ANCIENT TEXAS CAVE ART
The Shamanic Pictographs of the Canyons
of the Lower Pecos River Region
of the Lower Pecos River Region
Altamira (Spain), Lascaux and Chauvet (France), Magura (Bulgaria), Gilf Kevir (Egypt), Bhimbetka (India), Cueva de las Manos (Argentina), and Laas Gaal (South Africa) are the most famous examples of ancient cave art. Some date to 40,000 b.C and others are more recent; only a few thousand years old, they correspond to the period after the last glaciation. To the surprise of many, Texas has its own expression of cave art that merits special attention because of its significance and continuity.
WINDOW TO THE PAST (Video)
WINDOW TO THE PAST (Video)
To this list we must add The Lower Pecos River region, as shown in the following map. What today is a desert, in ancient times was part of the more fertile and cooler southern plains. The Pecos river was a major highway from the southern rockies to its confluence on the Rio Grande.
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| Modern sculpture by Bill Worrell of a Shaman near the Visitor Center and Museum at Seminole Canyon State Park |
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| Shelter dweller using a hand mill "mano" to grind seeds. Fragment of a diorama at the museum |
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| Major canyons with cave art The first two locations left of Comstock are in Seminole Canyon. All others are on private lands
Ancient animal migrations were followed by human hunters. In this region, the rivers have carved canyons with steep walls which naturally created a series of alcoves, or shallow caves. Some of these sites have archaelogical evidence of human habitation dating to 10,000 b. C., or earlier. It is also the same desert the Spaniards mistakenly called "el gran despoblado" (The great uninhabited) in the XVI century, as they never found any Indian settlements. Since paleo-Indian times, numerous different aboriginal groups continued to survive in this region as nomadic, seasonal hunters-gatherers up until the XIX century. They were still living a neolithic culture in modern times. The Franciscan missions gathered many of them, others were pushed or exterminated by Apaches, and others emigrated south and west into the sierras of Mexico. What they left in the alcoves is an extraordinary expression of Shamanic culture. Their pictographs focus greatly on human-like figures in different manifestations and the presence of animals or others symbols seems less important. In this sense, the Pecos pictographs are distinct from the other famous caves, where animals or symbols take precedence. The main paintings are about 4,000 years old.
One location that is easily available in spite of the harsh conditions of the area, and the logistical complications of being a border region with tensions, are two caves or alcoves in Seminole Canyon State Historical Park. It is located 45 mins. NW of Del Rio, Texas.
SEMINOLE CANYON STATE PARK (Read)
This aerial view shows the Museum and Visitor Center near the ridge of the canyon, a trail leading down to the riverbed and the long shadow on the wall that identifies the alcove. In this section, the riverbed is dry, except during flash floods. As the canyon gets closer to the Rio Grande, the river has permanent water as it is part of the inpoundment of Lake Amistad. The second site, known as Panther Cave, can only be reached by boat.
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| 102 F. with breeze in mid-July |
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| 112 F. on the riverbed because of refraction and reflection. |
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| Fate Bell Shelter in the shade at noon. 85 F. cool. View towards the NE |
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| Fate Bell Shelter View towards the south and the Rio Grande. Full protection from the afternoon sun |
THE SHAMANS OF THE LOWER PECOS
The word "shaman" is of Central Asian origin, but it has been used in anthropology to describe the significant role that a type of leader had in many ancient social groups. Shamanic culture still exists in many parts of the world. The most accepted functions of a shaman would be a combination of healer-spiritual guide-sage.
The medicine man -the healer- role demanded knowledge of available plant, animal and mineral resources, as well as basics of human anatomy and functions.
The sage -oracle, profet- required knowledge and wisdom. They were also the keepers of tradition and history, the story-tellers, the teachers.
The spiritual guide connected events with causes, it helped transition at death, it interpreted the order of things and demanded conformity of behavior.
The shaman travels to the spirit world -sometimes in the sky, sometimes in the underworld- by transcending his own consciousness and entering into an dream state, by becoming an animal or by taking its spirit. These ecstatic trances were reached either auto-hypnotically or through the use of intoxicants. We still call alcohol "spirits". There is evidence all over the walls of the Pecos cave art of shamans-part animals, in situations of dance, arms high, reaching for the sky. Symbols represent ancient atl-atls for the hunt, datura plants and peyote cactus, snakes (water), and deer as the most frequently depicted animal. Deer, even today, is the only abundant source of animal protein in this part of the world.
Most of the pictographs are located on the back, curved walls of the alcoves, extending to the ceiling. The paintings are damaged by weathering and chemical seeping from the underground.
In some areas, the paintings are on what would be the ceiling. One has to assume that many have been lost, as it is the ceiling that continues to weather, crack, crumble and fall.
Archaeological artifacts of an even earlier time are no doubt still waiting to be researched under several feet of debris that piled on top of the original floor. Analysts have concluded that the paintings in the area correspond to at least three different epochs, as the style, themes and materials vary.
This panel at Fate Bell Shelter clearly depicts five shaman involved in a dance, interacting with each other.
They are not separate paintings. The position of the feet would indicate that they were in a circle, some are facing the viewer and others show their backs. This was an actual event that happened in that spot, thousands of years ago.
In a way, these murals are books that remain to be read, in a language that may be lost to time.
The second site at this location is Panther Cave. Pumas or mountain lions are also referred to as panthers, Pumas are and have been the predator of these region. They represent power and it is one of the sacred "naguales" or protective spirits. PANTHER CAVE VIDEO 
This pictograph is the famous "White Shaman", painted on a large wall panel at Delicado Shelter, a site not in Seminole Canyon, but along the main channel of the Pecos River Canyon.
There are more than 300 documented rock shelters in the area containing petroglyphs and pictographs. The Rock Art Foundation and the Shumla Archaeological Research and Education Center have taken the stewardship of many sites, allied with the private property owners of the Texas side of the region. As time goes by, the remains of these monuments to the ancient human creativity and fundamental beliefs are disappearing. ROCK ART FOUNDATION SHUMLA ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH & EDUCATION CENTER
Two books are important to understand this chapter of Texas pre-history.
"The Rock Art of Texas Indians", written by W. W. Newcomb Jr. with illustrations of Forrest Kirkland. More important than the text, which is dated in its time, are the watercolors. After viewing Indian rock paintings on a bluff above the Concho River near Paint Rock, Texas, in 1934, the late Dallas artist Forrest Kirkland was seized with an idea. He wrote later, "Here was a veritable gallery of primitive art at the mercy of the elements and the hands of a destructive people. In a few more years only the hundreds of deeply carved names and smears of modern paint would remain to mark the site of the paintings left by the Indians.... What was at first merely a suggestion in my mind soon became a solemn command. I was a trained artist able to make accurate copies of these Indian paintings. I should save them from total ruin."
 
Kirkland devoted a good part of the rest of his life to copying pictographs and petroglyphs at some eighty far-flung sites in Texas. In The Rock Art of Texas Indians, his meticulous watercolor copies of this rich and diversified art are reproduced, thirty-two in full color, the rest in black and white. The informative and engaging text is contributed by W. W. Newcomb, Jr., former director of the Texas Memorial Museum and author of The Indians of Texas.
This inventory covers other areas of Texas besides the Lower Pecos rock shelters.
The second book provides a great insight into the specifics of the Lower Pecos region. In "The Rock Art of the Lower Pecos", Carolyn Boyd has created an interpretive guide to many of the pictographs. She has identified very repetitive symbols that appear as part of the apparel of the shamans, as part of the compositions where the shamans are in action, or isolated as significant parts of different wall panels. She has identified many as plants used by indigenous people even today because of their hallucinogenic properties. Two stand out: the datura plant and the small, plump peyote cactus.
These two plants naturally grow in the area and native peoples have traveled from afar, for thousands of years, in search of them. Their harvest was free until the mid XX century when their use was declared illegal as part of the war against drugs. Nevertheless, the shamanic culture is still very much alive, and has even been recognized in the law. The Native American Church was legally accepted in the XIX century in Oklahoma, then considered the amalgamated Indian Territory, where hundreds of different tribes were congregated by force. Today, this church claims a membership of more than 250,000, with a very loose connection to the ancient shamans.
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On the southern part of the border, these ancient practices are very much alive in their original, authentic form, as described in the May 2012 issue of Discover magazine.
Written by the same Carolyn Boyd, the evidence moves from archaeology to ethnography. She has found the descendants of the Lower Pecos people still vibrant in their ancient rituals and beliefs. If you are interested in this topic, click on the link and read. It is really a must!
The article ends: "In July 2010 Boyd invited a Huichol shaman from the Sierra Madre to White Shaman. In his sixties, bright-eyed with a square jaw, the shaman wore traditional dress: a wide-brimmed hat, a brightly colored woven shoulder bag, flowing white pants, and a shirt embroidered with small deer figures and colorful peyote symbols. For some minutes he studied the mural. He pointed to the watery, black-and-red underworld in the West, to the antler-headed human, to the humans marching across the rock face, then to the deities rising above each of the humans.
Then the shaman started weeping. “These are my grandfathers’ grandfathers’ grandfathers’ grandfathers,” he said through his tears."
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