Charlie Bailey, Derek Lee, and Jason R. at the entrance to Jason R.'s Wabasha Co. cave.
INTRODUCTION:
As a part of the ongoing effort to locate, record, and preserve petroglyphs in the state, a visit was made to a cave in Wabasha County. These petroglyphs were located on private land and were visited with permission of Jason R., one of the landowners. Locatoring information below the county level has been deleted. This research was not conducted on state or federal land and did not require a state permit.
Examples of vertical grooves.
FIELD NOTES February 24, 1997:
Charlie Bailey, a member of the Upper Midwest Rock Art Research Association, Derek Lee of the University of Minnesota Anthropology Department, and I visited Wabasha County to investigate the possibility of petroglyphs still remaining at a cave described in 1920 as follows: "This region abounds in natural curiosities. Near the . . . river is a cave in the side of a bluff. This is probably fifteen feet high and nearly as wide, extending thirty or forty feet into the ground; a small passage above the floor of the cave runs back . . . much farther. The side, roof and walls of the cave are solid limestone rock and are covered with Indian hieroglyphics representing the leading birds, fish, and game animals of the region. There are numerous other characters whose significance is only known to a few. It is said by some of the early settlers that the Indians who remained here after settlement [was] made refused to enter the cave, saying ‘the devil lives there.’ It served as a shelter for some of the early prospectors after claims, and their horses and some of the first settlers lived here for awhile."
More examples of apparent vertical grooves were seen inside. Charlie and Derek are standing near the entrance to the tunnel in the back of the cave. Note the height of the tunnel above the chamber floor.
This south facing cave is walled and has a door and presently is home to three bee hives and several bats. In the past it has been used as a root cellar, a space to protect seedlings, and a shelter to house horses and settlers. The cave is warm in the winter and cool in the summer and one vertebrae of a small animal was found in the back tunnel. To the east of the cave about 30 feet was a small collapsed sandstone tunnel with evidence of a recent rock fall. Derek Lee crawled a short way into that tunnel and indicated that it had collapsed. Jason had heard stories that a dog had puppies in it and that the tunnel used to go back quite a ways into the cliff but he had never personally crawled in there.
The tunnel in the back of the cave is long and narrow and has a red ceiling.
I crawled back along the tunnel inside the cave with a hardhat and lights until it became apparent that the space was physically too small for me to get through. It appeared that after the narrowest point, which a smaller person might be able to get through, it widened out, but that there had been some rock fall in the back of the tunnel. The walls of the tunnel were much darker than in the main chamber and were either patinated or sooted. The ceiling was red in color, and as Charlie Bailey pointed out, sandstone will often turn red when exposed to fire. About half way back into the tunnel I noticed modern graffitti in the form of the letter A. Like the cave in Dakota County visited the day before, the lettering appeared at a spot where the people would probably have made the decision that they were not going to go in any further because of narrowing of the cave.
More examples of vertical grooves
The cave walls showed a lot of modern graffitti but also had evidence of vertical grooves much like another site in Wabasha County, described in several articles by Deborah Morse-Kahn and Jack Steinbring at the UMRARA website. The grooves on the exterior of the cave appear unpatinated but there are also many within the cave and behind the protection of the door. If there is a natural weathering process or another cultural explanation for the large numbers of vertical grooves I do not know what they are. Native American grooving is a widespread cultural phenomena that may be related to ritual according to some ethnographic information in the far west or to the sharpening of stone tools. There was also a possible thunderbird and possible vulva forms.Additional petroglyphs may be preserved if they run under the wall at the entrance. A steel or iron hoist mechanism or hook was evident overhead at the apex at the front of the cave. The interior of the main chamber did not look sooted except for the rear tunnel.
Everyone who viewed this up close thought it might have been a thunderbird that was incomplete or damaged but it was difficult to say at this point.
This cave is of obvious historical importance and appears consistent with another site in Wabasha County in the large numbers of vertical groove petroglyphs made here. The reference in the 1920’s to the ‘devil living there’ may be a Christianized translation of a Native American belief that a dangerous or evil spirit resided there. If a dangerous spirit or "devil" was believed to live, there then ritual grooving would make sense. Ethnographic descriptions by Densmore, Rajnovich, and others suggests that powerful spirits related to illness and health were believed by the Ojibwa and other Algonkian peoples to live underground in the rock. Besides being dangerous, however, this spirit could heal. Due to fear of an underground spirit, Ojibwa in northern Minnesota were careful to make sacrifices to it.
Vertical grooves were quite noticeable and deep.
In northern Minnesota and Canada shamen believed that they would enter the rock during altered states of consciousness to talk to the ‘rock people’ about which of the plants or the forty minerals of the Earth would be best used to treat their patients. The redness of the stone in a narrow tunnel in the back may also have contributed to a perception of the cave as a place where a "devil" resided. Minnesota place names often included the word "devil" which probably was simply a reference to a dangerous manido or spirit. According to Jack Steinbring, grooving in some cultures seemed to be related to achieving altered states of consciousness during the repetitive motion made while gathering sand in a container used in a later ritual. In the far west the powder resulting from making cupmarks in rock was ingested to promote women’s fertility. There is ethnohistoric support for the view that some Native Americans viewed parts of the landscape in terms of a sacred landscape and natural forms such as rocks with human faces and characteristics were important. Not to be indelicate but the cave itself certainly could have been viewed to be a natural vulva form in the earth that faced the sun or sky spirit. In South Dakota the souls of bison were believed to emerge out of the earth from Wind Cave.
Many examples of grooves appear inside the cave.
This cave has been heavily graffitied in modern times and a careful study of patination, symbolism, and style might be able to separate the old from the new. The local ethnohistorical sources and early photographs of the settlers may also be useful in separating out what was made during the historic period. Additional older and intact petroglyphs may be preserved under the rock falls in the rear of the cave where the cave walls seem to seem to be more sooted or patinated and subject to less traffic and contact because of the confined nature of the space.
Archaeologist, Derek Lee examining the entrance to the back tunnel. The tunnel appeared to have dark patination or sooting.
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