periods, and are evidently quite old. Those which appeared the earliest were from twenty-five to thirty feet above the present water level. Those appearing more recent are about ten feet above water level. The figures are in black and red colors, representing Indians with bows and arrows, elk, deer, bear, beaver, and fish. There are four or five rows of these figures, and quite a number in each row.

The present native inhabitants know nothing whatever regarding the history of these paintings."[364] Apparently only paintings are meant.

[363] Bancroft, IV., p. 735; Lord, II, pp. 102 and 260; Gibbs, I, p.

411.

[364] Mallery, p. 26.

Red ochre is rubbed in the circle and dot designs and the grain of the stone of the pestle shown in Fig. 30 and also in the incised lines on the pipe shown in Fig. 104. Red paint (mercury) partly fills some of the holes and lines on the pendant made of steat.i.te shown in Fig. 119.

Because of the mineral nature of this paint, it may have remained a long time and its presence does not necessarily prove that the supposedly old grave in which the object was found is recent. Red paint also fills the circles and dots in the slate object shown in Fig. 120 while vermilion paint is found in the grooves of the animal form shown in Fig. 125 and as this is probably a mineral which would be rather enduring, it does not indicate that the painting was recently done.

Painting was done on moccasins in the general plateau area of which this is a part.[365] Spinden states that in the Nez Perce region the natives depended upon minerals for dyes, except in the cases of a wood, which produced a brown dye, and rock slime which produced green[366] and that white, red, blue and yellow earth paints were obtained by them further east from the vicinity of the Grande Ronde Valley;[367] also, that rock surfaces were painted over with brown as a field upon which to peck petroglyphs.[368] In the same region moreover, white clay[369] was used for cleaning clothing.

[365] Lewis, p. 190.

[366] Spinden, p. 191.

[367] _Ibid._, p. 222.

[368] _Ibid._, p. 231.

[369] _Ibid._, p. 216.

_Petroglyphs._ The petroglyphs pecked into the weathered surface of the basaltic columns found in this region, are similar in style to the paintings, being largely line designs of geometric or conventional representation together with a few realistic figures. The pictures are formed by pecking away the weathered surface and exposing the lighter color of the basalt below. Some of them may be very old, but the bruised surfaces making up the lines are not weathered very much in comparison with the surrounding rock surface and yet there is no history of their manufacture. In the Nez Perce region[370] such pecked pictographs are also found, some of them being upon fields painted brown.

[370] Spinden, p. 232.

In Plate XI are shown petroglyphs on the vertical basaltic columns on the eastern side of the Columbia River at Sentinal Bluffs, immediately above Priest Rapids. They are at the base of the cliffs shown in Plate V. Those shown in Fig. 1 are to the east of the road which runs along a notch blasted in the top of the columns that rise from the river at this point, while those shown in Fig. 2 are about fifteen feet to the southwest on the columns that rise shear from the river.

Some of those shown in Fig. 1[371] represent human figures each with a feather headdress which may be compared with that of the antler figure found at Tampico (Fig. 121) and the pictographs of Cowiche Creek. This place is only about 47 miles northeast from Tampico, and 33 miles in the same direction from the mouth of Cowiche Creek. One of these is shown in Fig. 2.[372] The long form in the centre has a headdress which taken with its shape reminds us especially of the human form in antler from Tampico. The general shape of the body and the row of dots on each side edge suggest a resemblance to the quill flattener made of antler from the Dakota shown in Fig. 122. On each side are human heads, each with a similar feather headdress that might be interpreted as rising suns with eyes and mouths. On the left are some similar figures without eyes and mouths. Below, is a horizontal figure resembling five links of a chain.

There is also a goat which resembles the two pecked in a granite boulder near Buffalo Rock in the Nez Perce area, eighteen miles above Lewiston on the east bank of the Snake River.[373] The star at the bottom, the rays of which end in dots, a small oval with radiating lines at the left, and two connected ovals with radiating lines at the top, remind us of the stars at Selah Canon, shown in Fig. 1, Plate XII, the petroglyphs near Wallula Junction, shown in Fig. 2, Plate XIII, somewhat similar figures on the large petroglyph at Nanaimo[374] and perhaps even more than of the Nanaimo figures, those in the petroglyphs beyond Nanaimo at Yellow Island, near Comox.[375] However, the two connected ovals with the radiating lines may represent hands of a human figure with a headdress having radiating feathers. All of these headdresses remind us of the others at this place shown in Fig. 1, the rising suns at Selah Canon next described, the pictographs at the mouth of Cowiche Creek, and the incised human form in antler.

[371] First reproduced. Smith, (g), Fig. 2, Plate IX; negative no.

44534, 8-11, taken from the west.

[372] _Ibid._, Fig. 1; Negative no. 44533, 8-10 as viewed from the north.

[373] Spinden, Fig. 4, Plate X.

[374] Smith, (b), Plate XI.

[375] _Ibid._, Fig. 115.

In Plate XII and Fig. 1, Plate XIII are shown petroglyphs which appear fresher and whiter or yellower than the naturally weathered reddish basaltic columns into which they are pecked. They are on the north side of Selah Canon about one and a half miles from the Yakima River at a point about a mile north of Selah station or one half a mile south of the intake of the Moxee Ca.n.a.l. It is about twenty-five miles west southwest of Sentinal Bluffs, eight northeast from the mouth of Cowiche Creek and twenty-two miles northeast from Tampico. They are more easily made out from a distance than close by.

The petroglyph shown in Fig. 1, Plate XII, is the most northeasterly of the group. This seems to be made up of circles with a dot in the middle and radiating lines, some of which end in dots. They remind us of some of the same series of figures as the oval with radiating lines at Priest Rapids.[376]

[376] Museum negative no. 44463, 2-12 from the east and from a greater distance, showing its relation to the next in negative catalogue no. 44162, 2-11.

The one shown in Fig. 2, is about eight feet to the southwest and a little lower down. The upper part of the left figure and the two main parts on the right, each consisting of a curve with short radiating lines like a representation of the rising sun, may be compared with the top of the petroglyph on the rocks a few feet to the southwest shown in Fig. 1, Plate XIII, next described, and with some of those at Sentinal Bluffs, shown in Plate XI; also, with the pictographs at the mouth of Cowiche Creek.[377]

[377] Represented in Museum, with the one shown in Fig. 1, by negative no. 44462, 2-11 and from a nearer point as shown in this figure in negative no. 44476, 4-1.

The petroglyph shown in Fig. 1, Plate XIII, is a few feet southwest of those shown in Plate XII, taken from the south. The segment with radiating lines like the rising sun at the top reminds us of similar figures among the other petroglyphs here just described, those at Sentinal Bluffs and pictographs at the mouth of Cowiche Creek, but the other lines are not interpreted and are not suggestive to us of other figures in the neighborhood. A small figure, similar in that it consists of two nearly vertical lines crossing each other and topped by a curved line, shows very faintly above, a little to the right.[378] A design similar to the part of some of these pictures interpreted as representing a headdress was also found pecked in the surface of the grooved net sinker shown in Fig. 14.

[378] Museum negative no. 44477, 4-2, is also represented from a greater distance in negative no. 44478, 4-3.

The petroglyph shown in Fig. 2, Plate XIII, is pecked on the top of a rock which projects about three feet from the surface of the ground near mile post 209 between it and 210 above the Spokane branch of the O. R. & N. on the south side of the Columbia River about four miles west of Wallula Junction and is here ill.u.s.trated as one twentieth of the natural size, from a tracing made by Mr. J. P. Newell, of Portland, a.s.sistant chief engineer on that road. We are indebted to Mr. W. E. Elliott of New York City, formerly engineer with Mr. Newell for permission to copy this tracing.[379] The top of the rock forms an east and west ridge. The pecked grooves are all of about equal depth and there are no other petroglyphs on the rock. The large figure at the left reminds us of the dog-like figures with "spines" in the petroglyphs at Nanaimo,[380] on Vancouver Island, especially as it has waved parallel lines, a fin or "spine" and two concentric curves at the top similar in shape to the lines indicating the back of the head and the mouth of the Nanaimo figure. This is less suggestive of certain harpoon points that are incised apparently to represent fish found in the main sh.e.l.l heap in the Fraser Delta at Eburne[381] although Eburne is nearer than Nanaimo and en route, and although these harpoon points have parallel lines, a fin-like projection and two lines representative of the back of the head or cheek and the mouth. The small circles some with lines radiating from them, remind us of similar marks on the same large petroglyph at Nanaimo and even more so of the petroglyphs beyond Nanaimo at Yellow Island near Comox.[382] The large figure on the right reminds us of the human form of the petroglyph at Nanaimo.[383]

[379] Museum negative no. 45696.

[380] Smith, (b), Fig. 117a and Plate XI.

[381] Smith, (a), Fig. 52.

[382] Smith, (b), Fig. 115.

[383] _Ibid._, Fig. 117a.

I am informed by Mr. Owen that there is a petroglyph on the north side of the Columbia River below Kennewick and that it has been destroyed by recent railroad construction; by Mr. W. H. Willc.o.x of North Yakima that there are petroglyphs or pictographs on the rocks ten miles south of Wenatchee on the western side of the Columbia River; and by Prof. Mark Harrington that it is said that there are "engravings" on the cliffs overhanging Lake Chelan. Mallery[384] refers to etchings at the lower end of Lake Chelan but his information seems to refer to painted figures only (See p. 120). The late Prof. Israel C. Russell informed me that there are etchings close to the river on both sides in the Snake Canon at Buffalo Rock in the extreme southeast corner of the state of Washington.[385]

[384] Mallery, p. 26.

[385] Cf. Spinden, Figs. 4 and 5, Plate X.