Garrick Mallery

No large amount of space need be occupied in the mention of detected pictographic frauds, their present and future importance being small, but much more than is now allowed would be required for the full discussion of controverted cases.

There is little inducement, beyond the amusement derived from hoaxing, to commit actual frauds in the fabrication of petroglyphs. It must, however, be remembered that coloration and carving of a deceptive character are sometimes produced by natural causes, e.g., pictured rocks on the island of Monhegan, Maine, figured by Schoolcraft (z), are classed in “Science” VI, No. 132, p. 124, as freaks of surface erosion. Mica plates were found in a mound at Lower Sandusky, Ohio, which, after some attempts at interpretation, proved to belong to the material known as graphic or hieroglyphic mica, the discolorations having been caused by the infiltration of mineral solution between the laminÆ.

The instances where inscribed stones from mounds have been ascertained to be forgeries or fictitious drawings are to be explained as sometimes produced by simple mischief, sometimes by craving for personal notoriety, and in other cases by schemes either to increase the marketable value of land supposed to contain more of the articles or to sell those exhibited.

With regard to more familiar and more portable articles, such as engraved pipes, painted robes, and like curios, it is well known that the fancy prices paid for them by amateurs have stimulated their unlimited manufacture by Indians at agencies who make a business of sketching upon ordinary robes or plain pipes the characters in common use by them, without regard to any real event or person, and selling them as significant records. Some enterprising traders have been known to furnish the unstained robes, plain pipes, paints, and other materials for the purpose, and simply pay a skillful Indian for his work, when the fresh antique or imaginary chronicle is delivered.

As the business of making and selling archÆologic frauds has become so extensive in Egypt and Palestine, it can be no matter of surprise that it has been attempted by enterprising people of the United States, about whom the wooden-nutmeg imputation still clings. The Bureau of Ethnology has discovered several centers of the manufacture of antiquities.

It was once proclaimed that six inscribed copper plates had been found in a mound near Kinderhook, Pike county, Illinois, which were reported to bear a close resemblance to Chinese. This resemblance seemed not to be extraordinary when it was ascertained that the plate had been engraved by the village blacksmith, copied from the lid of a Chinese tea-chest.

The following recent notice of a case of alleged fraud is quoted from Science, Vol. III, No. 58, March 14, 1884, page 334:

Dr. N. Roe Bradner exhibited [at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] an inscribed stone found inside a skull taken from one of the ancient mounds at Newark, Ohio, in 1865. An exploration of the region had been undertaken, in consequence of the finding of stones bearing markings somewhat resembling Hebrew letters, in the hope of finding other specimens of a like character. The exploration was supposed to have been entirely unproductive of such objects until Dr. Bradner had found the engraved stone, now exhibited, in a skull which had been given to him.

This was supplemented by an editorial note in No. 62 of the same publication, page 467, as follows:

The correspondent of Science probably remembered the operations of David Wyrick, of Newark, who, to prove his theory that the Hebrews were the mound-builders, discovered in 1860 a tablet bearing on one side a truculent “likeness” of Moses with his name in Hebrew, and on the other a Hebrew abridgment of the ten commandments. A Hebrew bible afterwards found in Mr. Wyrick’s private room threw some light on the inscribed characters.

A grooved stone ax or maul, first described by the late Dr. John Evans, of Pemberton, New Jersey, was reproduced by Dr. Wilson (a). Several characters are cut in the groove and on the blade. They are neither Runic, Scandinavian, nor Anglo-Saxon. It was found near Pemberton, New Jersey, prior to 1859. Dr. E. H. Davis, who saw the stone, does not regard the inscription as ancient. The characters had been retouched before he saw them.

A grooved stone ax or maul, sent to Col. Whittlesey in 1874, from Butler county, Ohio, about the size of the Pemberton ax, was covered with English letters so fresh as to deceive no one versed in antiquities. The purport of this inscription is that in 1689 Capt. H. Argill passed there and secreted two hundred bags of gold near a spring.

It was claimed that an inscribed stone had been plowed up on the eastern shore of Grand Traverse bay, Michigan, and an imperfect cast of it was among the collections of the state of Michigan at the Centennial Exhibition. The original is or was in the cabinet of the Kent county Institute, Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is imperfectly executed, probably with a knife, and evidently of recent make, in which Greek, Bardic, and fictitious letters are jumbled together without order.

In 1875 a stone maul was discovered in an ancient mine pit near Lake Desor, Isle Royal, Lake Superior, on which were cut several lines that were at first regarded as letters.

An instructive paper by Mr. Wm. H. Holmes “On Some Spurious Mexican Antiquities and their Relation to Ancient Art,” is published in the Report of the Smithsonian Institution for 1886, Pt. 1, pp. 319-334.

SECTION 1.
THE GRAVE CREEK STONE.

An inscribed stone found in Grave creek mound, near the Ohio river, in 1838, has been the subject of much linguistic contention among persons who admitted its authenticity. Twenty-four characters on it have been considered by various experts to be alphabetic, and one is a supposed hieroglyphic sign. Mr. Schoolcraft says that twenty-two of the characters are alphabetic, but there has been a difference of opinion with regard to their origin. One scholar finds among them four characters which he claims are ancient Greek; another claims that four are Etruscan; five have been said to be Runic; six, ancient Gaelic; seven, old Erse; ten, Phenician; fourteen, old British; and sixteen, Celtiberic. M. Levy Bing reported at the Congress of Americanists at Nancy, in 1875, that he found in the inscription twenty-three Canaanite letters, and translated it: “What thou sayest, thou dost impose it, thou shinest in thy impetuous clan and rapid chamois.” (!) M. Maurice Schwab in 1857 rendered it: “The Chief of Emigration who reached these places (or this island) has fixed these statutes forever.” M. Oppert, however, gave additional variety by the translation, so that all tastes can be suited: “The grave of one who was assassinated here. May God to avenge him strike his murderer, cutting off the hand of his existence.”

Col. Chas. Whittlesey (a) gives six copies of the Grave creek stone, all purporting to be facsimiles, which have been published and used in the elaborate discussions held upon its significance. Of these, three are here reproduced with Col. Whittlesey’s remarks, as follows:

Copy No. 1 is reproduced as Fig. 1285, drawn by Capt. Eastman.

Copy No. 3, now Fig. 1286, was used by Monsieur Jomard at Paris, 1843.

Copy No. 4, now Fig. 1287, was sent to Prof. Rafn, Copenhagen, 1843.

A mere collocation of letters from various alphabets is not an alphabet. Words can not be formed or ideas communicated by that artifice. When a people adopts the alphabetical signs of another it adopts the general style of the characters and more often the characters in detail. Such signs had already an arrangement into syllables and words which had a vocalic validity as well as known significance. A jumble of letters from a variety of alphabets bears internal evidence that the manipulator did not have an intelligent meaning to convey by them, and did not comprehend the languages from which the letters were selected. In the case of the Grave creek inscription the futile attempts to extract a meaning from it on the theory that it belongs to an intelligent alphabetic system show that it holds no such place. If it is genuine it must be treated as pictorial and ideographic, unless, indeed, it is cryptographic, which is not indicated.

SECTION 2.
THE DIGHTON ROCK.

In this connection some allusion must be made to the learned discussions upon the Dighton rock before mentioned, p. 86. The originally Algonquian characters were translated by a Scandinavian antiquary as an account of the party of Thorfinn, the Hopeful. A distinguished Orientalist made out clearly the word “melek” (king). Another scholar triumphantly established the characters to be Scythian, and still another identified them as Phenician. But this inscription has been so manipulated that it is difficult now to determine the original details.

An official report made in 1830 by the Rhode Island Historical Society and published by the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, in “Antiquitates AmericanÆ,” by C. C. Rafn (e), presents the best account known concerning the Dighton rock and gives copies made from time to time of the inscription, which are here reproduced, Pl. LIV. The text is condensed as follows, but in quoting it the statement that the work was not done by the Indians is without approval.

See, also, the illustration from Schoolcraft, Fig. 49, supra, with further 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 obvious, 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 Pasadena, California, regarding the much-discussed Davenport Tablets, in the genuineness of which he believes. Mr. Rust exhibited the drawings to Dakotas with the result made public at the Montreal meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and also in a letter, an extract from which is as follows:

An amusing example of forced interpretation of a genuine petroglyph is given by Lieut. J. W. Gunnison (a), and is presented in the present work in connection with Fig. 81, supra.

The second figure, a circle inclosing a triradiate character, refers to the personal totem. The character in the middle somewhat resembles the pictograph sometimes representing stars, though in the latter the lines center upon the disks and not at a common point.

The seven triangular characters represent the lodges of a village to which the person referred to belongs.

The serpentine lines immediately below these signify a stream or river, near which the village is situated.

The two persons holding guns in their left hands, together with another holding a spear, appear to be the companions of the speaker or recorder, all of whom are members of the turtle gens, as shown by that animal.

The curve from left to right is a representation of the sky, the sun having appeared upon the left or eastern horizon. The drawing, so far, might represent the morning when a female member of the crane gens, was killed—shown by the headless body of a woman.

The lower figure of a bear is the same apparently as the upper, though turned to the right. The hearts are drawn below the line, i.e., down, to denote sadness, grief, remorse, as it would be expressed in gesture language, and to atone for the misdeed committed the pipe is brought and offering made for peace.

Altogether the act depicted appears to have been accidental, the woman belonging to the same tribe, as can be learned from the gens of which she was a member. The regret or sorrow signified in the bear, next to the last figure, corresponds with that supposition, as such feelings would not be manifested on the death of an enemy.

The point of interest in this drawing is, that the figures are very skillfully copied from the numerous characters of the same kind representing Ojibwa pictographs, and given by Schoolcraft. The arrangement of these copied characters is precisely what would be common in the similar work of Indians. In fact, the group constitutes an intelligent pictograph and affords a good illustration of the manner in which one can be made. The fact that it was sold under false representations is its objectionable feature.

Another case brought officially to the Bureau of Ethnology shows evidence of a more determined fraud. In 1888 and earlier a so-called “Shawnee doctor” had displayed as a chart in the nature of an aboriginal diploma, a brightly colored picture 36 by 40 inches, a copy of which was sent, to be deciphered, to the Bureau by a gentleman who is not supposed to have been engaged in fraud or hoax. The mystic chart is copied in Fig. 1289. There was little difficulty in its explanation.

The large figures on the border can not be pretended to be of Indian origin. The smaller interior figures constituting the body of the chart are all, with trifling exceptions, exact copies of figures published and fully explained in G. Copway’s “Traditional History, etc., of the Ojibway Nation,” op. cit. Several of the same figures appear above in the present work. The principal exceptions are, first, a modern knife; second, a bird with a decidedly un-Indian human head, and, third, a cross with two horizontal arms of equal length. The figures from Copway are not in the exact order given in his list and it is possible that they may have been placed in their present order to simulate the appearance of some connected narrative or communication, which could readily be done in the same manner as the words of a dictionary could be cut out and pasted in some intelligent sequence.

Among the curiosities of literature in connection with the interpretation of pictographs may be mentioned La VÈritÈ sur le Livre des Sauvages, par L’AbbÉ Em. Domenech, Paris, 1861, and Researches into the Lost Histories of America, by W. S. Blacket, London and Philadelphia, 1884.

The following remarks of Dr. Edkins (h) are also in point: