Indian Rock Writings

Effigy Hill, Inscription Canyon, Black Mountain Complex, Superior Valley, Barstow, California 05/2018 Indian Rock Writings represents a paradigm shift in American Indian studies, from illegally contrived cultural obscuration to actual documented historical fact... For seven thousand years, the history surrounding the Battle of Bear Paw, in the Black Mountain Complex, Superior Valley of Southern California, was taught to ‘oot (proto-Uto-Aztecan) children using Indian rock writings. This Native American history is confirmed by Southern Ute Elder Dr. James Jefferson, PhD, and representatives from countless Ute enclaves throughout the United States, Central and South America. “We already know all these things,” stipulates Dr. Jefferson, confirming the contents of the book in accordance with Indian law. In the 1850s, this battle and all Indian history were stolen from the Native Americans by an attorney for the railroads, mining and banking industries. Here within these covers is a preliminary primer, dictionary, and thesaurus with which to supplement a small portion of recorded Indian history. A history recovered from Indian rock writings spanning several thousand years and two thousand miles from Southern California to Illinois, Texas to Montana. Perhaps the contents will inspire more field research and unmask Indian truths obscured by design for more than one hundred sixty-five years...

The Plains region that stretches from northern Colorado to southern Alberta and from the Rockies to the western Dakotas is the land of the Cheyenne and the Blackfeet, the Crow and the Sioux. Its rolling grasslands and river valleys have nurtured human cultures for thousands of years. On cave walls, glacial boulders, and riverside cliffs, native people recorded their ceremonies, vision quests, battles, and daily activities in the petroglyphs and pictographs they incised, pecked, or painted onto the stone surfaces. In this vast landscape, some rock art sites were clearly intended for communal use; others just as clearly mark the occurrence of a private spiritual encounter. Elders often used rock art, such as complex depictions of hunting, to teach traditional knowledge and skills to the young. Other sites document the medicine powers and brave deeds of famous warriors. Some Plains rock art goes back more than 5,000 years; some forms were made continuously over many centuries. Archaeologists James Keyser and Michael Klassen show us the origins, diversity, and beauty of Plains rock art. The seemingly endless variety of images include humans, animals of all kinds, weapons, masks, mazes, handprints, finger lines, geometric and abstract forms, tally marks, hoofprints, and the wavy lines and starbursts that humans universally associate with trancelike states. Plains Indian Rock Art is the ultimate guide to the art form. It covers the natural and archaeological history of the northwestern Plains; explains rock art forms, techniques, styles, terminology, and dating; and offers interpretations of images and compositions.

The comprehensive book on Indian petroglyphs in the Southwest.

This is a unique volume in the history of rock art studies, meant at once for the advanced scholar, serious student and the curious but conscientious layman, co-authored by K.K. Chakravarty and R.G. Bednarik, who co-chaired the Rock Art session of the World Archaeological Congress 3 at Delhi in 1994. It is a synoptic but comprehensive survey, illustrated by 221 photographs and sketches, including 172 photographs in colour. The two scholars have not only described the latest state of research on rock art, but also transported rock art studies into the realm of interdisciplinary, inter-cultural analysis. Buttressed by an indicative map of the rock art regions, a list of major up to date direct dating results on rock art, a glossary of keywords related to spatial, temporal, technological, managerial categories, and an index, this volume blends precise, dispassionate descriptions with eloquent evocations. It blends conclusions distilled from rigorous, hard headed field research with penetrating criticism and assessment of the evidence. It combines a ruthless brevity and density with extraordinary felicity and clarity of language. Above all, it is an wonderful attempt at dealing with the problems of understanding, which dog human attempts to comprehend the meaning and shape of human creativity.

Provides a look at the history of the Black Hills country over the last ten thousand years through rock art, which illustrates the rich oral traditions, religious beliefs, and sacred places of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Mandan, and Hidatsa Indians who once lived there. Original

This absorbing volume examines the cultural role of rock art for the Apsáalooke, or Crow, people of the northern Great Plains. Their extensive rock art developed within the changing cultural life of the tribe. Individual knowledge and meaning of rock art panels, however, relies as much on collective concepts of landscape as it does on shared memories of historic Crow culture. Using this idea as a focus, this book:-introduces Plains Indian rock art of the 19th century as we know about it from its own stylistic conventions, ethnographic data, and historical accounts;-investigates the contemporary Crow discourse about rock art and its place within the cultural landscape and archaeological record;-argues that cultural concepts of space and place are fundamental to the way rock art is discussed, experienced and interpreted.

Located along rivers, at the edges of lakes, on mountain boulders, in rock shelters, on rock ledges where the continent meets the ocean, and tucked into parks and public places, American Indian rock art offers tantilizing glimpses of the signs and symbols of a Native American culture. Picture Rocks documents all known permanent petroglyph and pictograph sites from the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the six New England states, New York, and New Jersey. Some sites are subject to disputes over their origins—Indian or Portuguese? Some are ancient, and others, such as the work of the Mi’kmaq, were executed in the past 200 years. Many of these sites are little known; others, like those at Bellows Falls, Vermont, are sources of great local pride and appear on city walking tours. Interspersing his own interpretations with comments from scholars and Native American storytellers, Edward J. Lenik provides a definitive look at an extraordinary art form. Two hundred illustrations include historic sketches by early Euro-American colonists, nineteenth-century photographs, and recent photographs and drawings of the current conditions of many sites.