In memory of Selwyn Dewdney (1909 – 1979), artist, teacher,
novelist, psychiatric therapist, and Canada’s foremost researcher of Indian
Rock Art. He grew up in Northwestern Ontario where he saw his first pictograph
and over his lifetime he recorded hundreds more for the National Museums of
Canada, Glenbow Foundation, Royal Ontario Museum, and the Quetico Foundation.
Selwyn wrote more than 20 books and articles on Indian art
including Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes with Kenneth Kidd and Sacred
Scroll of the Southern Ojibway in collaboration with James Red Sky of Shoal
Lake. A graduate of the University of Toronto, he was Research Associate in the
office of the Chief Archaeologist, Royal Ontario Museum.
His brilliant achievements made him Canada’s “father of rock
art research”.
The following words go with the rock paintings of the previous
Posts. Archaeology of Northwestern Ontario
2 Indian Rock Paintings and Carvings.
Page 4
The hundreds of Indian rock art sites adorning our cliffs
and rock slopes supply elements of reverence and mystery to the Northwestern
Region’s beautiful lakes.
The paintings, or “pictographs”, are figures in bright red
pigment made from mineral haematite 9red ochre) and possibly a grease and glue
from sturgeon fish. They are nearly
always found on spectacular, vertical, cliff faces at the water’s edge.
The carvings, or “petroglyphs”, are figures much like the
painted ones but incised with a sharp tool or pecked with a blunt object onto
smooth rock slopes along the shoreline.
In our region they have been found only on Lake of the Woods and may be
related to the petroglyph sites in northern Minnesota.
WHO WERE THE ARTISTS?
The Canadian Shield in Northern Ontario, Manitoba and
Saskatchewan was populated as early as A.D. 1000 by the Algonkian-speaking
ancestors of the modern Cree and Ojibway people. Many of the figures on the
rock paintings and carvings are similar to those on nineteenth and twentieth
century Ojibway birch bark scrolls.
HOW OLD ARE THEY?
We have not discovered techniques to date the sites. We can
only guess at their age from the objects depicted. Petroglyph sites in northern
Minnesota have been dated to as early as 3,000 B.C. because they depict
atlatls, or spear throwers, which were used during the Archaic period (about
3,000 B.C. to 200 B. C. ). Some of the Lake of the Woods petroglyphs may date
to that period, although others have been incised with modern metal
instruments. The rock paintings may date to as early as A.D. 1000 – that is,
the beginning of the period recognizably ancestral to the modern Cree and
Ojibway – but we know that some are historic because they depict
European-introduced items such as the horse and rifle.
Page 5
WHY WERE THEY PAINTED?
A Manitoba researcher was told the following story by Crees
at Oxford House, a tale that gives us some notion as to why the paintings were
done:
Page 7
A woman of Oxford House Band was very sick. The woman’s family asked an old man named
Mistoos Muskego to come and cure her of her illness. The old man tried again and again to cure the
woman but nothing seemed to work.
Finally the old man said that there was only one hope left and that was
to go and ask the men who lived in the rock if they could give him the powerful
medicine needed to cure the woman. The
old man left in his canoe and paddled to where he knew they dwelt. (This spot is today a granite rock face
rising sharply upwards from the Semple River even as it was in Mistoos’
day.) The old man was very powerful and
used his power to enter the rock, into the home of the men who lived
there. The old man talked for a long
time with the men who lived in the rock and asked for the medicine that would
cure the woman, and in the end he was given the medicine that he
requested. The old man then left the
rock and paddled back to the home of the woman who was ill. The medicine of the men who lived in the rock
was given to the woman who was ill.
This medicine cured the woman.
The old man said that all should remember it was the men who lived in
the rocks who were powerful and could give medicine to a powerful old man. The old man then made a paint and asked all
the people to come with him to the mome of the men who lived in the rocks. The old man and the people then paddled their canoes up to the rock ledge by the
water. He told the assembled people how
he had received the medicine. He then said that no one should forget the
men who lived in the rock and that he would draw a painting of them. (He then
drew a painting about two feet high, stick-figured with lines running from the
head giving a “rabbit-eared” look.) The
people now would remember where the men who lived in the rock lived and what
they looked like, and all returned home.
Clint Wheeler, CRARA Newsletter (Manitoba Chapter) 1:4
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The man who told the researcher the story had heard it from
his grandmother, and her grandmother had been present, as a little girl, at the
painting.
The above story links the painting to Cree Medicine and
similar paintings may be an element also of Ojibway Medicine. Researchers have
noted distinct similarities between the painted figures and the forms on birch
bark scrolls of the Ojibway Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society.
WHAT DO THEY MEAN?
Many of the figures are executed in such an abstract fashion
that it is difficult to recognize them.
Some are distinguishable as bear, moose, bison, etc., but some are
simply generalized animal or human figures.
The abstract and symbolic figures makes interpretation difficult without
access to the original artists. Indeed, the artists may have preferred
abstractions so that only they knew what the paintings meant.
We can see that on many paintings there are groups of figures
probably telling a story. The Algonkian
concept of spatial organization is not a left-to-right progression as in
writing but a generalized grouping of forms as in a picture. The figures, if they were meant to be used in
the same manner as those on the birch bark scrolls, were meant simply as memory
aids for the shaman-artist to recall a story – historical or mythological or
both – related to the area where the painting was done. The above recollection from Oxford House
describes such a situation.
It is likely that each site has not one but several meanings
depending on the audience. Ojibway
writer Basil Johnston has pointed out that Ojibway stories are not to be
interpreted literally but have four depths of meaning: enjoyment, moral
teaching, philosophic, and metaphysical.
Readers draw their own inferences
according to their knowledge and abilities.
The same is likely true of the rock art sites.
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Some figures may be spirits – the upraised arms of the human
figures denote the spiritual quality perhaps of Maymaygwayshi, or Rock Medicine
Men, who live in the cliffs and are known to steal fish from nets and bother
Indians canoeing by the site, but they also have positive qualities as the
Oxford House story relates.
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The animal figures are probably not only the ephemeral catch
of the hunt but also the ethereal spirits of the Species – the Spirit Bear, the
Spirit Wolf, etc. , who allow the Indians to kill animals for food and who have
prominent roles in the Midewiwin both as spirit guardians and guides but
sometimes as threats, depending on their positive or negative roles.
HOW SHOULD THE SITES BE TREATED?
The Indian rock art sites are considered by many Cree and
Ojibway to be sacred and offerings are still left for the spirits at many sites
in the Northwestern Region. The pictographs and petroglyphs are also valuable
archaeological records of past Indian Cultures and therefore, under The Ontario
Heritage Act, 1974, it is illegal to deface a rock art site, under penalty of
up to $5,000 and/or up to two years in jail.
The sites should be treated with care and respect. DO NOT
TOUCH THE ROCK PAINTINGS. Human perspiration can break down the bond between
rock and paint. Do not use an abrasive such as sand, in the rock carvings to
get a clear outline. The sand will eventually wear away the rock and destroy
the carving.
TIPS FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
(pre-digital)
1)
Use ASA 64 film for colour slides or prints.
2)
For pictographs, try for a slightly overcast
day: one that is bright, but not sunny. Sun tends to produce a glare on the
rock face and too much shade produces pictures that are too dark with unnatural
purplish tints in the pigment.
3)
“Bracket” the f-stop setting on the camera. If
your light metre calls for an f-stop of 8, take shots also at 5.6 and at 11 to
make sure you get a good picture.
4)
For petroglyphs, visit the sites either early in
the morning or late in the afternoon to get slanted sunlight on the rock slope
that creates deep shadows in the figures and makes them visible. Overhead sun blots out the figures. Page 11
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FOR MORE INFORMATION
The Canadian Rock Art Research Associates
(CRARA), founded by the late Selwyn Dewdney, is a group of amateur researchers
and professional archaeologists dedicated to the preservation of Canada’s
Indian rock paintings and carvings and to the dissemination of information on
the subject.
Department of Anthropology and Archaeology
University of Saskatchewan,
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
S7N 0W0
The Regional Archaeologist’s Office,
Northwestern Region, Historical Planning
and Research Branch, Ontario Ministry of Culture and Recreation, has recorded
many of the rock art sites of the region
207 First Street South
Box 2880
Kenora, Ontario
P9N 3K8
FOR FURTHER READING
Dewdney, Selwyn, Indian Rock Paintings of
the Great Lakes. University of Toronto
Press
Dewdney, Selwyn. Sacred Scrolls of the
Southern Ojibway. University of Toronto
Press.
Studies in West Patricia Archaeology Nos. 1
and 2. Edited by C.S. Paddy Reid.
Toronto: Historical Planning and Research Branch, Ontario Ministry of Culture
and Recreation. (Archaeology Research Report series.)
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HERITAGE CONSERVATION
Archaeological sites are fragile heritage
resources containing society’s only source of information about most of its
past. Broken bits of pottery and
arrowheads are more than interesting curios – they are important fragments of scientific evidence. Urban development, highway construction, and
thoughtless artifact collectors are destroying this evidence at an alarming
rate.
It is the responsibility of the Historical
Planning and Research Branch, Ontario Ministry of Culture and Recreation, to
identify and preserve archaeological and historical resources. This aim can be achieved only with the help
and support of all citizens of the Province. For further information please
contact the Regional Archaeologist in your area.
