Finding petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings) in the United States has never really been that hard. Thousands of examples of Native American rock art can be found pecked onto rock faces or painted onto rock walls. Rock art is numerous in many forms, including Native American pictographs or Indian pictographs, Native American drawings, and Native American cave drawings.

Native American pictographs were drawn or painted with pigments; petroglyphs, on the other hand, were created by carving or pecking the surface of a rock to form an image. Some of the carving or pecking tools used were simple stones or bones, and these tools were used to make different types of surface effects - some of the rock art is carved, some is pecked, and some is abraded (scraped or worn away by continuous rubbing). The different types of surface action produced deep cuts from carving or more shallow indentations from pecking or abrading. Since the rock art took much time and effort, the messages of the rock art were important to an indigenous people, perhaps even sacred. The rock art might represent a sacred belief or mark tribal boundaries.

Native American rock art symbols have, in some cases, been interpreted, though many have not. Some rock art symbols are spiritual, while others express more complex relationships, such as war and peace. Still other forms may have been used for educational purposes or to mark the location of food provisions.

Some Native American rock art symbols were spiritual in nature. Images of animals may have functioned within the context of a site used for meditation or sacred worship. Some rock art depicts creation stories. Animals like eagles, bears, and coyotes in Native American pictographs and petroglyphs served as totem creatures or guardian spiritual helpers. For example, in Cullowhee, North Carolina, the Judaculla Rock has over 1500 carvings, including a giant called Tsu'kalu. Cherokees of the area tie the rock to a legend about Tsu'kalu, who wanted a wife and carried her into the spirit world through the Judaculla Rock. Thereafter, the giant provided directions on how to enter the spirit world.

Another example of spiritual art symbols exists in Pennsylvania, where Native American petroglyphs have symbols showing the Algonquian tribe's Great Spirit or Manitou. Often the Great Spirit was depicted in the form of various animals, such as:

Thunderbird (Pinasiwuk)
Bear (makwa)
Wolf (myeengun)
Water panther (mishipizheu)
Horned snake (ginebik)
Great Lynx

Native American hieroglyphics are also part of Native American rock art. Hieroglyphics, however, differ from petroglyphs or pictographs in important ways. Hieroglyphics are part of a syntactic language system and express words, where petroglyphs or pictographs represent ideas.

Native American pictographs, Native American petroglyphs, Native American drawings, and Indian pictographs are found throughout the North American continent. Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque boasts more than 25,000 images mostly humans, animals and tribal symbols, carved into volcanic rocks by Native Americans and Spanish settlers 400-700 years ago, and another obvious site, Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah, is famously known for life-size human figures and depictions of men fighting, painted between 900-2000 years ago.

“We look at these images and symbols from people who traveled through the Rio Grande Valley hundreds and even thousands of years ago, yet they seem so distant that it is easy to think that they don't matter," says Susanna Villanueva, a park ranger at Petroglyph National Monument. The Ancestors graciously reach out to us across centuries through these petroglyphs to remind us that they do matter and that they are still connected to this world, to this landscape, and to us, for eternity.”

archaeohistories