History of Moose Creek Bluff rock paintings remain mostly a mystery

July 24, 1940

Rock paintings found near flood control

First Paintings Found in Alaska

Rock paintings have been found in several parts of the American Indian area, but until the week of June 17 none had been reported for the Athabascan territory which includes all the present natives of Alaska except the Eskimos. On Monday, June 17, Louis Giddings, tree-ring expert, and part-time instructor in anthropology at the university, received a telephone message from Dr. Bunnell at McKinley Park informing him that Hawley Sterling of the Alaska Road Commission said paintings had been discovered at Moose Bluff, about 18 miles up the river from Fairbanks.

Acting upon this message, Mr. Giddings went to the bluff, where the flood control is securing material for a rock dam, to inspect the paintings. When he arrived there he learned that the west side of the bluff was to be dynamited, and that in order to facilitate tunneling, the alder bush and spruce trees covering the face had been removed, and the paintings were exposed on the south side.

The first to recognize the paintings were Mr. Thomas Campbell, assistant professor in civil engineering at the university, and Mr. Ernie Lottsfeldt of Fairbanks. Word of the discovery was sent to Mr. Giddings but did not reach him until Monday. In the meantime, Mr. Campbell had taken some photographs. After inspecting the paintings, Mr. Giddings took pictures both in black and white and in color, and also made a few sketches.

The figures painted in red ochre are dim and, in most cases, cannot be recognized. Some are covered with patches of yellow lichens. The cliff itself has an overhang of about six feet between the top and the base, protecting the face of the rock from rain and weather. This accounts for the preservation of the pictures. The bluff overhangs the nought of Moose Creek where it flows into a slough of the Chena and was probably used by Indians as a camping place, although any flint chips or other evidence of camping ground seems to have been washed away by the river.

Where recognizable the pictures are crude human figures, probably rubbed on with shavings. They vary from about four inches to a larger figure approximately two feet high.

The most interesting group consists of five human figures sitting in a boat. The unusual thing is that this boat is not a birch bark canoe. It is high pointed at each end, and if the drawing is at all accurate it is a dugout canoe of the type used until recently by Indians of Southeastern Alaska.

Another painting shows three human figures inside an oval with one apparently sitting at one end, and one at each side standing. Other figures are shown marching in line in one direction as indicated by the position of the arms and legs. The meaning is not known because there is nothing with which to compare them. There are some figures that are not pictures but may be symbols.

As to the age of these paintings, they are probably older than the trees which grew up over the face of the cliff. (These were sixty years old.) It is possible they are much older and go far beyond present times because of the cave-like characteristic of the cliff with its overhang. One place in which figures appear to have been painted extends below the present ground surface, indicating that the surface was formerly much lower. Patches of red are all that can be made out on parts of the cliff. The face of rock on which the figures appear is 30 feet high, and they extend along about 60 feet of this face.

Rock paintings have been reported from the southeastern United states and other parts of the North American Indian area but are not common anywhere. In Alaska only one other mention is made of them in the Athabascan area. This is along the Kachemak Bay, where Tanana paintings were discovered as red figures on a black background. Red paint is still used by certain of the Indians and is made by collecting red ochre from river banks and pressing it. It is sometimes mixed with blood.

The full significance of the paintings will not be known until it is determined whether figures of the same nature have been found elsewhere.

•••

A few days after the initial article appeared, there was an interesting Letter to the Editor on the origin of the rock paintings at Moose Creek Bluff. William N. Craigie stated in that letter that he had first seen the paintings around 1910 and that he had met with a local elder Native by the name of Paul about the origin of the paintings. Craigie related that Paul left and returned with his father who was very elderly and between the two of them a story was related to Craigie about the origin of the paintings on the Moose Creek Bluff. That story mentioned a great flood, one family surviving it, the building of a boat, saving animals, etc, a story Craigie thought was similar to the story about Noah’s Ark. What is most interesting in the letter is that Paul told William Craigie that his father’s grandfather did not know who painted the bluff.

Sadly, the bluff that contained the paintings was blasted away later that same year, but Louis Giddings was able to return and recover a few fragments of painted rocks with human figures showing on them. Those fragments are safely kept by the Museum of the North.

In April 1992, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner did a story about the paintings that was focused on Martin Gutoski, who was studying the remaining artifacts and the story that Giddings had initially reported as part of earning his master’s degree in archeology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Gutoski was trying to get carbon dating done on a sample from the two rocks that were saved from the site.

It is interesting to note that both William Craigie and Martin Gutoski are members of the Fairbanks Men’s Igloo No. 4 of the Pioneers of Alaska.