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Story and photos by Bob Henderson Summer 2003 Issue And the vision / That was planted in my brain / Still remains ... ... Simon and Garfunkel, The Sound of Silence For Bob Henderson —that first library encounter with Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes struck a chord that made him a “pictograph grabber” for life. Now — at last —he has seen the book’s Big Three rock painting sites. They are classics, all – but the one that speaks most eloquently to KANAWA’s heritage specialist is the incredible artistry of North Saskatchewan’s Hickson-Marabelli rock art site. I’m certain everyone has that first time: the first time a connection is made between an experience and the knowledge that it will stimulate a lifelong passion. Or perhaps passion is not always the right word. Perhaps the experience will lead you to a course of study or inquiry, or an avocation — or a mystery that will retain its fascination over the years. The thrill of discovery Okay, so I’m not sure what to call it, but I remember it well. Fresh off a month-long trip in Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park, I found Dewdney and Kidd’s 1973 book, Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes, in my school library. I was sixteen. Ahhh ... sweet sixteen. It was romance at first sight. I read the book — actually read just for personal pleasure and curiosity. Somehow schooling hadn’t taught me how to do that and I hadn’t as yet picked it up on my own. Caught by the mystery Selwyn Dewdney brought back the questions we curious canoeists had asked that summer, gazing at Quetico’s cliff faces dotted with pictograph images (rock art paintings). How old were these images? What did they mean? Why were they drawn? How were they drawn — and by whom? Dewdney and Kidd did not concretely answer these question, and that was fine with me. Now, thirty years and many books later, questions still remain (and that’s still fine with me!) True, time has shed some light on the shadowy images shrouded in mystery. We know now, for example, that pictograph “paint” is anhydrous iron oxide: red ochre, with an fish-oil-based binding agent. The red ochre can be heated to obtain the desired colour. Over time, the ochre’s organic medium impregnates the rock. Questions of timing are more difficult: the rock art found throughout the Canadian Shield is difficult to date. Thor Conway, writing on the Agawa pictographs near Lake Superior, suggests most of the visible images are 500 years old or less. It is believed some images were drawn as late as the arrival of the horse and gun well into the 1700s. At Agawa, for example, a horse figure travels over four circles. In Quetico, a figure has a rifle. There remains mystery as well surrounding why rock paintings exist at all. Anthropologists have gleaned some solid interpretations from early fur trade records and from today’s native informants. Most believe the rock paintings were spiritual. Dewdney attended to many of the big rock art questions back in 1973, but for me the book’s stand-out feature was the inventory of Canadian Shield rock art. So many pictographs to see ... so many canoe trips ... so little time! Even at sixteen, with lots of time stretching before me, it was a daunting prospect. The scattering of dots on Dewdney’s map representing individual pictograph images or clusters, was overwhelming. But I wanted to share in Dewdney’s vision, to see and interpret all these sites first-hand. Dewdney’s Big Three Dewdney did make note of the highlights, however. Whether he was right or wrong – the 70s was a fledgling time for rock art study — Dewdney named the Big Three sites, based on the concentration of images: Lake Mazinaw in Bon Echo Park in southeastern Ontario (on the edge of the Shield); Cliff Lake in northwestern Ontario (north of Lake Nipigon, near the edge of the height-of-land between the Great Lakes and James Bay watershed), and the Hickson-Marabelli Lakes site in Northern Saskatchewan. I’d cut my teeth, so to speak, in Quetico, and later at the Agawa concentration on Lake Superior, where Thor Conway records an evolving total of 117 pictographs (some discovered in 1989). Definitely a good start! But the big three were a must. The promise of pictograph-strewn cliff faces on isolated northern lakes off the mainline of canoe travel was like a neon sign flashing in my brain. With the Dewdney/Kidd book, I became not a peak-bagger nor a river- bagger. I became a pictograph-bagger: native rock art added a heightened purpose to what became, over the years, a “general peregrination” over Canadian Shield canoe routes. There was study and there was experience. Site 1 – Bon Echo: A fine beginning I bagged the Lake Mazinaw site first. Bon Echo is a provincial park and access is extremely easy. The cliffs of Lake Mazinaw at Bon Echo Park are impressive in height and length. The pictographs, as I remember, are spread out along the cliff wall and Dewdney is right: there is a significant concentration. For the most part, however, they are quite faded. Once you’ve seen the clarity of the large Missipisi (Ojibwa spelling), the Underworld Great Lynx at Agawa Rock, or the heartless moose on Darky Lake in Quetico Provincial Park, the fading images at Mazinaw, all in all, are a bit disappointing. I should reserve comment however. It has been over close to twenty years since I’ve visited this site. Site 2 – Cliff Lake: A pictograph-prompted peregrination The Cliff Lake site involved more than a drop-in visit. Cliff Lake is part of a small watershed north of Lake Nipigon: the Big River. En route to the lake, we left low, boggy spruce forests on a canyon portage, climbing 75 feet (25 m) in elevation. The remote site adds to the mystique of the sliver-like, 6 km (3.7 mi.) lake. (To complete our circuit, we paddled the Attwood and Witchwood river systems to the Albany River and onto James Bay. It is possible to create an Ogoki/Albany circuit route as well.) One entire shoreline of Cliff Lake is lined, as its name implies, with low cliffs. With my Minnesota friend Gordon Hommes, I camped on the lake for two nights in 1985. We spent the day recording the images. We were playful, but respectful, fashioning ourselves as junior Selwyn Dewdneys. Legs that walk by themselves I remember layers of colours at one cluster. In a few places, purple, red and orange images overlapped. The overlap was a first for me. One faded, purplish, human-like figure appeared to be the oldest. Then, many classic brick red images were spread about, some overlapping the purple. Finally came a vivid orange pictograph, which appeared to be more recent. Dewdney, with help from native informants, identified the vivid orange shapes as “dreamlike legs that walk by themselves.” Hairy-heart beings Generations of rock artists must certainly have visited Cliff Lake. The cliffs, of course, would draw them, but the lake itself had a special aura. In 17 groupings of rock art, on 6 different cliff faces, we counted well over 50 individual, clearly discernible drawings — but as amateurs we knew we were missing much. The most common images featured canoes with paddlers. One drawing had twelve paddlers. Were they human figures, or mystical ones? Fur trader George Nelson, in his 1823 journal, reports that the Rock Cree to the north and west of the site called the paddlers O-may-me-thay-day-ace-cae-wuck, or “hairy-heart beings.” They are the ancients, who preceded human beings in the world. (Today, the Rock Cree in the La Ronge area refer to these marginally human beings as Kayasioiniwak.) The paddlers could also be maymaygwayshi (in Dewdney’s Ojibway spelling) or mimikwisiwak (in George Nelson’s 1820's Cree spelling). These beings seem to be omnipresent throughout the Shield. They are a distinct miniature race of cliff/cave dwellers, also known as underwater man (sea man and mermaid). It is they who are largely responsible for your canoe dumping suddenly in a rapid or wind, or for many other sundry mishaps. The sea men and mermaids must be shown respect. At cliff faces, particularly rock art sites, offerings are dutifully left to appease these mischievous beings. P.G. Downes in his classic 1943 account of a canoe trip in Northern Manitoba, Sleeping Island, tells a tale of three white travellers who did not respect the passing advice of a maymaygwayshi canoeing group. A curse was delivered and in the months that followed, the three men died separately in unusual circumstances. One senses when reading Downes’ account that he, for one, was respectful of cliff-face offerings. So who are these paddlers represented in this pictograph: humans or otherwise? Twelve in a canoe: in these parts? Not human, I think. But one cannot jump to conclusions. That’s half the fun and most of the intrigue. A humpy-backed buffalo with a tail? What are those moose-like shapes, or that animal with a long tail and a distorted hump that might represent a buffalo, though it could be a serpent (Cree misikinipik)? We will never know for sure. There is no living memory of rock art drawing amongst native peoples of the Shield today. We cannot know the artist’s intention, although a common view is that visions and dreams provided the inspiration. Site 3 – Hickson-Marabelli: The spirit calls Like remote Cliff Lake, there are a number of fine ways to get to the Hickson-Marabelli Lakes, departing from the mighty Churchill River and ending the trip at Reindeer Lake. The Foster River to the west and the Reindeer River to the east are options. Our choice, the Paull-Pink-Wathaman river route, is a lesser option perhaps, but certainly not as obscure as we might be inclined to think today. Forest fires last summer slowed our departure. (Areas west of Prince Albert were being evacuated while we were driving through.) Our delay in Missinipi meant that we could help build the Canada Day parade float with Churchill River Canoe Outfitters. Time with Ric Driediger is always a highlight of my travels in this country. Ric and Theresa found us a place to stay — their place — and helped keep our spirits up while we waited to fly north. My Edmonton friend James Cottrell, Ric and I spent time planning future routes, many to pictograph sites. We flew from Missinipi on the Churchill to Deception Lake on the Pink River. We’d hoped to paddle a healthy chunk of the Pink to “get into the spirit” of this lesser-used route, and trip into the Paull River system over a three-portage, height-of-land carry. Delays meant we flew directly to the Hickson-Marabelli narrows near the Pink-Paull height-of-land and paddled straight to the pictograph site. Nonetheless, Jamie and I were excited to get going. Close to thirty years after setting my sights on the three “must visits” on the Shield, here I was at the third! Needless to say, there is no fanfare or receiving line at a remote rock art site. Arriving as suddenly as we did could have made the moment seem anticlimactic. Instead, it provoked a quiet pondering, and a renewed respect for the centrality of the native people’s presence on the land. Once again, we returned to those basic questions: who, when, how, what and why. Worth its weight in ochre Aesthetically, the pictographs here are beautiful. They are big, vibrant images with clear definition, which stand out as works of artistic expression. If conventional interpretation of the images is worth its weight in ochre, many shapes represent thunder birds and animals. One moose-like shape has a long upturned tail and an oversized, drooping nose. Many of the human shapes, with bent arms reaching for the sky, are thought to be maymaygwayshis. Some of the maymaygwayshis seem to be dancing in harmony with other forms that are hard to label. The shapes are human-like, with lightning bolts or other protruding objects radiating from the head. Perhaps they are representations of shamans (medicine men). Andreas Lommel in Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art, credits such tribal figures as interpreters of the spirits and myths, both for the tribe’s main rock artist and for the people as a whole. At Hickson, there is certainly a sense that artistic qualities mattered: the images were the result of inspiration, talent and mystical energy. Perhaps one shaman claimed this site. Is this one artist’s life work? Like the red ochre paint that permeates the rock, the spirit world permeates the natural world. I’ll be back What now? As we had waited for the trip to begin, Ric Driediger had suggested I return to see more, such as the rock art site on Larocque Lake. On the Churchill River alone, there are eighteen rock art sites from Pinehouse Lake in the west to Amisk Lake in the east. With that kind of rock art wealth, combined with my long-held desire to see the Stanley Rapids Shaking Tent Shaman conjuring image on the Churchill, we could design a very pleasing circuit route. I tell Ric I will be back. And as a respectful and studious pictograph “bagger”, I now have my sights set on Manitoba: the Bloodvein River and the Paimish Creek site near Norway House. I am pleased that I will have to first find Paimish Creek on a map, and then explore possible canoe route connections. There are few things more pleasant than designing a canoe trip around a pictograph visit. That Dewdney map continues to be a blessing. So many dots on that map. So many pictographs. So many canoe routes to plan. So little time. And I haven’t even mentioned rock carvings yet. Petroglyphs after pictographs? What a concept! Bob Henderson, the KANAWA heritage specialist, teaches Outdoor Education at McMaster University. Email him at bhender@mcmaster.ca. Bob’s recommended books are too numerous to list, however, here is a small section. “The Orders of the Dreamed”: George Nelson on Cree and Northern Ojibwa Religion and Myth, 1823, by J.S.H. Brown and R. Brightman. Winnipeg: The University of Manitoba Press, 1988. Spirits on Stone: The Agawa Pictographs, by T. Conway and J. Conway. San Luis Obispo. CA: Heritage Discoveries, 1990. Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes, by S. Dewdney and K.E. Kidd. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973. Magic on the Rocks: Canoe Country Pictographs, by J. Furtman. Duluth, MN., Birch Portage Press, 2000. The Aboriginal Rock Paintings of the Churchill River, by T.E.H. Jones. Saskatchewan Department of Culture and Youth, Anthropological Series 4, 1981. Plains Indian Rock Art, by J.D. Keyser and M.A. Klassen. Vancouver, B.C., UBC Press, 2001.