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Show ' MALL£ UT. J PETROGLYPHS IN CALIFORNIA. 31 those at Tule River in the southern spurs of the Sierra Nevada, Kern County. These pictographic records are found at various localities along the hill tops, but to what distance is not positively known. In the range of mountains forming the northeastern boundary of Owen Valley are extensive groups of petroglyphs, apparently dissimilar to those found west of the Sierra Nevada. Dr. Oscar Loew nlso mentions a singular inscription on basaltic rocks in Black Lake Valley, about 4 miles southwest of the town of Benton, Mono County. This is scratched in the basalt surface with some sharp instrument and is evidently of great age. ( Ann. Report upon the Geog. Surveys west of the 100th meridian. Being Appendix J J, Ann. Report of Chief ot Engineers for 1876. Plate facing p. 326.) Dr. W. J. Hoffman, of the Bureau of Ethnology, reports the occurrence of a number of series of etchings scattered at intervals for over twenty miles in Owen's Valley, California. Some of these records were hastily examined by him in 1871, but it was not until the autumn of 1884 that a thorough examination of them was made, when measurements, drawings, etc., were obtaiued for study and comparison. The country is generally of a sandy, desert, character, devoid of vegetation and water. The occasional bowlders and croppings of rock consist of vesicular basalt, upon the smooth vertical faces of which occur innumerable characters different from any hitherto reported from California, but bearing marked similarity to some figures found in the country now occupied by the Moki and Zufii, in New Mexico and Arizona, respectively. The southernmost group of etchings is eighteen miles south of the town of Benton; the next group, two miles almost due north, at the Chalk Grade; the third, about three miles farther north, near the stage road; the fourth, half a mile north of the preceding; then a fifth, five and a half miles above the last named and twelve and a half miles south of Benton. The northernmost group is about ten or twelve miles northwest of the last- mentioned locality and southwest from Benton, at a place known as Watterson's Ranch. The principal figures consist of various simple, complex, and ornamental circles, some of the simple circles varying as nucleated, concentric, aud spectacle- shaped, zigzag,, and serpentine lines, etc. Animal forms are not abundant, those readily identified being those of the deer, antelope, and jack- rabbits. Representations of snakes and huge sculpturings of grizzly- bear tracks occur on one horizontal surface, twelve and a half miles south o£ Benton. In connection with the latter, several carvings of human foot- prints appear, leading in the same direction, L e., toward the south- southwest. All of these figures are pecked into the vertical faces of the rockst the depths varying from one- fourth of an inch to an inch and a quarter. A freshly broken surface of the rock presents various shades from a cream white to a Naples yellow color, though the sculptured lines are all blackened by exposure and oxidation of the iron contained therein. This fact has no importance toward the determination of the age of the work. |
