petroglyphs

Images in Stone

SITTING ON A ROCKY OUTCROP IN THE MOONlight, I listened for the ghosts.

People have been trekking to this small canyon in the midst of the Eagle Tail Mountains for thousands of years. Most were drawn by a water hole that once provided one of the few reliable water sources in the area. I'd been drawn by the petroglyphs these ancient wanderers laboriously etched into the sunstained face of the rocks forming the walls of this hidden canyon.

Photographer John Drew and I arrived just as sunset torched the colors in the rocks. He fell upon the glyphs at the canyon's entrance like a thirsty man at a desert spring. I wandered into the canyon looking for more rock art until darkness overtook me. We had found fewer images in stone than we'd expected in what was supposedly one of the better petroglyph sites in the state.

So now I sat on the rocky outcrop and listened to the small rustlings of the night, straining to hear voices in the warm breeze.I could make out the lighter patch of our sleeping bags a hundred feet below in the bend of the sandy wash. The light wind soothed me. Overhead, a full moon shone with such cold vehemence that I cast a clear shadow out across the dark

Images in Stone

Rocks. Gradually I blended into the sounds of the night, like a sleeper into dreams. How many generations of human beings must have done the same, perhaps on this very point of rock?

I could imagine people coming to this spring perhaps as long as 10,000 years ago when the big-game-hunting Clovis people harried mammoths, camels, mastodons, giant ground sloths, and a host of other Ice-Age animals with exquisitely fashioned stone spear points. The remains of Clovis-era encampments have been found scattered in southern Arizona, although none were located in the Eagle Tails, some 70 miles west of Phoenix and south of Interstate 10.

The groups that occupied Arizona during the Archaic period (5500 to 200 B.C.) did leave signs of their occupation in these mountains. We hiked along a desert wash to reach the site some three miles into the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness. Scattered, loosely knit extended family groups wandered the area, moving with the shifting plant and animal resources, blending with the desert ecosystem. The Eagle Tails offered only a handful of springs, the key to the use of any desert area since these people had only woven baskets sealed with pitch in which to carry water. They also were probably drawn to the area by game such as deer and bighorn sheep and the plentiful supply of a dense volcanic rock ideal for making flaked spear points.

The Archaic peoples used this spring for thousands of years. They also took advantage of sheer walls and boulders that were perfect for rock art, thanks to a thick brown coating of desert varnish caused by the weathering of sun and water. Using tools like deer antlers, they carefully chipped away at this bronzed covering to expose the lighter rock beneath.

The Archaic peoples etched out a variety of designs, mostly abstract and geometric patterns. Most remain mysterious, but some of the symbols and conventions that were used by the Mayans and later dessert cultures provide clues, according to Boma Johnson, a Bureau of Land Management archaeologist.

Some of those figures appear in the Eagle Tail petroglyphs. The jagged downward arc-shaped lines denoting rain and lightning can be found in several places. The crosslike shape inside a box probably suggests Venus, said Johnson; the evening star played a prominent role in Indian mythology as it disappears below the horizon for a portion of every year. Many native peoples devised myths that explained the death of the greatest and brightest of the gods, his sojourn in the underworld, and his triumphant reappearance. Other pictures show a maze of interlocking circles and bubbles, depicting the mazelike difficulties of life's physical and spiritual "great journey," according to Johnson.

The Archaic peoples were followed by a succession of prehistoric cultures, which also left their mark. The Hohokam occupied the nearby Gila River and the more distant Salt River in what is now Phoenix. They built hundreds of miles of irrigation canals, which supported thousands of acres of farmland and a people who created great multistory pueblos organized around large ball courts. The Hohokam probably sent regular hunting parties into the Eagle Tails in search of deer and bighorns.

The Eagle Tail spring probably served as a seasonal hunting camp for the Hohokam, judging by the number of sheep depicted on the rock walls and the sudden appearance of some of the same abstract and geometric designs found on Hohokam pottery, according to Connie Stone, a BLM archaeologist. The Hohokam-era drawings on the boulders and cliff faces might have been pleas to the gods for help in the hunt, making the area a ritual site.

But the animals depicted in rock art often held multiple layers of meaning, representing the animal itself, certain qualities the animal possessed, and sometimes even more abstract references, Stone said. Usually all the glyphs within view from a single spot contributed to the overall message. Sometimes they recounted scenes from mythology. Sometimes they offered directions to water or other resources. Sometimes they depicted important events in the physical and spiritual lives of the artist's group or tribe. One row of five boxes connected by a thin line probably represents the five worlds through which human beings have passed since their creation. Spiral shapes represent either water or the hole through which people have journeyed from one world into the next. We're now living in the fifth world and awaiting a transition to the sixth, according to the mythology of many tribes. Unfortunately, although we've deciphered bits and pieces of these rich messages, the full intellectual and metaphysical complexity of most of these silent panels has been lost.

Interpretations in the Eagle Tails are especially difficult because different cultures left their drawings side by side. Colorado River-based groups like the Yumans stayed in the area at the same time as the Hohokam, adding to the messages in stone laid down in the course of 3,000 years. Archaeologists believe they often respectfully expanded on earlier panels, updating the mythology. They also hid jugs of water throughout the area to succor travelers. In fact, one BLM team recently discovered a large intact jug left in a rocky niche, by either Hohokam hunters or, perhaps later on, an Apache or Yavapai band.

So I wondered as I sat in the moonlight how friendly the ghosts of this land would be should they find me sitting in this place. Still I'd been lulled into a dream of hidden ollas brimming with clear water when I was startled by a dark, eerily silent creature passing overhead. For a moment, I thought perhaps my hoped-for ghost had arrived.

But then I glimpsed the huge winged form of a great horned owl gliding out over the canyon, seeking its prey with stereoscopic hearing and wings edged with feathers that muffle all sound. The owl is a bird of ill omen for the Apaches, a dark-winged harbinger of death and doom. So I suppose it should be no surprise to find one gliding through this remote canyon, echoing with ghostly voices and dead cultures.

We rose just before dawn, making hasty preparations to capture the glory of first light, wondering whether we'd somehow missed most of the petroglyphs.

We hit the mother lode shortly after dawn, on the rock wall just below where I'd been sitting the night before listening for a sign in the darkness. The panels included a magnificent drawing of a big-horn with a full curl, numerous abstract designs, an exuberant little man, several inward-turning spirals, and some sort of giant lizard-looking creature with long out-stretched fingers. We scrambled from rock to rock like prospectors chasing a glittering vein of ore.

Once the light had grown hard and flat, we packed for the hike out. I had exhausted my camera battery. John Drew had finished off his film. As we turned to leave, he stopped and muttered disgustedly.

"What?" I said.

He pointed up the slope, perhaps 10 yards from where we'd slept. A small rich-brown boulder bore the etching of a big-horn sheep, depicted in midleap between rocks. The drawing remained fresh and lyrical, full of energy and humor, like a brilliant orange poppy sprouting unexpectedly from a crack in a cliff.

The ghosts had gathered 'round us after all, waiting to reveal themselves only after we had developed eyes to see.

WHEN YOU GO

For information about recreational opportunities in the Eagle Tails and the Eagletail Mountains Wilderness, contact the BLM, Yuma District Office, 3150 Winsor Ave., Yuma, AZ; (520) 317-3200.