Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau. James D. Keyser
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site was even more impressive than I had remembered, and in finding two other sites nearby. That summer, a colleague and I visited most of western Montana’s thirty sites.
As I did the research for a professional journal article about these paintings, I read or reread dozens of the available publications on rock art. There were two basic sorts of publications. Most common were simple descriptive works with page after page illustrating various paintings and carvings, but without answers as to why or when the art was made. A few professional publications interpreted rock art, but for most people these explanations were obscured by clouds of jargon, statistical comparisons, and references to scholarly works not readily available outside of university research libraries. A few notable books, especially those by Campbell Grant (1967) or Selwyn Dewdney and Kenneth Kidd (1967), were different in providing plenty of good illustrations combined with readable, informative text. But these books had little or nothing about Columbia Plateau rock art, and Grant’s national overview, Rock Art of the American Indian, didn’t report even one of the sites I had just finished recording! In passing, I thought how sad it was that no book existed about these paintings—or about any of the many others that I had learned of in neighboring states and Canadian provinces—that not only pictured the art but also went much further to tell who made them, why, and when.
I finished the article on western Montana pictographs and moved on to other subjects in archaeology, including rock art in other areas. In the intervening fifteen years I have written many of those articles filled with jargon, charts, and statistics, attempting to describe this art to other professional colleagues and to discern the “who, why, when, and what” that would help explain it. I have had fun doing this, and I have traveled throughout the northern Great Plains, the Columbia Plateau, and even to Europe to conduct my research. I have been fortunate in having had the opportunity to do much of this research in the course of jobs with universities and government agencies in both the United States and Canada.
Throughout my career, however, I have never forgotten my initial interest in rock art and my disappointment that so few publications had both good illustrations and answers to my many questions. Likewise, I have been conscious that much of my research has been funded by public support to preserve and study these prehistoric relics. In the past few years I have spoken to numerous public groups—from grade-school classes to historical societies—in an attempt to make more information about rock art available to the lay public, and thus to give something back to the people who ultimately support my research. This book is one more way that I can offer something about this subject to those who are interested. I hope it reaches everyone who has ever thought, “Why did they do these drawings? What do they mean?” Maybe some young person will read the book and find in its pages the same fascination that I found in that Montana pictograph thirty years ago.
Acknowledgments
Many people assisted in various ways with this book. Rick McClure, Carl Davis, Dan Leen, and Susan Carter all showed me sites and provided hard-to-find research source materials. McClure, Leen, Keo Boreson, and Greg Bettis gave photographs and drawings of many Columbia Plateau rock art sites. George Knight helped record and analyze western Montana pictographs during my first rock art research project. Dick Buscher, Greg Warren, and Don Oliver each gave support and counsel for my writing and illustrating the book. Paula Sindberg provided a place to live, a word processor, and sufficient moral support for me to take the time to write this book. To each of these people I give my heartfelt thanks; they all share in the success of this work.
To my parents, Dr. and Mrs. Raymond C. Keyser, I dedicate the book. Early on they recognized and fostered my interest in Indians and archaeology. Their support, and especially a trip to show a nine-year-old boy the Perma pictographs, is as much responsible for this book as anything else.
Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau
Map 1. The Columbia Plateau region, showing locations of major rock art study projects. Larger numbers indicate regional studies. 1, Bell 1979; 2, Baravalle 1981; 3, Keyser and Knight 1976; 4, Lundy 1979; 5, Boreson 1985; 6, Boreson 1984; 7, Leen 1988; 8, Corner 1968; 9, Nesbitt 1968; 10, Richards 1981; 11, Leen 1984; 12, Cain 1950; 13, McClure 1984; 14, McClure 1978; 15, Loring and Loring 1982.
Introduction
SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE Pacific Northwest are hundreds of prehistoric rock paintings and carvings made by the Indians of this region prior to European American settlement of the area. These pictures, carved into basalts along the Columbia River and its tributaries, or painted on cliffs around the lakes and in the river valleys of western Montana, British Columbia, northern Idaho, and Washington, are an artistic record of Indian culture that spans thousands of years. Collectively called rock art by the scientists who study them, these drawings are most often carefully executed pictures of humans, animals, and spirit figures that were made as part of the rituals associated with religion, magic, and hunting.
Rock art in the Pacific Northwest was first noticed by early explorers. Before the turn of the century, government-sponsored expeditions searching for wagon and railroad routes through the region noted rock art at Lake Chelan, along the lower Columbia River near Umatilla, and in northern Idaho. Soon after, anthropologists and other scientists began studying some of these sites. James Teit, an ethnologist who recorded the cultures of Columbia Plateau Indian tribes in British Columbia and northern Washington between 1890 and 1920, interviewed natives who had painted some of these pictures and asked why they had done so (Teit 1928). Since then, his work has been a key to all serious rock art research in the region. Since 1950, numerous scientific articles and two small books about Columbia Plateau rock art have described and discussed the paintings and carvings of many areas in the Pacific Northwest (Boreson 1976; Cain 1950; Corner 1968; Keyser and Knight 1976; Loring and Loring 1982; McClure 1978).
Despite this long history of scientific interest in Columbia Plateau rock art, the public remains relatively unaware of these paintings. Except for occasional newspaper or magazine articles, and limited interpretation of a few sites, little information on rock art has been made available to nonscientists. One result has been the spread of misinformation by sensationalist writers, who have suggested that these drawings are maps or “writing” left by Chinese, Norse, Celtic, or other pre-Columbian explorers.
More serious, however, is that current residents of and visitors to the Pacific Northwest miss the opportunity of understanding and appreciating rock art as a part of our region’s rich cultural heritage. This has led to the defacement (and even the destruction) of some sites by unthinking vandals who obliterate the original art with spray-paint scrawls. Thus, my purpose in writing this book is to help interested persons understand the age, meaning, and function of this art. I hope that this will lead to public appreciation of and concern for these irreplaceable art treasures of our past.
What Is Rock Art?
Simply put, rock art can be defined as either engravings or paintings on nonportable stones (Grant 1967, 1983). Because it is the subject of scientific study, a set of specialized archaeological terms and a technical vocabulary convey exact nuances of meaning to professional scholars. These terms can be confusing to the lay reader, and since the primary purpose of this book is to provide an overview of Columbia Plateau rock art and to describe in general its origin, function, and age, I have used a minimum of this professional jargon. Some terms cannot reasonably be avoided, however, due to the specialized nature of the subject matter. Thus, I define here six terms which may need clarification: petroglyph, pictograph, anthropomorph, zoomorph, rock art style, and rock art tradition. Each of these can also be found in the glossary, which contains a few other specialized terms used occasionally throughout the book.
Petroglyphs
Petroglyphs are rock engravings, made by a variety of techniques. In the Pacific Northwest, pecking was the most common method: the rock surface was repeatedly struck with a sharp piece of harder stone to produce a shallow pit that was then gradually enlarged to form the design. Some