m University of Massachusetts UMAS& Amherst I B R A R DIGHTON ROCK A Study of the Written Rocks of New England DIGHTON ROCK A Study of the Written Rocks of New England By EDMUND BURKE DELABARRE Professor of Psychology in Brown University With 108 Illustrations, from Rare Prints, Photographs, Drawings, Charts, and Maps m m New York WALTER NEALE Publisher of General Literature 1928 7-1 :fl33 Copyright, 1928, By Edmund Burke Delabarre Manufactured in the United States of America To the Memory of Miguel Cortereal First European Dweller in New England and of Great Meta comet Commonly Known As King Philip Chief Sachem CONTENTS PAGE Preface 1 CHAPTER I. Introduction 8 II, The Dighton Writing Rock 17 III. Early Interest in Dighton Rock 28 IV. A Record of Phcenician Adventure .... 49 V. Continued Oriental Speculation 68 VI. The Norse Myth 86 VII. Development of the Indian Theory .... 108 VIII. A Medley of Recent Opinions 126 IX. Reproductions of the Dighton Rocjc Inscrip- tion 146 X. A New Interpretation of the Records . . . 165 XI. The Mount Hope Rock 187 XII. The Island of Rhode Island 205 XIII. The Written Rocks at Tiverton 226 XIV. Mark Rock in Warwick 237 XV. Miscellaneous Inscribed Rocks and Stones . 255 XVI. Frauds, Rumors and Mistaken Reports . . . 271 XVII. Psychological Observations 287 XVIII. Conclusions 302 Bibliographies 313 A. Bibliography of Dighton Rock 317 B. Chronological Sequence of Items in A . . 346 C. Partial Bibliography of New England Petro- glyphs 348 Index 353 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Note. — Acknowledgment for the loan of plates is made in this list by means of the following abbreviations : to the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, (C.S.M.) ; to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, (N.E.A.) ; to the Rhode Island Historical Society, (R.I.H.S.). 1. Dighton Rock at low tide. Photograph by E. B. Delabarre, September 12, 1927 frontispiece FACING PAGE 2. Shoreward side of Dighton Rock, with Grassy Island beyond. Photograph by E. B. Delabarre, May 9, 1925 10 3. Sketch Map of Assonet Neck, Berkley, Massachusetts . . 18 4. The up-stream end of Dighton Rock. Photograph by E. B. Delabarre, 1919 22 5. A flashlight view of the Dighton Rock inscriptions. Photo- graph by E. B. Delabarre, June 25, 1923, 11 :30 P. M. . . 22 BETWEEN PAGES 6. Best known drawings of Dighton Rock made before the in- troduction of photography. From the Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1893, Plate LIV (C.S.M.) 26-27 7. Earliest drawing and description of the Dighton Rock inscrip- tion, by Rev. John Danforth, October, 1680. From a photo- graph of the originals in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 4432, 187, 188 (C.S.M.) 30-31 FACING PAGE 8. Earliest printed drawing and description of Dighton Rock. From the Wonderful Works of God Commemorated, by Rev. Cotton Mather, D.D., 1690 (N.E.A.) 38 9. Drawing of the Dighton Rock inscription by Rev. Ezra Stiles, July 15, 1767. From the original in the Yale Univer- sity Library (N.E.A.) 48 10. The "Smith-Stiles" copy of a drawing made in 1789 by Wil- liam Baylies, John Smith, Samuel West, Joseph Gooding, and others. From the original in the library of the Massa- chusetts Historical Society (N.E.A.) 48 ix X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE 11. Samuel Harris's copy, about 1807, of the alphabetic charac- ters discernible in James Winthrop's full size ink-impression from Dighton Rock, 1788. From the original in the Har- vard University Library (C.S.M.) 60 12. E. A. Kendall's Painting in Oil, 1807 (C.S.M.) 70 13. Dammartin's reproduction of Gebelin's reproduction of Sewall's drawing of 1768. From Dammartin's Explica- tion de la pierre de Taunston, 1838, planche 1 90 14. The Rhode Island Historical Society's drawing, 1834. From a photograph of the original in the Royal Library, Copen- hagen (N.KA.) 90 15. Drawing of alleged Roman letters (Fig. E), 1847; and com- bination of the drawings of 1789 and 1837, by Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1851. From Schoolcraft's History of the Indian Tribes, volume I, 1851, Plate 36 (C.S.M.) .... 110 16. The earliest known photographic representation of Dighton Rock. Daguerreotype made in 1853 by Capt. Seth Eastman. From the original in the library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (N.E.A.) 130 PAGE 17. Drawing of the shoreward side of Dighton Rock, by Charles A. Fernald, 1903. From Fernald's Universal International Genealogy, 1910, page 33, Plate 70 (C.S.M.) 137 18. Drawing by John W. Barber, 1839. From Barber's His- torical Collections of Massachusetts, page 117 (C.S.M.) . 151 FACING PAGE 19. Plaster Cast by Lucien I. Blake, 1876. From a photograph in the manuscript catalogue of the Gilbert Museum, Am- herst College (C.S.M.) 140 20. 21, 22. Examples of photographs interpreting the inscription on Dighton Rock by chalking its supposed characters : 20. By A. M. Harrison and W. B. Gardner, in 1875 (N.E.A.) 21. By Frank S. Davis in 1894 (N.E.A.) 22. By the Old Colony Historical Society in 1902 (N.E.A.) 150 23. Photograph of Dighton Rock without chalking, by George C. Burgess and Augustine H. Folsom, 1868 (N.E.A.) ... 156 24. Photograph of Dighton Rock without chalking, by Qiarles A. Hathaway, Jr., 1907 (N.E.A.) 156 25. Flashlight photograph of Dighton Rock, by E. B. Dela- barre, July 17, 1920, at 3.00 A. M 162 26. Arrangement of apparatus for taking flashlight photographs (N.E.A.) 164 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi BETWEEN PAGES n. The "Cortereal" inscription on Dighton Rock; its appearance in seven different photographs, and its probably correct reading 168-169 28. The right-hand end of the inscribed surface (N.E.A.) FACING PAGE a. Section of flashhght photograph of July 17, 1920 b. Probable inscription by Miguel Cortereal, 1511 c. Indian glyphs overlying and obscuring the Cortereal inscription 172 29. The Coat-of-Anns of Portugal a. As adopted in 1485. From the Geographical Journal, 1900, xvi. 634 b. As depicted on the Cantino chart, 1502. From Henry Harrisse's Discovery of North America, Plate VI, pages 78-79 c. As inscribed on Dighton Rock 164 30. A spring near Dighton Rock, possibly the "White Spring" of tradition. Photograph by E. B. Delabarre, Novem- ber 11, 1923 176 31. The mouth of "White Man's Brook," and beginning of the "Injun Trail." Photograph by E. B. Delabarre, April 4, 1924 176 Z2. The "Thacher" writing on Dighton Rock, 1592 a. Section of flashlight photograph of July 17, 1920 b. The same with the "Thacher" reading emphasized • . 180 ZZ. Part of the left-hand end of the inscribed surface (N.E.A) a. Section of flashlight photograph of June 27, 1922 b. The same with pictographs and records emphasized . . 182 34. Conjectural completion of the "Spring" inscription a. Section of flashlight photograph of July 17, 1920 b. The same with the writing emphasized 184 35. Conjectural reconstruction of all of the inscriptions on Digh- ton Rock, by E. B. Delabarre, 1927. Plotted upon the flash- light photograph of July 17, 1920 186 Zd. Section of Chart of Narragansett Bay in the vicinity of Mount Hope, Bristol, Rhode Island 188 Z1. The Mount Hope Rock as seen from the northwest. Photo- graph by John R. Hess, November 16, 1919 190 38. The inscription on Mount Hope Rock. Photograph by Johii R. Hess, November 16, 1919 190 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS tAGE 39. Drawing of Mount Hope inscription by William J. Miller, 1880. From Miller's Notes ConcerniHg the Wampanoag Tribe, page 119 189 40. Drawing of Mount Hope inscription by Wilfred H. Munro, 1880. From Munro's History of Bristol, page 389 ... . 189 41. Drawing of Mount Hope inscription by Edgar M. Bacon, 1904. From Bacon's Narragansett Bay, page 3 189 42. Versions of the Mount Hope inscription and comparison with other Indian writings 198 43. Drawings of Portsmouth inscriptions by Ezra Stiles, June 17, 1767. From Stiles's manuscript Itineraries, ii. 265 .... 204 44. Drawings of Portsmouth inscriptions by Ezra Stiles, June 17, 1767. From his Itineraries, ii. 266 207 45. Map by Ezra Stiles, October 6, 1767, of the vicinity of the Portsmouth rocks. From his Itineraries, ii. 301 .... 208 46. Plan of the Portsmouth rocks, by Ezra Stiles, October 6, 1767. From his Itineraries, ii. 302 209 47. Drawings of Portsmouth inscriptions by Ezra Stiles, Octo- ber 6, 1767. From his Itineraries, ii. 303 210 48. Drawings of Portsmouth inscriptions by Ezra Stiles, Octo- ber 6, 1767. From his Itineraries, ii. 304 211 49. Drawings of Portsmouth inscriptions by Ezra Stiles, Octo- ber 6, 1767. From his Itineraries, ii. 305 212 FACING PAGE 50. Section of Chart of Narragansett Bay, in the vicinity of the former Portsmouth rocks 206 51. 52, 53. Drawings of Portsmouth inscriptions by John R. Bartlett, August 10, 1835. From the originals in the library of the Rhode Island Historical Society Number 1 . . . 206 Numbers 2 and 3 212 54. One of the inscribed rocks at Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Photograph by George H. Chase, 1883 214 55. Section of Chart of Narragansett Bay, in the vicinity of Arnold's Point, Portsmouth 216 56. The Arnold's Point Cup Stone. Photograph by E. B. Dela- . barre. May 5, 1920 216 57. Section of Chart of Narragansett Bay, showing portions of Portsmouth and Tiverton in the vicinity of Fogland Point 220 58. Section of Chart of Narragansett Bay, showing southerly part of Middletown 220 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii FACING PAGE 59. The basins and grooves on ledges near Purgatory. Photo- graphs by E. B. Delabarre, August 23, 1921 222 60. The group of Tiverton boulders as seen from the south. Photograph by John R. Hess, October 29, 1919 226 61. The Tiverton inscription. Photograph by John R. Hess, October 29, 1919, at 5.00 P. M 226 62. 63. Drawings of Tiverton inscriptions by Ezra Stiles, June 7, 1768. From Stiles's manuscript Itineraries, ii. 351, 352 . 228 PAGES 64, 65, 66. Drawings of Tiverton inscriptions by John R. Bart- lett, August 18, 1835. From the originals in the library of the Rhode Island Historical Society 230, 231 PAGE 67. Alleged Runic characters on Portsmouth and Tiverton rocks 234 68. Map of vicinity of Mark Rock in Warwick, Rhode Island. From Richard's Standard Atlas of the Providence Metro- politan District, 1917, ii. 26 238 FACING PAGE 69. The Mark Rock Ledge. Photograph by John R. Hess, May 19, 1920 240 70. Plan of Mark Rock Ledge. After an aeroplane photograph PAGE by E. B. Delabarre, May 28, 1920 ' . . 241 71. 12, IZ. Mark Rock glyphs o, h, and c. Photographs by John FACING PAGE R. Hess, June 1, 1920 242 74, 75. Mark Rock glyphs d and e. Photographs by John R. Hess, June 1, 1920 244 PAGE 76. Sketch of probable markings in position / 245 FACING PAGE n, 78. Mark Rock glyphs g and h. Photographs by John R. Hess, June 1, 1920 246 79, 80, 81, 82. Mark Rock glyphs fZ and i. Photographs by E. B. Delabarre, May 30, 1923 248 83. Mark Rock glyphs in position %. Photograph by John R. Hess, June 1, 1920 250 84. Probable appearance of drawings of human figures on Mark Rock 250 85. 86. Mark Rock glyphs ; and k. Photographs by John R. Hess, June 1 and May 29, 1920 252 xlv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 87. Marks or signatures of four Indian sachems : Weshagan- esett, Wonimenatony, Miantonomi, and Socononoco (R.I.H.S.) 251 FACING PAGE 88. Inscribed Indian Banner Stone found in Warren, Rhode Island, near the Kickamuit river. From photographs of the original in the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York . 256 89. A pictographic headstone found in Dighton, Massachusetts. Photograph by Fred J. Carr, from the original in the Museum of the Old Colony Historical Society 258 90. Indian inscription carved upon a small boulder found in West Wrentham, Massachusetts. From H. H. Wilder's Man's Prehistoric Past, 1923, page 372 258 91. The Denison Tablet, found in southerly Rhode Island. From a photograph of the original in the Museum of the Rhode Island Historical Society 260 92. 93. Inscribed tablet found at Orient, Long Island. From dravk^ings of the original in the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York 260 PAGE 94. Inscriptions on a rock near Scaticook, in Kent, Connecticut. After drawings by Ezra Stiles, October 7, 1789, in the library of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . . 262 95, 96, 97, 98. Inscription Rocks in Vermont. From Hall's His- tory of Eastern Vermont, 1858, pages 587-589 95. "Indian Rock" at West River, Brattleboro 96. Former location of pictured rocks at Bellows Falls 97. 98. Inscriptions at Bellows Falls 266 FACING PAGE 99. Drawing by A. C. Hamlin of inscriptions at Bellows Falls. From Schoolcraft's History of the Indian Tribes, 1860, vi. 606 . . . 266 100. Photograph of inscriptions at Bellows Falls. From Cata- logue of the Gilbert Museum, Amherst College, Plate XI . 266 PAGE 101. Inscriptions at Machias, Maine. From Alallery's Picture Writing of the American Indians, Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Plate XII 268 102. 103. Drawings of the Hammond Tablet, based on rubbings 102. The "mammoth" side 276 103. The "historical" side 277 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv FACING PAGE 104. The Ober Broadside, 1889. From a copy in the library of the Old Colony Historical Society 280 PAGE 105. Alleged inscription at Damaris Cove Island, Maine. From Fernald's Universal International Genealogy, 1910, page 398 283 FACING PAGE 106. Photograph of one side of the Hammond Tablet. Photograph by Fred J. Carr 284 107. Alleged inscription at Monhegan Island, Maine. Drawing by A. C. Hamlin, from Schoolcraft's History of the Indian Tribes, 1860, vi. 612 284 108. Map showing approximate locations of inscribed rocks and stones of the Narragansett Basin 302 PREFACE Several circumstances have conspired to bring it about that this study has been made by one who is a psychologist by pro- fession, and not a trained archaeologist. For one thing, the archaeologists themselves were busy with other interests and assumed that this matter had been sufficiently settled. They were mistaken, as it turned out; nevertheless, none of them seemed likely to make the much needed investigation. It hap- pened — ^Voluntate Dei, as one of the rock-records expresses it — that it was the psychologist who chanced to make his sum- mer home within a mile or two of the most famous of these rocks, with the consequent arousal of his curiosity concerning the unsolved mystery of it. The endeavor to satisfy this curiosity followed naturally, and this led gradually to the dis- covery of so much of unsupported statement that called for assured verification or refutal, so much of positive error, so great a variety of conflicting claims and so deep an interest in the pursuit of them, that he was enticed little by little to the ultimate assemblage of all facts and views that had found expression. Among these were included a great many that were new and important, and it became his evident duty to pro- vide a correct account of them all. Moreover, the inadequacies of previous investigations as well as previous historical ac- counts became apparent, and thus arose the necessity of making fresh and more thoroughly conducted observations of his own. Then, finally, in doing all this, he was able to justify to him- self the time spent in the research and thus to appease his pro- fessional conscience, by finding the subject full of psychological contacts, some of which will become evident in the following pages. Almost everything which appears in this book has been published before in a more extended form. Soon after the first set of new discoveries had thrown fresh light upon the 1 2 DIGHTON ROCK earliest history of Dighton Rock, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts requested that they be presented in the pages of its Publications. Later, it extended the courtesy of an oppor- tunity to complete the history of the same rock in the fullest possible detail. After continued study of the rock had given new insight into the probable nature of its inscriptions, the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities per- mitted the announcement of the result in its Old-Time New England. Meanwhile, the Rhode Island Historical Society invited the writer to study and describe all of the other inscribed rocks about Narragansett Bay, for publication in its Collections. As preserved in these publications, however, the papers are too numerous and scattered, and are too full of minute detail, to serve the needs of the majority of readers. They can still be recommended to anyone who may wish the full proof or the ultimate source of any statement, or who may become interested enough to wish to read the more ample presentation of the facts about these rocks. It has seemed worth while, however, to bring together the more important features of the study in one volume and in a more compact manner, in the hope that it may thus reach a wider circle of readers, and perhaps arouse their interest in a subject which possesses so many-sided an appeal and whose study has been so continuous a source of delight to the writer. This new presentation is not merely a briefer repetition of what is con- tained in the early writings. Much of it has been revised radically, and frequently new facts are given and new con- clusions drawn. Foot notes are limited usually to such added material, since the earlier publications, and the Bibliographies at the end of this volume, contain ample reference to authori- ties and sources. The amount of neglected historical material that has come to light, the number of new facts that it has been possible to discover in a field apparently already worn threadbare by over two centuries of active controversy, is truly surprising. For instance, why should it have been assumed so long that these rocks were a mystery to the Indians at the time of the earliest PREFACE 3 colonists, when in truth it is impossible to trace any reference to them until sixty years after the settlement of Plymouth? Why has no one previously established the identity of the Dan- f orth who was the first to draw attention to them ? Who would have suspected that the famous drawing sent by Cotton Mather to the Royal Society, which started the whole train of weird speculations, was in part a copy from Dan forth, and in part published upside-down? Why has no one told of the visits to Dighton Rock of men so eminent as Smibert and Berkeley, or reproduced the valuable studies by President Stiles, or described and pictured the important inscriptions on Mark Rock? On the side of interpretation, it has been possible to develop a new view concerning the practice of picture-writing by Indians in New England; to discover the probable date and source and to decipher the meaning of the record on the boulder near Mount Hope ; to suggest the first well-supported reading of the inscriptions on Dighton Rock, which, if correct, establishes the main features of its entire history in a definite and reasonable manner. These are examples of contributions such as appear in almost every chapter. They illustrate how generously new truths disclose themselves to one who does no more than make himself receptive by adopting the attitude of an absorbing interest in the subject, of a determination to pursue every state- ment to its original source and every clue to its ultimate attainable end, and of making new observations in as thorough and reliable a manner as lies within his resources. The writer does not overestimate the importance of his contributions, nor feel that any particular credit is due to him personally for having made them. The nearness of his sum- mer residence, his love for out-of-door activities with a definite object in view, his long summer vacations, gave him an oppor- tunity and a temptation far beyond those which any previous investigator had experienced. Disclosures of new truth were inevitable under such conditions. The Story of the Rock simply found a receptive and impersonally attuned vehicle for its expression and gradually unfolded itself through it. In presenting the results, the writer has endeavored to make the record something more than a mere relation of events and 4 DIGHTON ROCK facts in their bare cold order. For him, they have woven themselves into an organic body and dramatic movement glow- ing throughout with life and purpose. So far as his powers permit, he has tried to convey a similar impression to his readers. As he once before expressed it : "A dead rock, if exhaustively studied, is not a dead rock merely, but the incarna- tion of a living, struggling, growing, self -perfecting Idea; and of such is the Kingdom of Truth." The recent zeal and superficiality of reporters have been responsible for many misleading descriptions of some of the features of these studies. Their blunders are often both amusing and vexing. By calling attention to a few of them, the writer finds opportunity to relieve such slight irritation as they may have caused him, and to take precaution against their persistence. Moreover, it is always profitable to know the pitfalls of error that should be avoided, as well as facts that are to be accepted. One of the most extraordinary examples was perpetrated by a Denver newspaper. Learning that the writer had dug out some human bones at Grassy Island, near Dighton Rock, whose position and condition indicate that they are those of a native Indian cremated there more than a thousand years ago, it announced in headlines that "Bones Unearthed Prove Discovery of America in 927." Statements that the study of these inscriptions involved thirteen years of constant labor and the reading of six hundred books have received world-wide circulation. The research was begun, it is true, thirteen years ago. But it has been largely a summer- time occupation, and the most important of its results had been announced within five years. The six hundred books are a myth, based upon the fact that, to illustrate the intensity and continuity of interest in Dighton Rock, a Bibliography was compiled embracing over six hundred items that refer to it. Only a few of these were books, some of them important con- tributions in periodicals, a great many merely brief and trivial references to the rock. Some accounts made patently absurd statements, such as that it had taken thirteen years and required the reading of six hundred books to discover that the Cor- PREFACE 5 tereals were early explorers of America — a fact known by every schoolboy, as one London editor remarked. Others thought that the labor was all devoted to the attempt to trans- late an abbreviated Latin inscription, — "which just goes to show what a college education can do," according to a humorous weekly. Or the tale is varied by asserting that the sole result of all these years and readings was the deciphering of eight words. In truth, the work has had two separate phases. The first task that allured was the correct presentation of the historical facts concerning the long-continued discussions that had centered about these inscriptions. For this purpose it was essential to read everything, both published and in unpublished records, that could be found bearing upon the subject, — and this is where the six hundred items have their place. It was only later that ambition was aroused to reconstruct the faint and uncertain inscriptions themselves. No reading of books was helpful here, but only prolonged and patient examination of the rocks themselves and of photographs of them. Not thirteen years, but occasional periods of study through a much shorter time, were devoted to this ; and the result was the dis- covery, not of eight words merely, but of more than twenty in English, Latin and Wampanoag, written on two rocks, and of numerous previously unseen Indian drawings. One ac- count proclaimed that the extensive reading was a hindrance to the accomplishment of this latter task; but that was only an example of reportorial imagination. Still another recent review managed to incorporate four blunders in brief space : that the rock-writings are attributed by many to the Indians of 500 years ago; that the Vikings have been strongly advocated recently as their originators ; that the old stone mill at Newport is accredited to the Vikings ; and — most lamentable of all — that "investigators now set forth the claim that perhaps it was the body of Miguel Cortereal which was found in Fall River encased in armor!" It is unfortunate that misconcep- tions like these so easily arise and so long persist. It is the Indians of Colonial times, 300 years ago and less, who enter seriously into the discussion ; the Norse theory of the rock and 6 DIGHTON ROCK mill was abandoned half a century ago by all who know any- thing about the facts ; and no real investigator has advanced, or ever will, so silly a supposition about the skeleton. Acknowledgment is due to the three Societies which have been mentioned, for generous permission to use in this volume plates and material that have appeared already in their publi- cations. To the many persons whose invaluable help has en- riched the results of his labors, the writer is under deep obli- gation. Already, in the earlier papers, he has expressed his appreciation of such service in case of particular facts sup- plied or useful hints given toward their discovery. He per- mits himself now, however, the pleasure of making known the sincerity of his gratitude to those who, apart from any particular contributions, have given constant encouragement and inspiration by their sympathetic interest and friendly counsel. Among these must be named James Edward Seaver, late Secretary of the Old Colony Historical Society, whose kindly help was indispensable in the early stages of the enquiry; Worthington Ford and Julius H. Tuttle, generous guides in the adventure of research ; George Parker Winship, close friend and steadying critic; Harris Hawthorne Wilder, the eternal youthfulness of whose enthusiasm, a prized influence enduring since days of youthful companionship, has been the stay of moments of discouragement; Howard M. Chapin, through whose wise suggestion the study was broadened beyond the compass of a single rock to embrace the entire related region; Albert Matthews, the unprobed depths of whose fund of elusive information has solved many a knotty problem, and whose tireless skill in the editorial art has raised the product to a higher plane; George Lyman Kittredge, who made firm the conviction of the real importance of these researches, con- tributed much out of his own deep lore, supplied a high ideal of scholarly method, and gave many an effective spur to con- tinued endeavor; and most of all, Dorothea Cotton Delabarre, my beloved wife, whose patient endurance of endless attempts to formulate problems and to give adequate expression to results has been a treasured stimulus to thought, and who has PREFACE 7 often suggested possibilities whose further elaboration has been incorporated into essential features of the completed structure. 9 Arlington Avenue, Providence, Rhode Island. September 1, 1927. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION There is an irresistible fascination in the study of the past. It gives glimpses of the process whereby cosmic systems have come into being, whereby life has arisen and has developed into successively higher forms, whereby man has advanced slowly, with unceasing struggle, from a level near to that of the brutes up to his present imperfect civilization. Surveyed in its whole- ness, it is a revelation of the Divine purpose of Progress in the universe, and a firm foundation for hope in its continuance. It thus warrants a confident expectation of man's ultimate mastery in concerns of mind and of spirit, wherein he is yet lamentably weak, comparable to his present and increasing control over physical forces. The steps of his progress during the last ten thousand years are fairly well known through recorded history. But the beginnings of history are the end of an immeasurably longer period, during which he was slowly acquiring the arts and tools that were indispensable to any high advance. The most essential of these were evidently speech, weapons and implements of stone and other natural materials, fire, clothing, pottery, artificial shelter, agriculture, domestication of animals, smelted metals.^ Each of these was an epoch-making development, and some of them were doubtless found, lost, and found again many times before they became permanent acquisitions almost universally employed; and each passed through a long course of gradual improvement. The last of these necessary arts, whose arrival stimulated progress incalculably and marked the transition to civilization ^ A paper by H. G. Wells on "The Ten Great Discoveries," in American Magazine for March, 1925, reminds me that I might well have added to this list at least the following : the taboo, basis of morality and social restraint ; the boat, with its influence upon trade and tolerance of strangers ; the wheel and road. 8 INTRODUCTION 9 and its history, was that of writing. Something is known con- cerning the course that its development must have taken.^ Its earHest germ lay in the attempts of stone-age cave-men to depict the actual appearance of things about them, so far as their skill allowed. Such skill had already become so great in prehistoric times as to result in representations surprisingly faithful and beautiful in design and spirited in action. Yet such high skill, though it developed independently in several distinct places and epochs, was exceptional. The drawings of most primitive peoples are crude and grotesque. A step for- ward, not in art but in the evolution of letters, was made when the drawing was so simplified that it was no longer an attempted portrait of an object, but served merely to suggest the thought of it to the observer ; and then a characteristic part of the object instead of the whole of it, or something closely associated with it such as a peculiar track made by a particular animal, served fully as well for the purpose and made further simplification possible. Such designs readily came to suggest qualities and actions and relations, as well as objects. When a considerable group of people began to make them in relatively convention- alized forms and suggesting the same meaning to all, the art of picture-writing had arisen. Simplification and conventional- izing pushed to such an extreme that often little resemblance to the original object remained, led to the development of systems of hieroglyphs and ideographs, which are merely highly evolved pictographs. A significant advance took place when the hieroglyph came to stand for the sound of the name of an object or idea, instead of the latter itself; for then it could be used, as is done in a modern rebus, to designate that sound in any word of which it formed a part. This idea, brilliant but difficult, apparently occurred independently in but very few centers of culture. Later, instead of standing for the whole word, the glyph was used sometimes as a phonogram of its first syllable only, a device which greatly reduced the number 2 For a more detailed account than can be given here, see "The History of the Alphabet," by Professor Ingo W. D. Hackh, in Scientific Monthly, August, 1927, page 97. He defends the belief that "the Weroglyphics of ancient Egypt are the parents of all our modern alphabets." 10 DIGHTON ROCK of symbols needed. A final step of vast consequence consisted in using the hieroglyph, now reduced to an ultra-simplicity that bore no likeness to the original form from which it started, as a symbol of the initial elementary sound of the name to which it once belonged, but now capable of utter detachment from the latter and of being joined with other characters of like nature into an endless variety of new sounds and words. The hieroglyph had become a letter, a gradual selective process produced a system of letters of which few were needed to represent all of the elementary sounds of any language, and the system thus became an alphabet. While such a course of development may be regarded as typical, perhaps, yet it may not have been followed exactly in every case. Some stages may have been omitted at times, or others introduced, and the process may have been arrested at any phase. For instance, the syllabic stage may be dispensed with. Complication instead of simplification may occur, as it did in the Maya hieroglyphs. The cumbersome Chinese system is an example of complete arrest in the ideographic form. Mnemonic aids, such as tally-marks, knots in strings or notches in sticks, arbitrary shapes impressed upon any receptive material to indicate ownership or other feature of identity, marks devised for the needs of calendar-records or of trade, may supply some of the starting points for later elaboration. It has been suggested that gesture-language, which attained so high a development in America, may have been one source of pictographic conventions. Even "the tattoo marks on the warrior's breast, his string of gristly scalps, the bear's claws around his neck, were not only trophies of his prowess, but records of his exploits, and to the contemplative mind contain the rudiments of the beneficent art of letters.''^ None of the aboriginal inhabitants of America had arrived at the development of a syllabary or alphabet, previous to their discovery by Europeans. Yet the more cultured of them seem to have been progressing in that direction, for the Mayas had arrived at the rebus stage of written records. The great majority of Indian tribes, however, aside from using as mere 3 Brinton, Myths of the New World, p. 9. INTRODUCTION 11 aids to memory a variety of devices that had no general mean- ing in themselves, had never advanced beyond a rather simple pictography, capable of expressing relatively few ideas, before their mode of life became profoundly influenced by the more intricate and varied practices and arts of the white invaders. Many of them, doubtless, were unacquainted with even the simplest forms of picture-writing. After the possibility and value of a method of written communication and record had been suggested to them through knowledge of the use made of it by Europeans, some of them seized the idea and put it to practical use by devising systems of their own. One case, to be discussed in a later chapter, worked out on a native basis by missionaries, was a complex system of ideographs. An- other, invented by an untaught native, was a syllabary. For the most part, however, the stimulus to native ingenuity led simply to more highly elaborated systems of pictography and mnemonic artifices. So far as can be judged by the accounts of early explorers and settlers in New England, the tribes who dwelt there were unacquainted with any form of writing. It is possible that they knew nothing even of the pictographic art, although this is a question which will demand our further consideration. Thus Roger Williams stated in 1624 that "they have no Bookes nor Letters, and conceive their Fathers never had;"* and Daniel Gookin wrote in 1674 that "they being ignorant of letters and records of antiquity, any true knowledge of their ancestors is utterly lost among them."^ Yet they did paint their faces and bodies, and also their "moose and Deere-skins for their Summer wearing, with varietie of forms and col- ours."® They also employed a mnemonic device of the simplest sort, which was described by Edward Winslow as a round hole made in the ground near the place of any remarkable event, as an aid to memory and oral narration, used "instead of records and chronicles."^ The rattlesnake-skin tied about a bundle of '^ Key into the Language of America, 1st ed., "Introduction." s "Historical Collections of the Indians" ; Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1st ser., i. 141. 6 Roger Williams, op. cit., p. 113 his. ^ E. Winslow, Good News from New England, 1624. 12 DIGHTON ROCK new arrows which was sent to the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1621 by the Narragansett sachem Canonicus, and which they returned to him filled with powder and shot,® was a crude sym- bolic message of hostility. At a much later date, at least, they made use of belts of wampum with various figures embroidered in them as mnemonic records of treaties, but this custom, Brin- ton thinks,® was probably introduced by European influences. So far as we can tell from contemporary chronicles, this may be the utmost extent of their practices in this direction. Such is one side of the setting of the problem with which we are about to deal. To the other side belong the numerous speculations concern- ing pre-Columbian voyages to America. There is no need to survey them here, for they are adequately discussed in many easily accessible Histories. Most of them are regarded by his- torians as unsupported myths ; but we shall find that belief in them constitutes an important factor in our investigation. It has long been widely known that there are several rocks in New England on which are carved inscriptions" of a mys- terious character, about which there has been a very great deal of long continued discussion. One of them, commonly known as the Dighton Rock, was noticed fairly early in Colonial his- tory, soon afterwards was brought to the attention of the Royal Society in England, and ever since then has aroused an intense degree of popular and scholarly interest and has been the sub- ject of animated and earnest controversy. Strangely differing presentations have been made of its supposed inscriptions, and strange and many theories have been confidently advanced as to who carved the characters and what they mean. Already before 1800 a considerable literature had gathered about the subject, and since then hardly a single year has gone by without bringing some printed contribution to the discussion. Indeed, * Winslow, op. cit., p. 2. ^ Brinton, op. cit., p. 15. ^° I shall use the word "inscription" throughout in a general sense, to indicate any kind of a line or collection of lines incised upon a rock by in- tentional human agency, without implication as to whether it was designed to convey a meaning and thus to constitute a true "writing." Some non- committal word of the sort is needed, and this serves the purpose as well as any. INTRODUCTION 13 it is doubtful if there has ever been any relic of antiquity any- where on earth that has appealed so strongly to general interest, been commented upon by so many scholars of every country, given rise to so extensive a literature, and so long remained an unsolved mystery. Although Dighton Rock has been the chief centre of all this speculation, yet it is not the only one in New England that bears unreadable inscriptions. A few others have been known almost as long as it, still others rumored but in need of confirmation, and a few discovered recently or only recently described for the first time. In spite of this abundance of material and the long-enduring interest and discussion, no one, up to the time when this par- ticular study of the subject began, had made a complete survey of the problem, at once thorough and critical. Some compre- hensive reviews had been attempted and had served as the basis for later statements and deductions, but it needed only a little of careful examination to discover that they were unreliable. A considerable amount of historical misinformation was cur- rent, untrustworthy depictions of the inscriptions were accepted as adequate support for particular theories, romantic appeal often usurped the place of scientific judgment as a foundation for belief, pertinent facts of wide variety were left uninvesti- gated or ignored. No well trained archaeologist equipped with knowledge of up-to-date methods of research undertook the task of assembling the facts, historical and scientific, and thus modern archaeological opinion was founded upon insufficient information. It was evident that the whole matter needed to be examined anew, without bias and without reliance upon what had been said before, until fresh observation should have established the things that could be depended upon as unques- tionable or accepted as reasonable probability. The result of conducting such an inquiry has been the discovery of an astonishing mass of new facts and new possibilities, and the gratification of finding in the study an amazing variety of appeals to interest. Before one has finished with the investiga- tion, he will have found involved in it matters not only of history and archaeology, but likewise of myth and legend, of 14 DIGHTON ROCK astronomy and geology, of religion and aesthetics, of ethnology and literature, of graphic art and that of faithful deciphering and copying, of fundamental scientific method in observation and hypothesis, of logic and psychology and philosophy. The problems presented by the existence of these inscribed rocks and stones in New England are many. We must discover exactly how many of them there are and where they are situ- ated. The answer to this question will involve the examination of a great many rumors and claims, often vague but sometimes definite, and the determination as to whether they are well founded or are partly or completely erroneous, whether due to careless reports assigning genuine petroglyphs to mistaken localities, or to mistaken belief that marks having a natural origin are human inscriptions, or that work of recent and trivial origin, as by boys at play or by men idly scratching insignificant marks just for the fun of it or to mystify others, is ancient and significant. It will be found necessary also to inquire in some cases as to whether marks due to unquestionable human agency are deliberate inscriptions or accidental scratches, and in other cases as to whether unquestionable inscriptions are genuine records of an unknown past or are recent and fraudulent imitations. Cases of all these types will come to our notice. Having accomplished this sifting process, it will be desirable to secure a faithful representation of the appear- ance of each inscription, or at least of the more important of them. In some cases good drawings will suffice. But when- ever there is any possibility of doubt occasioned by difficulty in deciphering what was originally inscribed, the best attainable photographs under controlled conditions of lighting will be indispensable. It will be of interest for psychological as well as historical reasons to assemble all earlier serious attempts to depict the appearance of the inscriptions, and to survey the numerous theories, some of them of the most extraordinary character, that have been advocated to account for them. Then, finally, we shall endeavor to arrive at conclusions of our own both in regard to what actually has been inscribed and what it probably signifies. In both respects we shall arrive at re- INTRODUCTION 15 suits fundamentally different from anything that has been pre- sented before, during the two hundred and fifty years of earnestly conducted observation and discussion. With these rather intricate and difficult tasks accomplished, we shall have found at least partial solutions of certain other problems. Is there any possibility that these inscriptions give evidence of visits to these shores by ancient peoples, Norse or other, long before the discovery by Columbus ? Do they throw any light on prehistoric wanderings of Indian tribes? Could they by any possibility have been executed by white men at some time later than 1492? If made by Indians, was it before their acquaintance with Europeans began, or at a later date and as a result of European influence? Or is there in them a mingling of these various sources? Do they have any dis- coverable significance, pictographic or other, or are they mere meaningless pictures and scribblings? Do they give any indi- cation as to how far the Indians of New England had pro- gressed in the use of symbolic records of their own initiative, and to what degree their contact with a new civilization worked in stimulating further development? We may not be able to answer all of these questions with complete certainty, yet we shall surely find contributions toward the solution of some of them. Not the least valuable feature of our investigation will consist in the illustrations of various mental processes that it will afford, and the aid that it will give toward a better under- standing of the psychology of observation and belief. The first of these rocks to be brought to the attention of the world was the Dighton Rock. A description of it by Cotton Mather in 1690 aroused little interest. But in 1714 a com- munication from him to the Royal Society, mentioning its existence and giving a very inaccurate illustration of its inscrip- tion, was published in the Philosophical Transactions of that Society and attracted a great deal of attention. In 1781, Court de Gebelin published in Paris an account of it, with an elaborate translation attributing the inscription to a party of Phoenician adventurers from Carthage. Michael Lort of London assem- bled in 1786 all the facts about the rock and its history that he 16 DIGHTON ROCK could discover. In 1837, Charles Christian Rafn of Denmark brought out his monumental work called Antiquitates Ameri- cance, in which he included a considerable amount of new information about this and other inscribed rocks. He made a new translation of the record on Dighton Rock, and claimed that it was carved by the party of Thorfinn Karlsefne the Norseman, who made an attempt at colonization in Vinland in the year 1007. These are the main sources from which all accounts of the history of Dighton Rock have been drawn heretofore. They are all of them incomplete, inaccurate, and marred by a considerable content of positive error. Instead of relying upon them, we shall examine afresh the actual facts as to its history, make our own observations as to its character and situation and the appearance of its inscription, and endeavor to arrive at a well-founded interpretation of its record. CHAPTER II THE DIGHTON WRITING ROCK Among the other curiosities of New England — so runs in part the earliest printed description of this mysterious stone — one is that of a mighty rock, on a perpendicular side whereof, by a river which at high tide covers part of it, there are very deeply engraved, no man alive knows how or when, lines filled with strange characters ; which would suggest as odd thoughts about them that were here before us, as there are odd shapes in that elaborate monument. The river on whose shore it stands was then known as the Taunton Great River, and the shallow cove which cuts into the land there was called Smith's Cove, although the Indians had given the much more picturesque name Chippascutt to the locality. Early observers spoke of the wonder-provoking stone as the Dighton Writing Rock, and speculated vainly as to the "how and when'' of its unreadable characters. Later it became known commonly as Dighton Rock, although it was rarely referred to also as the Assonet Monument. It is not in what is now known as Dighton, but across the Taunton river from that town, about eight miles down-river from Taunton. The land on which it stands is near the northwesterly corner of Assonet Neck, a triangular peninsula two miles long and about a mile in greatest width, lying between Taunton and Assonet Rivers and forming a southerly projection of the town of Berkley (Figure 3). In early days, however, Assonet Neck was included within the limits first of Taunton and afterwards of Dighton, and so the name given to the rock was then appropriate. Dighton had been set off from Taunton in 1712. It was not until 1799 that the Neck was detached from Dighton, and made a part of Berkley, which had been incorporated in 1735. Together with Mount Hope in Bristol, Rhode Island, Assonet Neck was the 17 18 DIGHTON ROCK ASSONET KECK, BERKLEY, MASSACHUSETTS Based upon U, S. Coast & Geodetic Survey "by A. M, Harrison 1875 and upon U, S. Topographical Surrey Map 1905 Figure 3 THE DIGHTON WRITING ROCK 19 last land retained by the Wampanoag Indians for their own exclusive use. As late as 1673, a deposition was filed in the records of the Colony of New Plymouth, testifying that the Neck was the personal property of an Indian named Piowant. In 1676 it was seized by Plymouth Colony as spoils of war, and the next year it was sold to six men of Taunton, its first "pro- prietors." Long before that, however, the extensive salt-grass meadows which border it had been ceded to the Proprietors of Taunton as an important source of hay, and the Neck itself had been coveted by them, but not secured, as a place for "pasture- ing yeong beasts." In the midst of Smith's Cove, fifty-six rods north of the Rock, lies Grassy Island,' a little over an acre in extent, which is of interest for two reasons. It has a level surface, which is entirely submerged at high tides, sometimes to a depth of three feet or more. Three or four feet below its surface, and under- neath the peat of which it is formed, lies a deeper surface of sandy clay on which are found numerous specimens of stone implements that seem to give evidence that a thousand years ago or more this latter surface, and therefore Dighton Rock with it, was well above the reach of the water and was the site of an Indian encampment." In the second place, the island is mentioned by name as early as 1644 as belonging to one of the first ministers of Taunton, and must have been assigned to him shortly after a court order had been issued in 1640 to the effect that he should be provided with meadow-land. Refer- ence to the map will show that there are extensive salt-grass meadows about Assonet Neck and Bay, and these became the most important early source of hay for the inhabitants of ^ See Figures 2 and 3. 2 See "A Possible Pre-Algonkian Culture in Southeastern Massachu- setts," by Edmund Burke Delabarre, American Anthropologist, July,_ 1925, xxvii. 359-369. — In the spring of 1927, I found on the same site, ten inches below the ancient deeper surface, a deposit of bones, broken into small frag- ments and lying together in a compact mass about ten to twelve inches in diameter and an inch or two in thickness. In the opinion of Mr. C. C. Wil- loughby, Director of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, they are "undoubtedly what remains of a cremated human body." Their situation makes it practically impossible that they could be the result of a burial since the site became a peat-covered and tide-washed island, and therefore indicates that they are those of an Indian who lived there more than a thousand years ago. 20 DIGHTON ROCK Taunton. The Grassy Island date on their records, therefore, assures us that the earhest settlers at Taunton, very soon after their arrival in 1637, became intimately acquainted with this locality and consequently with the existence of Dighton Rock, whether or not it already bore any of its present inscriptions. It was not until very much later than that, nevertheless, that any mention of it was made which has come down to us. There are a few other facts about Assonet Neck that have some bearing upon the problems that will confront us. Isaac Greenwood in 1730 said that it was "one of the most con- siderable seats of Indians in this part of the world, and the river remarkable for all sorts of fowl and fish." This is prob- ably an exaggeration, for all of their known important centers of residence were located elsewhere. Yet there must be a de- gree of truth in it, for it still bears traces of former Indian occupancy. One or two probable sites of villages are indicated by stone artefacts still found upon them in considerable num- bers, and there are a few not very extensive shell-heaps. That at least the entire southerly half of the twelve hundred acres of the Neck were under cultivation is made probable by the fact that the old Indian corn-hills are still clearly evident there, in all of the woods and pastures which have never been ploughed, in spite of the three hundred years that have elapsed since the great plague destroyed a large proportion of the Wam- panoags.^ A tradition seems to have existed among the Indians of this vicinity pointing to an early visit of white men in a sailing vessel and a resulting encounter between the men of the two races. We shall have need to consider it more in detail in a later discussion. It was reported first by Danforth in 1680, and later independently by Kendall in 1807. Kendall also speaks of a tradition that Assonet Neck was a place of banish- ment among the Indians. There was in fact a "place commonly called the Banished Indians," either on or near Assonet Neck, mentioned in documents as early as 1660.* It seems likely that 3 "Indian Cornhills in Massachusetts," by E. B. Delabarre and H. H. Wilder, Amer. Anthropologist, 1920, xxii. 203. * E. W. Peirce, Indian History, p. 241. This date is ten years earlier than the earliest one known to me at the time of my previous discussion of these questions, in Publications Colon. Sac. Mass., 1917, xviii. 244-247. THE DIGHTON WRITING ROCK 21 this name, and that of a small island off the southerly point of Assonet Neck called The Conspiracy, may have originated in connection with events occurring between 1642 and 1645, when there existed a belief in a wide-spread conspiracy of the Indians against the Colonies, and when the Narragansetts held a number of Mohegans in captivity somewhere in this vicinity. So far as I can judge from the imperfect descriptions, the place called the Banished Indians was probably not on the Neck itself, but across the mouth of the Assonet river from it, some- where near Barnaby Cove or the small cove next north of it. In the opinion of G. W. Ellis, this was approximately the scene of the Pocasset Swamp fight which occurred in 1675 near the beginning of King Philip's War. It was also not far from a place which we find referred to in 1705 under the peculiar name Behinde Noon. Dighton Rock is a gray, medium to coarse grained f eld- spathic sandstone boulder, presenting toward the river a nearly plane and smooth natural face, inclined at an angle of 39° to the vertical. Although it has sometimes been regarded as a projecting portion of a ledge, its true nature as a detached boulder has been established by excavations around its sides carried as far down as the inflowing water would permit, and deeper exploration by means of a stick thrust down through the ooze in contact with the rock. Its dimensions below ground as well as above have thus been determined. The exposed face toward the river measures about eleven feet in average horizontal length, and four feet ten inches in extreme vertical width or height. The rear or shoreward slope above ground has a width of about 7 feet 9^ inches and an average inclina- tion of about 65° to the vertical, but is very irregular, probably being much worn and broken. These two slopes meet above at an angle, and end below at about the level of the beach, where the two underground surfaces begin to incline inward toward one another. Each of these extends down for about seven or eight feet, until they meet below at an angle of about 91°. A vertical section through the rock from front to rear would thus present a nearly diamond-shaped figure, with one of its angles 22 DIGHTON ROCK underneath. The weight of such a prism, eleven feet long, as nearly as it can be calculated, would be not far from forty tons, and its cubic contents about 480 cubic feet. Probably seven- tenths of the bulk of the rock lies underground. A line drawn longitudinally through the exposed face parallel to the beach, correcting for magnetic deviation, is directed about N 60° E, although its upstream end is usually referred to as the north end of the rock. The rock is situated on the beach, between high and low water marks. At some low tides, the lowest part of the face is not quite fully exposed, but at lowest ebb the water recedes entirely away from the base, leaving fifteen feet or more of stony and muddy beach exposed between rock and river. The most moderate of high tides just cover the rock completely, and at extreme high waters there is, a depth of 3>^ to 4>^ feet above its top. A number of other rocks protrude from the beach in the near vicinity. One of them has often been spoken of as a "neighboring slab," because it looks like a large slab of stone lying flat on the beach, with only three or four inches of its thickness exposed. It is really, however, a boulder with a flat upper surface. This surface, in shape and dimensions, is closely similar to the face of the Rock, and lies only a few feet away, behind and southward from the latter. It is not at all impossible that the two were originally one boulder, and that something occurred to cause the Rock to split off from the slab, roll forward 2^ quarter-turns, and there settle edge-down in the mud and gravel. The present relative positions of the two would thus be exactly accounted for. If this happened while Indians were living there, as something similar did hap- pen to a huge boulder on Assonet River in the great gale of 1815, it is not impossible that the name Chippascutt which they gave to the locality may have commemorated the event; for one possible meaning of the word is "the place of the split- apart rock." There is, however, on the upland not very far away, a "cleft of rocks" mentioned as a landmark in earliest deeds, that may equally well have served as the basis of the name. Fig. 4. The up-stream end of Dighton Rock Fig. 5. A flashlight view of the Dighton Rock inscriptions Facing page 22 THE DIGHTON WRITING ROCK 23 With its alternate exposure to air and to salt water, the face of the rock weathers to a reddish-brown rusty color, and is slightly roughened by minute pittings due to the decomposition of the feldspar and other constituents in the midst of the more resistant network of quartz. It is crossed longitudinally by a number of narrow cracks, and along these in a few places small thin sections of the surface have scaled off. At certain times of year, parts of the face are covered thinly with a greenish marine growth of algae and diatoms, but at other times these are entirely absent. A great many observers have believed that under the influence of storms and ice, the surface of the rock wears away rapidly, causing a noticeable diminution in the depth and legibility of the engraved characters within the space of a lifetime; or, on the other hand, that the present difficulty of deciphering them indicates that they are worn with age and must have been carved a very long time, perhaps centuries, ago. The two beliefs are incompatible with one another, though often held both by one person, and we shall see later, after we have had opportunity to compare early and recent descriptions and photographs, that both of them are mistaken impressions. Shallow incisions made in the rock, as a great many of these were, become difficult to discern within a comparatively few years, through change of color rather than through wear; but the actual wear of the surface is so slow that it is not appreci- ably more difficult to read what was carved upon it now, than it was when the rock first came under observation, two hundred and fifty years ago. Its appearance, therefore, affords no indi- cation as to how old the inscriptions are. If they had been made centuries ago, they would probably have been tenaciously retained, much as we find them; but, on the other hand, if they had existed only for a few decades before 1680, that time would have been long enough to make the more shallow of them dim and uncertain, just as they have always appeared. In addition to what we may call the "inscription," all of which was presumably there at the time of the first observa- tion, in 1680, the face of the rock bears a considerable number of initials and dates made by thoughtless persons in the nine- 24 DIGHTON ROCK teenth and present centuries. On the shoreward slope, also, are numerous initials. None of them are recent, yet all were probably made by white men, and therefore within the last three hundred years ; most of them, very likely, during the last century. In spite of their relatively recent date, they look as old as do any of the characters on the face, and there is hardly an instance in which I can be sure as to exactly what initials were traced. The same fact appears in the case of still another small inscription on the rock. On its vertical up-stream end (Figure 4), there is something faintly discernible, but it can be seen only rarely, under the most favorable conditions of light. Ezra Stiles mentioned it first in 1767, and suggested that it looked somewhat like "I HOWOO." Only two ob- servers have spoken of having seen it since. I see it occa- sionally, with no assurance as to what was actually written. Yet Stiles was informed by persons who apparently knew the facts that this particular inscription had been made not more than about thirty years before the time of his visit ; and I judge from his description that it was as difficult for him to decipher it then as it is for us today. My own best guess is that it may be the name Greenwood^ and therefore carved in 1730. These facts, then, seem to add valuable support to our conclusion that dim and uncertain appearance affords no clue as to age, because shallow characters become rapidly obscure, mainly on account of their change in color, but last then for a very long time with very little wear or further diminution in legibility. The face of the rock toward the river is nearly covered with incisions,^ pecked in with some sharp tool. There seems to be no decisive indication as to whether the tool was of metal or of hard stone. The depth and consequent clearness of the cutting varies widely. I made an accurate depth-gauge to measure them, and found that the great majority of lines, representing the average and characteristic results, have a depth ranging from about two millimeters down to a mere trace so superficial that it could not be measured. The best marked, most clearly discernible lines, fairly numerous yet less so than the others, 6 See Figure 5, and the figures illustrating Chapter X. THE DIGHTON WRITING ROCK 25 vary between two and three millimeters. This depth is very rarely exceeded. There are only two or three places where it is as much as five millimeters, and one single hole, apparently artificial, where it is 17 millimeters. Some recent initials, how- ever, are cut to a depth of five to nine millimeters. The color of all of the lines, whether of earlier inscription or of later initials, even of a date "[18] 87," is the same as that of the surrounding rock. Unless they are cut fairly deep, this makes them hard to detect and to distinguish from the natural pit- tings and other weatherings of the surface. Not only is there this difficulty of deciding how much of what one sees is artificial and how much due to natural causes, but also, when one has arrived at some conclusion as to what he may plausibly accept as artificial, there is such a confusion of lines and such a certainty that not all of them have been dis- covered, that a still further difficulty arises. In what manner do they belong together ? What shapes and figures and pictures were they intended to present? Some of them are clearly pic- torial, representations of men or animals. Some are clearly arranged in more or less regular designs, whose meaning, how- ever, is not easy to determine. A considerable number of them look as if they might be alphabetical characters, but we cannot be sure that this is their intention unless we can satisfy our- selves that critical scrutiny does not diminish the likeness, and can then give them a significant connection and meaning. Until my own interpretations had occurred to me, this had never been done satisfactorily in a single instance; and when our discussion is completed, it may be that the reader will decide that it has not been accomplished even now, and that therefore these appear- ances are merely unintended resemblances, giving no proof that there are any unquestionable alphabetical characters there at all. Besides these forms which suggest something definite, even if not interpretable, there are great numbers of other lines, some sure, some only possible, that run about everywhere in incomprehensible jumbles. Within them it is easy to imagine the depiction of almost anything one will, but the cautious observer cannot accept these suggested possibilities as having 26 DIGHTON ROCK any sure objective validity. It is this intricate mass of at least possible lines, observable in so very many alternative ways, together with the fact that it is exceedingly difficult for anyone to be an ideally cautious observer even when he tries to be so and is confident that he has succeeded, that accounts for the truly extraordinary diversity of the different drawings of the inscription that have been made. Some of them are so utterly different in important particulars that it seems almost impos- sible at first sight to believe that they represent the same object.* In turn, a great many of the different, especially of the more detailed, theories as to the meaning of the inscription have been due to accepting some one of these undependable drawings as constituting accurate representations of the facts. These theories have been as extraordinarily numerous and varied as the draw- ings themselves. It will be profitable to examine them in their historical development and to satisfy ourselves as to their inadequacy, before we attempt the difficult task of determining for ourselves what the rock actually contains and what is its significance. Until the close of King Philip's War, Assonet Neck, on which the Writing Rock is situated, was the property of the Wampanoag Indians. As early as March 10, 1676, the Colony of New Plymouth looked upon the Neck as belonging to it by right of conquest. On November 12, 1677, it sold the Neck to six proprietors. These men made an agreement of division on March 23, 1680, and the portion which included the rock was set off to James Walker, a prominent proprietor of Taun- ton. After that it remained in private ownership until June ^ See Figure 6, showing the best known drawings of the rock as they are commonly presented. Not only do they differ much from one another, but these reproductions themselves differ from the original drawings. Re- liable facsimiles of the originals from which they were copied are given in my Colonial Society papers. In this volume, I have contented myself with presenting only a few of the more accurate versions of drawings included in Figure 6, and a few illustrative examples of the many other drawings and photographs of Dighton Rock. The reader who may wish to examine critically all versions of the drawings, and all photographs from interpreta- tive chalkings, will need to consult the Colonial Society papers. Nothing is omitted here, however, which is requisite for interpretation of the inscription. The other rocks discussed in this volume are illustrated as fully as possible. For a description of the sources from which the illustrations have been taken, the List of Illustrations should be consulted. Bcticcen pages 26-27 Fig. 6. Best known drawings of Dighton Rock, made before the introduction of photography THE DIGHTON WRITING ROCK 27 23, 1860, when Niels Arnzen of Fall River, who had purchased the rock at the request of Ole Bull, the violinist, made a gift of it to the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copen- hagen. This Society transferred it in 1877 to the Scandinavian Memorial Club of Boston. But the latter was not legally in- corporated and could not legally own property. Consequently, on January 30, 1889, the Danish Society deeded the property anew to the Old Colony Historical Society of Taunton, its present owner. There have been many proposals from time to time to remove the rock from its present position to a place where it would be safe from the attacks of vandals and more accessible for observation. The first of these, apparently, contemplated its removal to Fall River, in 1829.^ The Rhode Island His- torical Society considered the possibility of purchasing it, in 1838. Between 1861 and 1864, the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries was intending to remove the rock to Denmark. There is reference about 1873 to another indefinite project to split off the inscribed face, probably for some museum. In 1877, the Committee in charge of the erection of the Leif Erikson statue in Boston were proposing to remove the rock to that city. Each of these schemes was abandoned in the end, and the rock still occupies its original site.^ Perhaps it is appropriate that it should continue to do so; but at least there ought to be devised some w^ay of protecting it from the thought- less persons who mar its ancient and still insufficiently studied records by carving their own initials among them. '^Columbian Reporter (Taunton, Mass.), Dec. 2, 1829. 8 Owing to circumstances set forth in Chapter X, a large interest has been aroused recently among the Portuguese. It is possible that this may lead to the adoption of some plan for the better protection of the rock. CHAPTER III EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK It is now a matter of common knowledge that there are a great many petroglyphs scattered widely through the United States, many of whose inscribed drawings, unquestionably made by Indians of the historically known tribes, resemble in essential character some of those upon Dighton Rock. We must not be too sure, however, at the start, that this means that everything upon our Rock must have had a similar origin. Aside from this larger acquaintance with the wide distribution of such work, very nearly all of what was known concerning Dighton Rock up to the time when these studies began was contained in the accounts published by Lort in 1787 and by Rafn in 1837. These writers, we have seen, not only omit im- portant particulars, but include a considerable amount of actual error. Instead of following them as authorities, we must seek original and trustworthy sources. When the rock was first observed, and whether it then had anything written upon it, cannot be known from existing records. All that we can be sure of is that the Taunton men who began cutting hay close by as early as 1640 must at least have seen it. So also, probably, must those who were in charge of a trading-post that was established at a very early date, pos- sibly before the settlement of Taunton in 1637, at Storehouse Point on the Taunton River. ^ This Point has been variously located in Somerset and in Dighton, but in either case was across the river from Assonet Neck. A great many wholly unfounded statements have been made and frequently accepted as valid concerning this early period. Some of them claim that "the Indians were ignorant of the existence" of such inscribed rocks ; or that "the natives could not render any account of its 1 Francis Baylies, Hist, of Plymouth Colony, 1830, i. 288, ii. 272. EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 29 origin, when the Europeans discovered the country." Others assert that "the rock was seen and talked of by the first set- tlers in New England," or was "found there on the arrival of the first New England colonists." These are examples of mere plain romancing in the interest of a theory. There is nowhere on record any testimony by Indians at all resembling the state- ments quoted; and it was not until sixty years after the Pil- grims came that anyone is known to have noticed the rock. There is a pedigree through Greenwood, Lort and Rafn, with all of whom we shall make acquaintance in due order, to common knowledge of the fact that the earliest drawing and description of the rock were made in 1680. But these accounts were incomplete, and the drawing as presented was not entirely faithful to its original form. It was told in these sources that this pioneer in petroglyphic observation was the Rev. Dr. Danforth. But there was no Rev. Dr. Danforth in New Eng- land at that time. Of the two brothers of that name, John and Samuel, who not long afterwards became clergymen, neither ever was entitled to be called Doctor. It has been generally assumed, however, that the one meant must have been Samuel, because from 1687 for forty years he was minister at Taunton, the rock was at first within his parish and owned by one of his fellow townsmen, and he had great interest in the Indians and compiled a vocabulary of their language. But in 1680 he was only thirteen years old and was beginning his studies at Har- vard. Only by assuming that there was some mistake about the date as well as another in calling him Doctor, could he be regarded plausibly as author of the drawing. In the course of investigation it became evident that there was something more to be discovered about this mysterious "Dr. Danforth" than had been told by Greenwood, from whom all existing information derived. James Phinney Baxter pub- lished in 1887 an extract from a letter that he had seen in the British Museum, in which, without mention of Danforth or Greenwood, he quoted statements that had been attributed to Danforth by Greenwood, but with the addition of a sentence that the latter had not given. Following this clue as to the existence of further material, I secured transcripts of all per- 30 DIGHTON ROCK tinent records from the British Museum, the Royal Society, and the Society of Antiquaries of London. These yielded several interesting results. They confirmed the year of the drawing as being actually 1680, added the month when it was made, identified the Dan forth, and explained why he, and Greenwood with him, had always mistakenly been called "Doctor" in all of the Dighton Rock literature. The real draughtsman of this earliest representation of the inscription was Samuel's older brother, John Danforth, who became minister at Dorchester in 1682. In 1680 he had secured his Master of Arts degree from Harvard College while in his twentieth year. In the fall of that year he was evidently at Taunton, for in October he went to see the curiosity at Assonet Neck, very likely with James Walker, who had just become owner of the rock and adjoining land, or with Benjamin Jones, who in 1695 married Hannah, one of James Walker's daugh- ters, and whom we shall meet again shortly. The drawing that Danforth made was of only a portion of the inscription, the rest of which may have been covered by the tide at the time of his visit. Either then or later he wrote on a separate slip of paper a disappointingly brief description to accompany the drawing. The slip reads as follows : The uppermost of y^ Engravings of a Rock in y^ river As- soonet six miles below Tanton in New England. Taken out some- time in October 1680. by John Danforth. It is reported from the Tradition of old Indians, y* y*" came a wooden house, (& men of another country in it) swimming up the river Asonet, y* fought y* Indians & slew y*" Saunchem. &c. Some recon the figures here to be Hieroglyphicall. The first figure representing a Ship, without masts, & a meer Wrack cast upon the Shoales. The second repre- senting an head of Land, possibly a cape with a peninsula. Hence a Gulf. What are probably Dan forth' s own original drawing and the accompanying descriptive slip are preserved with a letter from Greenwood in the British Museum. Photostatic copies of them are reproduced in Figure 7. They are important because they give Danforth's own contribution in full and authentic form, instead of in the incomplete and slightly altered manner ^ '^4^^^ ^il^ '/ 9 -P ,/> vc/'"t-r <>/*<-' c c- . r.A,-, ., '% c -r-** .6-«. <^; 'C-SKVi r,^ Fig. 7. Earliest drawing and description of the Dighton ock inscription, by Rev. John Danforth, October, 1680 Between Images 30-31 EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 31 in which Greenwood reported it. The latter alone has been used heretofore, and mistaken inferences have been drawn from it. The sHp relates a tradition that we shall meet again in a somewhat differing version, and that has every appearance of being a genuine though vague reminiscence of a visit to the neighborhood by some early explorer. The two "figures" that it attempts to explain are evidently those at the right-hand end of the drawing, where the suggested resemblances may be seen easily but need not be regarded as anything more than mere fancies. There are two additions by Greenwood on the slip — the inserted n by which he corrected the spelling "Tanton" to "Taunton," and the "No. 2" at the bottom. Otherwise the writing is probably Danforth's, and it is he who mistakenly speaks of the Assonet instead of the Taunton river. The drawing is rather well executed, and we shall find reason to conclude that it is as trustworthy as any that were made by later observers, but no more so. The "No. 2" on it, as well as on the slip, is Greenwood's. The folio numbers close by, and the stamp of the British Museum, are also extraneous. The dimensions of the original drawing are 2^ by 7f^ inches. There is another extraneous mark on the drawing that is of particular interest and that perhaps throws light upon the wan- derings of the document. Near the left-hand end there is a faintly drawn "BI" that is certainly not meant to represent part of the inscription. The only plausible explanation of this mark that I can think of is that it constitutes the initials of Benjamin Jones. Cotton Mather published in 1690 a drawing which he unquestionably copied from this one by Danforth; and on it he placed a mark resembling a "9" in the position corresponding to this "B," evidently mistaking the latter for an integral part of the drawing, and copying it imperfectly. Later, Greenwood obtained possession of both drawing and slip, either before or at the time of his visit to the rock in 1730. In making his own copy. Greenwood also, like Mather, included the "B," but, unlike Mather, he made it faint, as it should be. James Walker, in 1690, deeded to his daughter Hannah the portion of his property on which the rock was situated. In 1695, she married Benjamin Jones, and on division-stones be- 32 DIGHTON ROCK tween their own and adjoining lands they caused the initials "BI" to be engraved. Benjamin Jones, dying in 1720, left his farm to his son Benjamin, who was living there at the time of Greenwood's visit in 1730. All of these facts can be con- sistently woven together and the marks on the drawing ex- plained if we make the following assumptions : that Danforth, attaching no great importance to the documents, gave them to Jones, who may have accompanied him; that Jones wrote his initials on the drawing; that Danforth, settling as minister at Dorchester in 1682, talked with Cotton Mather about the inscrip- tion; that Mather, deeply interested, wrote to Jones or Samuel Danforth and secured the drawing, copied it with erroneous inclusion of the "9," and perhaps later returned it to Jones; and that Jones's son presented both drawing and slip to Green- wood, although the latter might equally well have secured them from either Mather or Danforth, in case the first Jones had surrendered them permanently to either of these. Greenwood, as we shall see, retained for a while the original documents, but sent to England some quotations from the slip and a copy of the drawing. The latter, he stated, was "Delineata per Dom Dan- forth Anno 1680." This "Dom" was later accidentally tran- scribed "Dr." and thus became responsible for subsequent misapplication of that title to Danforth, under circumstances that can best be related in connection with Greenwood's own contributions. Cotton Mather became interested in Dighton Rock, in some such way as has just been conjectured, and wrote about it on four separate occasions. The first time was in the Epistle Dedicatory addressed "To the Right Worshipful Sir Henry Ashurst, Baronet," which prefaced a sermon published early in 1690 under the title The Wonderful Works of God Com- memorated.' He included a drawing of what he regarded as the "first line" out of a total of "about half a score lines" of the inscription, a few descriptive words of which the more im- portant were quoted at the beginning of our second chapter, and an allusion to "what the Indian People have Engraved upon Rocks" which reveals his belief that it was to these people that 2 Issued also in a second edition, 1703. EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 33 the inscription was due and that what they wrote is unintel- Hgible. In Figure 8 is given a reproduction of the whole. It appears that in his day it was not customary to make acknowl- edgment of sources, nor does his Diary mention them. Con- sequently, it has never been known whence he obtained the drawing and description. But if we compare his drawing of this date, and those of the same part of the inscription that he published twice later, with the Danforth drawing, as plates in my Colonial Society papers give opportunity to do, the possi- bility will suggest itself that the former may have been copied from the latter. Study of the productions of later artists will convince us that any two independent observers, and even the same observer at different times, inevitably make drawings that differ markedly from one another in important features. In this case there are no such essential differences, but only dis- tortions. The suggested possibility becomes a certainty. There is no question that Mather copied from Danforth, and that he was a very poor copyist. In the following year, 1691, Mather again briefly referred to the rock in the following words : "Of the Indians Reading and Writing is altogether unknown to them, tho' there is a Rock or two in the Country that has unaccountable characters Engrav'd upon it."^ Afterwards, he wrote no more about it for twenty years. He had been industrious, however, in the meantime, in taking note of everything that he regarded as of an extraordinary nature. This suggested to him eventually an idea which he expressed in his Diary on July 5, 1711 : "There is one good Interest, which I have never yett served, and yett I am capable of doing some small Service for it. The Improve- ment of Knowledge in the Works of Nature, is a Thing where- by God, and his Christ is glorified. I may make a valuable Collection of many Curiosities, which this Countrey has afforded; and present it unto the Royal Society. May the glorious Lord assist me, in this Performance." Acting upon this resolution, in November, 1712, he composed a series of thirteen letters on the Natural History of New England and ^Life of John Eliot, 1691, p. 81. 34 DIGHTON ROCK kindred topics, which he sent to members of the Royal Society for communication to the Society. Excerpts from these were printed in 1714 in No. 339 of the Philosophical Transactions, and afterwards incorporated in its Volume XXIX. Among the curiosities of which Mather made mention, Dighton Rock was included. His description of it was written on November 28, 1712, and does not differ essentially from that of 1690, except that now he thinks that the inscription consists of seven or eight lines, two of which he presents in a drawing with the hope that "ere long*' he may be able to obtain the rest of them ; and he no longer suggests the Indians as the engravers, but considers the characters unaccountable, since no one "knows any more what to make of them than who it was that graved them." The drawing is shown with approximate accuracy among those of Figure 6. The Colonial Society papers present it enlarged to about double its original linear dimensions, for the sake of better clarity and comparison with others. The "first line'' of this drawing is evidently a copy from that of 1690 and hence from that of Danforth. The "second line" corresponds really to very nearly all of the remaining sur- face of the rock, below the "first line," instead of being only a second line out of seven or eight, as Mather thought it was. It has always been a puzzle, for it bears not the slightest re- semblance to anything that anyone else has depicted as occupy- ing this position on the rock. Like the inscription itself to Mather, so to everyone else this "second line" of his has been such a mystery that "no one knows any more what to make of it than who it was that graved it." It never occurred to anyone before, nor to the writer until he had puzzled over it vainly for several years, to turn this second line bottom-side up. When this is done, although it will be seen to be a very unskilled piece of work, its resemblance to later drawings will be readily recognized. There are several possibilities as to whence Mather pro- cured this second line. There is no indication and no prob- ability that he ever saw the rock itself. The new drawing was evidently made by some one who had intimate knowledge of the "first line," for it is clearly designed as a supplement to the EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 35 latter and carefully avoids repetition of its features. One way in which it may have happened is suggested by an entry of Feb- ruary 24, 1691, in the Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall, where the latter reminds himself to write to Rev. Samuel Danforth *'to take the writing off the Rock and send it." In carrying out this purpose, he may have secured the original Danforth drawing from Mather and returned it to Jones through Samuel Danforth, asking not for a complete new drawing but only for the additional "lines;" and it may have been Jones, a farmer unskilled in drawing, who executed the commission. Then, years later, when Mather was ready to write about the rock again, he may have procured this new portion from Sewall, too late to send for the other lines that he believed had not yet been copied, and, not knowing its correct position, added it upside-down to what he already had. This course of events would explain everything adequately, although there are doubt- less other possible ways of doing it. This communication of Mather's to the Royal Society aroused a great deal of interest. One result of this was the issuance of a small Broadside, about four by five inches in size, whose existence had been unnoticed before this research was undertaken. Two copies of it are known, one owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the other by Yale University. They differ in that in one the cut of the inscrip- tion is printed below the descriptive matter, while in the other the position of the two is reversed. It seems not unlikely that Cotton Mather himself was responsible for its appearance, in order to satisfy the curiosity of his friends, and 'that it was printed not far from the time when the account in the Philo- sophical Transactions came out in 1714. Its cut is not a direct reproduction from the latter, as will be seen by consulting the plate in the Colonial Society papers which shows the three Mather versions of the "first line" compared with one another and with the Danforth drawing. He probably retained a copy of the two lines for himself when he wrote to the Royal So- ciety, and perhaps for the Broadside made a fresh copy from that ; and he never copied well, nor twice alike. Further results of the interest aroused by Mather's com- 36 DIGHTON ROCK munication were the publication by Daniel Neal of a quotation from it in his History of New England in 1720, and the pro- duction of a new drawing and description of the rock by Isaac Greenwood in 1730. But Greenwood was not the only person who visited the rock at about that same time and copied its inscription. Two men of considerable eminence went to see it, who have escaped the notice of previous writers. One of these was John Smibert, one of the earliest of American portrait painters. The only allusion to the fact is in an unpublished manuscript written by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere about 1781. He says: "There was in the collection of Doctor [Williams] Smibert at Boston, an accurate drawing of the Supposed in- scription at Taunton, done by his father John Smibert an eminent painter that came over to america with Dean Berkeley, and afterwards Settled at Boston."* If this report is trust- worthy, it is much to be regretted that search in many directions has thus far failed to discover this important early drawing by so gifted an artist. The time of the visit would probably have been 1 729, for it was in January of that year that Smibert arrived from England at Newport, and he left there for Boston late in the same year. There are three previously overlooked evidences of a visit by the Rev. George Berkeley, then Dean of Derry but tem- porarily residing at Newport,^ afterward Bishop of Cloyne and one of the most deservedly eminent of English philosophers. One of them is a manuscript note by Dr. Ezra Stiles, made in 1767, referring to the inscription on Dighton Rock: "Was taken off first by Dr. Cotton Mather. Then by Professor Greenwood. — Lastly by Dean Berkley. Greenw*^ took the whole; the other two but half. Teste Benj Jones aet. 70 Owner of the Rock." This Benjamin Jones was "Owner of the Rock" from 1720 to 1768, and was son of the Benjamin Jones of Dan- f orth's time and Mather's. He therefore may have personally seen Berkeley and Greenwood as well as Stiles on the occasions * P. E. du Simitiere, "Inscription in Massachusetts"; in MS Volume No. 1412 Quarto, Library Company of Philadelphia. ° He arrived in Newport on January 23, 1729, and departed for England on September 21, 1731. EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 37 of their several visits, but he would have known about Mather only by hearsay, and he very evidently confused Mather with Danforth. It is very possible also that, after nearly forty years, he confused the order of the visits of Berkeley and Green- wood, and forgot Smibert; for it seems most likely that Berkeley and Smibert, who had come from England together, would also have gone together to the rock made famous by Mather, and that the date of this event was 1729. A certain statement by Greenwood, also, becomes more comprehensible on this assumption. The same manuscript by du Simitiere which is authority for Smibert's visit, speaks also of Berkeley in the following man- ner: There is a tradition very current in New England, but particu- larly at New Port that when the learned Dean Berkeley resided near that last mentioned place ... he visited the rock at Taunton, and had began an Elaborate dissertation upon the supposed in- scription, when a farmer in its neighborhood . . . informed him, that, that rock had been used formerly by the Indians that resorted thither to Shoot ducks, and dart fish, to wett [whet] and Sharpen the points of their arrows and darts on that Stone which was the cause of the various hollow lines and figures formed thereon. Berkeley's visit is further attested, though with somewhat differing details, by a reviewer in the English Review for March, 1790, on the authority of "his ingenious and religious widow, the late Mrs. Berkeley." He well remembers to have been told by her that her husband "returned fully convinced that this reputed scrawl of the present Indians, this boasted inscription of Punick, of Phoenician, or of Tartar hands was merely the casual corrosion of the rock by the waves of the sea," and with this opinion he, the reviewer, cordially concurs. It is unbelievable that anyone who had actually seen the rock could possibly have considered the lines upon it as having been caused either by casual corrosion through natural agencies, or accidentally in the process of sharpening weapons. The two opinions attributed to Berkeley disagree with one another, and personally I do not doubt that those who reported them fifty 38 DIGHTON ROCK years and more after the incidents were mistaken about the facts. We shall study by and by some marks on rocks at Purgatory, near Newport and near Berkeley's home, which were actually made by Indians in sharpening and shaping their stone implements. It must have been there, at Purgatory, that he was given this correct explanation of its marks by a "farmer of the neighborhood;" and, much later, the traditions lingering at Newport concerning this opinion and also his visit to Digh- ton Rock, easily confused the two. What kind of confusion accounts for the other report, that he saw nothing on the rock except the results of natural processes, cannot be exactly traced. But this view has been suggested not infrequently by persons who had never seen the rock, and somehow or other, in the course of sixty years, Mrs. Berkeley seems to have become convinced that it was her husband's belief. As to the fact of his visit, however, there seems to be no question, since there are three independent evidences of it — the personal knowledge of Benjamin Jones, the tradition preserved at Newport, and the memory of Mrs. Berkeley. Isaac Greenwood was "Hollisian Professor of y® Mathe- maticks and Philosophy'' at Harvard College from 1727 to 1738. He seems to have been a picturesque character, inclining to extravagance in the purchase of neckties and the like, and to a rather indiscreet intimacy with John Barleycorn, yet regarded by Cotton Mather as "a sort of a son."^ He is the source of our earliest detailed information concerning Dighton Rock, but there has always been a puzzling degree of confusion con- cerning his contributions. These were first reported to the world by Lort in 1787, nearly sixty years after they were written. But little items of additional or conflicting informa- tion were available here and there, and suggested a fresh search for the original documents and the true history of them. Manuscripts preserved in the British Museum and records of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of Lon- don, more exhaustively examined and compared than had been done before, made it possible to completely straighten out 6 Diary, ii. 741 ; July 15, 1724. ■"!{ your Ac ceptanc* c! r;;em, as a part of our Ac- kaowled-gtrifnti. Amonz car ct!ir-r C.^ii..,2(i's of radicular f:i.w-cr..,f by n Rlv=^ uhich ^ Hig" Tide covtfS^ prt of ir, tb^re src vcrv defolv Fr»-av- iccrc ZM-j, -ifar Te- Poor i.j;;^, 3^^ , f:,„j „j . ,t 1/ie Lpifrlc Dedicatory. C g.5e(? as did ri.-»'jirs afioit them tliat were bfre Is fore us, as there arc ^.U '.jtjpc, in ih,u Klaoorate Mo- numrnr, \v!:crcjf you Ihall ice, i\k fn} lue Tun- Ccnbid llete.^ Fig. 8. Earliest printed drawing and description of Dighton Rock, liy Rev. Cotton Afather, D.D., 1690 Faciiu/ page 3S EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 39 the confusion and to work out the following account of the actual facts. Sometime before September, 1730, Professor Greenwood received from Mr. John Eames, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a letter stating that some of the members of that Society, in- terested by Cotton Mather's description in the Philosophical Transactions of 1714, wished to secure a new copy of the in- scription on the rock in Taunton River. Accordingly, Green- wood visited the rock in September, 1730, and copied its in- scription. He either had already in his possession, or more probably now secured from Benjamin Jones, the two papers that contain Danforth's original drawing of 1680 and his descriptive comments. The two drawings, his own and Dan- forth's, he copied onto one sheet of paper; and he also com- posed a letter in reply to Eames. This letter was at first a rough draft only, with numerous corrections, erasures, and interlineations; and in this form I refer to it as Letter B, Of this he then made a fair copy (Letter A), differing very slightly in content from the corrected original, markedly better in its handwriting and spelling, and containing most, but not all, of the contents of the "Danforth descriptive slip" in a postscript. This fair copy. Letter A, and the copy of the drawings he sent to Eames under date of December 8, 1730; retaining in his own possession the original draft, the two original drawings, and the Dan forth slip. In April, 1732, he learned from Eames that the latter had never received a reply to his previous letter with its request for a new drawing. There being a ship about to sail immediately, Greenwood, with no time to make another copy, put together the original rough draft of his letter, the two original and separate drawings, and the Dan forth slip, together constituting what I call Letter B. This bears the original date of December 8, 1730, but was sent to Eames, with a brief and hurried letter of explanation (Letter C), on April 28, 1732. Letters B and C arrived in London on June 5, were received by Eames, and were presented by him to the Royal Society on June 15, 1732. On the same day they were copied, including the drawings, into the Register Book of the Society, The 40 DIGHTON ROCK original documents eventually passed into Birch's collection of manuscripts, and by 1782 they were, as they now are, in the British Museum. Lort, prosecuting what he intended to be a thorough search of the records of the Royal Society, in 1786, failed to discover either the copied documents in the Society's Register Book, or the originals in the British Museum. By early November of the same year. Letter A also arrived at its destination. Eames seems to have thought that it would be of interest to the Society of Antiquaries of London ; for it was presented before that Society on November 9 by Mr. Bogdani, to whom it appears to have been transmitted through the Rev. Mr. Villers. A portion of the letter, and the drawings, were copied into the Minutes of the Society, and it was this frag- mentary account which Lort found in 1786, and from which very nearly all of previous statements concerning Danforth and Greenwood have been drawn. The letter itself apparently came into the possession of the Rev. William Cole, who bequeathed the volumes in which it is contained to the British Museum in 1783. One of the remarkable facts illustrative of the inadequacies of previous investigation is that no one ever reported the full contents of the Danforth slip, and no one correctly named the correspondent to whom Greenwood addressed his letters. The "Minutes" recorded the latter as Viller, and Lort misread this as Villan ; and in neither form is the name correct, for the con- temporary Historical Register speaks of this man as Rev. Dr. Villers, while the parochial records give his name as John Villa. One recent investigator asserted wrongly that the correspondent was Sir Hans Sloane, and another that he was Mr. John Evanses. The address that is still on one of the letters proves that all of them were really addressed to John Eames. Letter A was about twenty-three months in passage, but the combined Letters B and C took only thirty-eight days and arrived first. This irregularity seems to have been not unusual. Dean Berkeley, in 1730, wrote from Newport to one of his correspondents: "Letters are of uncertain passage: your last was half a year in coming, and I have had some a year after their date, though often in two or three months, and some- EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 41 times less;" and again he speaks of receiving a packet from Dublin by way of Philadelphia, "the postage whereof amounted to above four pounds of this country money."^ This probably also helps to explain certain marks apparently made by the postal authorities on the back of the packet B-C, which seem to indicate that it weighed one ounce, and that eleven shilling? five pence were charged for postage. Greenwood intended to send the letter, as was usual, in charge of the ship's captain and to have him mail it in the Penny Post in London, in which case it would have cost but one penny. The legal route estab- lished by the British Post Office from Boston was via New York, at the rate of eight shillings an ounce. But there were actually no mail packets from New York at the time. If Greenwood missed the ship which, as he remarked in his Letter C, was "immediately to sail" and which did clear for London on April 29, his letter may have gone by way of Philadelphia, as one that Berkeley mentioned did, and thus been charged a higher rate for postage; although perhaps the short time of passage precludes this possibility. Letter A contains Greenwood's copies of his own drawing and Danforth's. These have usually been presented after many copyings — from the letter to the "Minutes," thence by Lort, and thence by others. In 1908, however, David I. Bushnell published an accurate photographic reproduction of them,® and they are again shown among my Colonial Society plates from a photostatic copy made in the British Museum. Our Figure 6 shows them with sufficient accuracy. Underneath them Green- wood wrote that they were "Delineata per Dom Greenwood" and "per Dom Danforth." This "Dom" evidently means Dominus ; but it was copied into the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries as "Dr." Since this, through Lort, has been the source of all later statements about these two men in the liter- ature of Dighton Rock, it is easy to see why they have always been mistakenly spoken of as Dr. Danforth and Dr. Green- wood. The significance of the Dominus is thus explained by 7 The Works of George Berkeley, D.D. London, 1820. Vol. 1, pp. xxxix, xli. ^ Amer. Anthropologist, x. 251. 42 DIGHTON ROCK Albert Matthews : "On taking his first degree, or A.B., [at Harvard College] a student was, following the practice at English universities, called 'Dominus' or 'Sir,' the latter desig- nation remaining in use down to the first decade of the nine- teenth century. On taking his second degree, or A.M., the quondam student was called 'Mr.' "^ Until he received his first degree, he was called by his surname only. Danforth had both degrees, and while Greenwood calls him Dominus on the draw- ing, in the text of the letter he speaks of him as "Mr.," — ^that is, as possessed of the Master of Arts degree. Letter B contains the drawings from which Greenwood made his copies for Letter A, and it is not unlikely that they are the original drawings of Danforth and Greenwood. That by Danforth, together with its accompanying "slip," was shown in Figure 7. Greenwood's is not reproduced here, since it does not differ from that of letter A sufficiently to be of any addi- tional interest. Underneath it is written the statement that it was made in September, 1730. In either form, the drawing is incomplete, poorly made, with weak rounded lines, and of little use except as an exhibit illustrating the psychological features of our discussion. Since Greenwood's communication contains the first real description of Dighton Rock, it seems worth while to reproduce it here in full. The version given is that of the more finished Letter A, transcribed from photostatic copies of the manu- script in the British Museum. N.E. Cambr. Decem'" 8. 1730 I have according to the desire of some of the Members of the Hon'''^ the Roy' Society, which you mention'd to me in your last, examin'd the remarkable Inscript", on the Rock in Taunton River describ'd in the Phil. Trans. N°. 339 pa. 70 and herewith send a View of as much of it as I could then possibly take. N° I. ABCDE represent the face thereof, being a Plane nearly per- pendicular to the Horizon, looking N b W in length from B to D lly2 feet, and in Depth from C to F 4^. This seems to have been left by Nature very smooth & is certainly in its substance very uni- form, compact and durable. BCD represents the surface of the ^ Publicattons Colonial Soc. of Mass., xviii. 309. EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 43 Water at the time of Observation. I am inform'd that at some extraordinary Tides the Water ebbs below the Rock & some of undoubted Veracity belonging to the town assured me, that the River has been constantly encroaching on that part of the Beach, so as to waste the adjacent Lands, which since the Memory of many alive is something more distant from the Rock than formerly, tho' now but a few feet, and that there are the like figures for some feet under AE which is the present Surface of the Beach. In determining the Characters or Figures I found some dif- ficulty for the Indentures are not at present very considerable, nor I think equally deep, which put me upon the following Rule viz*. Carefully to trace out and Chalk all such places and those only which I beleived were real Indentures, and in this part I desired the Revisal & assistance of the Rev''. M"" Fisher & others. Many places were passed over which did not seem to be indented, as to the Eye, tho' remarkably discolour'd, by some adherent matter, in corresponding figures to the rest. I thought it more advisable to give such parts of these Characters as were real, that thereby the whole might be obtained; than to run the Risq of a conjectural Description, which would certainly endanger the discovery of many parts, and for this reason I must also note, that the figures are not all so well defin'd as I have express'd them, the Bounds being scarcely perceivable in some of them. The Stroakes also may be something, tho' very little broader; their Direction being what I cheifly aimed at. Time is suppos'd gradually to have impair'd theni, and one of advanced Years in the Town told me he was sensible of some Alteration since his Memory. And for this reason I have also sent you N". II which is a Draught of some part of this Inscription taken by the Rev^. M*". Danforth 1680. This Gentleman observes with relation to it, that there was a Tradition current among the eldest Indians "That there came a wooden house (and men of another Country in it) swimming up the River of Assoonet (as this was then called) who fought the Indians with mighty Success &c." This I think evidently shews that this Monu- ment was esteem'd by the oldest Indians not only very antique, but a work of a difif*. Nature from any of theirs. It may not be improper to add here that this place was one of the most consider- able Seats of Indians in this part of the World, and tire River remarkable for all Sorts of Fowl & Fish. After this description you may expect an Accompt of the Senti- ments of some among us relating to this Inscription. Such as look 44 DIGHTON ROCK upon it as the work of the Nature are little acquainted with her Operations and have made but a cursory Observation hereof. Two Opinions prevail most. 1^*. That these figures are the unde- signing and artless Impressions of some of the Natives, out of meer curiosity or for some particular Use. 2'^. That they are a Memorial in proper Sculpture of some remarkable Transactions or Accident. That they are not the Effect of mere Curiosity I think is very evident, for P'. the Natives of this Country were altogether ig- norant of Sculpture & the use of Iron. And tho' they had some Stone Instruments, none that ever I have seen are capable (in much better hands than theirs) of forming so accurate an Inscrip- tion, and if they were, 2'y. it is highly probable there would have been in the Neighbourhood or in some other parts of New England other Sketches of the same or a like Nature & Regularity which cannot be pretended. 3'^. One would think their Curiosity would have lead them to the Representation of Birds, Beasts, Fishes, Trees &c which we have since found to be their prevailing Genius, & not to figures quite different from the Objects of their Senses. 4'y. They were a Nation too idle & irresolute for a work of so much Industry & apparent Design. Some think these Sculptures were of particular Use to the Natives in sharpning the Heads of their Arrows, their Axes &c or at least that they were first form'd by such means. This is obviated by two Considerations P*. that there are no more (as I can yet hear) of such indented Rocks. If this was their usual Custom, we should find these Traces & Indentures very probably on many Rocks of the same Nature as this ; and if it was political (a customary preparation to confirm & encourage one another in their Intention or prosecution of War) no doubt but kindred & confederate Tribes would have had their respective Standards. But 2'y. The figures are too regular & uniform to comport with such an Occasion. And this brings me to the second Opinion viz*. That these figures are a Memorial in proper Sculpture of some remarkable Transaction or Accident which appears from the great Number thereof, from the likeness of several, from the Parallelism & Con- formity of the Stroakes one with another in each, from the Circum- stances of the Rock and Place, which are very proper for such a design, and from the equal Irregularity of some of the Oriental Characters &c. But for the farther Discovery of this our Hopes EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 45 being placed upon the extraordinary Skill and Ingenuity of M'- La Croze in the Alphabet both ancient & modern of the Oriental Tongues, it is with pleasure I now take leave of this Subject. If it should be thought proper to prosecute the Subject any farther I will endeavour to transmit unto the Society a large View of the whole Inscription, with an Acco*. of some other Sculptures, which probably were the work of some modern Indians. And this I esteem but a just Debt to that illustrious Body, who have im- provd in so eminent a manner every Branch of humane Literature. I am &c Isaac Greenwood Hollesian Professor at N. Cambridge. To the end of this letter a short postscript was added, quot- ing a portion of the Danforth slip. There are many things in the letter that are of no value as statements of fact or as ex- amples of sound reasoning. Such claims as that, within the memory of individuals, the river has encroached upon the land or the marks upon the rock have grown perceptibly fainter, are proven by completer evidence than Greenwood possessed to have no foundation in fact. The conclusion that he draws from Danforth's tradition about the wooden house is unwarranted, for the tradition has nothing whatever to do with the question as to whether or not the Indians made the carvings or knew anything about their meaning. We shall find a better hypoth- esis than Greenwood's about the significance of the inscrip- tion and the relation of the Indians to it; yet his mistaken deductions have been the basis of many later positive but unfounded assertions about the matter. His later arguments against the possibility that Indians could have done the work are not convincing. His method of preparing for his drawing by first chalking upon the rock what he believed to be real indentures has been followed by almost every draughtsman and photographer since, but it inevitably leads to error. In spite of these inadequacies, however, the letter is very valuable for several reasons. It has been the means of preserving for us Danforth's drawing, and the contents of his descriptive slip. It proves conclusively what is already suggested by the earlier 46 DIGHTON ROCK drawings of Danforth and Mather, that from the very first of known observation there has been "difficulty in determining the characters," the indentures being "not very considerable," the figures "not well defined," and the "bounds scarcely per- ceivable in some of them." There is certainly no greater diffi- culty today, after two hundred and fifty years, and hence there cannot have been any very marked wear with consequent in- crease in faintness. A further service rendered by Greenwood lies in his dis- cussion of opinions, which probably reflects well the course of general conjecture up to his time. Mather at first, and prob- ably Danforth, thought of it only as the work of Indians. But Mather seems to have given up this view as a consequence of current criticism, and regarded the characters as "unaccount- able." Gradually the arguments against the Indians became accepted as conclusive, and probably most of the scholars of the day, interested in the possibility that the Indians were descendants of the "lost tribes of Israel," inclined to the opinion that seems to have been Greenwood's own, that the inscription was in "Oriental Characters," and might yet be deciphered as such. He indicates, however, that two other opinions were current to some degree — ^that the lines upon the rock were the work of Nature only, or that they were accidental results of the work of Indians in sharpening arrow-heads. The latter theory, it seems to me, can have arisen only as a result of a transfer to a wrong locality of Berkeley's observations at Purgatory, and this is why I have suggested the probability that, contrary to the statement of Dr. Stiles, Berkeley's visit to the rock occurred before that of Greenwood; for in that case it would have been easy for Jones to have related to Greenwood a gar- bled account of Berkeley's comments. The "work of Nature" hypothesis may well have been current anywhere, among skeptics who had never seen the rock itself. A final fact worth noticing is that, although Greenwood knew of "no more of such indented Rocks," yet he did believe that the "modern Indians" of his day, if not their predecessors, were engaged in making occasional sculptures. We have thus gathered a rather gratifying amount of EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK 47 information concerning the rock during the first hundred years of its history after white men settled in its vicinity. EarHer accounts of this period have been meager and distorted. It will be instructive and encouraging to review how much of definite knowledge it has been possible to add to what had been told before through undertaking a fresh and exhaustive inquiry. Concerning the rock itself, its exact character and dimensions have been determined, and various erroneous reports about it corrected. Its rate of wear is slow, and the legibility of its inscription has not diminished perceptibly within the last two hundred and fifty years. The worn appearance that it presents may have been acquired within a few decades after it was made, and throws no light upon its age. The rock must have been seen as early as 1640, but there are no reports about it until forty years later, and consequently, so far as records show, the work upon it could have been done, partly or wholly, within that time. Statements that it was a mystery to the Indians, or that it was reported and discussed by the earliest colonists, are without foundation. John Dan forth, and not his brother Samuel, made the first drawing of it, in the month of October, 1680. His original drawing has been discovered and published, and also the full contents of his descriptive notes. The title "Doctor," always applied to him and Greenwood, has been withdrawn and the reason for its previous use explained. Something new is known concerning every one of Mather's contributions: that of 1690 was derived from Danforth; that of 1691 is noticed for the first time in the literature of the rock; the lower part of the 1712 drawing was published upside- down ; and the Broadside has been discovered. Samuel Sewall was interested in the rock in 1691. The rock was visited, prob- ably in 1729, by John Smibert and Dean Berkeley. The draw- ing that Smibert made seems to have disappeared completely. The opinions attributed to Berkeley are conflicting, and can be given a more probable application to other rocks. Green- wood's visit was in the month of September, 1730, and the correspondent to whom he addressed his letters was John Eames. Much confusion in the reports about these letters has been cleared up, the main letter has been given in a reliable ver- 48 DIGHTON ROCK sion, and it has been interpreted in such a manner as to reveal its true significance. These are the chief, but not the only new contributions affecting this period. They are enough to justify us in anticipating similar increase in our understanding of the rock as we pursue our study of it further. ^BjSBBjq^^*! *i'^^,.,t> ,' -- o° # -X3 O iltei]^il»si%^&,^ ^n^-HM^^sm^^ CHAPTER IV A RECORD OF PHCENICIAN ADVENTURE During the earliest period of interest in Dighton Rock and its strange writing, there seem to have been some, as Professor Greenwood implied in 1730, who suspected that possibly its characters were Oriental. This belief was doubtless closely connected with the many current theories as to the origin of the American Indians, — a problem which aroused interested discussion from almost the very earliest days of the colonies. On the one hand, northwestern Europe was looked upon by some as the home-land of some at least of the Indian tribes. But even more widely accepted as parents of the aborigines were Orientals, either from the eastern parts of Asia, such as the Siberian Tartars, the Chinese, or the Japanese, or from its western borders, such as the Lost Tribes of Israel, the sea- faring Phoenicians, or even the exiled Trojans. It was natural that, when this rock became known, some of the advocates of one theory or another should find in its curious characters evi- dence in favor of their views. But up to this time no very definite theory concerning the origin of the inscription had taken shape. During the next following one hundred years after Greenwood, it became generally held that some ancient people of Oriental origin carved this monument, or that the Indians did it in a writing retained from their Oriental ances- tors. Several theories ascribing it to different Oriental sources were announced. Some of them went so far as to discover a definite meaning for nearly every line upon the rock. Yet there continued an undercurrent of opposition to such specula- tions, and a belief that either the American Indians in a man- ner of their own, or even the action of natural forces alone, were responsible for the markings. Greenwood's contribution did not satisfy his correspond- 49 50 DIGHTON ROCK ents, and consequently remained buried from sight for over fifty years. After his retirement from the HolHs Professor- ship at Harvard in 1738, John Winthrop was appointed in his place; and Eames, "at the desire of a gentleman at Berlin," re- quested Mr. Timothy Hollis to secure through Winthrop a more accurate copy of the inscription. It is said that John Winthrop was the foremost teacher of science in this country in the eighteenth century, and that the growth of the scientific spirit in America owes much to his influence. It is easy to understand, therefore, that when he visited the rock in answer to this request, in 1744 or earlier, he must have realized the nearly insuperable difficulty of determining what had been engraved upon it, and so he made only a rough and incomplete sketch and did not preserve it. It was not until thirty years later that he complied with HoUis's request by sending him a new drawing by another man. In 1747, William Douglass, a Boston physician of violent prejudices and undisciplined utterance, published an intem- perate criticism ridiculing Mather and his communication to the Royal Society and claiming that the ebbing and flowing of the tide had made the marks upon Dighton Rock, as "a sort of vermoulure, honey-combing or etching on its face." Except historically, his contribution was as unimportant as was Cot- ton Mather's own. The one distorts and misrepresents the ap- pearance of the inscription, the other tells us that there is no inscription there; and neither of these men, apparently, had made a personal inspection of the rock. Yet until 1781 their accounts remained all that there was in print on this subject. According to Kendall, the most active attention to Dighton Rock after Greenwood was occasioned by motives of greed rather than of scholarly research. "The unlearned believe that the rock was sculptured by order of a pirate," he says, "either Captain Kyd or Captain Blackbeard, in order to mark the site of buried treasure ;" and in the search for it, in the years around 1765 according to his reckoning, much labor was expended in digging up the shore for more than a hundred fathom on a side. The fact that Dr. Ezra Stiles expressed certain opinions RECORD OF PHGENICIAN ADVENTURE 51 concerning Dighton Rock in an Election Sermon in 1783 is well known. But that he made three separate drawings in 1767, and another in 1788, is never mentioned in the literature of the subject. In all the history of the rock, perhaps noth- ing is more surprising than this almost complete ignoring of his important and repeated investigations. From 1755 to 1776 he was minister at Newport. After a brief residence at Digh- ton and at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during the war, he was called to the presidency of Yale College in 1778 and con- tinued in that office until his death in 1795. Most of his notes and drawings are contained in a series of manuscripts which he called his Itineraries, now preserved in the Library of Yale University. Many extracts from these Itineraries have been published recently, but not the many passages which contain his notes about inscribed rocks, a subject in which he was especially interested. Dr. Stiles's interest in the rock was first aroused by seeing a copy of the Mather Broadside in the fall of 1766. On May 27, 1767, he learned from Mr. Edward Shove of Assonet Neck that the "cyphered Stone" was situated half a mile from the latter's house. On June 5th he rode from Taunton to Shove's house, and they went together to the Writing Rock. *T began to take off some of the Characters, but without Chalking first. Next day I chalked the marks and took them more distinctly. Spent the forenoon in Decyphering about Two Thirds the Inscription, which I take to be in phoenician Letters & 3000 years old." He made a number of descriptive notes, mentioned the previously made drawings by Mather, Greenwood and Berkeley, and thought that he detected marks resembling an X and an R on one corner of the flat "slab" which has been spoken of as lying near the Writing Rock. On the upstream end of the latter, he detected some further faint marks, "said to be done 30 years ago, some said 12." He drew these as dotted lines, to indicate their faintness and uncertainty, mak- ing them look much like the letters "I HOWOO," with three U-like curves underneath. We have already seen that there is unquestionably something more or less like this in that pogi- 52 DIGHTON ROCK tion, so very rarely visible in favorable light that not more than two or three subsequent observers have noticed it. On the 15th of June Stiles wrote a letter to Professor John Winthrop of Harvard, telling of this visit, asking for a copy of the Greenwood drawing, and expressing the following opin- ion : "It is not a Vermiculation or Lusus Naturae, but a Work of Art, and I believe of Great Antiquity, perhaps up to the Phoenician Ages : but I believe it never will be interpreted." On July 15, 1767, he was again at Edward Shove's. After washing and scrubbing the rock, he attempted to take some full-sized impressions of its figures by using cartridge paper pressed upon them. Failing in this, he made a drawing by copying the characters as he had chalked them on the rock, devoting about two hours to the task. On the following morn- ing, he took another copy on a larger scale. His Diary records that he visited Dighton Rock again many years later, on May 16, 1783, and still again on October 3, 1788. On the latter occasion he worked for an hour and a quarter on a new draw- ing, but became discouraged and did not finish it; and the fragment cannot now be discovered. At various times he made drawings also of other similar inscriptions, in Rhode Island and Connecticut, to which we shall give attention in later chapters. The three drawings of 1767 are reproduced in the Colonial Society plates, and one of them is shown in our Figure 9. That of June 6 occupies four pages of the Itinerary, each measuring about 6% by 7^i inches. Placed together, therefore, the whole drawing measures about 7^ by 24^. The right and left halves are drawn on somewhat differing scales. On them Stiles wrote a number of indications of dimensions, and a few descriptive remarks. The drawing of July 15 (Figure 9) is also in the Itinerary, where it covers two pages, and therefore measures about 75/^ by 12^ inches. It attempts to indicate the relative breadth of the lines, shows the position of some of the natural cracks in the rock by dotted lines, and gives mar- ginal indications of the dimensions in feet. The drawing of July 16, being made on a larger scale, is RECORD OF PHCENICIAN ADVENTURE 53 not in the Itinerary. It is on two sheets of paper pasted together, measuring together 12% by 3134 inches, the drawing itself being about 9 by 23 inches. On the back is a carefully executed separate drawing of one of the groups of figures, 4 by 6^ inches in size. The main drawing, like that of the day before, indicates the breadth of the lines on the rock, but contains no marks of dimension. The separate figure, however, is divided by dotted lines into squares corresponding in numbering to the indications of dimensions in feet as given on the drawing of the 15th. In one corner of the face is written: "Characters on the Writing Rock, whose Incisions were obvious & unques- tionable decyphered July 16, 1767. Given to Yale College Museum / Ezra Stiles / 1788;" and on the back: "Dighton Writing Rock said to consist of Punic or Carthaginian Char- acters." The drawing is now in the collection of the Massa- chusetts Historical Society. The three drawings are in some respects so unlike as to show little indication of having been made by the same hand. Other features, however, especially the representations of human beings and the triangular figures, which are presented in an essentially like manner by nearly every one who has ever copied the inscription, are naturally nearly alike in these. The figure usually drawn as a quadruped bears no resemblance to its usual manner of depiction on the first drawing, but slight re- semblance on the second, and is lacking on the third. In view of later importance attached to them, it is particularly interest- ing to compare together the two lines of characters near the centre of the inscription which contain some resemblance to letters of the alphabet. Besides irregular marks possessing no such resemblance, the upper line includes shapes somewhat like XXXIM on June 6, XXX only on July 15, XXXIN on July 16, and cXXXIM in the drawing on the back of the latter. Calling the diamond-shaped character an O, and neglecting irregular curves, the lower line can be best likened to O . . OX on June 6, y7X on July 15, and OnQX on July 16. As a whole, the June drawing is very dissimilar to the two of July; yet a distinct individuality of style is perceptible in them all. That of July 16 is very similar to the one of the day before, 54 DIGHTON ROCK being based on the same chalking ; but it contains fewer figures, the omissions being mainly, but not wholly, in the lower part. It appears more carefully and accurately drawn than the others, and impresses me as the best one that Stiles made, though not the most complete. One significance of these drawings is that they are the earliest that show the entire sculptured surface of the rock in a serious manner. Danforth's gave less than half. Mather's "second line" was published upside-down, and hence has hitherto been valueless; and even in its correct position it is seen to be ill-drawn and badly distorted. Greenwood's draw- ing went only a little beyond Danforth's. These of 1767 show, as Stiles says, about two-thirds of the face of the rock ; but this is, nevertheless, nearly the whole surface so far as any artificial characters can be discovered on it. No one has ever given more than these drawings include, except perhaps for a few single figures that some have claimed to discover where others have seen little or nothing. That Stiles was not content with his drawings and still wished, after his own unsuccessful attempt, to secure a full- size direct impression of the characters themselves, is shown by the fact that, at his request, an attempt was made on August 15, 1767, by Elisha Paddack of Swansea assisted by John Hud- son, to "take off some of the figures as big as the life." They mixed ink and flour into a paste, filled in such marks on the rock as they took to be artificial, squeezed paper upon it, and then pricked off the resulting "negative" designs onto new paper. One small figure from this copy is preserved in Stiles's Itinerary, and another, much larger but still very incomplete and of no particular value for reproduction, is in possession of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. This impression, as well as some of Stiles's drawings, is appar- ently referred to by du Simitiere as having been shown to him by Stiles at Newport in June, 1768. Paddack suggested to Stiles in a letter of January 7, 1768, that one of the figures at the extreme right was meant to represent the "Phenitian God Dagon that we read of in the Old Testament," whom the Rev. RECORD OF PHCENICIAN ADVENTURE 55 Mr. West had described to him as customarily drawn in the form of a half-man and half-fish. The next actor on the scene was Stephen Sewall, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages at Har- vard College. He made a life-size drawing of the rock on Sep- tember 13, 1768. Very likely this production had some rela- tionship to John Winthrop's failure in 1744 to satisfy the request of Timothy Hollis; for in 1774 Winthrop sent a re- duced copy of Sewall's drawing to Hollis, with the remark that it was the "most exact copy" that was ever taken. Sewall him- self relates the circumstances under which it was made, and expresses his own opinions. He had as collaborator Thomas Dan forth, grandson of the Rev. John Dan forth of Dorchester ; and they were assisted by Seth Williams and David Cobb, and by William Baylies, prominent physician and judge in Digh- ton, who was intimately connected with several later investiga- tions of the rock. In a letter to Court de Gebelin in 1781, a copy of which he wrote also upon one corner of his original drawing, Sewall expresses the belief that "the level of the beach seems to have risen and to have covered a considerable part" of the inscription, and remarks that "the greater part of it is effaced to such a degree that it is no longer possible to dis- tinguish any characters in these portions of it." Of opinions he says : "Some imagine it to be the work of Phoenicians who were driven hither from Europe; others judge it to be rather hieroglyphical than literal, and that thus it may have been due to navigators from China or Japan!" As for himself, "I imagine it to be the work of the Indians of North America, done merely for amusement." Again, in a letter to Stiles on January 13, 1768, he says: "I confess I have no faith in the significancy of the characters. There is indeed in some of the figures an appearance of design. But the strokes in general appear to be drawn at random : So that I cannot but think the whole to be a mere hisiis Indoriim." We are still further assured, by Kendall on the authority of Dr. Bentley, that Sewall saw nothing on the roolc which reminded him of any ancient alphabet. Sewall's was the first complete drawing of the inscription 56 DIGHTON ROCK which was published, and the first complete one made of the full size of the face of the rock. It was kept for a long time in the Museum or Mineral Room of Harvard Hall, in charge of the Librarian, and this fact was probably responsible for the origin of a mistaken report that there was a "facsimile cast in the Geological collection at Cambridge." Reproductions of it on a smaller scale were published by Court de Gebelin in 1781 from a copy sent to him by Sewall, and by Lort in 1787 from the copy sent by John Winthrop in 1774 to Timothy Hollis; and from these two sources all later reproductions have been derived.^ In the spring of 1774, John Winthrop made a second visit to Dighton Rock, but made no drawing. On the following 14th of November he wrote to Timothy Hollis, at last complying with his request of thirty years before by sending him a copy of the Sewall drawing, as we have seen. The letter shows that he was not exempt from the erroneous impression that so fre- quently occurs, that "the characters do not appear so plain now as they did about thirty years ago." He seems to have shared without hesitation Sewall's opinion that the lines were carved by Indians, but expresses uncertainty as to whether it was designed by them "as a memorial of any remarkable event, or was a mere hisiis at their leisure hours, of which they have a great number." But he concludes with a statement which we have seen cannot be accepted without fuller investigation, that " 'tis certain it was done before the English settled in this country." Thus far we have met with a few attempts to depict the appearance of the inscription, differing from one another to a remarkable degree, and with a few suggestions as to what might have been its origin, but with no attempt to interpret it in detail. Now the scene changes. Our history enters upon an era of romantic and uncontrolled translations in which fact and fancy meet in weird partnership, and no critical attitude is taken toward the reliability of the drawings upon which the readings are based. The belief that the rock exhibits only the iSee Figures 6 and 13, and a still more accurate version in the Colonial Society plates. RECORD OF PHCENICIAN ADVENTURE 57 commonplace and unreadable products of rude Indian art con- tinues to be held by cautious thinkers; but all of those who in the next fifty years announced a full solution of the riddle held that they found in it proof of visits to these shores in the distant past by Phoenicians or other transoceanic peoples. The first to give rein to his exuberant imagination in this manner was Antoine Court de Gebelin ; and his theory had a far-reach- ing influence upon subsequent opinion and discussion. Sewall's drawing came to him as he was engaged in the preparation of the eighth volume of his elaborate treatise on Le Monde Primitif, and was enthusiastically greeted by him as furnish- ing the most convincing proof of his belief that Phoenician navigators had sailed "boldly and gloriously" throughout the ancient world, even to America. He published the volume in 1781, and claimed in it that the Dighton monument could not have been the work of American Indians, and was certainly inscribed "in very ancient times by Phoenicians, perhaps even by those of whom Diodorus speaks." The inscription is a record of the fact that a company of Carthaginian sailors, com- ing from a land of abundance and high culture, dwelt here for a time in amicable relations with the ignorant natives, and then, consulting their Oracle, obtained assurance of a prosperous return homeward. In support of this reading, Gebelin analyzed the drawing in detail, discovering a meaning for almost every one of the figures that it contains. He gives a beautiful illus- tration of the proneness of an uncritical mind to mistake its un- restrained fancies for actual truths. It is sufficient, however, to present his exposition in a very much condensed form. Most of the particular figures that he mentions can be readily iden- tified in the Sewall drawing of Figures 6 and 13, although difficulty may be found in detecting any resemblance to what he sees in a few cases, especially that of the "horse." "The monument is divided," he says, "into three unmistakable scenes, one representing a past, another a present, and the third a future event ;" and then he continues : First Scene. — At the right are four figures which turn their backs on the scene representing the present. They clearly relate 58 DIGHTON ROCK to a past event. Their nature indicates that those who engraved them were Phcenician navigators, either from Tyre or from Car- thage. The figure at the extreme right is Priapus, god of fecun- dity, father of fruits. He cannot be mistaken. He indicates the country whence come these bold navigators, — a country of pros- perity and abundance. The next figure to the left is an owl, sym- bol of Minerva, Isis or Astarte, goddess of wisdom and of the arts. It indicates the superiority in the arts and the skill in navi- gation of the nation of these newly landed sailors. The next figure, a little to the left and lower down, is the head of a sparrow- hawk, with a kind of mantle over its shoulders. It symbolizes per- sons who have come by sea. Among the Egyptians and Phoeni- cians, the sparrow-hawk was an emblem of the winds, especially of the north wind, which is necessary in order to pass from Europe to America. The fourth figure, furthest left in this group, is un- mistakably the little Telesphore, divinity of a happy outcome. He is wrapped in a sleeveless mantle, and covered with his hood. He shows that the voyage has met with the greatest success. Second Scene. — This represents the present, and for this reason is placed in the middle of the picture. Its essential objects are two animals that face one another, armed with banners and streamers that float in the wind. One represents the foreign nation, the other the American. The former is a horse, at rest in a kneeling position ; the other a beaver, recognizable by its long flat tail. Their good accord proves the intelligence of the two nations, and the favorable reception given to the strangers. The horse, and particularly the head of this proud animal, was the symbol of Carthage, as a maritime city, situated in a fertile and fruitful land. The horse was also a symbol of Neptune, of navigation, and of ships. This horse moreover has the air of a sovereign, while the beaver has almost that of a suppliant, — vivid picture of the difference between the noble pride of science and of the arts, and the timid weakness of ignorance. The upper part of this scene shows a large space enclosed on all sides, with three re-entrant gates facing north, east and south. It ends toward the west in a triangle within which is a cross. This is evidently a habitation divided into two parts, of which the larger was the dwelling of the natives, the smaller one that of the stran- gers, who placed a cross therein. It is known that the cross was in use in most remote antiquity among the Egyptians ; and the Car- thaginians were acquainted with it also, and used it as an instru- RECORD OF PHCENICIAN ADVENTURE 59 ment of punishment. To the left of this dwelling is their bark or ship, with stern, prow, mast, and rudder. Below these is a band of alphabetical characters, reading from right to left. The first, resembling A, may be an H or an A; the next, resembling a 9, a B or an R. The next following characters cannot be deciphered. The band ends in three characters which may be three T's, or more likely three X's, indicating the number of the foreigners; and another, above them, which resembles a Phoenician Caph. Third Scene. — This relatively empty scene represents the soli- tude of the future. The largest figure is a colossal bust, the Oracle who has just been consulted ; the line above him is his veil, which is already drawn. The question put to him was concerning the time of departure homeward ; and the answer has been favorable. On the right arm of the Oracle is a butterfly (the right-hand figure within the bust), symbol of return, of resurrection. On the breast of the god is a character which, if hieroglyphical, is the trident of Neptune; if alphabetical, is the Phoenician M, initial of the Phoenician name for water, and thus again symbol of Nep- tune. To his right is a small statue or priest; and to the left of the three X's, a person advancing hastily. Leftward from the latter is the Q of the Syracusans, Corinthians and Carthaginians. It is the initial letter of the name Carthage, — another evidence that Carthaginian sailors, perhaps while on a voyage to or from England, were driven by some northerly tempest to the shores of America. At the left extremity of this scene are three monograms, formed of characters that are incontestably Phoenician. The up- permost is formed of the two letters, Sh and N, and is the word Sh-Na, year. The lower ones indicate probably the month and the day of the month. These letters are drawn with more taste and skill than the other figures, which are very crude. This is natural, for the writer on the ship would be more skilful than the painter. Nevertheless, the composition of the picture is executed with much intelligence and unity of design. It seems hardly necessary to say that the interest of Gebe- lin's theory lies not in any possibility that it may be correct, but in its historical and psychological importance as an influence in shaping opinion and as a stage in the gradual development of scientifically sound views. From this point of view every fact, however trivial, every drawing, however distorted, and every 60 DIGHTON ROCK theory, however mistaken, is an interesting exhibit, an indis- pensable factor in the dramatic sequence of events that make up, all taken together, the entire absorbing story. It is worth while, laying aside the critical attitude toward these impossible visions, to try to think ourselves sympathetically into the frame of mind and limitations of knowledge of each painstaking pro- ducer of a drawing and each exponent of a theory, and thus to derive from this study all of its possibilities of instruction and entertainment. Gebelin's views naturally aroused much subsequent discus- sion. Many, like President Stiles, accepted them favorably. Others opposed them. Alexander von Humboldt, for instance, speaks of the "enthusiasm which is natural to him, but which is highly mischievous in discussions of this kind." Lort re- marked : "It would scarce be supposed he could be serious, by anyone that did not consider how far a man may be carried by attachment to a system.'' Vallancey calls Gebelin's an "ex- planation repugnant to all history. Many letters passed between me and Gebelin on this subject ; at length he acknowledged his doubts; in short, tacitly gave up the point." This "tacitly" is misleading, and does not justify its conclusion. Vallancey had quite as indefensible a theory of his own to advocate; and that he was naturally a prejudiced and unreliable theorizer we are shortly to discover. Sounder criticisms of Gebelin, however, were fully justified. While his theory was still a serious pos- sibility, the attitude of critical discussion, advocacy or opposi- tion, was the only one possible, instead of that which I have just been defending as desirable now. The question is no longer a genuine issue. Yet it is interesting to notice, in finally taking leave of Gebelin, that I have found — in sources, of course, that have no scientific importance whatever — two re- vivals of this old Phoenician theory as recently as 1890 and 1915. A complete and confident translation of this mysterious in- scription had at last been published. It appealed to the always keen interest of Dr. Stiles, who now weaves in the next thread of the fabric of developing opinion. At first, as a record in his Diary on May 1, 1782, shows, he was inclined to question its v,^ u + ^ I / I H) O S 9 * M •O-UL \ y ^'^ 11 t- 3 Ai-r ^: