Some modern graffiti is meant to be artistic, and perhaps there was an element of that in the images executed on the rock face near Amsterdam hundreds of years ago. It provides the author with a sense of establishing some sort of identity, and, depending on the medium used, some sort of immortality. We simply do not understand the symbolism well enough to know. Of note is the rendering of the canoe full of warriors in the above example.
Modern graffiti seems to be less pictorial and more language-based.
In fact much of it presents names and initials that should be easily understood. The point here is that in looking at the Mohawk River Valley graffiti at Little Falls in the year 2000, we may be seeing a situation not unlike that faced by travelers looking at the Mohawk River Valley graffiti at Painted Rocks 200 years ago. Rufus Grider has presented us with a complex, entertaining, and seemingly significant image of Indian rock painting. We will never know precisely what others saw here centuries ago, but in some ways, the mystery is as appealing as the reality. The New York State Museum is a program of the NYS Education Department .