Heritage, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 1988 Page: 20
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the riverbanks or hunters on the trail of the
bison herds. In their various and similar
ways, they have left their mark all over the
landscape, wherever there was reliable
water or tool material to be quarried. They
knew this hard land better than anyone of
European descent ever will.
At the next stop we lose all doubt that
the Indians shared our aesthetic appreciation.
Within a small, carved limestone
canyon are pictographs scattered on flat
wall surfaces around a lovely tinaja, or
water-filled bowl carved by the creek during
flash floods. Even in the midst of
drought it still holds water. The shade in
the canyon is very pleasant after the strong
spring sunshine.
Suddenly an ice chest materializes from
the back of the Far Flung van and a multicourse
lunch is spread on tables set on the
stone canyon floor. Sandwiches and fruit
disappear as we realize how hungry the
desert air and walking have made us. We
compare notes and speculate on what types
of bird dropped the feathers we have collected
around the pools.
Before heading into Big Bend National
Park, we stop on a barren hilltop. Nothing
grows in this inhospitable clay soil. But
Ken, who has worked in the area as a
surveyor for years, describes it as he first saw
it. "Then it was covered with rock mounds,
lines and arcs and circles of red volcanic
rocks that clearly formed a primitive celestial
calendar." Very few of such sites, which
are typical of plains Indians, have ever
been found. Realizing the significance of
the place, he carefully laid out the road he
was working on to go around the calendar.
Not everyone though, wants to let a few
Indian artifacts get in the way of "progress."
When he returned, the owners had put not
just a road but an intersection right in the
middle of the calendar. Not content with
that destruction, they had scooped up the
conveniently stacked rocks and used them
to build a culvert. There's not even a photo
of what it looked like. Just a scattering of
rocks looking slightly out of place.
Our next destination is a mountain
called Indianhead. The lumpy volcanic
intrusion bears no resemblance to an aboriginal
profile; the word derives from "arrowhead".
Indeed, flakes of flint, agate,
jasper, and homfels litter the ground here,and one of the group soon finds not one but
two good points close together. They areArchaeologists tend to
refer to these Big Bend
sites as "peripheral" to
cultural centers in
North America.
lovely, small, and tapered, finely worked to
sharpness. Perhaps being within the park
boundaries has spared a few, though certainly
not all, of the Indians' best-known
tools. After these finds we all scan the
ground, experiencing the same impulse
that motivates other hunters. It's the thrill
of the find, really, not the value of the item
that is the lure. Reluctantly we put back our
little flakes and maybe-scrapers. Not just
put them back even-at Virginia's encouragement
we throw them, disperse them, we
make of them our own offering to generations
to come.
Indianhead is noted not only for the
points found there but also for the petroglyphs
(pictures pecked into the rock) and
pictographs (painted on rock) decorating
the gigantic jumbled boulders at its base.
Some are well-known and easy to reach,
others hide in hard-to-find places or have
been scarred or buried as the rocks yielded
to gravity's inexorable pull. None of them
tells a clear tale. Could those stick-like
lines be people, or trees, or some other kind
of symbol? Are the ubiquitous wavy lines
supposed to be the river, or do they depict
snakes? Is that the outline of a bison? No
one knows. One circular pictograph inside
a delightfully breezy shelter could be a map.
So could the large area of lines and symbols
nearby. But who can say? Even the two tiny
red hand prints are ambiguous. You can
almost hear the earliest inhabitants of the
place chuckling down the centuries at our
confusion.
What must the early European explorers
of the area have thought? They were
here. They obligingly left their names and
the dates chipped into the stone right there
beside (or on top of) the Indian drawings.
One says 1902. Reportedly somewhere
close is one from the 1880s. Somehow wedon't mind those older names as much as
the more recent graffiti. Curious. Where do
you draw the line between quaint graffiti
and defacing graffiti? It is difficult not to
feel outrage when we learn that a woman
studying the paintings in the Big Bend
sprayed many of them with acrylic back in
the 1960s. It made them stand out better
and surely, she thought, it would help preserve
them. In fact, it made them smear and
run and now water in the rock is building
up behind them and they are beginning to
flake off. Of such good intentions, as well as
bad, are disasters made.
The icewater dispenser at the van does
a brisk business after Indianhead, and the
Rio Grande sounds more inviting all the
time. It takes but a few minutes to get
organized once we reach the historic river
crossing of Lajitas and we are soon under
way. No doubt the Apaches and Comanches
used this rock-floored crossing long
before it was utilized by European traders.
The sun slants ahead of the boats
through the thick stands of river cane as we
slide the short distance to our first night's
camp. The boatmen move the rubber rafts
along with pale wooden oars or simply drift
along with the slow current. Camp is a
sandy beach on the Mexican side of the
river among willows and palo verde trees in
explosive yellow bloom. Legend has it that
sleep under the palo verde brings strange
and wonderful dreams.
From the compact rafts where three of
us ride along with a guide, comes a mountain
of camping gear-tents, bedrolls,
stoves, tables, boxes with enough food, it
seems, for a week. Although we are in
Mexico and not in Big Bend National Park,
we abide by the park regulation to build a
fire only in a metal pan. Above ours sizzle
T-bone steaks and coals from the fire
nestled in the lid of a Dutch-oven which
later produces a chocolate cake. The wine
for dinner is even chilled. Over dinner we
get to know each other better. Virginia,
who is originally from Kansas, is the only
professional archaeologist in the group, but
others are experienced amateurs, or are
getting to be. There's Bert, a retired contractor
from South Texas; two lawyers,
both women, from Houston; and a couple
from Oklahoma City. Somehow for all of us
the pictures of early Texas painted by Virginia
have begun to come to life.
There is much life to see along theriver-Mexican candellia wax camps and
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Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 1988, periodical, Summer 1988; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45434/m1/20/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.