Stories On Stone (Rock Art: Images From the Ancient Ones)
THE PEOPLE WHO WERE THEY When I was a child growing up in the Southwest my family took car trips We often went in search of rock art ancient images on stone that are found throughout the region One hot July day my parents brother and I walked single file along a ridge in the Mimbres Valley a rock art site in southern New Mexico The stone under our feet was volcanic black boulders tumbled on a steep slope Pecked into the rock surfaces were hundreds if not thousands of images There were pictures of birds snakes deer mountain sheep and suns Some of the figures were eight feet tall Others were six feet high or three Some measured only inches To my eyes each one was magical and strange
A picture of a turtle caught my eye I tried to imagine the person who had created it I had been reading and studying all I could about rock art And although little is known of the people who chipped out the rock images in the Mimbres Valley since they left few traces of their lives behind I knew enough to help my imagination along
I knew that the turtle’s creator might have lived in the valley two thousand years before my visit there I decided the artist was a man thin with long black hair hanging loose I pictured him pecking at the black volcanic rock with a hard stone one he had used again and again I imagined the man was a husband and father with a wife and children waiting for him in a grove of cottonwoods not far off There too would be the other members of his clan Many clans bands of people who lived and traveled together took their names from animals Perhaps this clan had named itself after the turtle I imagined that the man was making the turtle to thank the spirits for good luck in hunting or perhaps to ask for better luck in the next hunt Once finished with his work the man would rejoin his family and clan members in the trees He would know that anyone passing would see the turtle and understand what it meant
On another family trip we visited Nine Mile Canyon a remote rock art site in southern Utah We hiked deep into the canyon where I saw images painted on sandstone walls Some of the pictures were of kachinas spirits that are half human half god The kachina figures were ten feet tall with boxy bodies and shields Their faces were covered by masks decorated with zigzags and circles I also saw painted images of antelope bird tracks and mountain sheep as well as handprints many of which fit my own ten-year old hands Later I learned that handprints are universal They exist on walls and stone all around the world
