A DStretch discovery: A Crow calling card pictograph at Writing-on-Stone

Abstract

DStretch enhancement technology has enabled rock art researchers to identify and record previously obscure pictographs at thousands of sites worldwide. Recent DStretch enhancement of photographs from Writing-on-Stone, Alberta, exposed a previously unknown horse and rider pictograph at site DgOv-2. The pictograph can be identified as a “calling card” painted by a Crow warrior-artist to taunt his Blackfoot enemies at one of their most sacred places. The image details the artist’s success against a force of enemies that are presumably Blackfoot.

KEYWORDS:

• northern plains Indian Biographic art
• Writing-on-Stone
• plains Indian warfare
• Crow rock art
• DStretch

Acknowledgements

I thank Michael Turney and Landon Bendiak of Golder Associates, who graciously shared their photographs and drawings of Panel 19. They deserve as much credit as anyone for the recent discoveries here. The late Jack Brink first shared the discovery of the pictograph with me and encouraged me to contact Turney and Bendiak and pursue analysis of the discovery. Martina Purdon and Sheila Macdonald of the Alberta Archaeological Survey provided me with various reports concerning DgOv-2 from the work of Golder Associates and other institutions. Michael Klassen’s 1992 work was what initiated the search for the Panel 19 pictograph. David A. Kaiser and David L. Minick did the DStretch enhancements for this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The numbered “panels” at DgOv-2 are more properly thought of as loci, since most comprise multiple rock faces containing petroglyphs and pictographs – each of which would typically be classified as a panel (cf. Keyser et al. 2012:4–5). But I have retained the original terminology because it is extensively used in the published record of the site (e.g. Keyser and Poetschat 2012; Klassen 1998; McCallister et al. 2021; Turney et al. 2021).

2 DStretch is a now widely used photographic enhancement tool originally developed by Jon Harman (2008, 2015) to accentuate colors in painted rock art.

3 For this analysis I define and use the terms Late Prehistoric, Protohistoric, and Historic periods as follows: Late Prehistoric is prior to any contact with Europeans or their artifacts, Protohistoric is that short time when northern Plains tribes had access to small quantities of European-introduced items (weapons and horses) but had yet to be contacted by Europeans, and Historic begins when these tribes are directly contacted by Europeans. Thus, in rock art, a scene can be identified as Historic either based on style or its content (multiple guns or other weapons and horses, small equestrian-period shields). A scene is identified as Late Prehistoric if it contains no Historic period indicators, and a scene identified as Protohistoric has a combination of early horse depictions, absence of firearms, or presence of horse armor or full-body sized shields characteristic of pre-horse warfare (cf. Greer et al. 2019; Keyser 2010).

4 Although occasional Comanche and Assiniboine artists used the Crow feathers convention, only a single Blackfoot artist drawing on the Malcolm robe is known to have drawn feathers in this manner (Keyser and Minick 2018:30; Lycett and Keyser 2018:figure 17).

5 Somehow, the original tracing of this part of Panel 19 was mislabeled as Panel 20, but that was corrected by Michael Klassen in his 1992 work.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James D. Keyser

James D. Keyser is retired and directs the Oregon Archaeological Society Rock Art Research Group in Portland, Oregon. His primary interests are Plains and Columbia Plateau rock art.