Comprehensive account of the petroglyphs of the northwest coastal regions, illustrated by reproduction of rubbings.

What is a petroglyph? Who made them and why? What is rock rubbing? How is it made? In her book, Guide to Indigenous Rock Carvings, Beth Hill examines these questions. She gives a fascinating introduction to the subject of First Peoples Petroglyphs of the Northwest Coastal Region - BC, Washington, Oregon and Alaska. Beth Hill and her husband Ray have traveled the coast for close to 20 years, recording the known sites, and discovering others. Out of this came Indian Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest, with over 1,000 photos and illustrations. A truly comprehensive study.

Description and location of petroglyphs along the Alaska, B.C., Washington State and Oregon coastline.

From the river valleys of interior British Columbia south to the hills of northern Oregon and east to the continental divide in western Montana, hundreds of cliffs and boulders display carved and painted designs created by ancient artists who inhabited this area, the Columbia Plateau, as long as seven thousand years ago. Expressing a vital social and spiritual dimension in the lives of these hunter-gathers, rock art captivates us with its evocative power and mystery. At once an irreplaceable yet fragile cultural resource, it documents Native histories, customs, and visions through thousands of years. This valuable reference and guidebook addresses basic questions of what petroglyphs and pictographs are, how they were produced, and how archaeologists classify and date them. James Keyser identifies five regions on the Columbia Plateau, each with its own variant of the rock art style identifiable as belonging exclusively to the region. He describes for each region the setting and scope of the rock art along with its design characteristics and possible meaning. Through line drawings, photographs, and detailed maps he provides a guide to the sites where rock art can be viewed. In western Montana, rock art motifs express the ritualistic seeking of a spirit helper from the natural world. In interior British Columbia, rayed arcs above the heads of human figures demonstrate possession of a guardian spirit. Twin figures on the central Columbia Plateau reveal another belief--the special power of twins--and hunting scenes celebrate success of the chase. The grimacing evocative face of Tsagiglalal, in lower Columbia pictographs, testifies to the Plateau Indians’ “death cult” response to the European diseases that decimated their villages between 1700 and 1840. On the southeastern Plateau, images of horse-back riders mark the adoption, after 1700 of the equestrian and cultural habits of the northwestern Great Plains Indians. Despite geographic differences in emphasis, similarities in design and technique link the drawings of all five regions. Human figures, animals depicting numerous species on the Plateau, geometric motifs, mysterious beings, and tally marks, whether painted or carved, appear throughout the Columbia Plateau.

The result of twenty years of searching out and recording ancient designs on rocks in Oregon and Washington, Pictographs and Petroglyphs of the Oregon Country is now in a convenient, one-volume edition. The authors, Malcolm and Louise Loring, began their monumental task in the early 1960s as members of the Oregon Archaeological Society committee dedicated to surveying and recording rock art. Soon finding themselves a committee of two, they soldiered on with the monumental task of cataloging and illustrating rock art of the region. After Malcolm retired from the US Forest Service in 1963, he and Louise began a full-time effort to record the sites. For many of these sites, this volume is the only record. Part I describes sites in Washington along the Columbia River and sites in northern and central Oregon. Part II contains sites in southern Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada.

In 1995, Peter Johnson went looking for a rare set of petroglyphs located on the outer coast of Vancouver Island near an abandoned whaling village. Encouraged by archival research that yielded court records, 90-year-old correspondence and a tantalizing 1926 newspaper article, Peter sought to tie these glyphs to the 1869 wreck of the trading barque John Bright and the bizarre colonial trial that followed. He found more questions than answers. Why, for example, were two Nuu-chah-nulth men so readily hung from a gallows erected in front of their village at Hesquiat? And how did this event relate to the rock carvings that Peter knew existed in a cove many miles south, along the life-saving West Coast Trail by the Graveyard of the Pacific? This story explores the significance of particular petroglyphs, colonial injustice and the European trading mentality on the west coast at the time of contact. Peter interweaves a personal journal with historical narrative in order to produce a lively account of the relationship between our coastal history and a little-known Aboriginal art form.