Our Haunted Planet - John Keel-pages

Page 24 of 135

Page 24 of 135
Our Haunted Planet - John Keel-pages

Page Content (OCR)

groups settled here and built forts and temples, the remnants of which have served to augment the beliefs of dozens of cults and fringe societies. In a learned dissertation on petroglyphs published by the Smithsonian in 1937. Julian H. Steward frowned on the arguments that attempt to prove that "Egyptians, Scythians, Chinese, and a host of other Old World peoples, including the Ten Lost- Tribes of Israel, invaded America in ancient days’. He noted that ‘devotees of the subject have written voluminously, argued bitterly, and even fought duels’. Now, over "thirty years later the Smithsonian is slowly changing its tune. They have stopped blaming the Indians for all these carved slabs. The Indians have been denying credit all along, of course. "When the white men first arrived here [in British Columbia, Canada] in I860, the West Coast Indians had already incorporated the carvings in their legends,' Phil Thornburg, a petroglyph expert in Victoria, Canada, said recently. They showed them to white explorers and explained they were left by an ancient civilization and were the hub of creation." Thomburg points to what appears to be a carving of a Chinese dragon, known in Indian legend as a sisutl. There does seem to be an Oriental background to them," he observes. 'Being carved in sandstone, it*s virtually impossible to say what age they are. I've found some that were buried under more than a foot o£ topsoil. placing the age of the carving around five to seven thousand years - which is really ancient for this country.* Thomburg found one petroglyph on Vancouver Island that had a hole worn completely through it by dripping water - proof that it had been there for a very long time. At another site he found a carving which had crumbled when a massive tree grew straight up through it. Petroglyphs which were definitely the work of Indian tribes often tell interesting stories about hunts and battles, and in several instances, encounters with the little people and other phantom inhabitants. Some contain solemn warnings that the valley or mountain ahead is the abode of a ’ 1 resided around Chimney Rock. North Carolina. White people have also seen them occasionally. In 1806 the Rev. George Newton reported to the Raleigh Register *a very extraordinary vision of thousands of beings in the air. They possessed a glittering appearance resembling the human form and were seen on or about Chimney Rode on the thirty-first of July last* Researcher Angelo CappareHo found this testimony by a Mrs. Reaves, one of the alleged witnesses: I looked towards the Chimney. I was absolutely amazed, for south of Chimney Rock and floating along the side of the mountain was a huge crowd of white, phantomlike beings. Their clothing "Now this wasn't the kind of topsoil that would have washed over them. This was formed there, A et A Dt these sinister phantoms. The Cherokee Indians have legends about the strange entities who