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A shout broke over the valley and the rocks about us seemed suddenly to grow men, as if every pictograph of the old stone age had become a sentient thing, a being with a Mexican dress, and the soul of a devil.
Among these pictographs many familiar forms are recognizable, among them being the crane or blue heron, bears' and badgers' paws, turtles, snakes, antelopes, earth symbols, spirals, and meanders. Among these many totems there was an unusual pictograph in the form of the figure 8, above which was a bear's paw accompanied by a human figure so common in southwestern rock etchings.
The modifications in the figure of the bird shown in the last mentioned pictograph, and the highly conventionalized forms which the wings and other parts assume, give me confidence to venture an interpretation of a strange figure shown in plate CXLI, a. This picture I regard as a representation of a bird, and I do so for the following resemblances to figures already studied.
Thereat the fourth and last Tootooch took wing and fled to distant heights, where he has ever since remained. This is the story of the Thunder Birds. The Killer Whale or Ka-Kow-in has a large dorsal fin shown in a conventional manner in the pictograph between the Thunder Bird and the face of the Indian girl, sister to Shewish.
Flo did faint, once or twice, during our first engagement with the Pictograph Company; but we find our present employers more considerate, and we have gained more importance than we had in the beginning." "It is dreadfully confining, though," remarked Florence, with a sigh. "Our hours are worse than those of shopgirls, for the early morning sun is the best part of the day for our work.
On either side of what might be regarded as a body we find, at the anterior end, two curved appendages which so closely resemble similarly placed bodies in the pictograph last discussed that they are regarded as representations of wings. These extensions at the posterior end of the body are readily comparable with prolongations in that part on which we have already commented.
There is, however, one fragment of a food bowl which is adorned with a pictograph so realistic and so true to modern legends of a harpy that I have not hesitated to affix to it the name current in modern Tusayan folklore. This fragment is shown in figure 275. According to modern folklore there once lived in the sky a winged being called Kwataka, or Man-eagle, who sorely troubled the ancients.
The Verde pictographs can not be distinguished, so far as designs are concerned, from many found elsewhere in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. An instructive pictograph, different from any which I have elsewhere seen, was discovered on the upturned side of a bowlder not far from Hance's ranch, near the road from Camp Verde to the cavate dwellings.
Above the wolf is a killer whale surmounted by a second picture of the Thunder Bird, and in the left top corner of the pictograph is seen the face of a young klootsmah or Indian girl. How strangely are her features pictured. With upturned hands she gazes in a blank unvarying stare. She holds the key to this old tale which the great scroll perpetuates.
All through this Painted Desert you are just on the other side of a veil from the Land of True Romance; but you'll not lift that veil, believe me, with a patronizing Eastern question. You'll find your way in, if you know how; and if you don't know how, no man can teach you. And at Adamana, don't forget to see the pictograph rocks.
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