The study of prehistoric sacred places : evidence from Lower Manitou Lake

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TTze Study of Prehistoric Sacred Places

Evidence from Lower Manitou Lake

Brian Molyneaux

Abstract

The occurrence of a projectile point at a rock-painting site at the narrows

of Lower Manitou Lake in northwestern Ontario is discussed. Evidence

of ritual use of weapons at other rock-painting sites and natural rock

formations in northeastern North America is related to this occurrence.

The unusual natural features of these sites, the artifacts and rock

paintings observed or collected at the sites, and the mythological

traditions of native inhabitants of the region lead to the interpretation of

the sites as sacred places.

Introduction

A small, triangular projectile point of

greenish rhyolite was recently recovered

from the rock-painting site on the narrows

Qf Lower Manitou Lake (Figure 1, DhKg-1)in northwestern Ontario (Molyneaux 1980).

The painted rock is the face of a granite

outcrop that is eroded into a slightly

concave shape and drops straight into the

water (Figure 2). The point lay in talus on a

submerged shelf immediately below the

paintings. Since this discovery was madeaccidentally during a rock-art recording

project, no attempt was made to probe the

site further.

The simple, nondistinctive shape of the

point (Figure 3) makes association with a

particular time period or cultural phase

impossible. Its presence in this unusual

location, however, is significant. Since

sheer cliffs and steeply sloping banks makethe shoreline impassable, the site is

accessible only by water. There is nohabitable land nearby. It seems unlikely,

therefore, that the point would have been

used as a weapon at this site. Indeed, the

point may not have been fired at all, for the

tip was not shattered. Moreover, if it had

been fired and had survived the impact, it

would probably have floated away with the

wooden arrow shaft. More likely, the

projectile point was pushed, hafted or

unhafted, into a crack in the rock or thrown

into the water below the paintings. The only

explanation for such an act must lie in somequality of the site itself.

Ritual use of arrows

The presence of projectile points in similarly

unusual contexts—at other rock-art sites

and rock formations in northeastern North

America— is explained in several instances

by details in eyewitness accounts from the

17th and 18th centuries and in native oral

traditions. The circumstances surrounding

the use of these projectiles suggest that they

were fired or deposited at the rocks as part

of magic or religious rituals. The

nonutilitarian use of arrows in such

situations may have been widespread.

Evidence was found by Cleland and

Peske (1968) at Spider Cave—a deep niche

cut by waves of a glacial lake in the

limestone bluff along the western shore of

Garden Peninsula on Lake Michigan—that

arrows and harpoons were fired for ritual

purposes during the Middle Woodlandperiod (ca 2000 B.P.). There was no evidence

of occupation. However, there were

artifacts recovered during excavations, andthe number of projectile points wasinordinately large in proportion to other

artifacts. In addition, 64 of the 83 points

typed and analysed had shattered tips,

which indicates that they had struck the

walls or ceiling of the cave. Cleland and

Peske concluded that this firing of stone and

antler projectiles was a meaningful act

probably associated with "magico-religious

practices" (1968:57).

The Chevalier de Troyes wrote that in

1686, on an expedition to James Bay, he

observed an arrow-offering ritual at Roche a

1'Oiseau, a massive and sheer cliff near the

northern end of la riviere creuse (deep river)

on the Ottawa River (Caron 1918:37). TheHuron companions of Father de Brebeuf

had called this rock Tsanhohi Arasta, after a

species of bird of prey; they believed that a

manitou dwelt in a hollow in the rock

(Thwaites 1900:165,167). Gabriel Sagard in

1623 (Sagard 1939:171) and Brebeuf in 1636

(Thwaites 1900:167) recorded having

observed Indian people leaving offerings of

tobacco in niches of the rock and in the

water below as they passed by in canoes. In

his journal, de Troyes described what he

saw as he went by the site:

On voit du coste nord, suivant la route,

une hautte montagne dont la

roche est droite et fort escarpee, le

milieu en paroist noir. Cela provient

peut estre de ce que les sauvages y font

leurs sacrifices jettant des fleches par

dessus, au bout desquelles ils attachent

un petit bout de tabac. (Caron 1918:37)

The crucial phrase in the last sentence was

translated word for word by Kennedy as

"the Indians make here their offerings,

throwing arrows over, to the end of whichthey attach a little bit of tobacco" (1970:29).

In their paraphrase of Caron's text, Kenyonand Turnbull interpreted the ritual not as a

throwing but as a firing (1971:53) of

tobacco-tipped arrows at the rock. Whetherthrown or fired, the arrows were the meansfor making offerings to the manitou in the

rock.

On the canoe route from Lake Superior to

the West, there is a place on Crooked Lakein Minnesota that Alexander Henry the

Younger called "Rock in Arrows" (Coues

1897:15). Alexander Mackenzie observed

that "into one of its horizontal chasms a

great number of arrows have been shot"

(Mackenzie 1801:liv). He related a story that

attributed this act to a Sioux war party, whofired the arrows into the rock as a warning

to the Ojibwa that their land was not

inviolable. This account would appear to

rule out an interpretation of the act as a

religious ritual. However, had the Sioux

fired the arrows as an act of agression, the

local Ojibwa inhabitants would probably

have removed them. Yet early in the 20th

century a collector apparently discovered

and removed the projectile points from this

site (Wheeler and Birk 1975:17); during later

investigations Birk discovered evidence of

additional arrows (Birk 1974).

The use of arrows at rock formations has

also been recorded in oral traditions about

the origin of unusual features in the

landscape. Jonas King, a Georgian Bay

Ojibwa, told Jenness a story about the

splitting of a large rock by an arrow:

Near French river are two big rocks,

round below, square on top, and with a

narrow crack between them. Formerly

they were one. But once a hunter

named Wabskitjanamshin, who wastravelling from Lake Nipissing to

Georgian bay with many furs in his

canoe, saw the rock sway from side to

side and heard a voice calling

'Wabskitjanamshin is listening

to us!'

N

RainyLake

WhiteOtterLake

km

Figure 1 Location of the Lower Manitou Lake site in northwestern Ontario

The hunter was annoyed at the remark

and shot his arrow into the middle of

the rock, where it caused the crack that

remains to this day. He then continued

down the river, but the manido that

dwelt in the rock made him drift over a

fall and lose all his furs. The Georgian

Bay Ojibwa now call the two rocks

Djiskan, "Conjurer's Lodge", and sing

the words given above as a kind of

refrain. (Jenness 1935:45)

Topographical preferences

in site selection

An interpretation of such unusual uses of

weapons as part of ritual or religious acts is

strengthened by the presence of red ochre

paintings at all four of the sites namedabove: the narrows of Lower Manitou Lake

(Dewdney and Kidd 1967), Spider Cave(Lugthart 1968), Roche a l'Oiseau (Tasse

1977), and Crooked Lake (Dewdney andKidd 1967). Since the paintings are exposed,

they cannot be related to other artifacts

found buried at these sites. Even so, the

very presence of the art in the same locality

as the projectile points or arrows mayprovide some evidence of a common

motivation for both cultural traditions.

Although the meaning and function of

rock art in northeastern North America can

only be surmised, iconographic analysis,

references to rock art in the ethnohistoric

and ethnographic literature, and the

continuing use of some of these sites as

offering places all point to an interpretation

of rock painting as a religious tradition (see,

for example, Dewdney and Kidd 1967; Jones

1981; Vastokas and Vastokas 1973).

There is another potential source of

information as well: the natural features of

the site itself. The rock painters and carvers'

choices of locations for their images were

not determined merely by the need for a

convenient rock surface but also by unusual

qualities of the site. Many sites in the

Canadian Shield, for example, have

distinctive rock features—high cliffs,

overhangs, cavities, crevices, and strange

formations caused by erosion. Moreover,

artists sometimes preferred certain parts of a

site to others that appear to be equally

suitable; it is common to find one part of a

rock face crowded with images, and an

adjacent section with none at all. The

symbolic potential of natural forms is at

times expressed in the images themselves.

For example, at the petroglyph site near

Stony Lake, Ontario, there are several

carvings of female genitalia that incorporate

natural crevices (Vastokas and Vastokas

1973:80); in a greywacke outcrop on

Kennedy Island in the Lake of the Woods, a

serpentine band of rock has been made to

resemble a snake by the addition of a head

pecked into the surface (Molyneaux 1978).

Even large rocks were animated in this way,

with artistic embellishments that clarified

the image suggested by the natural form.

Mackenzie described an island in northern

Saskatchewan as "remarkable for a very

large stone, in the form of a bear, on which

the natives had painted the head and snout

of that animal" (1801:lxxvii-lxix).

In their conscious selection of certain

kinds of localities for paintings, the artists

showed that these rocks were invested with

meaning. The Reverend Peter Jones, an

Ojibwa who became a Wesleyan

missionary, wrote of the topographical

perceptions of his people that "any

remarkable features in natural scenery or

terrific places become objects of

superstitious dread and veneration from the

idea that they are abodes of the gods"

(1861:85). It is significant, then, that the sites

with both projectile points and rock paint-

ings all have striking natural features. The

rock at the narrows of Lower Manitou Lake

has an unusual triangular face, heavily

streaked with a white mineral deposit that

enhances the visibility of the red pigment in

the paintings. Spider Cave, which was cut

Figure 2 The narrows

Figure 3 The projectile point recovered from

a submerged shelf below the rock paintings

by waves of a glacial lake into Burnt Bluff on

the shore of Lake Michigan, runs about

30 m along the limestone bluff, about 6 mabove the present lake. The massive face of

Roche a l'Oiseau was held by the Huroncompanions of Brebeuf to be a man whowas turned to stone, and of whom "they

distinguished still the head, the arms, andthe body" (Thwaites 1900:165, 167). TheCrooked Lake outcrop was described by

Mackenzie as "a remarkable rock, with a

smooth face, but split and cracked in

different parts, which hang over the water"

(1801:liv); and by Dewdney as "a great bulk

of granite. . .its walls streaked with a rich

mosaic of iron stains, vari-coloured lichens,

and vivid deposits of precipitated lime"

(Dewdney and Kidd 1967:32). If these

distinctive places were believed to be

inherently sacred, the images painted on

the rocks were not necessarily the object of

the ritual firing or depositing of arrows or

projectile points. The acts of painting

images and of making offerings may be seen

as different manifestations of a belief in the

manitou power that presided in rocks set

apart from the rest of the landscape by their

distinctive form.

Sacred landscapes

In a geographical region the places that

were sacred to a culture come together to

form a landscape that is distinct from the

landscape exploited for subsistence andhabitation, but just as real. Although the

special meaning given to sacred places in a

landscape is conceptual, the distinctive

natural formations of these sites and the

artifacts found there are visible

manifestations of their sacredness.

The most obvious of these places haverock paintings or petroglyphs. The sacred

places of a region may also be found in the

myths and legends of its peoples. In

mythology, supernatural events take place

against a background of real and imaginary

places. Among actual localities that mayappear in myths are places believed to be

inhabited by spirits or to show evidence of

spirits' actions. Roche a l'Oiseau, where the

hunter was turned into stone, and the rock

split by the hunter near the French River

both reflect these ideas.

Since unusual natural form is a significant

aspect of these localities, it may be possible

to identify places that have a potential for

being sacred on the basis of atypicality

alone. This approach would be particularly

useful in the search for prehistoric sites that

have no rock paintings or other obvious

cultural manifestations of ritual behaviour.

Several distinctive types of landforms maybe identified as potential locations of sacred

places. The shape of a rock might set it apart

from the rest of the landscape: a high or

sheer cliff, a rock that has been glaciated or

weathered in an unusual way, or a rock that

suggests an animate or other culturally

meaningful form. Other rocks may have an

unusual composition—an outcrop of

conglomerate or pegmatite in a granite area,

for example. Caves, cavities, large crevices,

and other such openings in rocks have been

regarded among some Algonkian peoples as

the abodes of spirits. Certain rocks mayhave been regarded as sacred because of

their location in the environment: at the

source of a river system, at the narrows of a

lake, along an important waterway, or at a

portage.

If the sacred landscape is then mappedand investigated like any other environment

that influences human activity, useful

information about the prehistory of the

region may be gained. On the Canadian

Shield, for example, evidence of the lives of

prehistoric peoples is thinly scattered

because the land only supported a mobile

hunting and gathering culture. The sacred

place may have been a focal point of the

region in which these people lived. Some of

the places may have been meaningful to a

single group or an individual—a shaman's

vision site, for example. The most striking

rock formations, especially when painted

and carved with images, may have becomefocal points for ritual traditions (Vastokas

and Vastokas 1973:50). As the presence of

the projectile point at the narrows of LowerManitou Lake has suggested, the proof of

this sacred significance may be indicated by

the presence of artifacts left as offerings.

The concept of the sacred landscape maybe used, therefore, as a framework for

archaeological investigations within a

geographical region, in particular in

searches for sacred places that are no longer

used. If religious beliefs informed the daily

lives of the hunting and gathering peoples

of prehistory, knowledge of the patterns of

use of these sacred places will give us

further insight into those lives. The range,

provenance, and chronology of artifacts

recovered from such sites could shed light

on the history of a region. Moresignificantly, perhaps, the information

derived might reveal that cultural groups

with different styles of artifacts shared

beliefs, and were, therefore, linked in waysnot revealed to date in the archaeological

record.

Acknowledgements

The drawing of the site was done by Rita

Granda, the projectile point by David

Findley, and the map by Kathy Mills, all of

the Department of New World Archaeology

at the Royal Ontario Museum. I am also

grateful to Dr. Peter Storck and to AndrewStewart for their helpful comments on the

ideas presented here. The project would not

have been possible without a grant from the

Ontario Heritage Foundation.

Literature Cited

Birk, Douglas A.

1974 An Archaeological Survey of the

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Thompson 1799-1814. Vol. 1.

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Churchill River. Saskatchewan

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Kennedy, Clyde C.

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Lugthart, Douglas W.

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Continent of North America, to the

Prozen and Pacific Oceans in the Years

1789 and 1793. London: R. Noble.

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Molyneaux, Brian L.

1978 Lake of the Woods Petroglyph Project.

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1939 The Long Journey to the Country of the

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Langton. Toronto: Champlain

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1977 "Premieres reconnaissances." In

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1973 Sacred Art of the Algonkians. Peter-

borough: Mansard Press. 164 pp.

Wheeler, Robert C. and D. A. Birk

1975 "A Thirteen-Year Chronology." In

Voices from the Rapids: An Underwater

Search for Pur Trade Artifacts 1960-73,

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A. R. Woolworth, and D. A. Birk.

Minnesota Historical Archaeology

Series No. 3. St. Paul: Minnesota

Historical Society, pp. 14-44.

Royal Ontario MuseumPublications in Archaeology

The Royal Ontario Museum publishes two series in the field of

archaeology—Monographs, a numbered series of original publications,

and Papers, a numbered series of primarily shorter original

publications—as well as unnumbered major monographs. All

manuscripts considered for publication are subject to the editorial

policies of the Royal Ontario Museum, and to review by persons outside

the Museum staff who are authorities in the particular field involved.

Art and Archaeology Editorial Board

Editor: M. Allodi

Associate Editor: A. J. Mills

Associate Editor: P. L. Storck

Brian Molyneaux is a Field Associate in the Department of NewWorld Archaeology, Royal Ontario Museum.

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Molyneaux, Brian.

The study of the prehistoric sacred places

(Archaeology paper / Royal Ontario Museum, ISSN 0700-

5466 ; 2)

Bibliography: p.

ISBN 0-88854-296-8

1. Rock paintings - Ontario - Manitou Lake.

2. Petroglyphs - Ontario - Manitou Lake. 3. Manitou

Lake (Ont.) - Antiquities. 4. Indians of North

America - Ontario - Antiquities. I. Royal Ontario

Museum. II. Title. III. Series: Archaeology paper

(Royal Ontario Museum) ; 2.

E78.05M65 971.3'14700497 C83-098217-5

© The Royal Ontario Museum, 1983

100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Canada M5S 2C6Printed and bound in Canada at THE ALGER PRESS

ISBN 0-88854-296-8

ISSN 0700-5466