Rock Inscriptions

While traveling up the Gila River from Fort Yuma to the Pima Villages (near modern-day Phoenix) in June of 1852, John Russell Bartlett and his party camped near a hill containing many Indian rock inscriptions.  The site was called Los Metates because the local Indians quarried metates from outcroppings found on the bluff.  Bartlett sketched many of the inscriptions and included some in his book.  Here's an example: 

Here's a portion of Bartlett's description:

Towards evening, when the sun began to lose its force, I took my sketch-book and went to the base of the bluff, where I had noticed as we passed a number of inscribed rocks.  I found hundreds of these boulders covered with rude figures of men, animals, and other objects of grotesque forms, all pecked in with a sharp instrument.

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