491 words – a two minute read time
Imagine a quiet, contemplative paddle along a cliff lined lake-shore when suddenly your eye catches something out of the ordinary… red ochre painted shapes not found in nature. Art work from a distant past… native rock painting – all but forgotten.
While on a three day kayak excursion on the north end of Kootenay lake in south eastern British Columbia, Canada, my wife and I found a Ktunaxa pictograph. Although it is always exciting to re-discover a native rock art site, what makes this particular pictograph important is that it is not listed in John Corner’s 1968 book, “Pictographs in the Interior of British Columbia.”
The Kootenay region is blessed with pictographs made by the ancestors of the local Ktunaxa Native Band. In John Corner’s book, he mentions nine known rock art sites. This pictograph is the third additional site that I have located in the Kootenay lake area that is not in Corner’s book.
Not a lot seems to be known about Native pictographs. Ethnologists and anthropologists suspect that the pictographs may be depictions of visions painted by youth going through a right of passage into adulthood. What we do know for sure is that they are some form of communication that are found on native travel routes.
In Corner’s book he states that for unknown reasons, the practice of painting on rocks seemed to have died out in the Kootenay region around 1860. As many of the older pictographs are on cliff faces that are 7 to 9 meters above the current lake level, this would indicate that they were painted at a time when the lake level was considerably higher than it is currently. I find it interesting that the older (higher up) pictographs are often the best preserved and brightest. The relatively newer pictographs located lower on the cliffs, are more faded and in at least one site, destroyed by vandals.
The red paint used locally is based on pure hematite, which is an iron oxide that is found approximately 7 kilometres north of the town of Lardeau on the Lardeau river – just north of Kootenay lake. Experts believe that rendered animal fat was added to the hematite as well as birds eggs and possibly chewed up fish eggs. It is interesting to note that on large areas of pictographs (called plates) some of the paint has faded more than in other parts of the same plate, possibly indicating different ingredients or volumes of ingredients were used when mixing up batches of paint.
The history of the indigenous people who populated the Kootenay region is fascinating. The thrill of seeing a pictograph is hard to describe. It may be a small glimpse into the past but it helps form a connection with a people who left their mark on history in the form of art.
Adventure is where you find it.
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