Nearly a decade after I first learned of it from an obscure trip report on a hiking forum, I set out with my dad on a day trip to discover the Quilcene petroglyph.
Route map. Parking at the Herb Beck Marina is $15 USD per day, cash or check only, no change.
The hiking trip report did not give us much to go on. It included a photo of the petroglyph but only described the location of the petroglyph as somewhere “near Quilcene.” “Near Quilcene” covers a rather wide swath of Washington State. A person could search “near Quilcene” for months without ever finding a petroglyph! We needed better directions than that, so I set about researching.
The Quilcene petroglyph does not appear in any of my standard reference works on west coast indigenous rock art. Most of my references date from the 1970s: Richard McClure (1978), Doris Lundy (1974), and Beth and Ray Hill (1975). References ealier than the 1970s are scarce because west coast rock art did not attract serious attention from archaeologists. References later than the 1970s are scarce because it became unfashionable, and in certain cases unlawful, for archaeologists to disclose the locations of rock art, the idea being to protect the sites from looters and vandals.
The Quilcene petroglyph was only accessioned to the archaeological record in 1997. By then, the publication of such knowledge had been deprecated. Archaeologists had long since closed ranks and ceased divulging site information to anyone they deemed unreliable—which turned out to mean almost everyone other than themselves.
Still, “information wants to be free,” so even though a lowly member of the public like myself is barred from access to the state’s secret database of archaeological sites, the mere knowledge that the petroglyph existed was enough of a clue that I was able to track down its whereabouts, sifting through publications a bit like an archeologist myself, except I was excavating middens of words instead of bones.
Grandpa John launching kayak at Quilcene boat ramp. This was Grandpa John’s first-ever search for a petroglyph, although like most Washingtonians he was familiar with the famous petroglyphs at Ozette.
View across Quilcene Bay from boat ramp. Quilcene Bay may look small on the map, but it is a demoralizingly large area to search for a petroglyph.
View of Fisherman’s Point. This point marks the mouth of Quilcene Bay, so if you find yourself south of Fisherman’s Point, you have gone past the petroglyph.
Pine siskin flock, Quilcene Bay. It was an unusually good winter for pine siskins here in the inland waters.
Common merganser, Quilcene Bay. Of the three North American merganser species, the common merganser is the most likely to be caught roosting ashore.
Even with a good idea of the petroglyph’s location, finding it in the field did not prove easy. My dad and I paddled the length of Quilcene Bay without spotting a thing. We resorted to a combined effort, me searching the shoreline on foot and him making a second pass by kayak.
It turned out a log had fallen across the face of the petroglyph boulder, missing the carving itself by mere inches, all but blocking the view of the petroglyph from the water. Even on foot, I did not spot the petroglyph until I was only an arm’s length away.
The Quilcene petroglyph consists of a stylized eagle head with a protruding tongue. The “eared” design of the eagle is similar to that of a petroglyph discovered on Gabriola Island in 1985, although the Gabriola petroglyph includes the bird’s body while the Quilcene petroglyph does not.
Quilcene petroglyph. To my untrained eye, the depth and sharpness of the petroglyph’s lines suggest incision by metallic chisel rather than rock, which, if true, would set an upper bound on the petroglyph’s possible age.
To a Seattleite like myself, the stylized eagle head immediately calls to mind the logo of the Seattle Seahawks, our National Football League team. The Seahawks debuted their team name and logo in 1975, more than twenty years before the Quilcene petroglyph was discovered, so despite the obvious similarities, the petroglyph cannot have been the inspiration for the logo.
It should come as no surprise that the actual inspiration for the logo became a matter of controversy. Today, the NFL is periodically rocked by scandal whenever one or another of its teams is accused of appropriating too much Native American imagery. In 1975, however, the scandal ran in the opposite direction: the King County Arts Commission complained that the Seahawks’ logo did not go far enough in appropriating Native American imagery.
In the Arts Commission’s view, the Seahawks’ logo “fail[ed] to depict with adequate sensitivity the art principles of the Northwest coast Indian peoples.” The Arts Commission advised the Seahawks to revise the logo to include “eyes and other features more characteristic of true Indian art than the more stylized Seahawks symbol did.”
The Seahawks, ever the experts at defense, hit back with a devastating downfield tackle: a photograph of the actual nineteenth-century indigenous “transformation mask” the team had used as inspiration for the logo. Even the most casual observer could see that the logo was a remarkably faithful reproduction. The King County Arts Commission slunk off the field in defeat.
But there were more problems! It turned out the mask did not originate from any indigenous nation native to Washington. It was a Kwakwakaʼwakw mask from northern Vancouver Island. The Kwakwakaʼwakw nations have no cultural overlap with the Salish nations of Washington’s Puget Sound. They are as different from one another as Scotland is from Russia. The Seahawks had appropriated the wrong culture!
The artistic styles of the Kwakwakaʼwakw and Salish are often said to be dissimilar. The Kwakwakaʼwakw, like many other northern nations, use the famous formline style that most people associate with “Pacific Northwest Indian art,” with its elegant U-shapes, S-shapes, and ovoids. The Salish nations don’t traditionally use the formline style. They use a more minimalist style, incorporating pierced silhouettes rather than the more ornate system of the northern nations.
A Puyallup artist created his own version of the Seahawks logo in the Salish style to illustrate the differences. A curator of Native American art at Seattle’s Burke Museum went so far as to suggest that “it might have been more appropriate for the NFL to have been inspired by a Coast Salish design” as opposed to the Kwakwakaʼwakw design.
I’m not convinced. To my non-expert eye, the style of the Quilcene petroglyph, a Salish artifact, is not so different from that of the transformation mask, a Kwakwakaʼwakw artifact. The petroglyph is not a paragon of what we are told is the formal Salish style. It incorporates positive design elements in its interior; it is not a minimalist outline nor a pierced silhouette. Likewise, the mask is not a perfect Kwakwakaʼwakw formline design. Its ovoids aren’t oval; its U-shapes aren’t U-shaped. It may be the case that these stylistic rules the indigenous nations are supposed to follow are not such binding rules after all.
Looking at the petroglyph, the logo, and the mask side by side, I see more similarities than differences. If the Seahawks had claimed the petroglyph as their inspiration instead of the mask, I would have found the claim credible. The team may not have been so misguided after all in its search for inspiration.
Most Indian nations seem to agree. From the Tulalip News to Indian Country Today, Native media is full of praise for the Seahawks and their logo. It helps that the team has fostered close personal connections with the local Indian nations and that the logo adheres so faithfully and respectfully to a piece of indigenous art—regardless of where the artwork originated.
Of course, the carvers of the Quilcene petroglyph did not intend their design to serve as the inspiration for a football team logo. Whatever they did intend, like so much other information about petroglyphs, has been lost in the depths of time.
—Alex Sidles