The Jeffers Petroglyphs

Kevin L. Callahan

Introduction

The Jeffers Petroglyphs site in southwestern Minnesota has over 2000 petroglyphs (rock carvings) some of which may be up to 5000 years old. This website answers the most frequently asked questions about this important site in southwestern Minnesota and provides information on common motifs and symbols found at the site.

About the website author:
Kevin L. Callahan has a Masters Degree in Anthropology from the University of Minnesota in rock art studies. He is a member of the Upper Midwest Rock Art Research Association (UMRARA) and was President of the Minnesota Society of the Archaeological Institute of America from 1997-1999.

Part I. Jeffers At a Glance

A) 27 Frequently asked questions about the Jeffers Petroglyphs site

1. What are the Jeffers Petroglyphs?
2. What does "Jeffers" refer to?
3. Where are the Jeffers Petroglyphs?
4. When is the best time to see the petroglyphs?
5. How strenuous are the trails?
6. What is a petroglyph and how is it different from a pictograph or rock art?
7. What pigments were used to make pictographs?
8. How were the petroglyphs made?
9. How many petroglyphs are carved at the Jeffers site?
10. How old are the petroglyphs?
11. What do the rock carvings depict?
12. Which petroglyphs are thought to be the oldest and which are probably more recent?
13. What is an atlatl?
14. What are the major divisions in Minnesota prehistory?
15. What was the Archaic period like in Minnesota?
16. Who made the petroglyphs?
17. Who lived in Minnesota at the time of European contact and is there any link to the
people of the Late Archaic who carved the atlatls and tanged projectile points?
18. What kind of rock are the petroglyphs carved into?
19. How long can a groove or scratch on Red Sioux Quartzite bedrock last without
weathering away?
20. What brought people to this area?
21. Where does the Little Cottonwood River go?
22. Was there something special about the Jeffers site’s location that might have inspired the
first people to carve rock here as opposed to somewhere else?
23. Was Jeffers a vision quest site?
24. Are there other petroglyphs and archaeological sites outside the property owned by the
Minnesota Historical Society?
25. Are there other petroglyphs in Minnesota?
26. What does contemporary Dakota and Ojibwe spirituality focus on?
27. Is the Jeffers Petroglyphs a spiritual place for some contemporary Native Americans

B) 25 Common Motifs and Symbols at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site

1. Bison with darts in their back
2. Atlatls
3. Projectile Points
4. Bow and Arrow
5. Upraised Arm Figures
6. Medicine Bags
7. Horned Serpent
8. Thunderbirds
9. Horned Headdress
10. Medicine Men or Shamen
11. Dogs
12. Turtles and "Totems"
13. "Rabbit Eared" Humans
14. Circled or Ring Feet
15. Heartlines
16. Bison Hoofprints
17. Elongated Bodies
18. Extra Fingers
19. Extra Toes
20. Hands
21. Geometric Forms
22. Half Human / Half Animal Figures
23. Humans with spears or arrows in the torso
24. Big Horn Sheep
25. Lunate (moon shaped) Forms

Part II. Jeffers In Depth

A) Atlatls and Projectile Points in Ancient Minnesota

B) Lunate Forms at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site

C) Why Study Rock Art?

D) "The Thunderbird amongst the Algonquians," by A.F. Chamberlain

Part III. Useful Rock Art Reference Materials

A) Rock Art Glossary

B) Rock Art Websites

C) Rock Art Bibliography and Suggested Reading List

Part I. Jeffers At a Glance:
A) 27 Frequently asked questions about the Jeffers Petroglyphs site

1. What are the Jeffers Petroglyphs?
The Jeffers Petroglyphs State Historic Site is the location of the oldest and largest surviving concentration of Native American rock art in the Upper Midwest. The Jeffers site is owned by the Minnesota Historical Society and there is a visitors center at the site which is open to the public. Visitor’s center summer hours are 10 am to 6 pm Monday-Saturday,12 pm to 6 pm Sunday. During May and September hours change to 10 am to 5 pm Friday and Saturday, 12 pm to 5 pm Sunday. Fees are: Adult $3, Senior $2, Child $1.50, Household $6, Group $1.50 per person. The Minnesota Office of Tourism has current information about the site, other places to visit in the area, and trip planning information. The Minnesota Office of Tourism’s Twin Cities metro number is (651) 296-5029. Their toll free number outside the metro area is 1(800) 657-3700. The new air conditioned visitor’s center has exhibits, hands-on activities, a multi-media theater, interpreters, and a book store and gift shop. Just outside the visitor’s center are picnic tables, a "pop" machine, and a supervised atlatl range with a realistic life-sized bison target. Both the site and its restrooms are wheel chair accessible. Wheel chairs and an electric golf cart driven by an interpreter are available for visitors with mobility or health problems.

2. What does "Jeffers" refer to?
The Minnesota Historical Society purchased the property from the Warren Jeffers family in November of 1966 (Roefer and Bakker 1969:1). The site is located 5 miles east and 3 miles north of the town of Jeffers on the northeastern edge of what once was a vast area of flat tall grass prairie. The Jeffers Petroglyphs site has 33 acres of native prairie and 47 acres of recreated prairie. Periodically sections of this prairie are burned to spur new plant growth and to keep the prairie ecosystem healthy.

3. Where are the Jeffers Petroglyphs?
The petroglyphs are located in southwestern Minnesota in Cottonwood County. The site is about a three hour and fifteen minute drive southwest from Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is about an hour’s drive east from Pipestone National Monument. From Interstate 90 (which crosses the southern part of the state from east to west) travel north on Highway 71 to Cottonwood County Road 10. This well marked site is three miles east on Cottonwood County Road 10, then one mile south on County Road 2.. Related regional attractions include Red Rock Falls County Park with a 30-foot waterfall along the Red Sioux Quartzite outcropping, Blue Mounds State Park with a bison herd, and 150 foot quartzite quarry, and Pipestone National Monument where Catlinite located between quartzite layers was (and still is) quarried for making pipes. Other nearby towns include Windom which has a one hour photo shop on its main square and Redwood Falls which has many motels including the Jackpot Junction Casino and Hotel located a few miles east of Redwood Falls.

4. When is the best time to see the petroglyphs?

The best times to view (and photograph) the petroglyphs are just after sunrise or just before sunset because the grazing sunlight highlights the edges and casts shadows. The Jeffers bedrock slopes gently at about 6 degrees. Seeing petroglyphs requires a period of adjustment of your perception and some patience and work but the effort required to learn to see them is well worth it. They seem to "pop out" in the morning and evening. The petroglyphs are shallow, so during the summer midday sun they appear "washed out" by the overhead lighting.
A petroglyph should never be touched directly or chalked because it can impact its future dating. Tracings, rubbings, and plaster casts damage petroglyphs.
Please respect the marker barriers that guide you along the rock surface.

5. How strenuous are the trails?

There are two trails. The trip from the visitor’s center to the main rock face (where most of the petroglyphs are located) is .5 mile (.8 km) along a flat gravel path. It is wheelchair accessible and considered easy by most people. A shaded golf cart is available for visitors with mobility or health problems. A longer .75 mile (1.2 km) grass path goes from the end of the gravel path through the prairie north of the main rockface and returns to the visitor’s center in a large loop. This is not a wheelchair accessible trail and is considered moderate in difficulty by some people. In the summer take normal precautions against sun, heat, insects, cactus, poison ivy, and dehydration. The rock face is often windy and is one of the highest points in the area so please return to the safety of the visitor’s center if lightning approaches. Insects are usually not a noticeable problem except at sunset if there is no wind. Various wildflowers are often in bloom. On the long grass trail be careful not to stumble over nesting birds and their walking chicks which have not yet learned to fly. Please help preserve the fragile prairie by staying on the trails and by not picking the wildflowers and grasses. For your own safety, do not go beyond the rope at the atlatl range.

5. What is a petroglyph and how is it different from a pictograph or rock art?
Rock art is a general term encompassing both carved and painted rock images, symbols, and motifs.
However, "art," as we think of it in a modern sense, may not have been the motivation for the creation of these cultural artifacts. A petroglyph is a rock carving. Rock material is physically removed by pecking or carving. A pictograph is a rock painting. Pigment is applied or added to the rock surface. All of the rock art at the Jeffers site found so far is in the form of petroglyphs or carvings with no pictographs or paintings. It is possible that some of the carvings or petroglyphs were originally painted and the paint has eroded away. There may also be additional petroglyphs or pictographs under the encroaching sod or under the lichen.

6. What pigments were used to make pictographs?
Elsewhere in Minnesota during historic times a red paint called "vermilion" was made and applied to stone by the Dakota and Ojibwe. Vermilion can refer to hematite (red iron oxide) or cinnabar (mercury sulfide). Both can produce a blood red pigment and hematite derives its name from the Greek for "blood red" and is frequently referred to as red ocher (Rapp and Hill 1998:120). Red ocher when ground into a powder for use as a pigment has been known since Paleo-Indian times and when mixed with glue and oil makes a durable paint (Rapp and Hill 1998:120-121). Blood, the bone marrow of deer or bison, animal fats, urine, milk, egg, and vegetable juices may also be used as a binder (Rose 1996:63). During a Canadian excavation several years ago at a boulder covered with petroglyphs, a pictograph was discovered to have been preserved below the surface of the soil where it had been protected from erosion (Buchner 1995).

7. How were the petroglyphs made?
The petroglyphs appear to have been pecked out using a hammerstone and a stone punch. Fire hardened wood, antler, or copper could also have been possible materials for the punch (Lothson 1973:27; Lothson 1976:23). Red Sioux Quartzite is the hardest building material quarried in the United States and there is an active quarry within visual range of the petroglyph site. Quartzite is generally composed of over 96% quartz grains and it is very hard. Quartzite is metamorphosed sandstone. There are two types of quartzite at the Jeffers site (Bowles 1918 202-204; Lothson 1976:6). The pale gray-red stone is softer than the pale pink stone. Thus, there are some areas of the Jeffers site where the rock is slightly softer and easier to work (Lothson 1976:6). These were also where some of the oldest petroglyphs seem to have been made. Quartz or another piece of quartzite seem likely candidates for the rock artists hammerstone and punch. Both ethnographic sources and microscopic examination of petroglyphs made elsewhere in the far west suggest that a stone tool made of quartz may have been knapped or shaped at night. When two pieces of quartz are struck together in the dark, internal flashes of light are created inside the stone and this was considered a way of gaining supernatural power. In one modern Dakota shamanic healing ceremony, the sparks created by the flint from lighters is still identified as the manifestation of spirit helpers at the ceremony (Lewis 1990:42).

8. How many petroglyphs are carved at the Jeffers site?
Gordon Lothson estimated over two thousand carvings at the site (Lothson 1976:1). During a three month period in 1971 a team mapped and recorded as rubbings, scale drawings, and photographs 1,971 carvings (Lothson 1976:3). In 1999 Robert Clouse, Head Archaeologist at the Minnesota Historical Society organized a rock art field school to undertake a resurvey of many of the petroglyphs.

9. How old are the petroglyphs?
The Jeffers Petroglyphs were dated by Gordon Lothson and Jack Steinbring to two possible periods, 1) the Archaic from about 3000 BC to 500 BC "based on the appearance of nearly a hundred carvings of atlatls" and carvings of copper age tanged projectile points, and 2) 900 AD to 1750 AD indicated by motifs and glyphs used by early historic peoples of the northern plains (Lothson 1976:1). Tanged projectile points were also carved in stone earlier in the Archaic period so some elements may be even earlier. The carvings also span recent times as indicated by graffiti from this century when the site was known as "Kissing Rock." The bedrock outcrop has been tested but is not amenable to current absolute dating techniques (Whitley 1996:personal communication).

10. What do the rock carvings depict?
The carvings appear to depict such things as bison (sometimes with spears in them), humans with horned headdresses, atlatls (spearthrowers), horned turtles, horned serpents, thunderbirds, elongated stick figures, hands and feet (sometimes with 6 digits), people with spears or darts through them, lunates (quarter moon shapes), big horn sheep, projectile points, lances, dots, medicine bags, beavers, wolves or dogs, bison hoofprints, geometric figures, lizards, dragon flies, and many more figures (Lothson 1976:9-28). Bison are the most frequently seen four-legged animal. The presence of carvings illustrating several of the "bodily transformations" medical test subjects commonly report experiencing at the deepest level of altered states of consciousness such as polymelia (growing an extra finger or toe), attenuation (a sensation of elongation of the torso), lycanthropy (transformation from a human to an animal), and so forth, suggest that some of the carvings may have been records of Native American dreams and vision quests.

11. Which petroglyphs are thought to be the oldest and which are probably more recent?
The atlatls or spearthrowers and "the carvings of projectile points which appear to belong to the large-point tradition dating to the Late Archaic period" were thought by Gordon Lothson to be two of the oldest petroglyph subjects at the site and the thunderbirds, stick figures with horned headdresses, horned turtles, dragonfly symbols, and some common geometric designs were thought to be similar to symbols found on historic Dakota pipe bags, teepee walls and rawhide shields (Lothson 1976:3). Depictions of mythological spirit beings however, may be quite old. Jack Steinbring found a thunderbird petroglyph underneath dateable material at the Mud Portage site near the northern Minnesota border that was about 2000 years old (Steinbring and Simpson 1986).

12. What is an atlatl?
The simplest atlatl is a two foot stick with one end shaped like a crochet hook which fits into the end of a spear or dart. They are used in an overhand throwing motion much like throwing a baseball and enhance the distance and force of the thrown spear. With a little practice many people can regularly hit a 4 inch square target at 90 feet. Atlatls or spearthrowers are lethal weapons. They were used to kill ancient bison and mammoth and were the weapon most feared by Spanish Conquistadors in South America because they were armor piercing. Atlatls were in use in historic times and are still used by the Inuit and Australian aborigines. In this area they are thought to have been replaced by the bow and arrow anywhere from 500 BC to 500 AD. They will make the thrower’s arm effectively 2 ½ times stronger meaning the distance and force of a thrown spear will be 2 ½ times greater than without it. Some atlatls had finger loops and distinctive "bannerstones" or "atlatl weights" which came in different shapes. There are many theories about bannerstones which include their possible function as a "silencer," akin to a bowstring silencer, as a device to increase the flex and power of the atlatl, as a hook to ward off incoming spears and dispatch wounded game, as a distinctive identifying symbol of a group, as a "charmstone," etc.

13. What are the major divisions in Minnesota prehistory?
Minnesota prehistory is divided into five main periods: 1) The Paleoindians: "The Mammoth and Giant Bison Hunters" 9,200 - 6000 B.C.; 2) The Archaic Period: "The Copper Tools and Ground Stone Tool makers" 6000 B.C. -800 B.C. 3) The Woodland Period: "The Mound Builders and Pottery makers" 800 B.C. - A.D.1700; 4) The Mississippian Period: "The Farmers" A.D. 900; 5) The Historic Period: Post European contact, when French, Spanish, and English written sources became available (French explorers like Father Louis Hennepin reached Minnesota during the 17th century). Native Americans probably always had a form of pictographic written communication and also have a tradition of oral history so the term "prehistory" is somewhat misleading. As used here, the term "prehistoric" refers to the period before the first European writings about Minnesota.

14. What was the Archaic period like in Minnesota?
During the Archaic period both the food and the tools changed from the previous Paleoindian mammoth and giant bison hunter lifestyle. Copper tools and ground and pecked stone tools were made in addition to the previous chipped stone tools. Small animals as well as large ones were hunted since the Ice Age mammoths and giant bison had become extinct. Chipped projectile points were now stemmed and notched and were not as well made as before. The Itasca Bison Kill site (dated 7000-5000 BC) in Itasca State Park at the headwaters of the Mississippi is a good example of an early Archaic site. Later in the Archaic period copper from the Lake Superior area and glacial deposits were used to make very distinctive large and small projectile points, lunate shaped objects (like the quarter moon), and other artifacts which have been found in excavations. This is sometimes described as the "Old Copper" age. By 7000 BC the glaciers were gone and Minnesota was covered by tundra, forest and prairie. By 5000 BC Minnesota was hotter and drier than today and the prairie was 75 miles northeast of where it is today. Bison remained a major source of food on the prairie for the mobile Archaic hunter-gather bands who hunted on foot with atlatls. About 2000 years ago the climate in Minnesota cooled and stabilized similar to the way it is today.

15. Who made the petroglyphs?
Minnesota has had several Native American groups move through the area in historic times (the period of written history) and individuals and small groups traveled around the landscape as well as tribal groups. The Pipestone Quarry in southwestern Minnesota had visitors come from around North America to quarry the pipestone there. The Iowa, Oto, Oujalespuiton and Yankton Dakota were early historic Native Americans to reside in the area (Lothson and Eubank 1974:1; Snow 1960:37; Winchell 1911:63-76). The Cheyenne were also one of the earliest tribes in southwestern Minnesota during the historic period. Carver reported that he saw "Schians" in a great camp that he visited on the Minnesota River in 1766, and the "Schianese" lived farther west (Grinnell 1962:16). Dakota traditions indicate the Cheyenne had lived on the Minnesota River, but moved west (Grinnell 1962:16).

16. Who lived in Minnesota at the time of European contact and is there any link to the people of the Late Archaic who carved the atlatls and tanged projectile points?
It is clear that in Minnesota, rock art images span not only different time periods but also involve different cultural groups (Lothson 1976:29-31). We know that pitched battles, cultural disjunctions, and migrations of different cultural groups have all occurred during historic times (Winchell 1911:580-584). The Ojibwa, for example, were moving into northern Minnesota at the time of contact with the French. (Snow 1960:5).
At the time of contact, northeast Minnesota was occupied by the Cree, northwest Minnesota was occupied by the Assiniboin, the Lower Red River was occupied by the Cheyenne, east central Minnesota was occupied by the Santee or Eastern Dakota, Leech Lake to the Minnesota River was occupied by the Yankton Dakota, Central and Western Minnesota was occupied by the Dakota and southern Minnesota was occupied by the Iowa and Oto. With the demonstrated amount of movement of people through Minnesota during the historic period it is difficult for most archaeologists to say who the Archaic people of Minnesota’s descendents might have been.

17. What kind of rock are the petroglyphs carved into?
The Red Rock Ridge is part of a massive and deep formation of Red Sioux Quartzite that runs for 300 kilometers from New Ulm, Minnesota to Mitchell, South Dakota. The pipestone at the the Pipestone National Monument used for carving pipes is a kind of soft mudstone called catlinite within the layers of harder Red Sioux Quartzite (Ojakangas and Weber 1984:2-3). In 1979-1980 three diamond core drills were used to penetrate the 480 meter thick solid quartzite bedrock in Cottonwood County (Southwick and Mossler 1984:17). The bedrock is thought to be 1.63 to 1.76 billion years old and the quartzite is the result of metamorphic processes (heat and pressure) applied to sedimentary sandstone. Pipestone is metamorphosed shale or clay. The quartzite formation is Proterozoic rock overlain by Cretaceous strata and Pleistocene glacial materials (Ojankangas and Weber 1984:1). During the Proterozoic shallow seas ebbed and flowed over this region depositing sand and some thin layers of mud.

18. How long can a groove or scratch on Red Sioux Quartzite bedrock last without weathering away?
There are many shallow parallel glacial striations still visible at the Jeffers site that are from the last part of the Wisconsin glaciation 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. These naturally created grooves were caused by rocks dragged across the bedrock underneath massive moving ice sheets possibly a mile thick (Lothson 1976:6). A few miles south of the Jeffers site is a terminal moraine (Lothson 1976:6). "Moraines of this type are associated with ice stagnation and seasonal advance and retreat of the ice front, which could account for the shallow, multidirectional striations on the quartzite outcrop" (Lothson 1976:6).

19. What brought people to this area?
The Jeffers petroglyphs are close to the spot where the Little Cottonwood River crosses Red Rock Ridge. The river is only a couple hundred yards from the site. Red Rock Ridge extends for 23 miles and rises some 100 to 300 feet (Lothson 1976:6). The long ridge of Red Sioux Quartzite runs nearly east and west (Snow 1960:1). It is the highest spot in the area with a good view of the surrounding landscape. On the geological survey map the Jeffers site is the largest Red Sioux Quartzite exposed outcropping (Southwick 1984: Plate 1). This generally lunate (quarter moon) shaped or banana shaped bedrock outcropping is about 200 yards long and fifty yards wide (Snow 1960:1). Two game trails follow the Little Cottonwood River. There is one game trail on each side of the river and in a hot summer plains environment water and shade are very important to both animals and humans. Firewood from the trees along the water and protection from wind is also important in winter. The Jeffers site is a high point in the landscape, a natural resting place out of the prairie grass and insects, and the rock stays warm at night when the air temperature drops. For travelers following the game trail along the river, the approach to the site would have been from the east rather than from the direction of today’s visitor’s center. Many of the oldest petroglyphs appear closest to the water. This is also the area of the softest and most easily carved quartzite and may explain the superimposition of glyphs there (Lothson 1976:23). There may also be additional early petroglyphs under the encroaching sod. In Dakota cosmology, Inyan (Rock or the stone-god) was the oldest god, dwells in stones and rocks, and is associated with warfare. Red is an important symbolic color and a red rock would be a visual stimulus in the environment.

20. Where does the Little Cottonwood River go?
The Little Cottonwood River and the Cottonwood River may have been routes for bison and people crossing between the Mississippi watershed and the Missouri River and Des Moines River watersheds. West of the Jeffers site the Rock River in southwestern Minnesota flows into the Big Sioux which flows into the Missouri River at Sioux City, Iowa. The "shortcut" between the Minnesota River and the Des Moines River (both are part of the Mississippi basin) is also through the Jeffers area following the Little Cottonwood River. The Little Cottonwood River flows into the Minnesota River southeast of New Ulm and the Minnesota River flows into the Mississippi River at St. Paul.

21. Was there something special about the Jeffers site’s location that might have inspired the first people to carve rock here as opposed to somewhere else?
The bedrock at Jeffers has many interesting features whose origins may have appeared very mysterious to early human visitors. For example, the bedrock has naturally occurring preserved ripple marks (like those seen on beaches) which geologists surmise resulted from water action along braided rivers millions of years ago (Ojakangas and Weber 1984:13). The bedrock also has many scratches or grooves from rocks moved by glacial ice sheets. In historic times the Dakota were aware of the mysterious creation of tracks resulting from the movement of stones within their landscape, but their explanation was spiritualistic in nature (Callahan 1999). The idea that large glacial ice sheets moved through the Upper Midwest was not something western science discovered until the 1870’s. The Jeffers bedrock also has cracks which are places many cultures view as entrances to the underworld. Once human made rock carvings appeared at the site their presence probably tended to suggest the activity to later visitors.

22. Was Jeffers a vision quest site?
The Jeffers site appears to fit the description of a location which would have been suitable for vision quests. Although not every Native American group undertook vision quests, the Dakota, Cheyenne, and Ojibwe did. The Cheyenne looked for vision quest and sacrifice locations that were not especially dangerous, such as on a hill on the south or west side of a river where they could see over the prairie, or at a point of rocks on the south or west side of a lake (Grinnell 1962:80-81). The Jeffers Petroglyphs site is located on the west side of the Little Cottonwood River on a high point that has a reasonably panoramic view of the prairie in a flat landscape. In Oglala (Lakota or Teton Dakota) religious practice a person might "cry for a vision" under the direction of a sacred person who instructed the person seeking the vision to go to a "sacred place, usually a hill or isolated place . . . and the novice was required to stay there alone, usually for four days, until he received a vision" (Lewis 1990:49; Powers 1982:61). It was vitally important to someone seeking a vision not to forget the vision once it occurred. Pecking an image regarding what was in the vision before falling asleep after an exhausting quest may have been a memory device similar to writing down a dream in the morning so it would not be forgotten. Permanently recording the vision also commemorated and marked the spot for later journeys. Carving one’s dream symbol when visiting an important religious spot also identified that one was there. A traditional Oglala vision quest site such as the "paha wak’an" or sacred hill described by medical anthropologist, Thomas H. Lewis can have "thousands of weathered cloth-bound tobacco offerings and a scattering of rusting knives" and become "a familiar part of our landscape" (Lewis 1990:51).

23. Are there other petroglyphs and archaeological sites outside the property owned by the Minnesota Historical Society?
Yes. There are some petroglyphs on private property in the area. Small archaeological sites and one excavated site have been located in the area but it is not clear if the archaeological sites had any direct connection to the making of the petroglyphs. The Callanan I site (east and on the east terrace of the river), the Callanan II site (about one quarter mile south of that on the west side of the river) and the Bugger site (due south), all found in 1971, are close to the site. They were composed mostly of scatters of material. The Callanan sites had several small side notched projectile points and were "possibly Archaic" (Lothson 1976:5). The Mountain Lake site 12 miles southeast of the Jeffers site had some Archaic materials along with later Woodland and Oneota materials (Lothson 1976:5). Petroglyphs on private property are both well known to their owners and well protected by their owners, their dogs, and their very large bulls.

24. Are there other petroglyphs in Minnesota?
There were petroglyphs at many sites across Minnesota that were recorded during the nineteenth century. Many of these have been destroyed or vandalized. The Pipestone National Monument has some petroglyphs on display inside their visitor center. Unfortunately these were excavated by Edward Bennett, the founder of Pipestone City during the nineteenth century from their original location near the base of the "Three Maidens" boulders by the entrance to the national monument. The Nett Lake site in northern Minnesota is on an island and permission of the local people is needed to visit the site. A painted boulder sacred to the Dakota can also be seen outside the United Methodist Church in Newport, Minnesota.

25. What does contemporary Dakota and Ojibwe spirituality focus on?
In general terms, Dakota and Ojibway spirituality centers around certain concepts, events, and objects. These include the pipe, the naming ceremony, prayer, vision questing and guardian spirits, the medicine man or woman ("shamans"), medicine bags, dream articles and traditional stories regarding the Great Spirit, The Flood, etc. Ritual and spiritual objects include sage, sweetgrass, tobacco, and cedar. Dogs were akin to the sacrifical lambs of early Christianity. There are 4 seasons and, for the Ojibwe, 4 grandfathers (or 4 powers of the universe) sit at the four cardinal directions of North, South, East, and West. The symbolic "four colors of man" are red, yellow, black, and white.

27. Is the Jeffers Petroglyphs a spiritual place for some contemporary Native Americans?
One writer addressed this as follows: "Jeffers Petroglyphs is a special place, not just for visitors but also for Native Americans. To the contemporary Native Americans who reside in and around the state it is a very spiritual place. It is a place where grandmother earth speaks of the past, present and future. Modern day descendants of those who left these markings continue the belief that this is indeed a place of worship. A prayer place no different than that of a church, synagogue, or mosque. Native Americans continue to hold this place as sacred and continue to conduct religious prayers and ceremonies as their ancestors did thousands of years ago. Please respect this sacred place in the same manner that you respect your own place of worship."

B) 25 Common Motifs and Symbols at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site

What do ethnographic sources, archaeologically excavated artifacts, and historic period photographs tell us about the symbols and motifs that appear carved at the Jeffers site? This section on common motifs and symbols gives information by various authors regarding the objects, symbolism, and meaning of many of the common motifs and symbols found at the Jeffers site.

1. Bison with darts in their back
2. Atlatls
3. Projectile Points
4. Bow and Arrow
5. Upraised Arm Figures
6. Medicine Bags
7. Horned Serpent
8. Thunderbirds
9. Horned Headdress
10. Medicine Men or Shamen
11. Dogs
12. Turtles and "Totems"
13. "Rabbit Eared" Humans
14. Circled or Ring Feet
15. Heartlines
16. Bison Hoofprints
17. Elongated Bodies
18. Extra Fingers
19. Extra Toes
20. Hands
21. Geometric Forms
22. Half Human / Half Animal Figures
23. Humans with spears or arrows in the torso
24. Big Horn Sheep
25. Lunate (moon shaped) Forms

BISON WITH DARTS IN THEIR BACK
Bison are the most frequently depicted four legged animal at the Jeffers site. Many are represented with darts (showing fletching or feathers) sticking from their backs. This is the angle and the point on the animal where a dart thrown into a herd with an atlatl for maximum distance (at a 45 degree angle) might be expected to strike the animal. It is also an effective place to efficiently kill bison. However, these carvings may have been more than simple descriptive representations of a wounded or hunted bison and could have had deeper layers of meaning. Elsewhere in North America, some ethnohistoric sources indicate that rock art motifs that portrayed dead or hunted animals had a religious meaning and symbolized shamen (specialists in contacting the otherworld) who were entering trance or altered states of consciousness (Whitley 1996:22). The reason shamen sometimes portrayed themselves as animals was because that is what they perceived themselves to transform into during the deepest stage of trance. Similarly, in South Africa, an anthropologist asked a group of San to draw a picture of themselves and discovered that the shamen in the group drew pictures of the animals they transformed into during trance (which is who they believed themselves to really be) and everyone else drew stick figures of the human form. The reason a common metaphor for a shaman in trance was that it was like dying, death, or killing was because when entering trance the shaman could lose control of motor functions, fall down, lose or have diminished breathing and pulse, appear rigid or go into convulsions, have his eyes roll back, and bleed from the nose or mouth (Whitley 1996:22). For a medicine man seeking knowledge from the "rock people," (spirits in the rock who revealed knowledge as to which plant or mineral should be used to cure a patient), entering the supernatural realm was a dangerous and heroic journey, like "dying" in order to gain knowledge, and returning to help others (Rajnovich 1989:184-185). Some contemporary religions use a similar metaphor of dying and being reborn to describe an intense conversion experience or a personal religious experience that is enlightening.

ATLATLS

The Jeffers Petroglyphs in southwestern Minnesota were dated to between 5000 years ago and 2500 years ago because of the representations of nearly 100 atlatls or spearthrowers and only one representation of a possible bow and arrow and certain distinctive projectile points. Some atlatl finger loops were made of stone or shell (rather than leather) and these artifacts along with stone atlatl weights have been found in archaeological excavations. In Nevada an 8500 year old oak atlatl was found intact in a dry cave. For more on atlatls see Part IV. Atlatls and Projectile Points in Ancient Minnesota below.

PROJECTILE POINTS
The relevance of stone and copper point research to rock art at Jeffers is that stylistic analysis of the petroglyphs of distinctive projectile points (spear points and arrowheads) is a part of the current basis for the dating of the Jeffers Petroglyphs. For more on projectile points in ancient Minnesota see Part II.

TANGED & EARED "OLD COPPER AGE" LARGE POINTS
A tanged projectile point has a very distinctive long narrow sharp end that fits in the wood of the spear or dart. It may also have small "ears" that stick out at the base of the point. The copper version of these spearpoints were made and used during the Late Archaic period 5500-2500 years ago and they have been found in many archaeological excavations. According to Gordon Lothson (1976), citing Jack Steinbring (1970), these large-tanged projectile points appear to make up the majority of the representations of projectile points at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site. Some of these are distinctively large. Preliminary experiments by the author indicate that copper projectile points with tangs, fly long, flat, and straight like a paper airplane, rather than spiraling into the target as many stone tipped projectiles will.
THE BOW AND ARROW IN MINNESOTA
As archaeologist, Dan Higginbottom has pointed out, the bow and arrow was probably in Minnesota by A.D. 500 and possibly earlier; just how much earlier is hard to say. The one possible "bow and arrow" petroglyph found at Jeffers might not be a bow and arrow at all since there is no representation of a bowstring and may have been a later modification of a "thunderbird track" petroglyph by the addition of a projectile point and fletching.

UPRAISED ARM FIGURES
The upraised arm figure is a common representation of a shamanic dance posture for imbuing supernatural power through the wrist (Reagan 1958;Whitley 1994). This is frequently seen as a stick figure with upraised arms and bent legs(Rajnovich 1989; Vastoukas1973).
MEDICINE BAGS
Medicine bags were used to carry important religious objects and were made from the whole skin of a bird, reptile, or animal and were one of the most valued Native American possessions, frequently going to the grave with their owner. All shamen had them and medicine or spirit power was "shot" into an initiate or sick person (Hoffman 1891).
THE HORNED SERPENT
The Horned Serpent was a spirit being connected to curing, medicine, and mythology. It was a powerful underground manitou that was the guardian spirit of many Native Americans and liked to reside in rocks near water. Frances Densmore describes a shaman’s curing vision in which he turned into a snake with horns and cured people with an illness (Densmore 1979).
THUNDERBIRDS
The thunderbird was one of the most well known, oldest, and widespread spirit beings to be represented on rock and on clothing. The Algonkians describe the thunderbird as being capable of transformation into a man, able to cause lightning, thunder, and wind, and as the nemesis of the Great Horned Serpent of the underworld. The thunderbird petroglyph symbol has been found across Canada and the United States. "Thunderbird tracks" appear like three toed bird footprints.
In describing the Jeffers Petroglyphs site, Gordon Lothson (1976) wrote that: "Thunderbird figures appear throughout the site. Five subclasses include obvious thunderbirds, stylized thunderbirds, birds in flight represented by crosses, thunderbirds with attached bison horns, and one thunderbird with the life-line heart motif." Lothson counted 118 thunderbird figures at Jeffers, comprising almost 8 percent of the total petroglyphs of the sample analyzed.
In 1866, Rev. Gideon H. Pond of Bloomington, Minnesota, wrote that:
"The lightning . . . is to the Dakota simply the tonwan of a winged monster, who lives and flies through the heavens shielded by thick clouds from mortal vision. By some of the wakan-men [shamen], it is said that there are four varieties of the form of their external manifestation. In essence, however, they are but one. One of the varieties is black, with a long beak, and has four joints in his wing." It seems likely that the petroglyph illustrated above is a representation of this form of the Dakota thunderbird or Wakinyan (flyer). Pond wrote that: "Lightning emanates from this flyer, and the thunder is the sound of his voice. This is the universal belief."
For more on thunderbirds see Part II.
HORNED HEADDRESS
Horns indicated either a spirit or a shaman filled with a spirit. A horned animal seen in a dream would sometimes be mimicked with a real horned cap in order to increase the shaman’s power. Black Elk was photographed with a buffalo horn headdress.
Buffalo horned headdresses were also used by the Lakota buffalo lodge during the buffalo dance and were probably used as camouflage before the introduction of horse mounted bison hunting.
Luther Standing Bear wrote about the Buffalo Dance as follows:
Many of the lodges or societies of the Lakotas were social in character, while others arose for very serious purposes, particularly those brought into existence by dreams or visions. The Buffalo Lodge was a social order which held no secret meetings. Its members, who joined only upon invitation, were braves, mostly old or middle-aged men, who met for the purpose of keeping alive their war records, telling stories, singing the lodge songs, dancing, and playing games. Their gatherings were very popular, the exploits of the braves - scouts, warriors, and icimanis [news-walkers who went from band to band with the news] - always holding much interest for the people. A favorite sport was enacting the Buffalo Dance, in which all members danced, but only those who had performed some outstanding act of bravery took the part of buffaloes. The warriors danced about the circle, those impersonating the buffalo bumping and butting the others. Those with lesser records of bravery endevored to keep beyond the reach of the buffalo dancers, but if outnumbered would have to step pretty lively. This dance called for much activity, and sometimes there was much leaping back and forthover the fire, providing a great deal of fun for the onlookers (Standing Bear 1978:142).

MEDICINE MEN OR SHAMEN

Some of the historic period rock art in Minnesota was probably made by medicine men or shamen (specialists in contacting the otherworld) and some petroglyphs were probably made by non-shamen recording their dream symbols and totems. Shamen could be men or women. Shamen became spirit-like, if not spirits themeselves, and took on the appearance, characteristics and qualities of their guardian spirits (Vastoukas and Vastokas 1973; Densmore 1979). Where an ordinary Algonkian hunter, for example, hoped for an animal, bird, or fish guardian the shaman sought many such spirits but also the cosmic manitous. Hoffman (1891) described in detail three different kinds of Ojibwe shamen including the Jessakids, Wabenos, and Medas. A Jessakid shaman specialized in seeing into the future, using a "shaking tent," practiced alone, and without a group. As the Vastoukas wrote, "Blessed by the sun, they were directly assisted by the Turtle and Thunderbird manitous, of which they would have dreamed in their youth"(Vastokas and Vastoukas 1973). The Wabenos, who also practiced alone, specialized in medicinal herbs, and potions for hunting and love magic, but also were feared as shamen who might use their powers to inflict harm. The Medas were highly organized into a hierarchical society. At one Minnesota location there were eight successive grades of curing and initiation rather than the four described by Hoffman (1891). The Vastoukas report that few got to the last grades because of the cost of initiation and the belief that the higher grades were psychically dangerous to the individual. The Midewiwin, who dealt with medical problems, were connected to those water spirits associated with curing illness, Nanaboujou, the Horned Serpent, Shell, and his assistant Bear. Minnesota Midewiwin birch bark scrolls were mnemonic (memory enhancing) and ideographic pictographs (pictures expressing the idea) which were incised as memory aids in the singing of songs. They are similar to petroglyphs found in the Upper Midwest many of which recorded shamanistic visionary experiences. Non-shamen who recorded their dream symbols and totems in rock at important locations were also recording shamanistic symbols since these were frequently obtained from shamen in naming rituals or from individual vision quests and individual dreams. The latter could sometimes include dreams of important mythic figures. The Dakota, Sacs, Foxes, and Ho-Chunk may have begun their own organized medicine societies based upon the Ojibwe example.
DOGS
According to George Catlin, dog images were carved into rocks as a sign of fidelity. Dogs were eaten at feasts and were drowned with tobacco as offerings to the underground spirit that caused illness.
TURTLES AND "TOTEMS"
Dakota society was traditionally not "totemic" (Organized in clans represented by animals, plants, etc.) however the Ojibwe were classically totemic in their social organization. In Ojibwe society, turtles were both spirit beings and totems and sometimes had horns. The turtle was a symbol of the mother earth seen as a womb and was a symbol of fertility. In mythology the turtle, especially the snapping turtle, was associated with being a great warrior. It was also a frequent motif on plains warrior shields and war drums. Some Plains Indians believed the turtle was a messenger between rock spirits and people.
Artist, George Catlin wrote about his travels between 1832 and 1839. Catlin reported that at the Pipestone Quarry in southwestern Minnesota, as well as at other places, he personally witnessed Indians recording their "totems," which he termed "symbolic names," by carving them among those rock carvings of older age.
Unfortunately Catlin did not tell us which "Indians" he saw carving their symbolic names at Pipestone, and elsewhere, and he did not tell us what the basis was upon which he satisfied himself that these were individual and clan totems.
The petroglyhs themselves look like portrayals of spirit animals and anthropomorphic spirits because of the heart lines, horns, and so forth (Densmore 1979:181; Grant 1983:53) . This suggests that what Catlin described as a "totem" may have been the individual's "dream symbol." The dream symbols may also be from an earlier period.
Dream symbols, including representations of spirit beings, frequently appeared on robes, shields, drums, etc. (Densmore 1979). A dream symbol is not the same thing as a "dream name." An Ojibwe individual would have a private dream name related directly or indirectly to altered states of consciousness and this was usually a very private name. However, the dream symbol could be made public, as could nicknames or common names and clan symbols.
"RABBIT EARED" HUMANS
These may be shamen and in Ojibwe culture are a symbolic reference to Nanaboujou or his brothers and "The Great Hare." Wavy lines going up from the head denote power. Native Americans also wore feathers upright at the back of the head.
CIRCLED OR RING FEET
Circles have many meanings. Circles may refer to the medicine drum, which was important in shamanic curing. Drum sounds were heard underfoot when walking across the petroglyphs at Drum Island. The drum was used to call a spirit to a shamanic incantation or invoke the assistance of his manido. Circles may also have an astronomical meaning as reflected in Dakota sky lore or, like cracks in the bedrock, as entrances to the underworld.
HEARTLINES
One of the thunderbirds at Jeffers has a "heartline." An examination of the Pipestone petroglyphs, shows spirit beings with heart lines, such as thunderbirds, and also human stick figures with heart lines. As Campbell Grant has pointed out : "The heart-line motif appears to have originated in the upper Ohio Valley or in southeastern Minnesota, and spread westward" (Grant 1967:67). Creatures with a heartline were believed by the Ojibwe to possess supernatural powers (Mallery 1893:773, cited in Grant 1983:53).

NANABOUJOU
This Ojibwe mythic figure is shown on birch bark scrolls with three lines coming from his head. He was considered the founder of the Ojibwe Midewiwin or organized shamanic society. Native American head dress sometimes also included one or more feathers worn sticking upwards from the head.
BISON HOOFPRINTS
Linea Sundstrom, working with South Dakota ethnography regarding petroglyphs has suggested that bison hoofprint petroglyphs are representative symbols of "buffalo women" which are related to puberty rituals and women’s power.
ELONGATED BODIES AND EXTRA FINGERS AND TOES
According to medical literature these are common bodily perceptions of human beings going into the deepest stages of altered states of consciousness and were probably representations of vision experiences. Children and people who have not drawn since they were children also tend to draw elongated bodies with short arms.
HANDS
Hands may be a symbol that this is a sacred spot and a marking of the owner’s presence at the site. The Ojibwe Maymaygwayshi or little "Men of the Wilderness" who live in the rock were supposed to be the ones who left their handprints on a rock in Rainy Lake. The reference to little people may be due to atropine hallucinogens, a taboo against speaking the name of deceased shamen, or an indirect reference to a spirit helper.
GEOMETRIC FORMS
These may be entoptic ("inside the eye") form constants usually seen in the first stage of altered states of consciousness (and by some migraine sufferers) or in some cases may be winter counts of the passage of time.
Entoptic forms generally include: Caternary curves ))) Grids ### Undulating lines ~~~ Dots ... Chevrons ^^^ Parallel lines /// Circles OO Spearlike forms ---- & Zigzags \/\/
Entoptic form constants are usually seen in the first stage of altered states of consciousness. In the second stage of altered states of consciousness, vortices, cartoonish figures, and tunnels with bright lights are commonly described by medical subjects. In the third stage of altered states, the experience is perceived to be real and can involve somatic or bodily transformations like polymelia (a sixth finger or toe), lycanthropy (transformation into an animal), attenuation or the perceived elongation of the torso sometimes resulting in the perception of flying, entering a rockface and going into an underworld, or being underwater. In the later stages of altered states of consciousness, synesthesia or interaction of the senses can occur. A startling, loud sound or noise, such as the loud banging of a rock, can set off colors and trigger rapid iconic hallucinations (Siegel 1977).

HALF HUMAN/ HALF ANIMAL FIGURES
Medical research indicates that in the deepest stages of altered states of consciousness, people frequently believe that they physically transform into animals and they perceive the experience to be real. Shamen who are asked to draw a picture of themselves will often draw pictures of the animal that they transform into during altered states, which is who they perceive themselves to really be. When asked to do the same thing, non-shamen tend to draw stick figures.
HUMANS WITH SPEARS OR ARROWS IN THE TORSO
The images of humans with spears or arrows in their torso may be describing a biographical event or may be symbolic or an image from a vision quest. As described above (see bison with darts in their back) shamen in some cultures describe their entering trance as "dying." This may be a symbolic image related to shamen or vision questing to obtain knowledge (dreaming for power) particularly regarding figures with spears or arrows going through an attenuated torso (see elongated bodies).
BIG HORN SHEEP
Archaeologist, David S. Whitley, has argued based on ethnohistoric sources in the far west that for the Coso Range in California petroglyphs of Big Horn Sheep were the symbolic self-representation of shamen (Whitley 1996).
LUNATE FORMS
Twenty five lunate forms in the shape of a quarter moon were recorded at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site (Lothson 1976:28). There is some controversy over whether or not these represent a copper age knife like an Inuit "ulu," a piece of jewelry like a gorget worn over the chest, a symbol of the moon or both. For more on Lunate Forms see Part II (B).

Part II. Jeffers In Depth

A) Atlatls and Projectile Points in Ancient Minnesota

The atlatl probably was in use when the first Paleoindians arrived in Minnesota. Mammoth bones have been recovered in Minnesota but no spearpoints embedded in the remains have been found yet. Clovis spearpoints have been found in Mammoth remains in the Southwest. A wooden atlatl has been found in Nevada that was 8500 years old.
The Jeffers atlatls are represented with "banner stones" and finger loops. It has been suggested by one author that the banner stones were like a "silencer" making the swishing sound less apparent as the spear was thrown at an animal or enemy in front of the thrower, much like a bowstring silencer. The "banner stones" may also have been status symbols or helped balance the atlatl when a spear was held in position for a long time. Some have argued that the weight improved the flex and the physics of the atlatl, increasing the distance a spear could be thrown.
Atlatls were in use in the Upper Paleolithic in Europe 17,000 years ago and one author has suggested that it may have replaced the only slightly less efficient Baton de Commandment that may have been used to throw spears from 25,000 years ago up to the invention of the atlatl. According to Pascal Chauvaux: "Spearthrower use is evidenced during the Upper Paleolithic of western Europe, from the Upper Solutrean (±17,500 BP) until the beginning of the Upper Magdalenian (±12,500 BP) in southwest France, Switzerland, eastern Germany, and Spain (Cattelain 1988, 1989; Cattelain and Stodiek 1996; Stodiek 1993). Only the distal extremities of spearthrowers, which were made of antler, bone or ivory, have been recovered; the handles, presumably made of wood, have not been found. Intact specimens show shaping (for example, bevels and perforations) indicative of hafting (Stodiek 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993). Study of macroscopic traces of use has shown that these objects bear the same wear traces as those found on ethnographic spearthrowers (Cattelain 1986, 1991)." The Aztecs had an entire arm of their army outfitted with atlatls and representations of atlatl warriors or duelists appear near the entrance to at least one Aztec stadium. The word "atlatl" is thought to be an Aztec word and the correct pronunciation according to one scholar is probably "atl-atl" rather than "at-latl."
An atlatl , which is shaped like a large 2 foot long crocheting needle (i.e. it has a hook on one end), is grasped in the throwing hand with the hook placed in the end of a spear or dart. The index finger and thumb grasp the spear which lies on top of the atlatl. The last three fingers of the hand grasp the atlatl. The spear is thrown overhand just like throwing a baseball.
With practice some people can regularly hit a 4 inch square target at 90 feet. A spear thrown for distance can increase that by many times. There is an international atlatl organization which holds throwing competitions. A world champion atlatl distance thrower recently threw a dart 848.56 feet or nearly the length of three football fields. Their motto is "I will hunt mammoth alone no longer."
If you ever use an atlatl use caution and be careful. They are lethal weapons and are not toys and should be used at all times with adult supervision. Like javelins, archery, or firearms, accidents do happen with atlatls. The beginner will not have much control over where the spear lands and it will probably go further and have more force than expected. The author threw one for the first time and accidentally put a hole in his garage door, not expecting it to fly as far or with as much force as it did. One local archaeologist accidentally put a spear through a metal 55 gallon drum the first time that she threw one. Do not use an atlatl with less respect than a bow and arrow or a gun. Atlatls are used to hunt deer in some states and are sold in certain archery stores. An atlatl will initially be much less accurate than either a gun or a bow and arrow. It should only be used in a wide open area with nothing and no one that you do not want to accidentally kill. You build and use one at your own risk.

The significance of projectile points is in their use to date the Jeffers site.
PRAIRIE ARCHAIC(side notched) POINT
These are thought to have been made and used by hunters during the Archaic period 5000 to 2500 years ago on the Great Plains to hunt bison. The spears were thrown with an atlatl or spearthrower. Several of these were found at the Callanan sites which are a few hundred feet from the Jeffers Petroglyphs site.
AVONLEA POINT (side notched)
This is thought to be an early bow and arrow projectile point from around 100 or 200AD to about 500 or 660AD.
In "Guide to the Identification of Certain American Indian Projectile Point Types" (1968, Oklahoma Anthropological Society Special Bulletin No. 3, Norman), Gregory Perno had the following to say about Avonlea:
The Avonlea point is the earliest small side-notched point appearing with large scale communal bison hunting in the northern Plains from about A.D. 220 to A.D. 660 [Dates for Avonlea have probably been modified since the 1968 publication]. It is found associated with the Middle Woodland Basant dart point. It is suggested that the Avonlea point may have been of Athabascan derivation and introduced into the area when some acculturation of the indigenous Middle Woodland (Besant) people with the technologically superior Athabascan invaders apparently occurred in the first two centuries A.D. . . . The time period quoted above indicates that this may have been the earliest arrowhead type used on the northern Plains. It also indicates that the bow and arrow may have been first introduced into the United States from the north, gradually being adopted southward and eastward by other groups in the next 500 years.
ST. CROIX POINT (corner notched)
This is also an early bow and arrow projectile point 100 AD-500 AD.

B) Lunate Forms at the Jeffers Petroglyphs site
An old lunate petroglyph in the shape of a cents sign (that has been nearly worn away but that was recorded by T.H. Lewis in the 1890's) also appears at the Fort Ransom Writing Rock in Fort Ransom, North Dakota.
The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago has a museum display that shows a lunate form displayed as an Old Copper Age object used by women as a kind of knife or ulu. A wooden handle crossed the points of the moon shaped copper knife to make a handle and apparently this object had been excavated from an Old Copper Age site somewhere in the Midwest. At the Jeffers site there are what have been interpreted by Jack Steinbring as Old Copper Age tanged projectile points - without the representation of the wooden shaft. This is similar to Bronze Age objects that are sometimes carved into stone cists and at Stonehenge that show the metal component only of a composite tool made from metal and wood. Another possibility for the lunate forms at Jeffers would be the interpretation that the lunate forms were gorgets like those found in Hopewell excavations. These often had holes to hold with rope the gorget around the neck. These holes do not appear in the rock art representation. None of these interpretations would preclude the object symbolizing the moon or women or being some kind of ethnic symbol or marking since physical objects of metal can have symbolic meanings as well. Unlike the Jeffers lunates, at Fort Ransom, where the petroglyph looks like a "cents" sign the rock art may be an attempt to show the wooden handle of the knife.
Chapter 9 of Jack Steinbring's 1975 Ph.D. dissertation is entitled "Lunar Symbolism During the Archaic: An Hypothesis" and sets out in great detail, ethnographic and archaeological evidence suggesting a symbolic as opposed to functional meaning of the lunate form. Guy Gibbon in his 1998 article "Old Copper in Minnesota: A Review" Plains Anthropologist Vol.43, No.163 pp.27-50 summarized this as follows:
Steinbring (1975) has argued that at least some copper crescents had a nonutilitarian function. This is suggested by: (1) their most common in situ context, which is as mortuary furniture; (2) their presence in all but one (Osceola) of the major cemetary sites; (3) their position in the thoracic region of some burials, which suggests they were suspended on the chest; (4) the general absence of average-to large-sized crescents in excavated portions of habitation sites; (5) the delicate nature of the miniature crescents that do occur in habitation contexts; (6) the unsuitable shape of some for butchering functions, especially those with exceptionally long "handles." He supports his suggestion that they served as lunar symbols with evidence from both ethnographic and archaeological sources. This evidence includes the presence of lunar mythology among historic populations in the Upper reat Lakes region and a possible association between burial type (high status), burial alignment (to the full or half moon), copper crescents, and lunar-compatible numbers of incisions upon burial furniture (Gibbon 1998:42).
Steinbring (1975:270) reviewed the ethnographic accounts as follows:
The most readily analogous form for which broad ethnological support would be available is that of the lunar symbol. Its pictographic representation among hunting societies of the Upper Great Lakes region is well established, particularly among the Ojibwa (Mallery 1893:242, Hoffman 1891:249,294, Landes 1968:82,83) who are regarded by Landes (1961:87) and Jennings (1968:112) as reflecting direct descent from the Archaic. Lunar mythology among these populations is also well developed (Jenness 1929:9,54,60,62,76,96,97,109). The Ojibwa are reported by Keating (1825) to have had a "moon cult" and Hoffman (1891:294) describes a pictographic representation of moon-phases associated with the Midewiwin as "probably having reference to certain periods at which some important ceremonies or events are to occur." Radisson reported the Ojibwa to have made "half-moons of copper" (Thayer 1940:58), and the association between copper and the Ojibwa pictographic recording of mythological tradition is precisely conveyed by Warren (1885:89,90) [quotation omitted].
Steinbring points out that in burial #10 at the large cemetary site on the south shore of Lake Butte des Morts in east-central Wisconsin 3 copper crescents were found and he included a photograph of the artifacts. The points tend to angle back like they were tangs rather than having a perfectly smooth quarter moon shape as the Jeffers petroglyphs are carved. The drawing of the triple burial shows two of the crescents with their points facing northeast (summer, moonrise or sunrise?) and the curved part facing southwest (winter, moonset or sunset?).The third lunate was drawn by Ostberg as being over the L3 area but also overlapping some ribs. Steinbring indicates "A third crescent is located upon the lower chest, with the tangs pointed toward the head" Steinbring 1975:274). One of the crescents is notched which could be notational. Steinbring cites Warren (1885:89,90) at length for an Ojibway of the Crane family who had kept 8 notches on a circular copper plate which was kept buried in the ground most of the time. The notches were the number of ancestors who had passed away since the Ojibwe first lighted their fire at Shang-a-waum-ik-ong near La Pointe (Steinbring 1975:271).
There is an historic drawing of Red Cloud that shows him wearing around his neck what may be a gorget (a residual item from the days of European armor) which has the shape of a lunate form. This item of jewelry was probably commercially made and purchased. Frances Densmore illustrates and describes a lunate form given to an Ojibwe infant to be worn around the neck. These suggest a likely connection to shamanism.The Ojibwe, of course only arrived in Minnesota during the historic period and the distant time of the people and culture of the late Archaic 5000 years ago attenuates the possible cultural analogies. The Ojibwe and Dakota however could certainly have preserved the traditional meaning of a symbol and artifact that derived from Archaic times.

C) Why study rock art?

by Kevin L. Callahan

Rock art studies is an exciting subdiscipline of anthropological archaeology. Rock art is often the only "mark" on the world left by the minds of people before the invention of other writing systems. The visual directness of rock art and the ambiguity often associated with the meaning of the rock art make it mysterious - but a mystery that has left many clues. Ethnohistoric sources give us much information about historic period petroglyphs and the sacred landscape. Experimental archaeology and excavated artifacts give us much information about Archaic period petroglyphs. Much remains to be done and much is not understood, but archaeology is inevitably an effort to do the best one can with the available information.

The study of rock art is intimately tied to the larger landscape, and the experience of stone and massive bedrock in natural settings. There is a tactile aspect to the study of rock art. As an area of anthropological study, rock art is important to the reconstruction of past human cognition, rituals, religion, aesthetics, social organization, fauna, and environment.

I find it frustrating that the study of rock art is sometimes not recognized as a true subdiscipline of archaeology, the reconstruction of cultures and people of the past. I see myself in the middle of a continuum between two extreme viewpoints, both of which need to be actively resisted. On one extreme are some anthropologically ignorant "professional" archaeologists who are often cynical, apathetic, or downright hostile to the study of rock art (as if it would disappear as an archaeological artifact simply because they are uninterested in it). They often do not understand the profound religious reasons behind much of it, are ethnocentric in their approach to it, and ignorantly dismiss it as "graffitti," thus making a false ethnocentric analogy from our own culture to cultures of the past that they have no understanding of. Their ignorance is often a source of frustration.

The other extreme view results directly from the vacuum that is left when these archaeologists abandon the field to amateurs. In case after case, some members of the general public (which as a whole is immensely interested in rock art, perhaps because it is so immediately and visually accessible), will step into that vacuum and formulate totally non-anthropological explanations divorcing the rock art from the people who really made it. Everyone from aliens to Vikings will be suggested as makers of North American rock art and the people and cultures that lived here and made it are frequently the first to be forgotten. This approach, is the anti-thesis of anthropological archaeology.

The theoretical approach to rock art developed by leading academics in the field such as David Lewis-Williams, David S. Whitley and many others, is arguably well ahead of the discipline of archaeology as a whole and incorporates the study of ethnohistory, relevant common biological phenomena studied by experimental medical science, and an understanding of the "artifacts" themselves. The depth of their knowledge and the controversy surrounding their approach to theory and method in rock art analysis gives us an opportunity to think carefully about what we are doing and incorporate relevant anthropological and biological information into the field.

The conclusion of rock art experts can have an important and immediate impact on public policy decisions in many countries, such as in Portugal recently, where a dam project in the Coa Valley was stopped because it would have flooded major open air rock art sites probably from the Upper Paleolithic. This is an interesting time for international rock art studies because of the number of important finds during our lifetimes such as at Chauvet cave in France and the important work that is being done locally such as at the Gottschall Rock Shelter in Wisconsin.

In addition to the finding of new rock art, the interpretation of rock art requires work researching ethnographic and historic sources of information. Fortunately, Minnesota is unusually rich in ethnohistoric sources thanks to some major work in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some of the rock art here probably dates to the Archaic period and may be 5000 years old. I occasionally try to remember that this makes them older than the Egyptian pyramids. I also try to remember that although we were probably not the audience imagined for most rock art, in some cases it was consciously intended to be seen by public passersby and communicate something. In other cases rock art appears to be more related to secret and private things which were not necessarily intended for us to understand. We have many new tools to assist our understanding of the meanings of rock art but there remains much to be discovered.

D) "The Thunder-bird amongst the Algonkians" by A.F. Chamberlain

The American Anthropologist Jan. 1890:51-54.
The interesting article of Rev. Myron Eels in Vol. ii, pp. 329-3361 has suggested a brief discussion of the same subject with regard to the tribes of Algonkian stock amongst which the belief in the thunder-bird appears to be very wide-spread. It is found with the Crees of the Canadian Northwest and amongst some of the tribes of Micmac lineage dwelling near the coast of the Atlantic, on the shores of Hudson's Bay, and in the States on the southern banks of Lake Superior. The investigation of this peculiar belief must therefore cover the whole Algonkian region.
The Crees believe that certain divine birds cause the lightning by the flashings of their eyes, and with their wings make the noise of thunder. The thunderbolts are the "invisible and flaming arrows shot by these birds." Hind speaks of the Plain Indians of the Northwest as Aanxious and timid during the roll of thunder, invoking the Great Bird by whose flapping wings they suppose it to be produced, or crouching from the blink of his all-penetrating eye, which they allege is the lightning's flash." Cognate is the belief of the Blackfeet that winds are caused by the flapping of the wings of a great bird in the mountains.
Among the Algonkian tribes of the Lake Superior region the same, or similar, beliefs are current, Rev. John McLean informs us that the Pottowattamies look on one of the high mountain peaks at Thunder Bay as the abode of the thunder, and that at one time a nest containing the young thunder-birds was there discovered by them.
From Rev. E. F. Wilson" we learn that the Ottawas believed the thunder was " a great bird which flapped its wings on high over the [end of page 51]
____________________________________________________________________________________
[Footnotes to page 51:]
Lacombe, Diet. de la Langue des Cris (I874), pp. 575, 262. - The thunderbird is called piyesis--i.e. "bird"--identical with Ojebway binesi, Mississagua pinesi, Illinois pineusun. Ottawa pinasi, evidently a common Algonkian word for Abird."
Narrative of Canad. Explor. Exped. of-I857, etc. (I860), ii, p. 144.
McLean. The Indians, their Manners and Customs (1889), p. 38.
Op. cit., p. 182.
'Our Forest Children. N. S. No. I (July, 1889), p. 5.

earth to guard its inhabitants and to prevent those evil monsters hidden in the bowels of the earth from coming forth to injure them." The existence of the thunder-bird tradition among the Ojebways of the northern shore of Lake Superior has been confirmed to the writer by information from Rev. Allen Salt, a Mississagua Indian, who has frequently visited that region. Regarding the Ojebways (Chippeways), Rev. Peter Jones' says "they consider the thunder to be a god in the shape of a great eagle that feeds upon serpents, which it takes from under the earth." Jones also relates (Op. cit., P. 86) the story of an Indian who visited the nest of a thunder-bird on a high mountain. He saw bones of serpents scattered about, and noticed that " the bark of the young trees had been peeled off by the young thunders trying their arrows before going abroad to hunt serpents." At another time a party of Indians found a nest on the plains and put the young thunder-birds to death, after blinding them with their arrows (which, however, were shattered to pieces). All but one of the Indians were killed by the old birds on their return. The Ojebways believed that the home of the thunder-bird was on the top of a high mountain in the West, where it lays its eggs and hatches its young like an eagle. From time to time it sets forth into different parts of the earth to search for serpents, which form its food. When they saw a thunderbolt strike a tree these Indians believed that the thunder "had shot its fiery arrows at a serpent and caught it up in the twinkling of an eye." This belief is confirmed by the evidence of the early Jesuit missionary, Pere Buteux, who relates it in very similar terms of the Algonkins of the north shore of the St. Lawrence in I637$ The thunder-bird is also known to the Ojebways of Red Lake, Minnesota, and figures in their pictographic records.' While on a visit to the Mississaguas of Scugog, Ontario, in August, 1888, the writer was told by an aged woman of that tribe the following as the ancient belief of her people: AThe thunder was caused by the flapping of the wings of the great thunder-bird that lived up in the sky, and the lightning was caused by the flashings of its eyes." A great storm of thunder and lightning was explained thus: " The young birds up there in the sky, they are so glad, they fly all about and make a great deal of thunder and lightning; like all young people, they are very restless." Not far from the village [end of page 52]
__________________________________________________________________________________
[Footnotes to page 52]:
History of the Ojebway Indians (1861), p. 85.
Relations des Jesuites, Annee 1637, p. 53$ See also Brinton, Myths of the New World (r876), p. 118.
Dr. W. J. Hoffmann; Amer. Anthropologist, i, 225.

of Scugog is buried a Mississagua chief, who just before he died called out that " I die ! the thunders are coming !"
Amongst the Mississaguas and Ojebways, Indians were very often named after the "thunders." At Scugog one of the sons of Nawigishkoke (sun in the center of the sky) was named Head Thunder, while another Indian was called OsawanimikI (Yellow Thunder). When the Rev. Peter Jones was named, the appellation confcrred upon him was Kakiwakwonabi (sacred waving-feathers), and his tutelary deity was the thunder. " He was given a war-club and a bunch of eagle-feathers, symbolical of the might and swiftness of the eagle-god of thunder.'''
Among the Passamaquoddy Indians the thunder-birds appear as men. Leland has recorded a legend of this tribe of a man who was whirled up into the abode of the thunders and who told what he had there seen. The "thunders" were very like human beings. used bows and arrows, and had wings which could be removed or put on as occasion demanded. "The thunder is the sound of the wings of the men who fly above. The lightning we see is the fire and smoke of their pipes." These thunder-beings are always Atrying to kill a big bird in the south." Here a recolIection of the thunder-bird of other Algonkian people would seem to be present. Other" thunder stories " are given by Leland. According to another legend, the giant thunder-spirits, with eyebrows of stone and cheeks like rocks, dwell in Mount Katahdin. According to another Passamaquoddy legend, Badawk, the thunder and Psawk-tankapic, the lightning, are brother and sister, whilst the distant rumbling before the thunder-crash is made by the child of Badawk to whom his grandfather had fastened wings. This child was the offspring of Badawk and an Indian woman.
The Passamaquoddies also believe that the wind is caused by the motions of the wings of "a great bird called by them Wochowsen or Wuchowsen, meaning Wind-Blow or the Wind-Blower, who lives far to the north and sits upon a great rock at the end of the sky." This resembles the belief of the Blackfeet, noticed above.
Leland thinks that this Wind-Blower is, as he appears in the Passamaquoddy tale, far more like the same bird of the Norsemen [end of page 53]
_____________________________________________________________________
[Footnotes to page 53:]
Journ. of Amer. Folk-lore, i, 152.
Leland. Algonquin Legends of New England (1885), pp. 263-266.
Op cit., p. 221 Op. cit., p. 267. Op. cit., p. 111.
Op cit, p. 113. A similar account of Passamaquoddy beliefs is given in
Journ. Of Amer. Folk-Lore, ii, 230.

than the grotesque thunder-bird of the Western tribes. " He seems inclined to explain many of the incidents in the " thunder stories " from Eskimo and from Norse mythology.
It may be, however, that the "wind-blower" and the "thundergiants" are simply the " wind-bird " and the "thunder-birds " of the Western Algonkian tribes modified to suit circumstance and locality.
This view seems to be confirmed by the statement of Dr. F.V. Hayden' respecting the Crees: "Indeed, these Indians do not seem to fear any natural phenomena except thunder, which is supposed to be the screaming and flapping of the wings of a large bird, which they represent on their lodges as a great eagle. Wind is supposed to be produced by its flying, and flashes of lightning are caused by the light of the sun reflected from its white and golden plumage, and when strokes of lightning are felt they are thunderstones cast down by this bird. All storms, tornadoes, etc., are caused by its wrath, and fair winds, calm and fine weather are regarded as tokens of its good humor." Here the wind-bird and the thunder-bird are regarded as one, and, as with the Ojebways, the bird takes on the form of an eagle in pictography, sculpture, and ornament. On the whole, the Algonkian beliefs respecting thunder seem more akin to those of the Siouan than of any other Indian peoples. With the Tetons the snake appears as the enemy of the thunder. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey thus describes the Teton thunderers: " Some of these ancient people still dwell in the clouds. They have large, curved beaks, resembling bison humps; their voices are loud, they do not open their eyes wide except when they make lightning, and they have wings. They can kill various mysterious beings, as well as human beings. Their ancient foes were the giant rattlesnakes and the Un-kche-ghi-la or water monsters, whose bones are now found in the bluffs of Nebraska and Dakota." In the Omaha and Ponka myths thunder-men and thunder-birds appear, and the story of a visit to the nest of the thunder-bird is related. A close and detailed comparison of Siouan and Algonkian thunder stories and folk-lore would be of great interest and value, and might perhaps shed some light upon the relations of these two great peoples in the past. [end of page 54]
_____________________________________________________________________
[Footnotes to page 54]
Transactions of Amer. Pbilos. Sec., vol. xii (N. S.), p. 245€
Journal of Amer. Folk-Lore, ii, 135. 136. Compare the Ononandaga tale of the serpent and the thunderers, ib., i, 46.
'Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, in Journ. of American Folk-Lore, i, 75-77.

Part III. Useful Rock Art Reference Materials

A) Rock Art Glossary

-ASC - altered states of consciousness
Algonkian - the Native American language group that includes the Ojibwa, Cree, etc.
altered states of consciousness - an unusual state of mind which may include the experience of entoptic phenomena or hallucinations
anthropology - the holistic study of human beings, including their physical evolution and biology, culture and society, archaeology, and linguistics
anthropomorph - a rock art figure shaped like a human being or human-like
archaeoastronomy - the anthropology of astronomy; the reconstruction of past astronomical practices, celestial lore, mythologies, religions and world-views of ancient cultures related to the sky
archaeology - the reconstruction of the human past primarily through its material remains
Archaic - the Eastern Archaic tradition is an archaeological time period from about 6000 B.C. to 800 B.C. generally associated with the appearance of ground-stone and copper tools
atlatl - spearthrower; a stick with a hook on the end (that often looks like a large crochet hook) used to throw a spear or dart 2 and ½ times further
Au ge jak - Ojibwa word for the ""little people"" often associated with rock art
banner stone - a stone found in the archaeological record that may have been a component of Archaic atlatls
bas relief - a three dimensional carving still attached to the background wall
birch bark scroll - a form of pictographic writing (non-phonetic) often used to remember songs or
shamanic rituals
bison - the North American buffalo; a bovine ruminant
blade - a stone tool that is at least two times as long as it is wide that may have been used as a projectile
point, knife, etc.
buffalo - North American bison (not ""water buffalo"")
chert - a type of stone favored for knapping stone tools and projectile points because of its structure and
predictable fracturing characteristics
Cheyenne - a Native American cultural group and a tribal affiliation
Chippewa - an older name (currently less favored) for Ojibwa
copper age - an archaeological period during the Archaic when copper tools first appeared
culture - the non-biological characteristics unique to a particular society and the nongenetic means of
adaption e.g. learned behavior; culture is not unique to human beings
cup and rings - cupules surrounded by one or more concentric circles; the term favored in Europe
cupmark - cupule
cupule - a petroglyph in the shape of a ""cup"" (or the bottom half of a sphere) in stone usually about
inches (5cm) and about 5/8ths inch deep found all over the world
Dakota - a Native American cultural group and a tribal affiliation
effigy mound - a mound of dirt in the shape of a figure such as an a bird or snake that may have burials
en toto - the interior of an outlined figure has been pecked
entoptic- visual phenomena generated within vision (or more loosely within the nervous system);
generally the images seen in the first stage of altered states of consciousness
excised - carving away the background around a figure in stone
fauna - animals
flint - a type of stone favored for making stone tools because of its ability to fracture (like glass) in predictable and controllable ways
flintknap - the technique of making stone tools by knocking flakes off of a stone to shape it
fluted points - a projectile point that has a flake or flakes removed from the interior area or end of the point to thin the point for hafting; usually seen in Clovis and Folsom points
geoglyph - images formed on the ground by scraping away surface material to form an image out of the exposed underlying soil, or by arranging stones to form a figure such as a petroform
hafting - tying something such as a stone tool or projectile point onto a handle or spear
heart line - a line in a petroglyph from the mouth or the chest that usually ends in a heart-shaped object
historic - during a period when written history existed
incised - carving figures into rock by cutting lines to outline a figure
intaglio - incised rock carving with a sunken design
Jessakid - one of the three types of Ojibwa shamen; usually solo practioners associated with contacting the dead e.g. with a ""shaking tent""
Lewis, Theodore H. - the first archaeologist to systematically survey and record the petroglyphs, cave art, incised boulders, and burial mounds of Minnesota and many other states during the late 19thth century. Much of Lewis’' work was financed by Alfred J. Hill.
lilliputian hallucination - the medical term for seeing ""little people"" while hallucinating; often associated with atropine, alcohol withdrawal, and DMT hallucinations
lithics - artifacts like projectile points made of stone
lunate - lunar or moon shaped
mammoth - a large cold adapted elephant-like extinct animal with a domed head, large tusks, and long thick fur
manido - a spirit
manitou - a spirit
maymaygwayshi - the Ah ge jaks or ""little people"" associated by some Ojibwa with rock art
medicine bag - a bag carried by Native Americans containing spiritually important objects usually made from the skin of an animal and usually buried with te owner
megafauna - large animals such as now extinct North American mammoths, mastodons, camels, giant ground sloths, giant beaver, giant bison
Mide - one of the three types of Ojibwa shamen; a male or female shaman initiated into the organized Midewiwin or ""Grand Medicine Society"" which practiced medicine, healing, naming of children and other spiritual practices
Midewiwin - the Ojibwa organized shamanic society, sometimes referred to as the ""Grand Medicine Society""
Minnesota - The state is named after the Minnesota River. In Dakota "Mine Soto" means "whitish water" referring to the white clay in the river.
Mississippi- ""Mee-zee-see-pee"" in Ojibwa means ""large water""
Mississippian - an archaeological time period from about 900 A.D. to 1700 A.D. generally associated with the appearance of organized agriculture
mobiliary art - portable, mobile or movable art such as small objects that can be transported
neuropsychological model - a theory of rock art related to the representation of figures and shapes commonly perceived during altered states of consciousness
obsidian - a form of natural volcanic glass used to make projectile points and other tools
Ojibwa - the largest Native American culture or tribal affiliation in North America
Paleo-Indian - the earliest archaeological time period in North America before 6000 B.C. associated with the culture of mammoth and giant bison hunters. 9,200 BC to 6000 BC.
parietal art - art on the walls of caves and rock shelters
patination - the thin layer of material that forms on a rock surface after weathering that can change its
color
pecked - a dimpled appearance on stone when a hammer stone is used to shape or roughen a surface
petroform - a representational figure laid out on the ground with stones or boulders
petroglyph - an image carved or pecked into a rock face using tone tools.
pictoglyph - a less used general term for a petroglyph or pictograph
pictograph - an image that is painted or drawn on to a surface; it may also reference a form of symbolic imagery used as a mnemonic device that is usually not phonetic but is representational
pitted boulder - a boulder (usually a glacial erratic) with cupmarks on it
pipestone - a type of carveable soft stone (Catlinite) reddish in color, used to make ceremonial pipes and traded across North America
pit and grooves - cup shaped petroglyphs with incised lines
prehistory - before written history
projectile point - a more neutral and general term that encompasses arrowheads, spear points, dart points, etc. which may or may not have been thrown, thrown with an atlatl, or shot with a bow
quartzite - a fine grained extremely hard metamorphic rock (or bedrock)
rock art - a general term for petroglyphs, pictoglyphs, pictographs, mobiliary art, etc.; ""art"" as we think of it in a modern sense may not have been the motivation for the creation of these cultural artifacts;
""rock art"" is the term more frequently used in Europe rather than the more North American term ""petroglyph""
rock shelter - an overhang such as on a cliff face used as protection or shelter from the elements; often a temporary camp or permanent living area; favored because a fire in a true cave can suffocate the occupants
sculpture - three dimensional representation of a figure
shaman - a person skilled in contacting the otherworld who may be specialized in medicine, contacting
the dead, love magic, hunting magic, etc.
Sioux - an older less favored term for the Dakota
solar marker - petroglyphs designed so that sunlight or shadow interacts in a distinctive way with the rock art. These interactions may occur on astronomically significant days.
Sheyenne - older spelling of Cheyenne; also the name of a river in North Dakota that flows into the Red River
St. Croix - the name of a river on the Minnesota, Wisconsin border; also the name of a type of projectile point
style - a distinctive manner or way of doing something e.g. a unique decoration or expressive shape
tanged projectile point - a projectile point with a very long slender tongue or shank projecting from it for
inserting into a shaft or dart
totem - the symbolic association of animals with clans, family groups, and individuals in Ojibwa society
tutelary spirit - a guardian spirit or spirit helper
vision quest - the attempt to obtain a vision, contact spirits, obtain a guardian spirit or gain spiritual knowledge
Wabeno - one of the three types of Ojibwa shamen who often worked alone and performed love magic, hunting magic, etc.
Wakan - the Dakota organized medicine society of shamen
Woodland - an archaeological time period from about 800 B.C. to 1700 A.D. generally associated with the appearance of pottery and burial mounds
UMRARA - Upper Midwest Rock Art Association
Winnebago - a Native American cultural group (they prefer the name Ho-Chunk)
zoomorph - a rock art figure that is animal-like
B) Rock Art Websites

There are many internet websites regarding North American rock art:
Midwest:
UPPER MIDWEST ROCK ART RESEARCH ASSOCIATION (UMRARA)
http://www.tcinternet.net/users/cbailey/index.htm
KEVIN L. CALLAHAN’S WEBSITE
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5579/index.html
MISSSISSIPPI VALLEY ARCHAEOLOGY CENTER (MVAC)
http://www2.uwlax.edu/Colleges/mvac/rockart/rockart.htm
MANKATO STATE UNIVERSITY E-MUSEUM
http://kroeber.anthro.mankato.msus.edu/prehistory/rockart/index.shtml

North American:
AMERICAN ROCK ART RESEARCH ASSOCIATION (ARARA)
http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/Comp/Bill/ARARA/ARARA.html
PETROGLYPHS & ROCK PAINTINGS
http://www.execpc.com/~jcampbel/
SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES ROCK ART GALLERY
http://net.indra.com/~dheyser/index.html
ANCIENT ROCK ART INFO SOURCES
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bclee/rockart/rockart.html
ROCK ART FOUNDATION
http://www.rockart.org/homepage.htm

C) Bibliography and Recommended Reading

Arndt, A.
1935 Indian Pictographs in Minnesota. Minnesota Archaeologist 1(6):7-8.

Bakker, F. R. a. W.
196? The Cottonwood County Petroglyphs, pamphlet.

Brookins, J. D. H. a. J. A.
1972 Minnesota's Major Historic Sites, A Guide, pp. 103-107. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.

Callahan, K. L.
1996 The Fort Ransom Writing Rock. Upper Midwest Rock Art Research Association, http://www.tcinternet.net/users/cbailey/index.html.

Catlin, G.
1973 Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians. 2 vols. Dover Publications, Inc., New York, Reprint 1844.

Connolly, L.
1999 Listen to Grandmother Earth. Minnesota History 56/6(Summer):322-327.

Conway, T.
1993 Painted Dreams. Northwood Press, Minocqua, Wisconsin.

Eastman, M.
1849 Dahcotah; or, Life and Legends of the Sioux around Fort Snelling. J.Wiley, New York.

Eubank, G. A. L. a. N.
1974 Jeffers Petroglyphs Walking Tour, A Journey Through Time, pp. 26. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.

J.M.L.
1966 The Jeffers Petroglyphs. The Minnesota Archaeologist 28(3):110-141.

Klammer, P.
1970 Red Rock Ridge. Brown County's Heritage 3(1):4-6.

Kreidberg, M. (editor)
1976 Old Rail Fence Corners, Frontier Tales Told by Minnesota Pioneers. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul.

Lewis, T. H.
1891 Cup-Stones Near Old Fort Ransom. The American Naturalist 25:455-461.

Long, S. H. a. W. H. K.
1959 Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter’s River, Lake Winnepeek, Lake of the Woods, &c. Performed in the year 1823, by order of the Hon. J.C. Calhoun, Secretary of War under the command of Stephen H. Long, USTE. Ross & Haines, Inc., Minneapolis, Reprint ed., 1823.

Lothson, F. R. a. M. E. a. G.
1973 The Jeffers Petroglyphs, A Cultural-Ecological Study. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul.

Lynd, J. W.
1889 1860-67 The Religion of the Dakotas. vol. II. Collections of the Minn. Hist. Soc. Manuscripts, St. Paul.

Mallery, G.
1972 (1893) Picture Writing of the American Indians, Vol.s 1 & 2. Dover Editions reprint,, Washington D. C.

Mossler, D. L. S. a. J. H.
1984 The Sioux Quartzite and Subjacent Regolith in the Cottonwood County Basin, Minnesota. In Shorter Contributions to the Geology of the Sioux Quartzite (Early Proterozoic) Southwestern Minnesota, edited by D. L. Southwick, pp. 17-44. vol. 32. University of Minnesota, St. Paul.

Pond, S.
1986 The Dakota or Sioux in Minnesota As They Were in 1834. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Reprint 1908.

Radin
1923 The Winnebago Tribe. In Bulletin 61, Bureau of of American Ethnology, Washington, D.C.

Rajnovich, G.
1994 Reading Rock Art: Interpreting The Indian Rock Paintings Of The Canadian Shield. Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc., Toronto.

Rapp, G. J. a. C. L. H.
1998 Geoarchaeology: The Earth-Science Approach to Archaeological Interpretation. Yale University Press, New Haven and London.

Rau, C.
1882 Observations on Cup-Shaped and Other Lapidarian Sculptures in the Old World and America. In Contributions to North American Ethnology. vol. V, Washington D.C.

Review
1963 An Exploring Trip to southwestern Brown County in 1885. Brown County's Heritage 2(4):129-130.

Riggs, S. R.
1872 Concerning Dakota Beliefs. Paper presented at the Transactions of the American Philological Association 1871.

Riggs, S. R.
1883 Mythology of the Dakotas. The American Antiquarian V(2):148.

Riggs, S. R.
1889? Tah-koo Wah-kan; or The Gospel Among The Dakotas. Cong. Sabbath-School and Publishing Society, Boston.

Roefer, F.
197? A Profile of the Jeffers Petroglyph Prairie. pamphlet.

Rose, M.
1996 Clues from paint pigments. In Archaeology, pp. 63.

Snow, D. R.
1980 Analysis of the Petroglyphs of Cottonwood County, Minnesota, ms. Term Paper, Anthropology 80.

Thornton, R.
1967 Northeast of Jeffers, Indian Rock Carvings Abound. In The Minneapolis Star, pp. 7A, Minneapolis.

Thwaites, R. G. (editor)
1904 The Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition 1804-1806. Dodd, Mead & Company, New York.

Walker, J.
1991 Lakota Belief and Ritual. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London.

Walker, J. R.
1917 The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 16(2):50-221.

Wallis, W. D.
1999 Beliefs and Tales of the Canadian Dakota. Tales of the Santee (Eastern) Dakota Nation Volume 1. Prairie Smoke Press, St. Paul.

Weber, R. W. O. a. R. E.
1984 Petrography and Paleocurrents of the lower Proterozoic Sioux Quartzite, Minnesota and South Dakota. In Shorter Contributions to the Geology of the Sioux Quartzite (Early Proterozoic) Southwestern Minnesota, edited by D. L. Southwick. vol. 32. University of Minnesota, St. Paul.
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