Picture-Writing of the American Indians

Book excerpt: This work is essential for anyone doing research in rock art and petroglyphs. Col. Garrick Mallery's report on the picture-writing of the American Indians is one of the most significant of all the early reports of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Besides a special section on petroglyphs, most of the specimens are roughly contemporary with the report's writing and were collected by ethnologists, explorers, and expeditions to reservations. The focus is on the significance of the pictures and the dissimilarities between the styles of picture-writing of the various tribes. Col. Mallery's report is the fundamental study of North American Indian picture-writing for anthropologists, sociologists, historians, or artists. Since most of the samples were collected by peers while picturing was still a vital method of communication, the ethnologists were often helped by the Indians themselves in interpreting the pictographs and uncovering the wealth of information they conveyed. The report consists of almost 1,300 pictures and 54 plates illustrating the samples which Col. Mallery describes.