[Illustration: FIG. 41.--The Piasa petroglyph.]
Under Myths and Mythic Animals, Chapter XIV, Section 2, are illustrations and descriptions which should be compared with these accounts, and Chapter XXII gives other examples of errors and discrepancies in the description and copying of petroglyphs.
Mr. A. D. Jones (_a_) says of the same petroglyph:
After the distribution of firearms among the Indians, bullets were substituted for arrows, and even to this day no savage presumes to pass the spot without discharging his rifle and raising his shout of triumph. I visited the spot in June (1838) and examined the image and the ten thousand bullet marks on the cliff seemed to corroborate the tradition related to me in the neighborhood.
Mr. McAdams, loc. cit., also reports regarding Fig. 42:
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Petroglyph on the Illinois river.]
Some twenty-five or thirty miles above the mouth of the Illinois river, on the west bank of that stream, high up on the smooth face of an overhanging cliff, is another interesting pictograph sculptured deeply in the hard rock. It remains to-day probably in nearly the same condition it was when the French voyagers first descended the river and got their first view of the Mississippi. The animal-like body, with the human head, is carved in the rock in outline. The huge eyes are depressions like saucers, an inch or more in depth, and the outline of the body has been scooped out in the same way; also the mouth.
The figure of the archer with the drawn bow, however, is painted, or rather stained with a reddish brown pigment, over the sculptured outline of the monster’s face.
Mr. McAdams suggests that the painted figure of the human form with the bow and arrows was made later than the sculpture.
The same author (_b_) says, describing Fig. 43:
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Petroglyph near Alton, Illinois.]
Some 3 or 4 miles above Alton, high up beneath the overhanging cliff, which forms a sort of cave shelter on the smooth face of a thick ledge of rock, is a series of paintings, twelve in number. They are painted or rather stained in the rock with a reddish brown pigment that seems to defy the tooth of time. It may be said, however, that their position is so sheltered that they remain almost perfectly dry. We made sketches of them some thirty years ago and on a recent visit could see that they had changed but little, although their appearance denotes great age.