 | On an unknown date within the past several hundred years or so, a Native American artist painted this image of a moose on a rock wall in Quetico Park on Lac La Croix, a large lake between the United States and Canada. The paint was made from red ochre, a soft oxide of iron. This style of aboriginal painting is known as a pictograph, or native pictograph. Prehistoric rock art in North Americda is generally categorized as pictorgaphs (paintings using red ochre and white, yellow and black dyes), and petroglyphs (carvings in stone).
This image is located low on the stone wall, just above deep water, which is visible in the lower part of the photo. Adjacent images, including handprints and symbols and stylized humans and animals, are also clustered above the water line, suggesting that these images may have been painted from a canoe or boat of some kind. They have survived freezing and thawing, snow and rain, the splashing of waves, the direct rays of the sun, wind and dust, and probably the grinding of ice. Faint red smudges just to the left of the moose suggest another, perhaps older, image.
There is speculation as to what the artists had in mind when painting pictographs. The images may convey stories or astronomical events or have any number of possible meanings. Some people consider pictorgaphs to be sacred images. Please treat pictographs and petroglyphs with respect. To help preserve the images, please do not touch pictographs, as oils in the skin are destructive to the paint.
This photograph was made with a medium format rangefinder film camera, taken from a free-floating canoe.
|