Monday, February 26, 2018

3D canvas created by spirit beings

 
   My friend Dr. Johnnie Rock Lobster writes to me a while back:

1.) “The placement of rock art motifs/panels/stone features on the landscape is selective (the pattern is not always obvious, but there are physiologically-informed and culturally-mediated reasons why certain locales are selected over others);

2. Rock art motifs/panels/stone features on the landscape exhibit self-similar properties at different scales (the Russian doll-within-doll idea is that the big natural bedding plane, that resembles a snake, contains numerous painted depictions of smaller rattle snakes);

3.) The rock/terrain surface is as significant as the rock art motifs/panels/stone features (e.g., it provides a pre-figured 3D canvas created by spirit beings that then need people to reciprocate likewise);

4.) Rock art motifs/panels/stone features on the landscape are interactive, even long after their production (e.g., live snakes coming in and out of the "dead" natural one);



5.) Bodily movements in and around rock art panels and stone features on the landscape are significant (note how your snake head changed when you crossed the threshold/veil). So all-in-all, there is good reason to claim that rock art/stone features in its original physical context has a certain degree of agency, one that facilitates informed visitors (informed by having in-depth knowledge of the culture involved) to relive certain experiences and beliefs of the original makers...” - J.R. Lobster (pers. comm.)


    A Moravian Missionary wrote about the ability of an “Indian acquaintance and friend” to do much the same using face paint for an unspecified “dance.”

      “As I was once resting in my travels at the house of a trader who lived at some distance from an Indian town, I went in the morning to visit an Indian acquaintance and friend of mine. I found him engaged in plucking out his beard, preparatory to painting himself for a dance which was to take place the ensuing evening. Having finished his head dress, about an hour before sunset, he came up, as he said, to see me, but I and my companions judged that he came to be seen. To my utter astonishment, I saw three different paintings or figures on one and the same face. He had, by his great ingenuity and judgment in laying on and shading the different colours, made his nose appear, when we stood directly in front of him, as if it were very long and narrow, with a round knob at the end, much like the upper part of a pair of tongs.


 On one cheek there was a red round spot, about the size of an apple, and the other was done in the same manner with black. The eye-lids, both the upper and lower ones, were reversed in the colouring.

     When we viewed him in profile on one side, his nose represented the beak of an eagle, with the bill rounded and brought to a point, precisely as those birds have it, though the mouth was somewhat open. The eye was astonishingly well done, and the head, upon the whole, appeared tolerably well, shewing a great deal of fierceness.   
     When we turned round to the other side, the same nose now resembled the snout of a pike, with the mouth so open, that the teeth could be seen. 

       He seemed much pleased with his execution, and having his looking-glass with him, he contemplated his work, seemingly with great pride and exultation. He asked me how I liked it? I answered that if he had done the work on a piece of board, bark, or anything else, I should like it very well and often look at it. But, asked he, why not so as it is? Because I cannot see the face that is hidden under these colours, so as to know who it is. Well, he replied, I must go now, and as you cannot know me to-day, I will call to-morrow morning before you leave this place. He did so, and when he came back he was washed clean again.
      Thus, for a single night's frolic, a whole day is spent in what they call dressing, in which each strives to outdo the other (page 102).”

   John Gottlieb Ernestus Heckewelder
History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations  Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighbouring States
    Every once in a while, I wonder if some Ceremonial Stone Landscape Features had at one time (or at certain times?) had also been painted, as documented in certain places.

    Kevin Callahan: “In the 1840's artist Henry Lewis painted a scene of the Red Rock published in his book The Valley of the Mississippi Illustrated. The boulder in the lower left corner next to the tree is thought to be the Red Rock at its original location several miles south of St. Paul on the Mississippi river:”

“This painted boulder has been moved many times since then to protect it from damage by steamboat passengers and others. One individual apparently even wanted to blow it up with dynamite as a pagan idol. It now resides in front of the United Methodist Church of Newport, Minnesota.”




"The beliefs and customs surrounding the Red Rock is typical of a wider rock art and religious phenomenon in the Upper Midwest - namely Native American religious customs and beliefs that concerned glacial erratics and other significant stones within the sacred landscape which were often painted and decorated as part of their religion."



“Other celebrated spots in the Dakota sacred landscape were the Pipestone Quarry with its enormous granite boulders called "the Three Maidens" which at one time were literally surrounded by a circle of petroglyphs, and Carvers Cave in St. Paul which was covered in petroglyphs that were recorded by Theodore H. Lewis.”

"Wakinyan, or the Thunder-bird had its chief dwelling place in Brown's Valley in far western Minnesota. Brown's Valley had several boulders covered with thunderbird symbols - sometimes referred to in rock art literature as "turkey tracks."


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