Mysterious Earth Drawings

A VANISHING WON Arizona's Geoglyphs

The delicate line drawings

[PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 6 AND 7] Ancestors of today's Colorado River Indian tribes inscribed giant sprawling figures into the earth - geoglyphs - depicting the myths and legends of their culture. An immense arrow dominates a group of 14 geoglyphs south of Quartzsite and dwarfs even the power poles, but the Plomosa Mountains on the horizon (inset) put it in a different perspective.

[ABOVE AND OPPOSITE PAGE] Known as “the Fisherman,” this geoglyph of a human figure holding a spear, with fish swimming below and a sun shining above, may represent the Creator forming the Colorado River.

that stretch across the basin floor look as if the next strong breeze might simply erase them with a film of dust. But the symbolic figures, faintly inscribed into the hard desert ground on a grand scale visible only from the air, actually may have endured for centuries. According to archaeologists who have studied the figures, they were created by the Pai, the forebears of the Colorado River Indian tribes of today. Not so long ago, however, no one knew they were there.

One geoglyph 85 miles north of Yuma depicts a man fishing with a white-quartz-tipped spear. While it covers 1,600 square feet of rocky desert ground, it wasn't sighted until a museum worker flew over it in the 1970s. Although stylized fish swim below his feet and the sun casts rays of light toward his head, don't assume the figure represents merely a fisherman.

Boma Johnson, my guide and teacher for the day, gave a sly smile as he gazed over the landscape that holds the secret of this fisherman. Johnson, an archaeologist, retired after 25 years with the Yuma office of the Bureau of Land ManManagement to offer lectures, tours and consulting through his own company, Archaeology Plus. Along with his knowledge of petroglyphs, pictographs and geoglyphs of the Southwest, he brings insight gleaned from his many years of ethnologic study with the Quechan, Maricopa, Mojave and Cocopah Indian tribes of the Colorado River Basin.

“To children and tourists, he is a fisherman,” Johnson said, explaining that geoglyphs often have several layers of meaning-rocky double entendres, so to speak.

The archaeologist pointed to the spear. Varying myths passed down from local Indian tribes tell similar stories of how they believe “the Fisherman” has stabbed the spear point into the earth to set free the waters of the nearby Colorado River.

“The spear point is the source and power of the Creator,” Johnson explained. “It's the mythological version of how the water came to be. The spear being made out of quartz is highly significant. White quartz is very sacred rock to the people of this region.

We know today that quartz carries a form of energy. A quartz crystal placed in an electric field oscillates at a constant frequency and can be used to control devices that require precise regulation, like watches. And while this technology is relatively new, it appears some Indians have understood something of this energy phenomenon for hundreds of years.

The Fisherman numbers among the 600 recorded geoglyphs that have been discovered on both sides of the Colorado and Gila rivers, stretching throughout Arizona and California and into Mexico.

Archaeologists once thought these geoglyphs were produced between 500 and 10,000 years ago. Today they believe most of them were created within the last 500 years. Accurate dating remains nearly impossible because it's difficult to determine when a rock was turned over or moved, the basic process used in creating the geoglyphs.

A closer look at the ground's surface reveals a top layer of small stones locked together in a sort of natural mosaic called desert pavement. When the stones are scraped away, the lighter soil beneath is revealed. Larger stones packed in berms outline the edges of the geoglyphs. Were the small rocks not naturally grouted together, the drawings would have quickly disappeared, scoured away by wind and water.

The first modern documentation of a Colorado River Basin geoglyph came in 1931, when pilot George Palmer spotted from the air the immense image of a man with outstretched arms drawn on the desert floor near Blythe, California. Palmer found three huge human figures-the largest measured 176 feet long-as well as two animal figures. The group became known as theLaForge looked down at a giant snake symbol, a curving line almost 150 feet long bearing two even darker desert-varnished rocks for eyes.Blythe Intaglios, a term describing engraved marks depressed below the surface so that an impression from the design would yield an image in relief. "Intaglio" later gave way to the more general term "geoglyph," meaning carv-ing or inscription on the earth.

Johnson gazed at the tableau at his feet.

"The only places we have gravel like this is the original area of what is called the Lower Colorado River drainage basin," he said. "The geoglyphs are all found on this terrain. Once you run out of this gravel, you run out of geoglyphs."

A horned toad, with its fat belly and mottled, spiky skin, scuttles over the rocky ground and under a creosote bush near the Fisherman. The arid, forbidding land it inhabits is bordered by mountains on three sides and a rolling, rockyplain to the west. Twenty-five miles away, past dusty mesquite trees and scraggly cholla cacti, the Colorado River wends its way south. Which brings up the question: Why here?

'Tread lightly... the tracks from the pioneers driving their wagons – we know that's more than 100 years ago – are still very distinct.'

"These figures that are not on the river have to do typically with a trail that eventually reaches the river," Johnson said as he glanced across the plain. "They probably chose this place to relate the water holes to the river. The water was sacred because it was necessary for life. Water represented a gift from the Creator."

Johnson drove us in his camper, with bumper stickers that read "Sacred Sites Are More Precious Than Gold" and "Walk in Balance on Mother Earth," up onto an area of desert pavement just south of Quartzsite known as the Big Arrow Geoglyphs. Wire fencing 82 feet long and 66 feet wide rings several geoglyphs, the most prominent in the shape of a large arrow. Interestingly, an imaginary straight line drawn from the arrow's tip would lead right back to the Fisherman, 16 miles away. A continuation of that line would mark a route that once led to several large water holes near Bouse. Like the Fisherman, the Big Arrow Geoglyphs include a sun. Again, this sun is more than what it appears to be.

"The sun is the sun in the sky, but it is also an identifier for the person who is the son of the Creator/Father God Kukumat," Johnson said. Also common to about a dozen Colorado River geoglyphs is a flying serpent, which indicates the son of the Kukumat.

"The serpent represents the Creator," Johnson theorized from his study of local mythology. "He comes out of the sky world and is eventually killed by the people. Then he goes in death into the underworld and transforms into a beautiful bird and goes back into the sky. He endures a transformation coming from the sky world, becoming mortal, dying and being reborn."

One theory suggests that the Colorado Basin geoglyphs were meant for only the gods to see, hence their monumental size. Perhaps whichever ancient peoples made them were doing what they could to reach into the heavens.

A hot breeze blew over the desert pavement. The stones appear as uniformly brown with a faint sheen. The sun-baked sheen covers only the exposed tops of the rocks, a phenomenon known as desert varnish, a patina similar to rust on iron or verdigris on copper.

Archaeologist Aline LaForge of the Bureau of Land Managment's Lake Havasu office explained about a dating technique associated with desert varnish that is complicated and controversial: “They’re experimenting with desert varnish, capturing organic materials and doing accelerated mass spectrometer dating of carbon that gets trapped. The idea is that things get disturbed, new rocks are exposed and then they gradually start to varnish again. It sets a baseline.”

Having taken us to a site about 12 miles east of Parker, LaForge looked down at a giant snake symbol, a curving line almost 150 feet long bearing two even darker desert-varnished rocks for eyes. Archaeologists who first recorded this site noted another figure nearby, a nest of baby snakes, but that drawing has vanished over the decades. Though wind and rain hardly affect the geoglyphs, modern man and his vehicles rapidly destroy them.

“Tread lightly,” LaForge always advises anyone who might come upon a geoglyph. She pointed out, “The tracks from the pioneers driving their wagons-we know that’s more than 100 years ago-are still very distinct.” Aerial photographs of the geoglyph sites show a vast array of modern vehicle tracks nearby. The Snake, the Fisherman and the Big Arrow Geoglyphs are fenced in to deter people from driving over them. LaForge laments, however, that the necessary protective fencing and oversight responsibilities may detract from the ancient Indian art. “If this was a sacred property to you, would you destroy the integrity of the site by allowing anything modern to intrude?” LaForge asked. “When we put any area into what we call 'public use,' it requires a tremendous amount of management: You will put in trails. You will put in signs. You will have people watching all the time. It changes the character of the property.” Some of the local Indians would like the fences taken down, the roads to the sites closed and the geoglyphs left alone because of their sacredness.

It’s a dilemma that land stewards such as the BLM have to deal with. For now, they’re opting to allow the public to visit and learn about these irreplaceable antiquities while preserving them behind fences for future generations to treasure.

Science has unlocked the energy of quartz crystals and may be partway to unraveling the chemical process of desert varnish, but the ancient messages behind the Southwest’s desert geoglyphs remain tantalizingly hidden, an undeciphered puzzle honored by the desert. AH