cc >> Norman Gilliland: Welcome
to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland.
If you spend any time at all
you've seen some of the istate's many effigy mounds.t
It's far less likely that you have had a chance to experience
some of the state's rock art, which is also very prevalent,
but tends to be in out
What does that rock art mean, who put it there, and, for that
matter, what is its likely future?
Joining me today are two
They are Robert Boszhardt, experts on Wisconsin rock art.
president of the Wisconsin better known as Ernie, who's the
also Geri Schrab, who paints Archeological Society, and
art of Wisconsin. And welcome to
University Place
Thank you. >> First, Presents. >> Thank you.
notion of what we mean we should have some
Now, I have seen paintings when we say rock art.
undisclosed area of Wisconsin. on private property in an
other forms too? >> Ernie Is it Boszhardt: Actually,there
there are other forms, and
form of rock art. There's paintithree basic kinds common
of rock arts. There's paintings or drawings,
which we call pictographs, and
are more common, which are then there are carvings which
usually done in sandstone in called petroglyphs, and that's
places like that. The other cavkind of rock art thatand
we don't usually talk about is portable rock art.
Things like carved pipes and
made out of stone, and the pendants and things like that,
to archeologists because those portable rock art is important
us to date the site and date are found in context which allow
the iconography easier those styles and the images and
on the walls of caves thanand rock shelters.ings
So dating rock art is a problem for archeologists, but portable
rock art helps us with that.
rock art around? You >> Is there that much portable
just picking it up. >> It's not extremely common but
there's been thousands of pipes,
over the past 150 years for exof doing archeology.onsin
And there are pendants, in fact there's a late prehistoric
culture called the Oneota culture which has large tablets
about a foot in size that are made out of pipestone from
Minnesota, the red pipestone
amazing intricate incising that are done on those tablets which,
again, are bison and birdmen, and things like that.
What kind of time frame are we talking about when we're
talking about the whole sweep of this rock art in Wisconsin?
It's a bit of a problem in
We certainly know that the terms of how old it is.
art in Wisconsin for at Natleast a thousand years.ing
Probably going all the way back 13,000 years when people first
came to the state that we know of.
The earliest known rock art in
old in Minnesota. So it's the Miprobably all the way years
through time, but, again, it's
You can't use carbon-14 dating, very for example, on stone.rock.
It has to be organic. >>
the carvings in Wisconsin are sandstone, primarily,,
which is very fragile.
And so many of the carvings may have fallen off the rock
face, and that's one of the concerns now for preservation.
And what sort of things do we find over this course of these
many years of rock art? What kind of images?
Well, Geri and I have a series
you that is sort of a sample of sites that we can show
beginning with one of the earliest ones which we call
Samuel's Cave. And the
Cave, it was found in 1878 by a farmer's boy named Frank Samuel
who followed his dog into a small opening in this hillside,
and he went home and got some lanterns and went into this
cavern and saw on the inside the
deep, all sorts of carvings saand paintings on the wall.t
And it the news made it back
La Crosse, and within a few months lots of people have come
visited this site and open up the entrance, and they started
carving their names on the
So when we first went to walls of Samuel's Cave.
of the things they did back in Samuel's Cave in the 1980s, one
rubbings of the carvings so we the 1870s is they actually made
original art, the pristine art, and that's in this picture in
the lower left-hand side. Those are actual drawings and
the original rubbings from 1879.
1984, there was all sorts of When we went to Samuel's Cave in
images had been obliterated gbut some still remained.e
So we did a detailed mapping and
in Samuel's Cave, and that's documentation of what remained
current picture there. And shown in the lower right of this
show you some of the actual images and how they're preserved
if you want to move forward.
get-go then, the problem, sort >> And that's right from the
finding this art is that unlike, of the mixed blessing with
to be a good deal less fragile say, effigy mounds, which tend
let's say, as soon as the rock and subject to modification,
likely to get art compromised. >> Yes.t's
Well, and when you first went to
day or two you went back to trecord it and some of it had
already fallen? >> Yes.
There's two problems
One is that people automatically with rock art.
If they see glyphs they assume, sometimes they don't recognize
what it is and they'll start
top of it. So you get graffiti.n
And this picture shows Samuel's Cave, one wall of Samuel's Cave
that shows there's actually a human image in the center of
that, but all those other lines are letters and numbers and it's
graffiti from a hundred years.
you can see a white area, and Andthat's a collapsed wall.ide
So freeze/thaw will actually
destroy it. But in collapse a rock art as well and
documentation we brought in bright lights into that cave.
We've actually found
And on the right side of this picture is actually a painting
that had never been recorded
discovered in the 1980s. back in the 1870s that we
because it's a human form that We call it the Bubble Man
bottom. It's probably has sorta spirit of some on the
sort, a human spirit, but we
if you look carefully over the call it the Bubble Man because
graffiti right over abdomthe middle of it.ved in
That's why you call him Bubble Man.
I didn't know that. >> I
came from. >> Right, wondered where that title
graffiti, unfortunately. >> All of these, or virtually
all of these, and how many of them are there?
Rock art sites in Wisconsin?
1980s, and most of the rock art is in the unglaciated driftless
area in southwestern Wisconsin
exposures there. When we just because there's rock
the 1980s, there's was about first started looking in
Now, because of the intensive work that's been done in the
past 20 years, there's 150 rock art sites known in Wisconsin.
Each of those sites may have one
glyphs. And, again, glyph most of them arendred
carvings or petroglyphs, but one
Tainter Cave, is full of cave I'll show you later on,
and that was a recent find paintings or charcoal drawings
How many of them and a spectacular find.
visibOne. >> One.blic?
One out of 150. >> Roche-a-Cri
of Friendship, has a rock art site in petroglyphs, which are
the carvings, and pictographs,
And we have pictures of those further on in the presentation.
We'll get to that a little
fairing in terms of holding up. What are some of the other early
sites that were found in the 19th century?
Well, Roche-a-Cri, for example, was first recorded in
the 1940s. So there wasn't a lot of sites
actually recorded in the 1900s. Archeologists were primarily
focused on mound research in the
20th century, and every once in a while they would come across a
pretty obvious rock art site. But there weren't many found, it
was Samuel's Cave and a few and then in the 1940s and '50s
there's a little bit of a surge.
Wisconsin Archeologist from 1950 There's an article in the
But then there was another that talks about 15 or so sites.
and that was a worldwide hiatus until about the 1980s,
rock art research just exploded. phenomenon in the 1980s where
documenting it. Just a People started looking at it and
that I got into archeology in the 1970s, and I've always
worked in Wisconsin, but I never
I didn't want to get into rock wanted to get into rock art, and
so you never knew how old it was art because you couldn't date it
always a problem. It was and interpreting the meaning was
stuff mean? Most of the juglyphs are abstracthis
symbols. And so I tried to avoid it.
Well, working in the driftless
can't avoid it. But over area, it's there, and so you
and studying them and analyzing them, we've built up more of an
encyclopedia and we also
So now we can understand the age have new dating techniques.
the meanings at least. >> Right.
Now, are most of these in caves or are also some in
exposed areas? >> Rock
all different kinds artof environments. in
I've been going to rock art sites for 17 years.
I've only been in one cave, which was a challenge for me
because I don't like dark and small spaces, but I've seen them
up in the Boundary Waters around
paddling our canoe out there. >> the waterways when you're
too. You can paddle Yes, I'vup to them andt there
see them which implies the water
I don't know. >> Some levof those are up prettyer.
high. >> Yeah, I'm
implies, but I've seen them up there.
Jeffers petroglyph site in
rock face that's exposed, completely flat facing the sky.
I've seen them in high
Boulders, just placed out rock desert like Chaco Canyon.
wherever there's rock. >> Now, you mentioned, Ernie,
that a lot of these are just
symbols, recurring figures if swe look at Wisconsin rock art?g
Yeah, there are. There's
symbols but there's arepeating ones.t
There's things like grids,
There's an oval with a dot in the middle which is oftentimes
interpreted to represent a
And you see there's femalhundreds of those.ort.
There's things like a turkey
three-prong with a leg track which is just a
Those are fairly common across like a bird print in mud.
beyond. So there are reoccurring
symbols. And, of
are things that we're, obviously course, the easy ones
humans and things like that, but birds, obviously buffalo and
And sometimes you find a lot of them are abstract.
Like you'll find turkey tracks combinations of things.
that mean sort of thing. >> insIt's always hard to tell.does
Maybe the human was there first and somebody put the turkey
track on top. It could
artists with two very different purposes.
Right. Right.
Like the Gullickson's Glen there.
Lots of times the symbols are carved on top of each other, and
it gets very complex. And it's very difficult to
distinguish, not only the petroglyphs from each other, but
also the petroglyphs then from
in the rock face itself. And the natural fissures and cracks
in my paintings is, and onemy paintings are art. do
My paintings are not meant to be scientific renditions of the
rock art sites. My
address the emotional and that paintings are meant to
rock art site that's timeless. kind of mystical nature of the
panels, I will pull out certain Anelements and just focus onx
those. So, okay,
the screen there's like right now up on
That's from Gullickson's Glen. Long Ago Deer.
painting in 1994, and by the And that's a site, I started
site that's up, Long Ago time I had started painting this
It had already fallen. Deer was already gone.
It was already gone. Had >> It was already gone?
face. And a friend already fallen off the rock
a number of her pictures so that of mine had lent me
already disappeared. And I could paint images that had
paintings from Gullickson's Glen consists of paintings of
petroglyphs that are still
gone before I even started there, petroglyphs that were
learned that one of the paintings I've done since I
started painting, that
off the rock face and petrdoesn't exist anymore.llen
Do we have a sense that this is something that's
accelerating? It seems
disintegration. >> It's hard to measure because
so many site have been
But a lot of the sites in Wisconsin are relatively shallow
rock shelters, and so they
Tainter Cave, for example, later are exposed to freeze/thaw.
cave. It goes in 300 on which we'll go to, is a deep
constant temperature, constant feet, and there's
isn't a problem there humidibut graffiti is./thaw
Even back 300 feet? >> Yes.
Yes. >> Okay, now we have Larson Cave
here is another, would you
Rock shelter, small ccave, rock shelter.?
Yeah, and this panel is right at the very entrance to that
rock shelter. And it's a very beautiful
multi-colored sandstone. And
talk about this a little this painting, I'd like to
illustrates why I feel rock art is important as far as studying
it maybe from more perspectives than just the scientific.
When I came to painting rock
artist. I had no archeological
background. I had no, I'm 100% German
American, I had no awareness of American Indian history in this
country. I was basically
and this painting, based on the site at Larson Cave, is in a
sense, now looking back, I did
just started doing this and I didn't really understand the
significance. It is kind of a pictorial
narrative of what rock art did
rock art learning about the ancestors, the past of this land
through the rock art because
art I started reading about the history of this land, I startedk
understanding the transition
And so it taught me about cultural awareness, it taught me
about respect for that ancient history.
It taught me about
and all of those things. So that painting, to me, it
shows how rock art can open up
that we're not necessarily our awareness to many things
Let me ask you kind of a aware of here in Wisconsin.
How good of an artist do you pointed question then, Geri.
the benefit you've have to be in order to derive
If we're talking about symbols described from rock art?
simple figures and that kind in a lot of cases, relatively
experience that would be of thing, is this the kind of
non-artist or an amateur artist? accessible to what we'd call a
started to paint. Really, >> I'd have to say the rock I
art taught me how to paint. I was so intrigued by the
subject matter, that is what
And, quite frankly, one of the taught me how to paint.
educational program with things that I do is I do an
teach them about the rock art, elementary students to help
Wisconsin rock art sites and and I have them do paintings of
because they don't they can do these paintings
They're stick figures. have to be perfect.
But it also gives them, through those programs and painting
their own rock art pictures based on Wisconsin sites, an
ownership, a feeling of ownership for those sites, an
identification with them so when
rock art site they're not as they get older and they see a
rock art site because they've had their own experience with
it. >> What's the actual medium for
the painting? What do they use for the paint?
The Native Americans? Well, there's ways that we can
now chemically analyze that if
of pigment, which we haven't you can pick off a little bit
But there's two basic colors: black, which is almost certainly
charcoal from a charred stick or a charred bone,
and then red, which is red ocher
pigment of some sort, lots of different potential sources for
that. It's usually
pigment is then mixed with a thought that that
make it more pliable and grease or a fat or something to
actually analyzed the actual adherent, but we haven't
But just to give you an example, pigments from Wisconsin yet.
drawings, they are absorbed into in Tainter Cave, the charcoal
talk a little bit the rockmore about that.an maybe
Oh, because it was
Yeah, just absorbs. >> It makes a blessing though.
because it was easily able to absorb this pigment, it also was
easily deteriorated,
The sandstone tends to form a hard surface, a casing, and if
the casing is in tact, the
If you break through that scasing, the sandstone is verye.
soft, and you can rub it with your finger and grains of sand
will come off. So as long as that casing is in
tact and, for example, Tainter
those paintings are preserved, Cave and Samuel's Cave where
But if you get behind that, then it's on that hard casing.
What's the distribution of it will start just blasting off.
Obviously we're talking about rock so it would be in areas
that are fairly blessed with
geographical pattern rock, but does it have a
95% of the rock art in Wisconsin other than that?
driftless area. So this iis a picture of Bell
Coulee Rock Shelter in
there's thousands of these southwestern Wisconsin, and
exposures in that sanpart of the state.ne
You just don't get them in
The Door Peninsula is limestone eand has lots of exposures, and
there's a little bit of rock art known up there.
But Milwaukee area, Madison area, there's no rock exposed
here, there's no
So 99% or 95% of it is in the southwestern unglaciated
driftless area in places like this.
It just invites the rock art. >> And what we just saw there
was surprisingly exposed. A casual hiker, I would imagine,
could come across something like that.
That's right. Just real quick, so one of the
things you have to realize about
Wisconsin in general is that the driftless area in southern
but 150 years ago this was a there's lots of trees here now,
of prairie fires and much more open landscape because
But, also, a casual hiker, things like that.
lots of times you're not going unless you're looking for it,
at unless you're looking for it. to recognize what you're looking
right at it or looking for it Anand not necessarily see it.ing
So this is Bell Coulee, again just as an example, the left
slide is a photograph, and Bell Coulee was only found in the
late 1990s. It's a
discovery. And I was relatively recent
found. It was taken onout by a gentlemanas
who lived in the area, knew rock
go out and look. And we expcame across this littleet's
rock shelter, and the wall
That must have been was extremely exciting.yphs.
It was extremely exciting. >> To be right there when it was
found. >> Exactly.
There's a thrill of discover, absolutely.
And then, of course,
We have to document it and then we have to try to work towards
its preservation. But it's
when you go to Bell Coulee, depending on the cloud cover,
the time of day, the images come out and fade away again.
So you can go to a rock art site
conditions and see 10 different times in different
Yeah. And it's amazing.
I've gone to sites and taken
photographs and painted from the photographs and looked at the
to the same site and taken photographs and then gone back
couple years later of the same different photographs maybe a
the sudden it's like, wow, site and go to paint it and all
had been looking at to do the previous painting and I didn't
see it. Now, Ernie
Bell Coulee, now the painting to the right of the petroglyph
site, in that piece, there's
you sit there and you take something about rock art when
You're in the outdoors, it's a the time to experience it.
the time to slow down and bactually look at the rock arte
and I like to say feel the rock art.
And you think about the person
maybe 500 years ago or a that was actually standing there
that rock face, and it can be very powerful and very moving.
And what I like to do with the
something that science can't paintings that I think maybe is
to capture and convey that quite address is I like to try
of the rock art on the rock tagainst the landscape and kind
of how the rock art crosses the boundary.
Now, like in that painting, I'm sorry, could you go back
one? Is that possible?
No? Anyway, I try to show how the
trees go up into the rock and they interlap with each other.
Now, you mentioned, Ernie, preservation.
Right. >> A key part of that, I
suppose, is keeping the location secret, isn't it?
It's the number one line of preservation.
I should say defense. But it is and it's a state
policy for the State Historical Society, which manages
archeological resources in the
art site is found the first thing we do, unfortunately, most
of them are on private property so you have to work with the
landowner to become stewards or try to have them work with you
to become stewards of that
yeah, we just can't promote prothe location of the sites.ut
And it's very unfortunate and the one example that set all
that up was the place called the
don't have pictures of here. But Gottschall Rock Shelter which we
site found in the 1980s, and that was an amazing painting
Geographic, and within a year somebody had gone up there with
a mason saw and tried to carve
Front page picture in the paper on that occasion.
That's right. It
legislature passed a law to protect rock art sites based on
that incident. >> And in the painting, when I
started painting these images,
significance, I had no idea of I had no idea of the cultural
issues, and I've had to learn and through my work I've had to
walk a really fine line of being
them know that this history is able to show the public and let
yet absolutely not in any way hlet people know where thesend
sites are or expose the sites to
showing the work. I like danger though talking about and
paintings and letting people to, as far as showing the
like people are not going to know about the rock art, I feel
something they don't know about, take care of and preserve
as a way to allow people to sexperience the sites withouts
necessarily endangering the sites.
It is a catch-22, isn't it? Because how do people get
interested in these works of art
and they can't ever and suactually see them.uation
And it's the seeing and the experience of getting there as
well that, unfortunately, Wisconsin is not set up to have
that public access yet
Except for Roche-a-Cri. >> except for Roche-a-Cri.
little later on because even Which we can talk about a
that as well. >> Is that,that common in other with
states too? Or are other
with so much more rock art that they don't have to worry quite
so much? >> There is vandalism
everywhere. There's vandalism everywhere.
And we went passed a slide way
Samuel's Cave, the first rock art site that Ernie had been in,
when I went in to see, and I've been to rock art sites all
across the United States, that
site I've seen anywhere. is probably the worst vandalized
everywhere, that's probably the worst I've ever seen.
And one of the things I like to do when I paint is paint the
images without the vandalism
sites and to honor the sites and just as a way to respect the
it to its original beauty or to, in some small way, restore
I would think there would be maybe what was originally there.
recreation of what it originally some value in that as a form of
Do we have a sense, though, that would have been like.
that the artists themselves from over the course of the years
adding things on fairly onindiscriminately to what hade
been there first? >> The
Other than Gullickson's Glen, which is a palimpsest of glyphs
on top of glyphs on top of
archeological standpoint, creates rock art stratigraphy,
so you can start to get earlier versus a little bit later, but
most of the rock art sites in Wisconsin it seems that they're
not going on top of original glyphs.
They're going alongside or in different areas.
Roche-a-Cri is pretty.. . >> Overlapping.
That's right. >> Which
difficult, I think, to interpret would make it even more
What did it mean for the first the meanings of these symbols.
years after that or 200 years. person, what did it mean 100
Meaning is a problem. >>We laugh about that,m.
what's the meaning? >> And
a little bit later on perhaps is that Geri and I, we're
Euro-Americans in descent. I'm
rock art painter, but we do work an archeologist and she's a
descendents, the peoples today. clSo, for example, Bell Couleean
which is up, again, this is a buffalo, clearly a buffalo
archeologically, meaning that the depiction of a buffalo tells
us that that is almost certainly
dates to 1300 AD to 1650 AD in done by the Oneota culture which
because we find buffalo remains won Oneota habitation village
sites, and you don't find them on earlier cultures.
So that's a time marker for us, but we brought Ho-Chunk
representatives, for example, to this cave, to this site.
And they help us. Sometimes,
sometimes they'll share stories. not always, but
up. >> What kind And that just opens our minds
you get from a Ho-Chunk? >> Well, for example, in Bell
Coulee there was the buffalo and
one wall, and on the opposite wall there appears to be a human
being sitting down with a zig-zag line coming out of his
head which is often interpreted as a power line or a shaman's
kind of speech line. And
that context and they said this person over here is telling the
story of a buffalo hunt that's
So that sort of thing. >> I decan't help wondering if Ill.
see an image like this one which
of these things haven't just we're about to bring up if some
you were to excavate some of the been buried by nature, and if
all kinds of things that caves of Wisconsin you'd find
That would be ideal. And have been preserved.
happened. This is itTainter Cave and thes
opening of Tainter Cave, as you can see in this winter shot,
it's about three feet tall and 20 feet across.
It's not a very large opening.
feet. It opens into And yetthree connecteds in 300
rooms. It's huge.
And it's filled with rock art and graffiti, unfortunately.
But there's probably caves, almost certainly, Samuel's Cave
is an example where it's almost completely closed off except for
enough for a dog to get in initially in 1879.
But there must be caves like
sealed, and those are then that that the entrances are
have graffiti, and when we find pone of those caves it will be't
like a Lascaux discovery
It'll be that important. It'll in Wisconsin.
can do it right. >> Lascaux bebeing one of those, we
probably the premier
It's in France and example in the world.
25,000, 30,000 years. >> goes back maybe...
Beautiful art, though. That's the wonderful thing about
some of these sites that were unspoiled.
You have to wonder, though, if a
where people would just practice lot of the sites were not places
go to the prime places? before t>> Well, yeah.nough to
Wisconsin, the rock art tends to be stick line figures, and
that's the style they used. I've
maybe address this a little bit, asked artists, and Geri can
ago do you get these why would they, why 25,000 years
like Lascaux, and Wisconsin you naget these line drawings likees
this headless human with power
the arms. But the lineartists reply, well, itd and
doesn't take, you do what you need to do to express the
message. And so they
two dots and a thing said a smiley face,
Right. >> And that's sends a message.
So you don't have to all it takes.
And so in Wisconsin we have what do more than that.
three-dimensional multi-colored we harenditions like that. these
And I'm not sure, do you think
able to facilitate sandstone would have been
I don't know. [LAUGHTER]
Maybe not. >> And what have we here?
This is a painting, this is from
one we just looked at with inside of Tainter Cave, the
And that is the cave, when I the very small entrance.
I was terrified. It was went ishortly after we hadll you
first met. Because it was pretty narrow and
pretty dark. And this is a charcoal drawing.
On the left is the actual site, and on the right is my painting
of it, and I don't think this was quite in dark zone yet.
This is right at the
So in order to see this you have to have artificial light.
So you have to have a flashlight
birch bark torches or prehistorically we found
So it is at the transition from where light enters the cave to
where it's pitch black. >>
Again, there's those wavy lines that are oftentimes called power
symbols or... >> Speech lines sometimes.
Speech lines sometimes, yeah. >> But things like the upturned
arms is almost always interpreted as a shaman in rock
art. >> Do you see
hunting scenes? >> We do hunting pictures,
series from Tainter Cave here. and I think in the next
Now, Tainter Cave So was found in 1999.ve.
That's hard to
It's very recent. A deep cave.
The picture on the left is from a panel 150 feet into this cave.
It is absolutely pitch dark.
get back there. You have You're sensory deprived when you
I've been in there when there's a thunderstorm going on outside
and you don't hear it.
It's pitch black, no sound, no light, it's amazing.
So this, the picture on the left, was mind-blowing to me
because trying to understand
Here's one where we can start to the meaning of rock art.
is charcoal drawings on a wall with a horizontal crack.e
And the charcoal drawings above that horizontal crack are all
birds and feathers
So it's all sky symbolism above. and bird feet.
and there's human bow hunters. Below that crack there's deer
And many Native American tribes, And so it's an Earth scene.
their world view have an upper in their clan structure and
world, different symbols and world, middle world, and lower
that. So this was a differeclear rendition ofh like
an upper world, lower world,
The interesting thing about the lower, the hunting scene for us
was that the bow hunters tell us
comes into Wisconsin about time because the bow and arrow
any earlier than that. So we 700 AD, so this can't be
into the effigy mound culture because of where it's found in
the world. And the other
deer, these are just stick thing was that the
them are up. So that's figures but the tails on some of
not an elk because a whitetail deer and
Just a little line. But some of the deer have baby
deers in side of them. >> Yeah, I noticed that from one
of the pictures. And the
well I know we're not speculating too much on
significance, but do you have a sense of what that would mean?
Well, we get to the point where we can start to speculate.
[LAUGHTER] Which is the fun part now.
It's very fun, yeah. >> But a pregnant deer, all deer
rut in November and they
So that's a winter drop their fawns in May.
And so that rock art, the hunting scene probably depicts a
winter hunting scene which
And there's a whole bunch of is the period of starvation.
and it may have been yarded up, and it probably, that's the time
of starvation so it may represent a hunt that either was
successful and enabled that group to survive through the
year, or maybe they're painting that scene in advance of a hunt
hoping. >> Wishful thinking.
To get the power to go and have success.
When you say that some of these places were discovered as
recently as 1999, how do you go about actually looking for a
place given that virtually all
are on private land? >> Well, of thhow we survey for rocktion,
art is like how we do for most archeological sites.
The easiest way to find rock art
on the landscape all the time. sites is to ask people who are
their land. You focus Hunton places that haveknow
the right kind of bedrock.
there's good geological So smaps of Wisconsin. and
You can take valleys and you can
art, it's probably in this area. say if there's going to be rock
and you look. You get And thon your foot and yougo out
climb bluffs and
Should I even ask where you would expect to look next?
There's certain valleys that I would go to, again,
in southwestern Wisconsin.
in Vernon County, for example. There's a lot down
Just south of the Wisconsin River there's a fair amount
known in Iowa County and that,
County and Grant County, there's but you get into Lafayette
looked at, and there's got to be rock art there, and there's
hardly anything reported. So it has to be there.
Is there sort of a holy grail of rock art?
A thing that you think this just seems like there should be
something like this out there, where might it be?
Boy... >> I know
reverse. It's like I'll see this
beautiful rock face in a place
really significant. >> Why that seems like it should be
And I'm thinking of some up daround the Baraboo area.
It's like there's got to be rock art here.
And I'll look and I'll look and I'll look, and I don't see it.
But I can't imagine... >> I think the holy grail for
me would be, and I've thought about this, is a sealed cave.
It's a place where you find a cave and it's sealed, you open
it up and you go in there and literally there's baskets and
pots against the wall and the torches are there and the rock
art doesn't have any graffiti.
holy grail. And, again, And ththat adds to thatbe the
encyclopedia of images and now
to put this stuff in perspective datable techniques that we have
Americans into there and watch and then to take some Native
stories or not. >> And them and see if they'll share
important. Again, I the science is soly
important to preserve it but
respecting that that oral history has value and we can
learn about some of that through
Native Americans. So, again, the rock art and talking to the
of the rock art that I think that's an extension
explored and appreciated. >> is very important that it's
creators of this rock art, we're So if we're talking about the
line between those people and tthe people in Wisconsin now so
that there would be a sense that
what some of it means and there where it comes from. as to
Certainly with the Ho-Chunk in western Wisconsin.
The Menominee are an indigenous tribe for eastern Wisconsin, and
they may not have created rock
se, and there's certainly groups art in the driftless area per
that historically migrated to tthe west, the Iowan and groups
like that, but they're
they share stories and affiliated with the Ho-Chunk and
And then in northern cosmologies and things.
Waters, that's a little bit out of our area, that would be more
Ojibwa. And I've
interesting, in addition to as always found it very
read stories, the stories that are out there from their
perspective and learn that way also.
There's a lot of written
American tribes. It helps.
That would have been collected
Late 1800s or early 1900s, that's right.
Yeah. So stories recorded then
that may not be told today. >> And we're looking here at?
This is the panel at
were talking about. And RochRoche-a-Cri is kind oft we
unique because it's got pictographs, which are the
paintings, and petroglyphs, which are the carvings.
On the left is the
That's probably the most pictograph panel.
And then to the right well-is my painting of it.a-Cri.
Now, Ernie, do you
So Roche-a-Cri had been known since the 1940s, and below these
pictographs is lots of carvings.
It's hard to make out. But And it's really a jumble.
there's a couple of people and there's turkey tracks and
things. >> Huge, huge crescents.
Right, crescents. >> Crescents.
Like a quarter of a moon or slice of a moon sort of thing.
You would not see those elsewhere?
In some places there are
cnot always. It varies some.ut
Maybe they're pulling your leg!
[LAUGHTER] 700 years
they can make out of this one. >> Yeah, that's true.
[LAUGHTER] >> But in 1987 we went to
Roche-a-Cri and for the first time saw these red
paintings above the carvings. Nobody had ever noticed those
before or reported those. And,
it's the south face of unfortunately, this face,
outlier rock near Roche-aAdams-Friendship.is this
And there's a history of it there was a Civil War encampment
there where they mustered troops
on this. So there's in and bullet holes, leadactice
balls hitting it, and lots of graffiti.
And JSF was carved right
pictographs. And over the top of these red
It's about 10 feet up above the ground so it's high.
Pretty high. It's pretty high.
And has that, as the one place
that we know of in Wisconsin, Roche-a-Cri, has that remained
in tact since its discovery in the '40s?
Well, the rock itself has remained in tact, I believe.
There was some vandalism on it in either 2004 or 2005.
Somebody spray painted black. >>
They climthat? >> No.et to do
Well, actually the petroglyphs
and then it goes up and that start at the base of the rock,
actually up on the top. But picsomeone had come in andn is
spray painted black spray paint symbols over the petroglyphs.
Here it's the only publicly accessible site in Wisconsin,
the DNR had built a wooden
with interpretive signs, and yet walkway up to and a platform
fence and gone up to the rock with a spray paint and sprayed
their names and hearts
And it was like, and I love somebody.
Do you close this one down? What do you do?
So it's a problem.
Get out the Plexiglas. >> Well, there were all sorts of
things. You can plant noxious weeds, put
up security cameras.
>Exactly. Yeah, yeah..
Which is, now on this next
the things I consider an slide here, these are some of
Education, especially of important part of my work.
interested in to try and help avoid in the future some of this
vandalism because I'm sure a
younger adults now a lot of times not knowing what they're
doing or understanding. So, like I said, I've done
artist in residence programs
graders to help them understand wand feel an ownership for it.h
Then I also created, on the left-hand side of this slide is
my coloring book of rock art
States, and they're all publicly sites from all across the United
And so that is meant to teach the youngsters about what these
sites are, and I talk in the
and then I also give a list of book about respect for the sites
across the United States so when publicly accessible sites all
goes on a road trip they can go out and they can experience one
of the public sites and learn about it and teach their kids
about it. The Rosebud magazine up in the
upper right-hand corner, that's a literary journal, and I find
that interesting that they
paintings throughout these short incorporated my petroglyph
the magazine, and I find that pvery interesting because it'st
incorporating the old stories that they left in the rock art
along with our modern stories and kind of interweaving
literature, for lack of a better
in one body of work. word, of the two times together
archeological publication actually out of Missouri on the
Northern Ozarks where it's an archeological publication but
they included the art on the cover.
And then it's the joining of
perspectives, which I thosthink is important.sses,
Well, if we get back to this
after some harm has been done, notion of preservation even
that had been cut or somebody had attempted to cut that out,
literally had cut a panel from
at Roche-a-Cri, what can be done under those circumstances?
It's impossible to monitor all
of the sites. You thehave to work with theful
landowners to watch the sites as
them incentives to participate best they can and somehow give
At Tainter Cave, Tainter Cave which had 400 pictographs, more
than any other site in
scene and the human with the Wisconsin, the deer hunting
a gate on that cave. We powergot the American Cave built
Conservation Association, we got
20-foot beams of steel. And a we had a welder up there andp
we cut it and welded
And it's environmentally it into place.
out but people can't. And frthat's an extreme example,nd
but you can't gate every
So a lot of it's education. It's just awareness.
And, as Geri pointed out, most
sites have no idea people who vandalize rock art
They don't see it. >> Right.
They don't recognize it because there's so much graffiti
out there already, they're
Yeah, and once there's just adding their name.
graffiti on top of that and there's more graffiti on top of
that, and it just continues on. >> Is there a penalty for
defacing rock art in Wisconsin? >> There now is because of the
law that was based on that
Yes. Had they caught cutting, that incident.
was literally trying to cut that, it's a thousand-year-old
painting and they tried to cut
on the black market. And one of the images on it to sell
painting, to us it's as if a thousand-year-old
cut out a face of somebodan image on that.andt and
It's so unique. It's so rare.
And so there was no penalty,
person, other than trespassing. So the state legislature, now
there is a penalty for defacing,
that way. >> Did you intentionally, private property
this slide, Ernie. want to talk about
This is an exhibit that, I used to work at the Mississippi
Valley Archeology Center at the University of Wisconsin
La Crosse, and after 25 years we put this exhibit up.
And the only point of having
archeological finds from sites, but, also, we included Ho-Chunk.
So we had historic pictures of
and then we established a room Ho-Chunk and Ho-Chunk baskets,
Samuel's Cave actually were wdepicted in there as well.
And we actually had modern
well. And so I just artistwanted to bring ins, as
the collaboration that Geri just
the artists but also with mentithe Native Americans.gy and
So Geri and I are collaborating with a Ho-Chunk member,
Chloris Lowe. We've done
public programs, where the three a series of programs,
various perspectives. She ofhas a perspective, I have aur
perspective, and Chloris has a
But the audience really enjoys very different perspective too.
and so we're talking about those different perspectives,
that out a little more. So collaborating on a book to bring
in the next year or two. >> hSo, what do you see as thet
future of these rock paintings? More people are going to know
about them, but, on the other hand, they're going to require
more protection as more people know about them.
What's the prospect for the future?
Well, there's protection but
through the paintings and photographs and public programs.
So, for example, this program.
the first thing we do is we map it and photograph it so we have,
a record of what's there in case it's gone tomorrow.
So we can at least share that.
that's the hard part. And Sif we can find more places
to take people to that are
or the floor of the site itself because even walking on some oft
these places will disturb things.
So we just have to work toward finding more places.
Some people have suggested that we make replicas and sandstone
quarries in western Wisconsin that you can go in there and you
can carve examples and study
I think it's challenging because the erosion over time.
the experience is being a in the environment.of
Being outdoors amongst the trees
is part of what makes it and the elements and everything
It's a dilemma. >> such a special experience.
And what I do is, people ask It is a dilemma.
number one, I don't remember me, well, where are these, and
bsite. I have my husband drivea
and I forget where they were. >> That's convenient!
But I'll direct people to Roche-a-Cri, I'll direct
people to Jeffers petroglyph
I'll direct people to sites sitthat are open and publiclya.
accessible so that they can get a taste of that and have the
opportunity to experience it. >> Well, thank you for helping
to spread the word and share
today on University some of Place Presents. with me
Our pleasure. >> Yeah,
My guests have been president of the Wisconsin
Archeological Society, and that would be Ernie Boszhardt, and
also an artist in watercolors inspired by Wisconsin rock art,
Geri Schrab. I'm Norman Gilliland and I hope
you can join me next time for University Place
Presents.