Native American rock art is typically associated with the Western United States (picture images of buffalo painted high on a desert bluff), but the Southern Appalachians is home to hundreds of ancient rock art sites. Typically, the art consists of rudimentary rock etchings called petroglyphs that were created by the Native Americans living in the area 3,000 years ago, long before the Cherokee. But because of the South’s scarcity of public lands, most of the sites remain unknown or off-limits.
“We’ve had a lot of development in the South, so it’s likely many of the rock art sites have been destroyed unknowingly,” says Lorie Hansen, project director for the North Carolina Rock Art Survey. “But we have every reason to believe the Native Americans in the Southeast were every bit as prolific in their rock art as Native Americans in the West.”
Probably the most famous petroglyph in the South is Judaculla Rock, a large, flat soapstone boulder in Jackson County, N.C., with hundreds of hand-carved figures and symbols, ranging from human handprints to geometric shapes. Exactly who carved the symbols remains a mystery.
“We’re not certain about the who, why, or even the when of Judaculla,” says Hansen, who is working on a comprehensive restoration of the site, which is one of the few significant rock art sites located on public land in our region. The uncertainty extends to most rock art sites in the Southeast.
“The majority of glyphs around the South were carved somewhere between 1000 B.C. and contact with the first Europeans,” Hansen says. “But we can’t carbon date rock the way you can organic material, so it’s difficult to know for sure.”
The carvings on Judacalla may have been started by one tribe of Native Americans dating back to 1500 B.C., but it’s likely the carvings were added to by subsequent tribes, perhaps even the Cherokee. Track Rock, a series of petroglyphs on soapstone boulders in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest, has evolved in the same manner. On the six table-sized boulders, more than one hundred different figures can be seen, the earliest of which date back 3,600 years.
“The carvings were made by Native Americans during repeated visits over several hundred years,” says James Wettstaed, the archaeologist for the Chattahoochee National Forest.
The progressive nature of the rock art also makes it difficult to interpret and give meaning to the carvings, both at Track Rock and Judaculla. Possible theories suggest that Judaculla was a treaty or a map. Another theory is that the carvings are imprints of the Cherokee legend himself. Judaculla was a Cherokee giant who jumped off a nearby mountain, and many still believe that his handprints made some of the markings. At the base of the stone, two massive footprints can be seen.
While most rock art sites in the South are on private property, there are a few impressive etchings found on public lands.
The petroglyphs are made on a soapstone boulder that includes hundreds of cupules and deep grooves, as well as a number of designs that resemble humans, footprints, and geometric shapes. The site has recently been rehabilitated by Jackson County Parks and Recreation and the U.S. Forest Service, and it now features a viewing platform and interpretive signs. A portion of the boulder that was previously hidden by dirt has also been excavated.
Six table-sized soapstone boulders containing more than a hundred rock carvings reside on national forest land near Blairsville. The site has recently been rehabilitated with a new viewing platform and interpretive signs. Animal tracks, crosses, footprints, and handprints are common. One human foot has six toes, and a couple of stick figures are upside down, which archaeologists believe refers to the spirit world. One of the Cherokee legends associated with Track Rock involves worldwide flooding survived by one family and a host of animals meant to repopulate the world. Their canoe landed at Track Rock and their troop of animals disembarked, leaving their impressions on the rock as they passed.
One of the few pictograph sites (painted, not etched) in the South, Paint Rock sits in Pisgah National Forest on a high bluff near Hot Springs. Images of humans, fish, and fowls were painted in red circa 2500 B.C. It’s the oldest pictograph in the Southeast. Today, the markings can be difficult to discern, and hikers often confuse natural iron markings with the original paintings.
The petroglyphs on Indian God Rock along the Allegheny River in western Pennsylvania were likely carved by the ancestors of the Shawnee between A.D. 900 and 1650. The petroglyphs can be difficult to see, but interpretive panels discuss the cultural and historical significance of the site and aid in locating specific markings, which include geometric designs and animals and humans in “x-ray” form.