My canoe buddy and I are taking his 9-year-old granddaughter on her second trip to the BW next summer. We brought her last summer and she was a real trooper with rain, cold, and wind on her first BW experience.

This year she has requested to see pictographs. I have seen the ones on Lac La Croix and also Crooked Lake and thought they were quite nice. I have not seen the other pictograph sites.

My question to you: Where do you feel the best pictographs are for this girl to see?

Thank you!

IMO, Lac La Croix has it hands down for both clarity and quantity of pictographs.

Hegman (BWCAW) or Darky Lake (Quetico) have probably the clearest ones in either area.

Lac La Croix and Crooked would be good choices though.

T

LLC are the best I've seen in the BWCA.

Darky Just a few of many

I agree; Hegman, LLC, Crooked, Darky, in order of accessibility. Hegman you can even access in the winter by skiing or snowshoes. I like all of them and each has their own merits. Someone told me that at the site of the LLC you can see a Voyager's emblem on the cliff above the pictographs. Has anyone seen this or can provide a photo?

There are also some pictographs on Wednesday Bay of Crooked that are less impressive, but the cliff has interesting story that the Native Americans used to target practice to see if they could shot an arrow into the crevasses. The old maps had an "I" showing the location.

Darky has pictographs in two locations that I'm familiar with. Some strange ones, including an image of someone shooting a gun (musket).









Hegman's pictographs are visible on the rock cliff in the background.

starwatcher

I heard once that the pictos we call canoes are really images of gap-toothed smiles. There was something about the lower teeth that fascinated those early People. S'pose there's any truth in that?

absolutely LLC

I think the best pictos available in the BWCA are at Lower Basswood Falls (that is where the voyageurs found the arrows--Sioux would raid the Chippewa, then shoot their remaining arrows as an insult as they left...so I read). The LLC picts are actually in the Q, but available to the BWCA, and they are great. The famous LLC moose is said to be the most artistic of all the Canadian Shield pictos, and had to be painted by a professional painter (someone who didn't have to hunt/fish constantly and had time to perfect his/her painting techniques). In the Q, the Darky pictos are great...the "monster", the man aiming a long gun, and also a man with a very impressive erection (must have been painted by a man!) And we shouldn't forget the petroglyphs on Q Agnes (pictures chipped out of the rock--the only ones in the Canadien Shield). Hegman pictos are also good, and the easiest to get to. There is a very informative book about the pictos, "Indian Rock Paintings of the geat Lakes" by Selwyn Dewdney and Kenneth E. Kidd. Very informative. Furtman's book is good, too, but not as depthy as Dewdney.

there are some nice ones just north of the Beaty RR portage into LLC.
they are marked on the maps and if you arrive just around noon in the right kind of sunny weather the light reflects off the water and under the ledge with the "man riding on an otter" picto on it.

I checked the map and the pictographs (third picture) that I said were on Wednesday Bay are actually on the Basswood River just below Basswood Falls prior to Wednesday Bay.

Approximately how far would one have to snowshoe from the entry point to see the Hegman pictographs?

You might have more fun skiing to those pictographs, but I suppose it would take close to two hours to snowshoe.

I am going to have to explore these wonderfull bits of history in the future.

How are the pictos on Fishdance?

Mongo- not as bright as other sites, but still cool to see.

The Hegman pictos are my favorite. They look like they were painted yesterday. LLC are 2nd, and Darky 3rd. The Hegman pictos are also the easiest to get to. Just a short paddle from Echo Trail. I've paddled there twice, and walked to them on the ice another time.

I like LLC the best. Fishdance are a bit hard to find and faded. I would suggest the book "Magic on the Rocks" as a reference for pictos. Very informative.

Darky's are my favorite. I want to figure out what they used for paint and paint my house with it!

My understanding is they used fish oil and iron oxide "paint rock."

starwatcher

I have read that the paints are made up of oils from a sturgeon spinal cord and iron oxide (rust). Who in the world came up with that formula?

BTW I have also read that the general opinion is that most of the pictos at the various sites were painted by the same artist. They do have a remarkable similarity.

Some of the images are basically symbolic and certainly meant something to the early people viewing them. Their meanings have been lost through time. One image that still cracks me up every time I see it is of a moose smoking a pipe.

SE

SE- In the book "Magic on the Rocks" Furtman theorizes that the Hegman site and the Darky site were painted by the same artist. The reason for his theory is that the artist included dew claws on the moose at both sites. Moose at other known sites do not have dew claws.

A couple of shots of the Hegman Lake pictos.









tony

Darky (east side ones) for me, in part because of the setting. The high bluff set back in a quiet cove, lots of interesting rock, lichens, pollen lines . . . I felt like it was a very special place.

I believe that is a very big patch of poison ivy I'm seeing there, old grey goose.

Thanks for all your thoughts ... and yes, I believe Mr. Barley is correct about that poison ivy!

Hah, I know it's poison ivy. Me and moose plums were standing in it taking pictures last June. Luckily I'm not affected by it.

You beat me to it, Barley. And someone remarked about the paint quality...we have nothing like it today. At the Agawa site on the SE side of Lake Superior is an outstanding set of picto's including a mythical creature. In about 1918 a fisherman's daughter painted her initials across the picto with red barn paint, which I assume would have been an oil base. Everyone thought they were ruined, but in a few years the barn paint had worn off and the pictos was good as ever. The fear now is that acid rain is fading them all, and I am sure that most of the ones that I saw in the 1970's are more faded now.