Indian God Rock

The above photo was taken in 1962 of James Swauger and Mrs. Brigitta Wallace at the Indian God Rock petroglyph site. It is located in Venango County Pennsylvania on the Allegheny river. On the bend in the river is a huge sandstone that sits facing west with a fifty degree slope. What makes this rock special is that it was the first rock to be documented in writing about the ancient carvings on it's face. French explorers headed by Pierre Joseph Celoron de Blainville in 1749 traveled down from Canada to claim the Ohio valley for France. La Salle had already claimed the valley for France in the expeditions of 1669 and 1682. This expedition however had several Indian guides to take them through the valley along with 216 French. Starting in New York and finishing just west of the Miami River in Ohio. Remarkably they did all of this in one summer. The French took with them copper plates to nail to trees and lead plates to bury near major rivers emptying into the Ohio river. The plates themselves are a very interesting story with only three ever recovered. Some of them were only partial fragments that were found. One is intact and held by the Virginia Historical society. They were around 11 inches long and 7 1/2 inches wide. The one that Virginia holds actually was found in Point Pleasant West Virginia at the mouth of the Kanawha river. It was found about 100 years after it was buried by the French by two boys looking for small stones to use as sinkers while fishing. The two boys found the plate partially sticking out of the bank under the roots of an old Elm tree. It was handed over to relatives and eventually found it's way to the Virginia Historical Society for safe keeping. It has since been a source of dispute between the two states of who should take care of the plate. Blainville did write in his journal that a plate was buried very close to the giant rock as well as plate of arms nailed to a nearby tree proclaiming the land for France. Below is a picture of the plate that was found at Point Pleasant. 

   

The above photo is a partial plate that was found.

The expedition made notes about the carvings on the rock and determined they were made by the "savages" that previously lived here. It was reported that the Indian guides knew of the rock and the markings on it and regarded them as sacred. Over the years others noted the images carved onto the face of the rock. Bonnecamps, Schoolcraft, Whittlesey, and a host of others studied and wrote about the rock. The only person to assemble a long research history and document the carvings is none other than James Swauger. In fact he spent the second half of his career documenting and cataloging petroglyphs up and down the Ohio valley. What is so interesting about the God Rock is how it relates to the petroglyphs found here in our area. Both are documented in his book " Rock Art of the Upper Ohio Valley". 

Above are examples of previous work done by others before Swauger studied the God Rock. What stands out to me is the similarities of figure #20 compared to the carvings at Wellsville near the old dam. Even # 27 looks very similar to the petroglyphs at the Babb's Island site. 

 Above is one of the carvings at the old number 8 dam site in Wellsville.

Above are the carvings of the Babb's Island site. Images were taken from the book "Petroglyphs of Ohio" by James Swauger. I can see some very close similarities between the God Rock site and the sites that were found in Wellsville and East Liverpool.

This is a sketch of the Indian God Rock done in 1963 by Swauger. As you can see some of these sketches greatly differ from those sketches done 100 years prior. With years of erosion and vandalism getting an accurate chalking of the original carvings had to be almost impossible. Over the years the God rock had become a sort of attraction for steamboats traveling down the Allegheny. Passers by would stop to view the petroglyphs and leave their name and date on the rock also. It happened as well at the Smithsferry site. Below is an example of how Swauger chalked around the modern carvings to locate the original petroglyph. This would have been painstakingly time consuming and required a very trained eye to distinguish modern graffiti from original rock art.

   

Not all of the carvings are graffiti. There seems to be a record of dates and names dating from around 1810 to present day. Some may be false dates but the majority of them are probably authentic. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of names and dates on all sides of the rock. The rock was designated a national historic monument in the early 80's. The rock can be accessed today via a paved hiking and bike trail known as the Allegheny River Trail. The rock sits on the bend around 4 miles down river from the Belmar trail access point in Franklin Pennsylvania. 

   Views from Indian God Rock looking across the Allegheny.

                        Present day views of the rock.

Swauger estimates the petroglyphs were carved any where between 900 AD to 1750 AD as with those carved here. Many  researchers believe that the majority of carvings found at many of the sites through Pennsylvania and Ohio are the same images found on birch bark scrolls. Birch bark scrolls are a record of a secret society of the Ojibwa (pronounced "oh jeeb way") called the Midewiwin. In other words a secret society of medicine men or shawman. These were religious leaders that practiced healing among the people. Their teachings were passed down from generation to generation by inscribing images on the undersides of rolled birch bark. They were sometimes darkened with carbon or coal to highlight the images and then carefully rolled up and hid away in caves or underground. They would last for very long periods of time undisturbed. The teachings were intended to be used for all tribes. Many of the images are very close to what is found in some of the petroglyphs carved in our area. As you can see from the photos above hundreds of years of erosion and river ice have worn the sandstone down. It is one of very few sites that still exist in our modern time. The ones here have been under water or destroyed by the building of dam # 8. It seems to me that the corridor running from the great lakes through our valley has been well traveled from the ancient of days. It is amazing to me how many important events have unfolded throughout history in our little towns.

Resources : 

" Rock Art of the Upper Ohio Valley"
" Petroglyphs of Ohio"
   by James Swauger


The Virginia Historical Society:
http://www.vahistorical.org/give-and-join/support-vhs/protecting-endangered-c%C3%A9loron-plate


Pocahontas Times 1924 @ West Virginia Archives and History:
http://www.wvculture.org/history/settlement/celeron01.html


Partial plate photo courtesy of New York Public Library:
 http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=134851&imageID=112532&total=31&num=0&word=Ohio%20River&s=3&notword=&d=&c=&f=2&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&imgs=20&pos=13&e=r