Rock Art, Scent Mark

In fact, interest in these ancient doodles reaches far from academic realms and is one of those things, like Egyptology, that fascinates the larger public. National Geographic, that journal of popular everything, finds its readers so enthralled that the magazine publishes regular reports on new rock art discoveries.

Governments have financed expeditions in search of both more rock art and their meanings. It was Napolean's interest in Egyptian artifiacts that "dug up" the Rosetta Stone, after all, and some individuals have spent major portions of their life's work recording and searching.

North America has not escaped the hunt. And, in Great Lakes country, especially in Ontario, interest has reached a fever pitch. University students trek into the bush every summer to record red ocre paintings which abound in the region, and many non-academic types have adopted the hunt as a hobby.

At Parks Canada's Marathon, Ont., office I met a naturalist with an avid interest in rock art. We talked for hours one afternoon, and that conversation led me to a known but unrecorded site called Les Petits Escrits. More on that later.

The key to all this interest in rock art is the problematic nature of their existance and meaning. Practially all investigators, popular and academic journals have resorted to religious explanations to explain their meanings.

The Lascaux and other French cave paintings are said to be information revealed to cult members during ceremonial "hunts" deep in the bowels of the labyrinths. In describing his rock art finds in Baja, Harry Crosby used the word "ritual" and suggested that paintings atop other paintings might have some special ceremonial significance. Since then, some researchers have theorized that paintings atop of paintings represent a "rekilling" of certain animals depicted and that this must certainly have been part of some kind of ritual.

Selwyn Dewdney, whose decade-long work in Ontario sparked much of the interest there, thought ther was some connection between the rock pictographs (as he called them) and the Mide' Society, a politico-religious cult that flourished in North America, but especially among the Ojibwa-Chippewa around the time of European contact (1500 to 1800).

Both Dewdney and anthropologist Kenneth Kidd of Trent University made this link, because certain of the pictographic symbols also appear in Ojibwa bark scrolls. Such scrolls are known to have been part of the Mide' shaman's kitbag and were apparently used to record both creation myths and ceremonial rules and directions.

Such links obviously exist. The monster Mishupishu, for example, is frequently seen in both rock pictographs and surviving bark scrolls. Mishupishu means something like "great horned underwater lynx" (the Ojibwa didn't know what to call Lake Superior's own version of Nessie).

Kidd wrote in is epilogue to Dewdney's site recording quest: "All the pictures were presumably placed on the rocks for some purpose, the most obvious being to convey a message. If they were intended as messages, some were probably addressed to the attention of other Indians; some to the inhabitants of the spirit world. Any which were not, strictly speaking, messages, may have been memorials of one sort or another, illustrations of myths, or markers of spots of some ritual or other significance."

That covers about everything, but beyond this sort of stdatement, Kidd and others sink into an abyss of detailed confusion about meaning and motivation.

Businessmen, when faced with similar conundrums, often say it is time to "redefine" the problem.

That is what I do here--suggest a new frame of reference that hasn't been tried that can get us beyond references to magic, spirts, myth, mysticism, ritual and religion.

I suggest looking at rock art as evidence of human behavior in a biological sense. Instead of the fruitless search for a Great Lakes Rosetta Stone, why not attempt to figure out the "adaptive" significance on a Darwinian sense. What is their survival value, and what were the motiviations of the artists? I call it the Graffiti Hypothesis.

Agawa Rock

Of the hundreds of known Ontario sites, Agawa Rock is the most well-known and by far the most dramatic. Today, a large sign marks its location off Highway 17 on the northeast shore of Lake Superior. Special visitor's pamphlets are provided by the provincial government as an aide to tourist, and improved trails with wooden stairs have been built to accomodate people making a land approach to the site.

It is very rough terrain, complete with deep crevasses and shear rock faces common along a geologic fault. The trails are an engineering feat that emphasizes the difficulty of approaching Agawa Rock by land. Ancient approaches were made by water, and it is obvious at least some were painted from a canoe bobbing in Lake Superior, because they are impossible to reach by foot.

There are, or were, 37 pictographs on Agawa Rock. Some are considered to belong to a set or sets and others stand alone and were clearly rendered by different artists.

The Agawa site is one of the few with an ethnohistoric explanation. Henry Schoolcraft, the Indian agent and ethnographer who lived at Sault Ste. Marie in the early 19th Century, got the story from an Ojibwa shaman named Chingwauk.

He gave Schoolcraft two bark scrolls upon which he had scribed figures he had seen at Agawa Rock, about 170 miles to the north of the Soo. Chingwauk claimed these figures were rendered by another Ojibwa shaman, Myeegun.

According to the story, Myeegun led a war party across dreaded Lake Superior from Keweenaw Peninsula on the south shore to a battle at Agawa Bay. Many of the paintings are said to be an account of the crossing and ensuing battle.

Other figures at the site are thought to be representative of clan symbols and religious symbols associated with Ojibwa vision quests.

The official Canadian government hand-out says: "For the Algonkians, the clan symbol was an important aspect of one's identity, and persons of different tribes who shared a class sign might feel greater loyalty to each other than to their fellow tribesmen or even family members." Furthermore, visitor pamplet notes that "the Agawa symbols are in many cases then, probably indicative" of vision quests for "manitou personal".

There is no evidence to support either claim, although both statements fit in well with contemporary beliefs and Schoolcraft's report.

Schoolcraft reported in 1851 that native rock figures were usually painted in hard-to-reach spots on the faces of perpendicular cliffs. He believed their purpose was "to produce a feeling of surprise or mystery."

Dewdney, whose passing is now commemorated by a bronze plaque set in granite next to Agawa Rock, believed the figures were demonstrations of native thought and were "baffling to early traders and missionaries" who were "incapable of understanding the native style of thinking: subtle, indirect, and highly allegorical, the more so when the concept was a focus of fear..."

None of these proposed exclamations get close to meaning and offer only generalizations about motivation of the artists. Even more telling is that none of the sociological explanations offered to date tie all the various painting themes together in any kind of consistent hypothesis.

Take a look at the Agawa paintings. Among them is a man on a horse. This figure sticks out from the others--canoes, turtles, fish, serpents, birds, Mishupishu (the great "horned" lynx of the lake) and other items from daily Ojibwa life. Besides providing arough dating clue (the first horses didn't appear at the Soo until after 1600), the horse must be a strong referent to the painter. How many Ojibwa could have seen or ridden a horse at the time? An Ojibwa man who saw or even rode a horse would have gained considerable fame among his fellows.

Note that the horse appears with the set that is supposed to mean Myeegun crossed the lake in four days. A turtle, also in this group, could refer to landfall, homage to the painter's personal manitou, or a clan. It could also be just a painting of a turtle.

Les Petits Ecrits

The next closest known set of paintings is 150 miles to the north and west along Superior's isolated north shore, near the town of Terrace Bay, Ontario. It bears little resemblance to Agawa Rock. Although unrecorded in academic or popular litrature, Dewdney found an historical reference and sought the site without success. The site is known as Les Petits Ecrits (the small writings).

He probably didn't ask local people about the site, because I found it was well-known by Terrace Bay residents. A Ministry of Natural Resources employee took me there in the summer of 1980.

This small set of pictographs is painted in red ocre, but they are on two faces of an overhanging granite boulder at the back of a small bay, surrounded by a gravel beach.

One face sports a large Maymaygawish (little horned man that lives in the rocks) and an accompanying arrow. The other face, high in the corner of the overhang on a tiny flat space, includes three clear figures and one or two faded ones. Included are a circle with a dot in the middle, a small Maymaygawish and two anthropomorphic figures.

Maymaygawish appear on many rock faces in the Canadian Shield country, as do circles and anthropomorphic figures. Mishupishu is another common figure among the pictographs elswhere but is not depicted at Les Petits Ecrits.

Viewed as graffiti behavior, the individual symbols are less important than their combinations. At Agawa Rock, the horse with rider was probably a clear identification of the painter. The four circles there could easily respresent Myeegun's fourth degree membership in the Mide'.

Perhaps he did cross the lake in four days, but considering the mystical nature of the number four in Ojibwa mythology, he may hve put down four "suns" no matter how long it took to make the crossing. The turtle, if it is a turtle, could be an ally or a clan symbol. In any case, it would be easy enough to read this set as a signature of a fourth degree shaman who had seen or ridden a horse, or maybe even owned one. As already mentioned, horses were not seen at The Soo until after 1600. Anyone who had seen, riden or owned a horse among the Ojibwa would have been known for it.

At Les Petits Ecrits, the diversity of symbols is less marked, and only one circle is used. The painter also used mystical references and abstract ones. As graffiti, the smallest set could again be a signature. In this case, the signator would have been a first degree Mide' initiate (one circle) who had mystical knowledge of the Maymaygawish, and, perhaps, Nanebosho, the Great Hare.

Pictographic interpretations aside, there is stronger evidence of the graffiti-like nature of the pictographs.

The Doodling Traveller

The overhanging boulder at Les Petits Ecrits offers a natural shelter. Empty cans, remains of a fire and even a pair of discarded underwear were present under the boulder's shelf when I visited.

These artifacts could have been left as an offering to the spirits, an Ojibwa behavior that is as strong as it ever was; or they could have been left by some weather-bound canoeist, trapper or hunter who laid up at the site.

No matter. It was the litter that forced me to bigin thinking of the pictographs as graffiti.

Because even though Schoolcraft reported that pictographs were only found in out-of-the-way places, my surveys found that just the opposite is the case.

It was true that Agawa Rock was out-of-the-way for a white man at The Soo, but for people who moved along the shore and around the lake on a regular basis, the shoreline would have been a familiar roadside. Les Petits Ecrits would have been and still is a handy spot for a weatherbound traveller. Agawa Rock would have been one of the most spectacular billboards on the route.

These days the older water routes have been abandoned by all but tourist canoeists. The highways are now jammed with travellers. And, it is hard not to notice the modern "rock art" that colors the roadside cliffs and boulders along Highway 17. Graffiti is ubiquitous, especially where there are dramatic granite billboards to use for canvas.

In the days of the red ocre painters, the major trade routes were along Superior's shores and through the Rainy River lake country to the west. Ojibwa and Sioux are known to have contended over the territory, and the heaviest concentration of pictographs (native graffiti) is in the much-travelled region. What is now the Quetico-Superior boundary waters area was a major canoe route 600 years ago.

Contemporary Ojibwa people living in this country are enthusiastic rock painters to this day. One concentration at the Heron Bay reserve matches Agawa Rock in numbers of symbols and confusion of meaning.

Contemporary graffiti at Heron Bay includes initials, place names, political statements ("Get High" or "Fuck You"), religious ones ("Jesus Saves"), calls for native unity, smiling faces and countless undecipherable signs. Much of this modern graffiti is meant to be cryptic--the graffitist wants his or her intellect, hometown, political interests and so forth known to passers-by, but seldom leaves his or her full name. However, the people who live at Heron Bay can tell you who wrote what on their rock wall just by what they did paint. So, in a way, simply recording what is "on their heart" is identification in itself.

As an anthropologist with a strong interest in animal behavior, this behavior looks very much like mammalian scent marking, although it has a peculiar an appropriate human twist.

First, the graffitist seems to want his or her passing known, while, at the same time maintaining anonymity, at least from police. In the case of organized urban gangs, symbols represent each gang much as the Agawa Rock animal figures are supposed to represent clans. Individual gang members are known by some cyptic nickname which is often stylized into a sort of "logo" or trademark that other gang members recognize but the outside world doesn't.

Seen in this way, graffiti behavior is highly individualized on one level but also reinforces gang or clan bonds by creating and sharing exclusive symbols understood fully by the group alone.

Graffiti and pictographs are both statements by individuals who are laying some kind of claim to the spot painted. Graffiti behavior is more intense where population densities are high, or at boundaries where group or individual claims overlap.

This is exactly what one sees in scent-marking mammals. Where one coyote makes a scent mark, every coyote that passes there will also mark the spot.

In contemporary society we mark our territories with symbols in the form of deeds and property lines. We are plainly symbolic scent markers, and there is no reason to suppose the Ojibwa shamans, or all people everywhere, are any different.

If we are to believe Ruth Landes' account of Ojibwa religion, shamans were incredibly egotistic and individualistic persons. They would have been eager to mark their territories.

Finally, viewing pictographs as graffiti behavior or symbolic scent marking opens new kinds of inquiry and completes our historical knowledge of graffiti.

Graffiti can be traced at least as far back as Pompeii where citizens adorned their alleyways with sexually explicit drawings, names, dates and all sorts of other information. Soldiers of every army since written language began have left symbolic marks along their routes.

But our historical record of graffiti only goes back to the point where written languages appear. Drawings in caves and on rock faces around the world, done by ancient peoples are classified as "pictographs" or "petroglyphs" or cave "paintings" and rock "art."

However, rock art fits the graffiti bill like a glove, and to anthropologists, it clearly demonstrates behavioral continuity through time.

Such continuity is easily seen in North American rock graffiti (sic, art). At Picture Lake near Thunder Bay, Ont., someone, perhaps an early trapper, wrote "Simo" on the rock face as part of a set of native pictographs that includes canoes, men, serpents and hand prints. In Utah, native artists have chipped historical events on among older symbols. There are bearded men with guns riding a train, as well as a commemoration of the first moon landing.

What all this suggests to me is the value of studying contemporary graffiti. It ought to be possible, for example, to record contemporary Ojibwa thoughts on artistic motivation through observation and interview. Any information derived could be applied to similar behavior in white society, or at least lead us to a new understanding of our biocultural nature, because graffiti is one of those nexuses of individual and group behavior.

Finally, there has to be a conection between grafffiti/scent marking and development of written language. North American native people may have been on the verge of developing their own written languages, but that's another story for another time.

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