The people of the Mi'kmaq people have lived in what is now Nova Scotia and the Maritimes for hundreds of years.

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• The people of the Mi'kmaq people have lived in
  what is now Nova Scotia and the Maritimes for
  hundreds of years.
• They have generally expressed their culture and
  worldviews in stories and traditions.
• We are able to experience and understand aspects
  of Mi'kmaq traditions and culture through these
  stories and through the art they have created.

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• The Mi'kmaq people for hundreds of years have
  created enduring art.
• Some of this art has been carved into the rocks
  of the province.
• These rock pictures, or petroglyphs, record their
  lives and the things they saw around them.

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• Petroglyphs are sacred to the Mi'kmaq people.
  They are seen as traces from the past the
  carvings have stories to tell new generations ,
  which offers insights and inspiration.
• Petroglyphs are found along shores of soft,
  smooth slate and on places like the Bedford
  Barrens, an outcropping of rock along a ledge
  above the Bedford Basin.

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• Many petroglyphs can be found along the rocky
  shores of the lakes and rivers of Kejimkujik
  National Park, the Medway River and McGowan Lake,
  in southwest Nova Scotia.

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Mi'kmaq Petroglyphs Kejimkujik National Park
Maitland Bridge, Annapolis County
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• Petroglyphs have also been created at several
  other locations around the province.
• However, the smooth, fine-grained slates found in
  the Kejimkujik area are the best known, and have
  made an excellent surface for recording images.
• The lines were cut, scratched, or pecked using
  stone or metal tools.

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• The Mi'kmaq recorded images of
• people, animals, hunting, fishing,
• and the decorative motifs women
• sewed or painted on clothing.
• With the arrival of the Europeans, the lives of
  the Mi'kmaq changed in new ways. Evidence of this
  change includes images of sailing ships, men
  hunting with muskets, soldiers, Christian altars
  and churches, and small items like coins and
  jack-knives.

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• George Creed, the postmaster at South Rawdon in
  central Nova Scotia, made a series of tracings of
  the Mi'kmaq petroglyphs at Kejimkujik and McGowan
  Lake in 1887 and 1888.
• Creed's tracings form the earliest attempt to
  document the rock art in the province is an
  important record of this culture.

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• George Creed grouped his petroglyph tracings into
  broad categories depending on the subject ships,
  people, canoes, animals, etc.
• In doing this he broke up groupings and made
  separate tracings of individual images. It is
  impossible to tell from Creed's tracings what the
  context was, or the relationships of the
  individual images to each other.

Couple in ceremonial dress
Hand with Peaked Cap and European-style felted
Beaver fur hat on palm
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• Through the discovery of the the petroglyphs
  throughout the province, one thing is quite
  clear, that it is almost impossible to accurately
  date most of the petroglyphs.
• Images of sailing ships, hunters with guns and
  European-style dwellings are clearly more recent.
  

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• A few petroglyphs have the year of their creation
  carved into the rock next to them, either from
  the 1800s or the early 1900s.

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• Constantly exposed to weather, many petroglyphs
  have become worn over time.
• In numerous cases, vandals have defaced the
  images. In some cases, Creed's tracings are now
  the only record that the image ever existed.

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Bedrock with Petroglyphs The soft bedrock here
is being slowly washed away, thus the petroglyph
images will some day be no longer visible.
Vandals have scrawled graffiti on the rocks, but
the original petroglyphs still remain. Rangers
now patrol these areas to protect these fragile
drawings.
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• It is very difficult to accurately record
  petroglyphs.
• The shallow cuts and lines that make up the image
  - in the quartzite and slate stone favoured by
  the artists - are often eroded by years of water,
  ice and weather wearing the edges down and making
  the images less distinct.

• Most recordings have been done with either
  tracing the petroglyphs onto paper or other
  materials, or by taking photographs.
• Often some technique was used to prepare the
  petroglyphs to make the lines more distinct
  before recording.

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• Tracings have the advantage that they are exactly
  the same size as the petroglyphs.
• Photographs of petroglyphs can be misleading if a
  scale is not included in the photo so that the
  size can be accurately shown.
• Casting, the third method, is the most accurate
  way to record rock carvings.

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• Originally, blue aniline pencil was used to trace
  the petroglyphs.
• Then, dampened paper was pressed over the
  tracing.
• The moisture in the paper transferred the pencil
  dye to the paper.

• This technique creates an image on the back of
  the paper that is a mirror image of the original,
  but are reversed when compared to the original
  carving.

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• Modern tracings are typically done on a
  transparent material such as mylar.
• The mylar sheet is placed over the petroglyph and
  the lines are traced with an ink pen, creating a
  correct image tracing of the petroglyph.

• Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Ethnologist at the Nova
  Scotia Museum, made this tracing of an early
  petroglyph in Bedford, NS, that was made with
  stone tools.

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Mi'kmaq Petroglyphs - It is necessary to wet many
of the drawings to even begin to see them. Here
you see a drawing of a missionary along with the
outline of a hand in the left area of the
picture.
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• The Bedford Barren petroglyphs are very unique
  examples of Mi'kmaq carvings.
• They were discovered by Michael Ross in the hills
  above Bedford, N.S., in l983 as he walked along a
  flat ridge of quartz like rock.
• He took pictures and his mother brought them to
  the N.S. Museum to the attention of Ruth
  Whitehead. It was determined that they were of
  Mikmaq origin.

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• They were photographed, studied by Brian
  Molyneaux, a Research Associate in Archaeology at
  the Royal Ontario Museum.
• Molyneaux determined that the that the
  petroglyphs had been cut and drilled into the
  rock using stone tools. It appeared to date the
  petroglyphs back to a period before the arrival
  from Europe of metal tools (1500).
• Thus, the petroglyphs predate any other known
  petroglyph site in Atlantic Canada.

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Bedford Petroglyphs, Halifax County
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• The Mi'kmaq people were not notified of their
  existence until 1989 by a local group of
  residents who wanted to save the Bedford Barrens
  from being destroyed by developers.
• To this date only a portion of the land has been
  preserved. Of the 90 acres of land that is to
  be/has been developed, only 4 acres have been set
  aside.

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• The Mi'kmaq people feel that this is not enough
  and that the whole area should be preserved and
  protected.
• The petroglyphs are found along a ledge above the
  Bedford Basin