Indian Rock Art of the Columbia Plateau by James D. Keyser

Author:James D. Keyser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

46. Pictographs enclosed in circles are a common vision quest theme in Columbia Plateau rock art. These pictographs at Long Lake, near Spokane, Washington, show an encircled animal near a stickman and several other designs in a larger circle to the left.

47. Hunting scene petroglyphs are common in central Columbia Plateau art. These scenes are found at sites along the middle Columbia River. The lighter bowman, a, appears to be a later artist’s addition.

The bear-paw petroglyphs at Lake Pend Oreille and the cupule petroglyphs at several Kettle Falls sites fit neither northern nor southern pattern. Cupule petroglyphs appear at a few sites scattered throughout the Columbia Plateau, from the Fraser River in the north to The Dalles and Hells Canyon in the south. These petroglyphs may represent a rock art tradition older than the Columbia Plateau style (as they appear to do in parts of the Great Basin), or they may be contemporaneous with, but made for a different purpose than, the naturalistic drawings of the Plateau style art.

The bear tracks on Lake Pend Oreille are also significantly different from the central Plateau panels of naturalistic pictographs and petroglyphs. These bear-paw designs occur in large groups associated only with pecked circles or ovals. Hoof- or pawprint images occur occasionally on the Columbia Plateau, but much more commonly on the northwestern Plains—almost always as petroglyphs. Elsewhere on the Plateau, large concentrations of bear paws are pecked at two sites near John Day Dam, and tracks and hoofprints of several species are pecked at the Cranbrook petroglyphs in British Columbia. To the east, sites containing hoofprint art are frequent on the Plains in Montana, Saskatchewan, and South Dakota. As with cupules, we know very little about the reasons behind these bear-track and hoofprint petroglyphs, but their purpose probably differed significantly from that of the more common naturalistic art.

Like that of other Columbia Plateau areas, central Plateau rock art appears to have functioned in a religious context. Many of the northern pictographs apparently record vision quests, in which adolescents and adults sought supernatural power through a ritual of isolation, fasting, and prayer. According to Salishan Indian informants from the region, pictographs commemorated the successful acquisition of a spirit helper, the rites associated with the vision, and the symbolic relationship between human and guardian (Cline et al. 1938; Malouf and White 1953). In fact, Indians thought that the act of painting assisted the transfer of the spiritual power. Typical vision quest motifs are tally marks and symbolic groupings of animals or geometric designs; often the group will be contained within a circle. Sites in the mid–Columbia River region probably also served religious purposes, although these petroglyphs and pictographs appear a little less “symbolic.” Drawings typically show humans with rayed heads or rayed arcs above their heads. Twin figures depicted at several sites probably represent deities of some sort connected with the supernatural power ascribed to human twins. Deer and mountain sheep frequently appear both singly and in groups and often in hunting scenes, usually with a single bowman.

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