OUR pre-columbian knowledge of the Amerind people is at present meagre. The majority of the different stocks had not arrived at the point where they understood how to record their thoughts and their doings. Outside of the Maya and Nahuatl stocks, and others in that region, there is nothing but rude picture-writing to refer to besides an abundance of traditions, legends, and other oral matter. All the Amerind languages are capable of being readily written, being possessed of grammars and of copious vocabularies, but none of the tribes north of Mexico had made the discovery that marks can represent sounds. We trace our alphabet back to the Romans, still farther to the Greeks, and yet farther back to the Phœnicians, and then another stage back to even ruder characters connecting the chain of its development with the end links of such writing as that of the Mayas, and exhibiting writing in all stages, from rock scratching or picture-writing, through all phases down to the work of the writing and printing machines of to-day.
Mankind are all alike, merely exhibiting different degrees of culture. As the rills in the mountains born of the rains and the snows are all the same and reach the ocean by various devious and complicated courses, so the races of men, emerging from the darkness of the past, follow, because of the immutability of natural law, practically the same lines of development through savagery, barbarism, civilisation, toward a common goal of unification and enlightenment. The progress of humanity from earliest times to now appears to be divided, in each race evolution, into several epochs by certain great inventions or discoveries which seemed to spread themselves over the world either from one centre or from several. Of these the most important are, first, fire; second, the bow; third, smelting; fourth, phonetic writing; and fifth, printing. This progression is not even, but a people may stand still for a long time and then suddenly become active in one particular line, or in many lines.[37] Ours is the age of mechanical development; the Greeks made a stride in art. When development reaches a certain point and conditions are favourable for an invention, it springs into being not in one individual alone but usually in several widely separated ones, as if the seed of it had been sprinkled over the earth. It may have germinated before when conditions were not ripe, but it then died before even sprouting. Environment cultivates the mind, and the mind feeds on environment. Only a small portion of those to whom an idea occurs endeavour to carry it out, and often other subsequent inventions are necessary to success.
On the Amerind continent before the advent of the European the various stocks and tribes were rising and falling under the influence of the moulding conditions, and rising again or giving place to more highly vitalised stock which might succeed in fertilising in the brain of a Hiawatha or a Quetzalcohuatl great ideas that should lift them onward.
In the matter of writing, these races were moving toward success, and had their isolation been maintained they would in time have come to the full measure. As it was, the Mayas[38] had reached a considerable degree of efficiency, and the Aztecs were following close. The more northern stocks, however, had not passed beyond the elementary stage. In the sense in which artists now use the word “drawing,” it hardly existed anywhere on this continent; that is, there was little exactness and delicacy of delineation, but it was mainly an offhand representation of objects in a barbaric fashion. There was considerable merit in some of the work executed by the sculptors, but it was nevertheless as a whole aboriginal and primitive. In the middle region the drawings and rock peckings[39] have no artistic merit whatever, and are like the work of little children; nor are the Eskimo efforts much better. The Eastern States do not afford the same abundance of characters pecked and scratched, and sometimes painted on the rocks, that exists in the Rocky Mountain region, and particularly in the South-west, where they are found everywhere.[40] This may be due to the more verdant nature of the eastern part of the country, and also to the fact that the broad, smooth surfaces of sandstone exposed so universally in the South-west are generally absent in the East. Another reason may be that the Amerinds of the various Pueblo stocks and allied tribes were more given to inscribing the rocks in this manner. Certain it is that wherever evidences exist of the former occupation of a locality by Amerinds of the Pueblo kind, there rocks will be found covered with markings and paintings. These people went everywhere in their region, and they generally left some record on the rocks, as they do to-day. If one thinks he has found a place where they did not arrive in that vast land of cliffs and canyons, he is sure soon to be undeceived. Once I reached a little platform on the face of a cliff in Arizona by hard scrambling, part of the way through a narrow crevice, and as I stood viewing the valley a thousand feet below, I thought, “Now, at last, I am on a spot where the Shinumo[41] never stood.” As I turned to make my way down again I was confronted by a lot of pictographs spread across the whole of the smooth wall behind. Thus it was almost everywhere: in the deep gorges of the Colorado River, in its side canyons, in the cliffs above and around, and all along Green River, at least as far north as the lower end of Split-Mountain canyon, these pictures occur. The climate is dry, and there is little change from one century’s end to another.[42] Some are comparatively recent, while others, even some of the painted ones, are old; how old it is impossible to estimate, but many of them are found in regions where no Amerinds of the Pueblo type[43] have lived within historical times, or within the memory of those Amerinds who now occupy the region. Some of the painted figures in sheltered places appeared fresh, but they must have been at least a century or two old. The other Amerinds, while they also executed picture-writings of various kinds, did not so often decorate rock surfaces with them. They were more inclined to drawing and painting on buffalo robes and other skins, on bark, on trees, shell, pottery; even the human form in some regions not being exempt. The Puebloans, while utilising most of these methods, also used the rocks a great deal, the country they occupied abounding in broad, smooth faces attractive for this purpose. In the settled East the perishable substances have long ago disappeared, except those fortunately preserved in museums or private collections. Comparatively few rock inscriptions are found there, and these have created considerable discussion and the usual number of theories. The markings, undoubtedly Algonquian, on the now widely known Dighton Rock in Massachusetts were for a long time ascribed to the Northmen, and were copied in a great many different ways.[44] The trouble arose from the same reason that has led to so many mistaken theories regarding the Amerind race—that is, an underestimate of their intellectual side, so far as those north of Mexico are concerned, and an overestimate of those in the latter region. Brinton asserts that the Algonquins had developed the picture-writing farther than any other stock north of the Aztecs. “It had passed,” he says, “from the representative to the symbolic stage, and was extensively employed to preserve the national history and rites of the secret societies. The figures were scratched or painted on pieces of bark or slabs of wood, and as the colour of the paint was red, these were sometimes called ‘red sticks.’” Some of these slabs, or “red sticks,” like the Walam Olum (walam = painted, and olum = scores or notches on a stick) of the Lenapés,[45] have been preserved. Many of the figures executed by the Amerinds, not excepting the Aztecs and the Mayas, were grotesque, and even childish. Their strangeness is frequently due to our unfamiliarity with the originals, figures with queer hair-dressing, masks, or complete ceremonial costume, which, if we could see them to-day, would resemble nothing we had ever imagined or viewed before. The extraordinary make-up of these people for their ceremonials is beyond anything our race can imagine. Those who have witnessed Pueblo ceremonials will understand how unlike any human being the wearer of the strange costumes can become. The katcina[46] is fearfully and wonderfully made, and, especially if represented with the half-skill of the Amerind, would baffle classification by anyone not familiar with the actual object. Among the early tribes there were undoubtedly many of these ceremonial dresses and costumes that we can now have no conception of, and where we see them represented in sculpture or drawing they have a most uncanny and diabolical appearance. Even to-day were we to see a representation in their crude way of a simple little Moki girl, with the singular arrangement of her hair in flat, circular puffs, like huge wheels, one on each side of the head, and had never seen or heard of this fashion of hair-dressing, we should be puzzled as to what it meant.
There are sixty of these figures painted on the sticks. Each one recalls to the memory of those who have become acquainted with the associated idea, that special idea, and as an example nine of the signs are given here in connection with the associated idea, and also with the translation into English.
There is seen here at once the resemblance to Genesis, and it is difficult to believe that this portion of the Walam Olum was not inspired by the teachings of the missionaries. But Brinton says: “This similarity is due wholly to the identity of psychological action, the same ideas and fancies arising from similar impressions in New as well as Old World tribes.
Some of the ordinary rock pictures may have been carved for simple amusement, but the majority were made with a purpose, and this was usually the communication or record of an idea. The Amerind records may be divided into two and perhaps three general classes: first, the mnemonic; second, the ideographic; and, third, the phonetic. Brinton suggests for the writings of the Aztecs, which were partly ideographic and partly phonetic, the term ikonomatic,[47] and used it in his own works. The ideographic class are those which represent an idea, as a man striking another, like the accompanying illustration from the autobiography of Running Antelope, who thus records his killing of two Arikarees. The mnemonic class do not represent an idea, but simply are memory helps, like a string tied around one’s finger, a good example being any numeral, say the figure “9.” The phonetic class represent sounds, like the letters of our alphabet, say the letter “e.” It is believed that the Maya writings were largely phonetic, but the phonetic quality is not well established.
It is supposed that the mnemonic symbols originated in sign-language. One of the most striking examples of the universality of the sign-language is the case, cited by Mallery, of a professor in a deaf-mute college, who, visiting several wild tribes, was able to communicate freely with them though he knew nothing of their spoken languages. It was a natural thing that races should attempt to record these signs, and some early hieroglyphs in Egyptian can clearly be traced to them. These same efforts occurred amongst the Amerind stocks in varying degree. Picture-writing, the world over, as well as particularly in North America, probably grew out of sign-language, giving, as the first stage in the development, sign-language, second pictographs, third alphabet. These merge into each other, as there was not a series of jumps, but a slow and gradual progression. Many pictographs are merely representations of natural objects and had no special significance, others were guide marks to springs, others recorded visits to certain localities. Mallery states a particularly interesting fact, that within “each particular system ... every Indian draws in precisely the same manner.” Therefore, if a perfect understanding of each tribal system is obtained, the various rock markings and other pictographs can be classified. Sometimes frauds[48] have been attempted by white men, one well-known case being where an Illinois blacksmith copied on six copper plates designs from a Chinese tea-box, and then claimed that the plates had been found in a mound. Recently a most ingenious counterfeiter of stone implements was discovered in Dane County, Wis. He had been selling the spurious implements for years. They are usually of bizarre patterns.[49] Bandelier says that “it is certain that some of them [pictographs in Mexico] were manufactured after the Conquest, not with the intention of fraud, but with a view to a compromise between the new method of recording and the old one, which the new teachers were loath to comprehend and which they refused to adopt.” Powell classifies all the picture-writings as: (1) Mnemonic—songs, traditions, treaties, war, and time; (2) Notification—departure, direction, condition, warning, guidance, geographic features, claim or demand messages, and communications and record of expeditions; (3) Totemic—tribal, gentile, clan, and personal designations, insignia, tokens of authority, personal names, property marks, status of individuals, signs of particular achievements; (4) Religious—mythic personages, shamanism, dances, ceremonies, mortuary practices, grave-posts, charms, fetiches; (5) Customs, habits; (6) Tribal history; (7) Biographic.
On this continent no true alphabet, so far as now known, was produced, unless we accept that recorded by Bishop Landa, and ascribed to the Mayas. Landa was the second bishop of Yucatan, and he did his best to destroy the Maya records and everything else that in his estimation linked them with the devil. But he did construct an alphabet after theirs, for the purpose, no doubt, of putting before them the Holy Gospel, and it is this alphabet that has been preserved. It has been the basis of many vain attempts to decipher the few ancient Maya documents that are known, and the failure of these attempts has caused some investigators to consider the alphabet a pure fabrication, but the identity of the characters with many of those in the ancient writing completely disproves this charge. Besides the alphabet, Landa left some other information concerning the Mayas, and Goodman thus presents his respects to his memory[50]: “It is a signal instance of the irony of fate that this bigoted destroyer of the fruits of Maya science and art—the pietist whose zeal rendered him avid of the obliteration of every vestige of their impious learning—should have been the only one to leave a clue by which the mysterious codices and inscriptions will yet be deciphered. Nevertheless he left such a clue—slight and vague, it is true; but, when carefully followed up, it broadens and leads into an open way where everything will presently become self-evident.” The alphabet was probably modified by a desire to make it conform to the Spanish, and it is this foreign element possibly that has led to the unfavourable opinion expressed in some quarters concerning it.
North of the Mexican country certain alphabets were invented by the European priests for the purpose of furthering the introduction of Christianity among the Amerinds. Of these the Micmac is a good example.[51] They were not drawn from pictographs, and were used only for teaching the Bible. In that field they did not serve to preserve Amerind history, traditions, and legends. After long contact with Europeans there was invented but one alphabet, and he who accomplished this was a half-breed. In 1821, George Gist (or Guess), whose native name was Sequoyah, a Cherokee, who spoke little if any English, but whose father was a Dutch peddler and whose mother was of mixed blood, produced an alphabet, or, more correctly speaking, a syllabary, which was immediately adopted by his tribe, and enabled them to record their traditions, sacred formulæ, prayers, etc., which to-day form a valuable portion of the information we possess of these Amerind people. Many of the symbols were adapted from our alphabet, an old spelling-book having found its way into Sequoyah’s hands, but it was the forms which were utilised, the sounds they represented being usually different. By means of this syllabary the members of the Cherokee tribe were able to learn in a few hours to write words, and the system is used to this day.
The endeavour to prove the descent of the Amerinds from one of the numerous foreign sources that have from time to time been advocated has at least resulted sometimes in the accumulation or reproduction of some interesting material. Lord Kingsborough became so infatuated with the idea that the Amerinds were the Lost Tribes of Israel that he attempted to prove it in a number of splendid volumes, which also contain admirable fac-similes of some old Amerind manuscripts.[52] He spent his fortune on this work, and through a business dispute with the merchants who furnished the paper he was thrown into Dublin Jail, where, unfortunately, he died.
To explain the methods employed in the ruder attempts at recording, the map made by Lean Wolf, a Hidatsa, who once made a trip from Fort Berthold to Fort Buford, Dakota, with the ambition of stealing a horse, is a good example. In the illustration the returning horse-tracks indicate that he was successful and rode home. 1 is Lean Wolf himself; 2, the Hidatsa lodges; 3, Lean Wolfs tracks on his outward course; 4, government buildings at Fort Buford; 5, several Hidatsa lodges whose occupants intermarried with Dakotas; 6, Dakota tipis; 7, small square, a white man’s home, with a cross indicating that he had married a Dakota woman; 8, horse-tracks; 9, the Missouri River and tributaries.
Frequently the marks on the rocks merely record the visit of someone to the place, exactly as when we visit the birthplace of Shakespeare we write our names in a large book kept there for that purpose; or, perhaps, as some persons carve their names on public buildings and in other conspicuous places. Gilbert found a number of such records at Oakley Springs, Arizona, and old Tuba, a Moki, explained them to him. Tuba said that the Mokis go to a place in the canyon of the Little Colorado for salt, and they stop on the return trip at this spring, where each draws his totem mark, or crest, on the record rocks once, and once only, for each trip. There are many repetitions of the same sign, showing that the owner of that particular sign, or totem, had made that many journeys to the salt mine. Tuba gave the name of the totems, and they were all animals.
One cannot be too careful in taking statements from Amerinds, for, like some of their white brethren, many of them will lie for the fun of it, or just to experiment as to the probable result. Sometimes, too, when they are telling the truth they tell only part of it. This is particularly the case with regard to springs, sacred rites, and other matters which are specially cherished. Some objects in the custody of the heads of the secret orders are never shown in public, or are only shown on special occasions. Pictographs representing them, therefore, should any happen to be made, would not be intelligible to any persons but the initiated.
Another class of symbols was worked out in wampum. The popular idea of wampum seems to be that it was a kind of Amerind money, but the money function was only one of its uses. There was another, a mnemonic use, of more importance—that is, it was a means of recording and of communicating mnemonically among the tribes of the North-east. The Iroquois used it chiefly in the form of belts. The beads were generally white, and were used in strings as well as belts, other colours being mingled with the white, as purple and white, or black and white. These strings had important functions in summoning officers, in representing persons, and in conferring authority. But all wampum had a meaning only to those who remembered the particular association of particular forms of it, and the knowledge once entirely forgotten could never be regained. Consequently the ideas with which the belts, etc., were associated had to be regularly brought to mind. Once a year, therefore, they were exhibited in public, and the story connected with each carefully rehearsed so that it should not be lost through forgetfulness. This custom is still kept up among the remnants of the wampum-using tribes. In other tribes, formulæ and drawings were often preserved by certain orders who rehearsed them in the privacy of the kiva. The wampum beads were generally ⅛ inch by ¼ inch diameter—that is, flat discs of shell. They were sometimes also ¼ to ½ inch thick, with the same diameter. When the white men discovered the valuation the Amerinds placed on these beads an attempt was made to introduce some of European manufacture, but it met with only partial success.[53] The average width of a belt is three inches and the length three feet.
By some tribes the human body was also used as a surface for the display of pictographs. Among all primitive people the body has been often decorated to a greater or less extent by means of pigments or by tattooing, and even to-day the practice lingers among civilised races, in their sailors and soldiers especially. The primitive totem or tattoo marks are frequently highly elaborate, but the work is not all accomplished at one time. Years sometimes pass before the drawings are complete. The Haidas of the North-west coast are specially given to this form of decoration, and their bodies bear carefully prepared symbols. They are heraldic signs, or the family totem, of the clan to which the person belongs.
Pottery was also a medium, and some of the designs contained upon earthenware unfold a whole legend to the knowing eye of the native. The designs that are woven into blankets, baskets, and scarfs of Amerind manufacture are also, to a certain extent, symbolic. The Navajos, who weave a superior kind of blanket, put into it a variety of designs, that are carried entirely in their memory. It is asserted that the majority of these designs are Pueblo. The Navajos no doubt absorbed many of the Pueblos, who must have been in the country they now occupy when they arrived. There is some intermarriage of Navajos and Mokis in these latter days.[54]
Everything the Amerind does pertains to his religious belief, and these symbols, totems, and pictures play an important part in his life. Some sign or token occurs on almost every article of his manufacture.
Excellent examples of Algonquin mnemonic records are found in the songs of the Midē society, which have been preserved for many generations by means of their picture-writing, and some of the records are exceedingly elaborate. The method is to associate certain devices with songs or with parts of songs to recall the words to the memory of the singer when he beholds the pictures, and in this way they have been handed along through the centuries. There is reason to believe that almost all important legends are recorded in this mnemonic way among the tribes of North America. Of course the memory is likely to fail in some details and so the songs become more or less changed as time goes on, but it is not probable that the changes are of much importance, for where the memory is trained in this way it grows remarkably accurate. There was much practising of the various songs at each particular season, under the guidance of some veteran singer.
The Eskimo, in their picture-writing, seem now to be rather a class by themselves. Whether the suggestion of perspective found in some pictures was a result of contact with the whites I am unable to state, but it seems probable. In the above illustration the suggestion of perspective is clear. There is a landscape with houses, with the moon in the sky, and with a perfectly evident effort to make the foreground and middle and background take their proper places. Such a thing is not to be found throughout all the other Amerind stocks.
From Alaska come some good examples of the ideographic, by way of San Francisco, where one Naumoff, an Alaskan native, made them. They are written on strips of wood and placed in conspicuous places as notifications.
The irregular line indicates the contour of the country. The traveller is seen starting out at the left. He presently leaves a stick with a bunch of grass to show direction, and stops with a friend at night—the division of days represented by a line upright. Next morning, on the second hill, he discovers game, etc.
Some tribes have a system of enumerating the members of it and keeping a kind of clan roll. Chief Big Road, a Dakota, was one day brought to the agency and required to give an account of his followers. He submitted a roster, made on common foolscap paper with black and coloured pencils. The names, represented by pictures, were Big Bear, Bear-looking-behind, Brings-back-Plenty, White Buffalo, and so on. This is also an example of the ideographic. Red Cloud had a similar census of his warriors. It was prepared under his supervision at the Pine Ridge Agency. Owing to some disagreement, the agent had refused to recognise Red Cloud’s leadership and named another man as chief. Thereupon the adherents of Red Cloud prepared this document, and sent it to Washington to establish his claim. The names pictorially represented are Shield-Bear, Sees-the-Enemy, Biting-Bear, Cut-through, Red Owl, etc.
In this same line are the Dakota winter counts collected by Dr. Corbusier. The years are counted by winters, as the winter among the Dakotas makes the deepest impression. These records have been kept for many years and are used in computing time and to aid the memory in recalling names and events of different years. The enumeration is begun at the winter last recorded and carried backward. There are at least five of these counts kept among the Oglalas and Brules by different men.[55]
From the manuscript drawing-book of an Amerind prisoner at St. Augustine we have a “conversation” about the lassooing, shooting, and final killing of a bison which had wandered into camp. “The dotted lines indicate footprints. The Indian drawn under the animal having secured it by the forefeet, so informs his companions, as indicated by the line drawn from his mouth to the object mentioned. The left-hand figure, having secured the buffalo by the horns, gives his nearest comrade an opportunity to strike it with an axe, which he no doubt announces that he will do, as the line from his mouth to the head of the animal indicates. The Indian in the upper left-hand corner is told by a squaw to take an arrow and join his companions, when he turns his head to inform her that he has one already, which fact he demonstrates by holding up the weapon.”[56]
The Navajos have a singular kind of picture-writing which has been called “dry-painting.” These dry-paintings are made on the ground with dry sand of various colours.[57] All the designs are made with the utmost care and precision, being drawn according to an exact system, except in minor points, where the artist is left to his imagination. So far as known this system is not recorded in any way, but depends entirely on the memory of those in charge. Changes must therefore occur in the course of time. The sand is trailed out of the hand between the thumb and forefinger, and when a mistake is made it is corrected by renewing at that point the surface of the sand which forms the general ground for the work. No less than seventeen ceremonies are illustrated by drawings of this kind. Sand enters into some of the kiva ceremonies of the Moki, but in a different way. It is used more to maintain in position certain objects that belong to the ritual.
The mounds of the Mississippi valley have yielded antiquities of great interest, but thus far nothing that is beyond the ability of the ordinary Amerind to execute. Some shell discs, which Holmes suggests may have been time symbols, attract special attention. There are generally thirteen small outer circles on the discs, and thirteen is a number that occurs frequently in Amerind chronology. On other discs various objects are drawn, the one first to fix the attention of the white race being the figure of the cross because of its connection with the Christian religion. But it had no similar significance with the Christian cross. Crosses were found among almost all the tribes of North America, because a cross is an easy and a most natural figure to construct. Another emblem found throughout the world, and next to the cross the simplest figure to make, is that called the swastika, merely a cross 卐 with the arms broken at right angles. The Mormons firmly believe, along with Kingsborough, that the Amerinds are the Lost Tribes of Israel, and one of their elders has succeeded in translating some picture-writing thus: “I, Mahanti, the 2nd king of the Lamanites in five valleys in the mountains, make this record in the twelve hundredth year since we came out of Jerusalem. And I have three sons gone to the south country to live by hunting antelope and deer.” Like the power to divine the future, the power to translate picture-writings is rare.
In some of the Moundbuilder work there is a suggestion of a position for the makers intermediate between, say, the Algonquin and the Nahuatl or Aztec tribes. Their serpent symbols strongly resemble those of more southern tribes, and also some of the figures in shell and copper.
The fact that the serpent was a prominent object with them as with the Nahuatl tribes tends to link the tribes who made these symbols with the Nahuatl tribes. The serpent symbol, especially the feathered kind,[58] belongs mainly to the tribes of the Mexican region, where the rattlesnake exists in its greatest variety. The rattlesnake was highly venerated, and tribes as far north as the Moki country in the West, and perhaps as the Ohio in the East, might be correctly called the Snake people. There is nothing improbable in supposing that some of the tribes of the Mississippi valley, if they were not of the same stock as the Aztecs, were in tolerably close communication with them, or with tribes intermediate between the two.
Sometimes there occur markings on the rocks in the South-west that would be a puzzle to us did we not know, through the Mokis, who are still making them, just what they are. There is therefore no room for the imagination; the long scratchings are only grooves made in sandstone by the Moki farmer sharpening his planting stick.
Another kind of rock markings, the so-called cupped-stones or cup markings, about which there has been a vast amount of discussion, may be considered here because they have generally been thought to have symbolic significance. That some of them may have had such significance is admitted below, but the bulk of those on this continent it seems possible to explain without resort to symbolism. An explanation which I offer, for what it may be worth, I have never seen suggested, though the idea may not be new. It is well known that the common form of fire-drill in use from one end of this continent to the other was that in which the end of a straight stick is made to rotate back and forth in a rounded cavity in another stick of softer wood called the hearth. In order that the operation should be speedily successful in producing fire, it was necessary to have the end of the drill convex, so that it would immediately bear as nearly as possible on the whole surface of the hearth cavity. In order to produce this convexity, the Amerind pecked a small cavity on a slab or rock of sandstone, and when he had it in the proper condition, he could bring his drill very quickly to the desired convexity, and also give it a roughness of surface that would contribute to the friction. As the fire-drill was long in constant use, many cavities were necessary, for a cavity would grow too deep, or for some other cause would not be adequate. A new hole would then be made, and thus in the course of time there would be numbers of the cavities on a rock or slab, which was convenient or had been found to possess the right texture for the purpose. My opinion, therefore, is that these so-called “cup markings” or “cupped” stones were in America the result of the sharpening of fire-drills, just as the long grooves seen at the Moki towns to-day are the result of the sharpening of planting sticks. Gerard Fowke describes the cupped-stones in the Bureau of Ethnology collection,[59] as follows, and it will be noticed that thin pieces have cups on both sides, while the large blocks have them only on one. This was because it was convenient to turn the small stones over. In some cases where a cup had worn too large, another was started in the bottom of it, perhaps because the rock at that particular spot suited the fancy of the individual. Fowke says: “The cupped-stones in the Bureau are almost invariably of reddish sandstone, of varying texture, from a few ounces to thirty pounds in weight. The holes are from one to twenty-five in number, of various sizes, even in the same stone, and follow the natural contour of the surface even when that is quite irregular; the stone is never flattened or dressed to bring the cups on a level; none show any marks of work, but are rough blocks or slabs in their natural state. Many of the holes are roughly pecked in, but the larger ones are usually smooth, as if ground out, and almost complete hemispheres. They range from a pit only started or going scarcely beyond the surface to one two inches in diameter. The smaller ones with one cup pass into the pitted stones. Occasionally at the bottom of a large cup there is a small secondary hole as though made by a flint drill. Slabs or thin pieces nearly always have cups on both sides, while blocks or thick slabs have them on one side only.”
In the case of the cup markings of the Eastern Hemisphere, their frequent peculiar arrangement accompanied by grooves and circles may have pertained to some ceremony connected with the drill-dressing. It may have been thought that the fire would come quicker, be better, or last longer when the drill was dressed in holes of a certain type; or special stones and holes of peculiar arrangement may have been required for dressing the drill-end that was to be used by the priest in the sacred ceremony of producing the “new-fire.” In this manner a primitive custom might become sacred and be surrounded with symbolism exemplified in cup markings the world over.