Alternative Science & History News

ALBANY -- The Northeast's landscape has a hidden story that's only beginning to appear as researchers investigate centuries-old Native American rock cairns and nearly forgotten art.
"We're at the beginning stage of figuring out how rich this history is," said Ted Timreck, a Smithsonian research associate and director of the film "Hidden Landscapes."


At 9:30 a.m. Saturday in the New York State Museum, the movie "Hidden Landscapes" will be screened and discussed as part of a seminar, "Rock Art and Stone Cairns in New York," sponsored by the Native-American Institute of the Hudson River Valley.

The cairns, and the petroglyph and pictographs painted on rock surfaces, are seen as integrally tied to their surroundings. They are not considered oddities but of significant cultural value.

The cairns are piles of stones. A petroglyph is a stone carving, while a pictograph is a picture or picturelike symbol used to express ideas or information.

"What the film does is set out the history of how we have come to understand these sites," said Timreck, who has spent 30 years investigating cairns.

"The latest research is to put together as ceremonial all these things as part of the landscape. These elements are to be seen in their relationship to the landscape. That relates to the way traditional Native-Americans see these things," Timreck said.

"The recent combination of native voice and the antiquarian voice is becoming so interesting and vocal that the scientific voice is joining in," Timreck said.

Questions arise about why there are so few intact examples of these Native-American artifacts in the Northeast.

"Certainly, it's not as abundant as out in the Southwest. One of the mysteries is why we have so few petroglyphs and pictographs here in the Northeast," said Edward J. Lenik, author of "American Indian Rock Art in the Northeast Woodlands."

Lenik has a theory for the rare occurrence of paintings on rocky surfaces. He is participating in the panel discussion on the rock cairns and art.

"The Indians had plenty of wood to work with. They carved a lot of their work on trees," he explained.

Rock carvings survive in the Hudson River Valley near Kingston and Rhinecliff. At one time, a pictograph was in the Mohawk River valley.

"There was a beautiful pictograph along the Mohawk River in Amsterdam. It disappeared by the end of the 19th century," Lenik said.

They were known as the "Painted Rocks of the Mohawk," and artist Rufus Gridel preserved how they looked in his paintings. The State Museum has studied them.

State researchers found that the Painted Rocks were repainted throughout the 19th century. Timreck said many Native Americans stayed in their original homelands even as some tribe members migrated west ahead of the settlers.

"The scientists are getting a lot more sensitive to farm work from the Colonial era on and the possibility of stonework that exists pre-contact. They're finding native peoples didn't evaporate out of the Eastern landscape," Timreck said.

Those who remained may have continued their native traditions, Timreck said.

As awareness grows about traditional sites in the Northeast, which are often along waterways, there is a strong push to preserve them from development as has occurred elsewhere in the U.S. 

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http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=596172&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=LOCAL&newsdate=6/8/2007