HISTORIC ROCK ART - A FIGURE FROM DENVER HISTORY COMMEMORATED ON A CLIFF IN SKAGWAY, ALASKA:

Sometimes you can go halfway around the world only to run into something that makes you feel at home again.

Ship signature cliff, Skagway, Alaska. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

Ship signature cliff, Skagway, Alaska. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

“Alongside the Railroad Dock in Skagway is an impressive wall of solid granite that is home to one of the most unique art collections in Alaska. Since 1928, the crews of ships have been ‘autographing’ this wall to commemorate their first voyage to Skagway. Though access to the dock has been severely curtailed since ‘9/11’, passengers on the cruise ships with use of the dock and off-season visitors can spend hours reading the signatures, which comprise a virtual ‘Who’s Who’ of Alaska passenger ships from the past 80-odd years.” (Lundberg)

"Soapy" Smith skull painting, Skagway, Alaska. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

"Soapy" Smith skull painting, Skagway, Alaska. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

The dominating image on this wall in Skagway is a large painted skull dedicated to a man named “Soapy Smith.” Soapy Smith’s skull was painted in the Fall of 1926 on a rock formation that is shaped somewhat like a skull. It was signed by ‘FM’ but nowadays nobody seems to know who that was. (Lundberg)

"Soapy" Smith. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

"Soapy" Smith with "Soiled Dove", Skagway, Alaska. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

In this context the story of "Soapy" Smith begins in Denver, Colorado. "Once upon a time, our town had a most colorful villain, Jefferson Randolph ‘Soapy’ Smith, the king of all Western con-men. In Denver, Soapy earned his nickname, opening up a suitcase and offering downtown crowds a chance at easy money. He would flamboyantly wrap a $100 bill around a soap bar before sealing it with pretty pastel tissue. That bar would go on display with the other soap bars. Soapy sang out ads such as: ‘When you raise your arm, do you lose your charm?’ For a mere $1, anyone could pick any bar and take it home. Soapy’s bills, of course, went only to his confederates, whose whoops of elation could be heard for blocks away. Two Denver police officers were among Soapy’s early customers. When he balked at giving them his name, they booked him as Soapy Smith. The name stuck.” (Noel 2016)

"Soapy" Smith at a bar in Skagway, Alaska. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

He also became involved in local politics. “Soapy became a star at recruiting, registering, instructing and shepherding voters to the polls where they voted early and often. He masterminded the 1889 election of Mayor Wold Londoner, and election so blatantly crooked that Londoner became the only Denver mayor forced to step down.

During Denver’s notorious City Hall War of 1893, Soapy defended a corrupt city hall against the reform troops of Gov. Davis H. Waite. Supposedly while waving a stick of dynamite from atop the old city hall at 14^th and Larimer, Soapy Smith yelled down at the forces of reform, ‘I’m closer to heaven than you are, but if you come any closer you will get there first.

When reformers prevailed, Soapy was run out of Denver. He headed for Skagway, Alaska, where he is now the town’s pride and joy. The National Park Service is restoring Jeff Smith’s Parlor, a saloon, gambling hell and ‘business office’ for Soapy’s gang, which ran the the town and fleeced the thousands of fortune seekers pouring into this base camp for the great Klondike Gold Rush of 1898.” (Noel 2016) Soapy being considered “the town’s pride and joy” strikes me as an example of an anti-hero, but we in Colorado are happy to share this scoundrel with them in a reverse of their loss is our gain.

“Short on law and long on gold dust, Skagway was the perfect place for Smith to perfect his con games. He soon became the head of an ambitious criminal underworld, and he and his partners fleeced thousands of gullible miners. Smith’s success eventually angered the honest citizens of Skagway, who were trying to build an upstanding community. They formed a vigilante ‘Committee of 101’ in an attempt to bring law and order to the town. Undaunted, Smith formed his own gang into a ‘Committee of 303’ to oppose them.

"Soapy" Smith and his gang in Skagway, Alaska. Internet photograph, Public Domain.

On this day [8 July] in 1898, Smith tried to crash a vigilante meeting on the Skagway wharf, apparently hoping to use his con-man skills to persuade them that he posed no threat to the community. Smith, however, had failed to realize just how angry the vigilantes were. When he tried to break through the crowd, a Skagway city engineer named Frank Reid confronted him. The men exchanged harsh words and then bullets. Reid shot Smith dead on the spot, but not before Smith had badly wounded him. The engineer died 12 days later.” (History.com)

Old Soapy seems to have been destined for a bad ending hurting a lot of people along the way. With the buffer of time, however, people seem to find a way to admire, even celebrate, scoundrels like Soapy Smith. Denver celebrates running him out of town, Skagway not so much apparently.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

History.com Editors, 2019, Soapy Smith killed in Skagway, Alaska, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-histury/soapy-smith-killed-in-skagway-alaska, accessed on 3 July 2022.

Lundberg, Murray, Skagway, Alaska: The “Ship Signature Wall,” Explore North, An Explorer’s Guide to the North, accessed on 13 November 2021

Noel, Tom, 2016, “Soapy” Smith was Denver’s Original Tourist Attraction, 11 September 2008, updated 7 May 2011, https://www.denverpost.com

UNDERWATER ROCK ART - PART 2, ROCK ART IN THE PROCESS OF BEING SUBMERGED:

The major factor in natural coastal rock art submersion is climate change, the warming of the earth by the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. “Global mean sea level has risen about 8-9 inches (21 - 24 centimeters) since 1880, with about a third of that coming in just the last two and a half decades. The rising water level is mostly due to a combination of meltwater from glaciers and ice sheets and a thermal expansion of seawater as it warms. In 2019, global mean sea level was 3.4 inches (87.61 mm) above the 1993 average - the highest annual average in the satellite record. From 2018 to 2019, global sea level rose 0.24 inches (6.2 millimeters).” (Lindsey 2020) Sites that currently lie just a few inches to a few feet above mean sea level will inevitably become submerged as rising waters continue to creep up year by year.

View of Alta fjord, Norway. Photo Ralph Frenken, 2012, from Donsmaps.com

Alta fjord, Norway, Googleearth, Don Hitchcock, Donsmaps.com.

One rock art site listed by Tiwary (2014) is the Alta Fjord site in Norway which, although currently exposed, he expects to be submerged by rising sea-levels. “The World Heritage Rock Art in Alta is a rich cultural monument consisting of several carvings and paintings localized in the inner parts of Altafjord in Finnmark, Norway. The rock art in Alta was made over a period of time from 4200 B.C. to 200 A.D. After a few years it may get submerged into the sea.” (Tiwary 2014)

Alta fjord rock art, Norway. Internet photo, whc.unesco.org.

Alta fjord, Norway. Photo Ralph Frenken, 2012, From Donsmaps.com.

“The Alta site is at the head of the fjord, and is very well protected from the swells of the Norwegian Sea. The depth of the fjord increases rapidly from about 60 metres close in shore to more than 400 metres further out in the fjord. It was used as an anchorage by the German battleships Tirpitz and Scharnhorst in 1943 during WWII.” (Hitchcock 2019)

“At the end of the last ice age, the land ‘rebounded’ after the bulk of the ice melted, and so this part of Norway slowly lifted by a process known as isostasy. The ice sheet reached its greatest extent and thickness 20,000 years ago, and most melting occurred between 16,000 and 10,000 years ago. This uplift did not stop when the ice had melted, it continues to this day.” (Hitchcock 2019)

This isostasy will be competing with the sea-level rise caused by global warming, but the projections for sea-level rise suggest that it will win the competition and that the Alta petroglyphs are eventually as doomed as the other sites I have listed.

Waianae coast, Oahu, Hawaii. Online photo from LiveScience.

Waianae coast, Oahu, Hawaii. Internet photo, Public Domain.

Waianae coast, Oahu, Hawaii. Internet photo, Public Domain.

Waianae coast, Oahu, Hawaii. Internet photo, Public Domain.

Waianae coast, Oahu, Hawaii. Internet photo, Public Domain.

Waianae coast, Oahu, Hawaii. Internet photo, Public Domain.

There are many other rock art sites that sit near sea level that will become underwater rock art  sites with continued sea-level rise. One site is a recently discovered petroglyph site on Hawaiia’s Waianae coast on Oahu. “Archaeologists from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and the U.S. Army have been working together to record and document the petroglyphs; which now number at least 17 figures.” (Sci-News 2016) The figures stretch over sixty feet of beach. These figures are on the beach and were covered by sand until recently and, depending on wave action and storms, may be covered again. A few inches of sea-level rise, however, will submerge them.

Petroglyph Beach, Wrangell, Alaska. Photo Peter Faris, August 2, 2001.

Orca petroglyph, Wrangell, Alaska. Photo                    Peter Faris, August 2, 2001.

Another major petroglyph site which will inevitably be covered by sea-level rise is Petroglyph Beach at Wrangell, Alaska. Produced by the Tlingit people it is representative of much of the rock art on the northwestern coast of North America.

Bird petroglyph, Wrangell, Alaska. Photo Peter Faris, August 2, 2001.

  
Mask petroglyph, Wrangell, Alaska. Photo                     Peter Faris, August 2, 2001.

“While Tlingit rock art (especially petroglyphs) may sometimes have been made to attract the salmon, the figures include clan crests, ancestors, mythological figures and sailing ships, as well as symbols of wealth or victory. Tlingit rock art may, like the elaborate totemic figures on poles and house screens, serve as illustrations of important events, mythic or historical, in the clan traditions and so bear witness to the achievements, wealth, or supernatural powers obtained by the clan ancestors.” (De Laguna 1990:215) Of the rock art at Petroglyph Beach, the figures are pecked and carved into basalt boulders on the beach. Many of them seemingly consist of masklike faces, but the famous orca there is undoubtedly a clan figure as described above. Again, if left as they are, a foot or two of sea level rise will submerge almost all of them.

Undoubtedly many other locations like this exist. It has not been my intention to present a complete catalog of threatened rock art sites, but to present a different angle to rock art conservation, one not commonly considered. Next week I will discuss some rock art sites that are underwater as a result of human, not natural, activity.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

Additionally - I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Sachin Tiwary for his permission to quote his study as well as reproduce images from it.

REFERENCES:

De Laguna, Frederica, 1990 Tlingit, pp. 203-228, in Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 7, Northwest Coast, Wayne Suttles, editor, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

Hitchcock, Don, 2019, Norwegian Rock Art - Alta Fjord, Don’s Maps, https://www.donsmaps.com/norge.html

Lindsey, Rebecca, 2020, Climate Change: Global Sea Level, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), https://www.climate.gov

Staff, 2016 400-Year-Old-Petroglyphs Found on Hawaii Shoreline, Ausust 11, 2016, www.sci-news.com

Tiwary, Sachin Kr., 2014 Underwater Rock Art: In Global Context, En Rupestreweb, http://www.rupestreweb.info/underwaterrockart.html

THE EARLIEST HUMAN DATE IN NORTH AMERICA SO FAR (PART TWO) - THE ROCK ART:

Beringia.

cs7.pikabu.ru,

Public domain.

In part one of this I presented the earliest human date - so far - in North America, obtained from human-made cut marks on a piece of a horse mandible dated to 24,000 years ago. This was recovered from excavations between 1977 and 1987 at Bluefish Caves in the Yukon, by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars. This location is in the area defined as Beringia, the portions of the Bering Strait exposed during the last glacial maximum, and adjoining portions of Siberia, Alaska, and Canada that were not covered by glaciation. I closed that column with the statement - "but this is RockArtBlog - what does this have to do with rock art? Well, we know people make rock art, and people from 24,000 years ago might well have made rock art too. As Eamer stated Beringia is now "mostly underwater" but, in the portions remaining available to us there is the possibility of rock art as old as 24,000 years. What a find that would be, what might it look like?"

With the end of the Ice Age and the melting of the glaciers the portion of Beringia that is now the Bering Strait was submerged, but portions of the land on continental North America that had been exposed at that time (and included in the boundaries of Beringia) are still exposed, and it so happens there are examples of rock art on those portions that might give us clues to what Beringian rock art would have looked like.

To begin, I must confess that my sample is woefully small, but from a very wide area. I have samples of petroglyphs from Petroglyph Beach at Wrangell, Alaska, and a carved rock from Shemya Island in the Aleutians, a small rocky island way out by the western end of the Aleutian chain.

Petroglyph Beach, Wrangell, Alaska.

Peter Faris, August 2001.

Petroglyph Beach, Wrangell, Alaska.

Peter Faris, August 2001.

"Petroglyph Beach State Historic Site is an Alaskan beach and public historical site with the highest concentration of Native American petroglyphs in the southeastern region of Alaska. Located on the shore of Wrangell, Alaska barely a mile out of town it became a State Historic Park in 2000. At lease 40 petroglyphs have been found to date. The site itself is about 8,000 years old." (Wikipedia) The predominate motifs seem to be concentric circles and masks, although a few recognizable zoomorphs are found such as birds and an orca.

"Seal Stone", Shemya Island,

Alaska. Public domain.

Shemya Island, Alaska.

1944, Public domain.

Shemya Island is located 1200 miles west by southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. This very "small island is in the Near Islands group of the Semichi Islands chain in the Aleutian Islands archipelago. - It has a land area of 5.903 sq mi (15.29 km²) and is 2.73 miles (4.39 km) wide and 4.32 miles (6.95 km) long." (Wikipedia) An island that is this small would never have supported a large population, but prehistoric population did exist, and we have a carved stone to prove it. The "Seal Stone" (so-called for the resemblence of one end to the head of a seal) weighs approximately 250 pounds and was found on Shemya during World War II by an American airman who shipped it home on an Air Corps cargo plane. It has since been recovered and returned to the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska (McLain 2015). 

Seal stone, one analysis of motifs
(I disagree with most of these identifications
except the face, there are also faces
that he did not identify).

aleutianislandsworkinggroup.wordpress.com,
Public domain.

The carvings on the "Seal Stone" are very reminiscent of many of the petroglyphs found on Petroglyph Beach at Wrangell, consisting of circles and masks, suggesting that they were made by members of the same culture.

We find motifs in both examples of masks, and multiple circular elements, showing considerable similarity. Having two examples of similar rock art found in areas that were included in old Beringia, and 1200 miles apart, seems to indicate a widespread culture that might have once included the rest of Beringia. Unfortunately we do not have reliable dates for these petroglyphs and the only way of estimating dates that I can imagine would be by measuring the depth of the weathering rind in the carved lines and comparing that to the rind of an un-carved surface. This would be a destructive technique so we should eschew any such attempts. If the published estimate of age for the petroglyphs at Wrangell is correct, then their creation was much closer to the time of Beringian exposure than to the present. That could suggest that this common culture is, indeed, very old and may well date back to Beringia. I fear, however, that we may never know unless more rock art is discovered in datable contexts.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the originals at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Eamer, Claire

2017 Archaeological Find Puts Humans in North America 10,000 Years Earlier Than Thought, January 13, 2017, https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/archaeological-find-puts-humans-north-america-10000-years-earlier-thought

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shemya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph_Beach_State_Historic_Park

McLain, Allison Young,

2015 The Seal Stone Enigma, 16 March 2015, https://aleutianislandsworkinggroup.wordpress.com/tab/rock-art/

THE EARLIEST HUMAN DATE IN NORTH AMERICA - SO FAR (PART ONE):

 

Yukon scene with close-up of

bone with cut marks inset.

ancientorigins.com.

Public Domain.

I have long been interested in the possibility as to whether any rock art exists created in Beringia by the first immigrants to North America. I can see no reason why they would not have created rock art, pretty much everybody else did in prehistoric North America.

Close-up of bone fragment

with cut marks.

umontreal.ca,

Public Domain.

Now, materials recovered from the Bluefish Caves in the Yukon between 1977 and 1987, by archaeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars have belatedly provided evidence that humans had arrived in North America 24,000 years ago. (Boissoneault 2017) "At the time Cinq-Mars and his team concluded that the Bluefish Caves showed evidence of occasional human use as much as 30,000 years ago." (Eamer 2017) - In part 1 I will present the early date, and in part 2 I will add some speculations about the rock art.

Fragment of horse mandible

from Bluefish Caves,

smithsonianmag.com

Public Domain.

Naturally, Cinq-Mars' early dates raised considerable controversy and disagreement, after all, back then we all knew that the Clovis people of 13,000 years ago were the first inhabitants of North America.

"The discord surrounding Cinq-Mars' discovery resulted in a portion of the collection never being thoroughly analyzed and researchers eventually lost interest. But now, 40 years after Cinq-Mars' initial discovery, it seems the archaeologist has been vindicated. Canadian scientists Lauriane Bourgeon and Ariane Burke, assisted by University of Oxford professor Thomas Higham, conducted a two-year re-analysis of the bones found in the Bluefish Caves, poring over 36,000 bone fragments held in a collection at the Canadian Museum of History and studying fragments that hadn't previously been taphonomically classified. After doing a thorough classification of the markings on the bones as made by natural forces or humans, they conducted radiocarbon dating of those they deemed to have been marked by humans. The earliest bone to show distinct human-made marks - a horse jaw, sawed by a stone tool that indicates the hunter was attempting to remove the tongue - dates to 24,000 years ago." (Boissoneault 2017)

Diagram of placement of the

horse mandible fragment,

umontreal.ca,

Public Domain.

"Recent genetic studies suggest that some ancient people rode out the hostile conditions of the Last Glacial Maximum in isolation in the relatively hospitable Beringia - a continent, now mostly underwater, that once spanned from Siberia to Canada's Mackenzie River - before moving deeper into North America when conditions improved. Archaeological evidence of their presence has been elusive, but the butchered bones of the Bluefish Caves might provide that missing link." (Eamer 2017) So if the cut marks are interpreted correctly, and if the radiocarbon dates are correct, people were in North America as far back as 24,000 years ago.

Tools from Bluefish Caves,

rperon1017blog.files.wordpress.com,

Public Domain.

The results of Cinq-Mars' excavation also provide evidence supporting the Beringia Standstill Hypothesis, the theory that during the last glacial maximum a population remained standing still in Beringia, cut off from moving further south by glaciation. "John Hoffecker, an archaeologist and human paleoecologist at the University of Colorado and proponent of the Beringia standstill hypothesis, agrees that the cut-marked bones are strong evidence of early human occupation. But what stunned him, he says, was a comment - taken from Cinq-Mars's original, unpublished notes - that stone tools were found in the lowest and oldest cave deposits. "As soon as I saw the information, I realized that there is a pretty solid case for the Last Glacial Maximum occupation 24,000 years ago."" (Eamer 2017)

But this is RockArtBlog - what does this have to do with rock art? Well, we know people make rock art, and people from 24,000 years ago might well have made rock art too. As Eamer stated above, Beringia is now "mostly underwater" but, in the portions remaining available to us there is the possibility of rock art as old as 24,000 years. What a find that would be, what might it look like? - To Be Continued.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the originals at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Eamer, Claire

2017 Archaeological Find Puts Humans in North America 10,000 Years Earlier Than Thought, January 13, 2017, https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/archaeological-find-puts-humans-north-america-10000-years-earlier-thought

Boissoneault, Lorraine,

2017 North America 10,000 Years Earlier Than We Thought, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/humans-may-have-arrived-north-america-10000-years-earlier-we-thought-180961957/

VANDALISM OF ROCK ART - THEFT:

Orca petroglyph, Petroglyph Beach, Wrangell,

Alaska. Photo Peter Faris, 2001.

One form of vandalism of rock art that has many different facets that need to be considered is theft. First, many museums have examples of rock art in their collections that have been moved to the facility from its natural environment. This may have been done for many reasons. Often the rock has been moved to protect it from erosion or from theft or other vandalism. Other examples of rock art in museum collections were acquired before our modern sensibility to the feelings of indigenous peoples and our current attitude that these images belong where they were created. Many were collected just like any other artifact back in the 1800s. While we tend to overlook these heritage examples, I am afraid it still comes up once in a while. At least we now have considerably more sensibility to such occurrences.

More commonly are stories about people who have taken rocks with petroglyphs on them for their own personal reasons. If taken from public land this is theft and a federal crime.

One example I personally ran into in 2001 while on an Alaska cruise was the rock with the famous Orca (Killer Whale) petroglyph on Petroglyph Beach at Wrangell, Alaska. My wife and I searched the boulders for quite some time and could not find the image anywhere. We finally had to go to lunch but, after lunch, while she stayed on the ship I went back to search some more. Again I was unsuccessful and was actually turning to leave when I noticed that one of the houses with back yards adjoining the beach had a fire pit in the yard surrounded by boulders that matched the ones on the beach.

I went over to the fire ring (yes, I was trespassing) and found that one of the boulders in the ring had exactly the Orca petroglyph I had been searching for on it. In other words that home owner had stolen it. They probably did not think of it as theft, after all they live there. They may have thought of it as protecting the art. The fact is, however, they took the petroglyph rock away from its location on the public beach and placed it on their own private property. Maybe it is better protected now!