Essays

Moseying: History of the Southern Llano Estacado

Pictographs of Paint Rock revisited
December 31, 2003

"It is fascinating to sit and listen to the elders speak, to hear the old stories," a Comanche visitor to the Sibley Center recently told me. In American Indian cultures elders are treasured keepers of history. On the winter solstice of 2003 my wife Deborah, myself, and our twenty-something nursing student offspring again spent time at Fred and Kay Campbell's Paint Rock ranch, watching sundaggers mark the return of longer days. Native Americans used sundaggers as calendars -- where the Indians observed sunlight passing through cracks in the rocks of cliffs for a few minutes just a few days a year, they then placed a pictograph where the sunlight shaft hit.

Fred and Kay are elders to whom west Texans should listen. About 25 people had gathered that day. Mr. Campbell showed newcomers what to look for, and gave short talks about what archaeologists, Indians and others think about various pictographs visible along the cliff. About 45 minutes before the illumination of showiest of the four pictographs he stopped by where Deborah, An, and I were sitting.

Deborah asked him about one of the pictographs and his answer led to other questions and before we knew it he had "hunkered" down with us. I asked him about Captain Jack Hays fighting Comanches in the neighborhood for two days in 1842 -- "that happened downriver a quarter mile or so." The depth of his knowledge of the history of the lower Concho River valley is incredible. Mr. Campbell has read the Captain Mendoza report of 1684 and Francisco Amangual's report from 1808 and "a slew" of other resources in his goal of learning all that he can about the pictographs. We talked for ten or fifteen minutes.

One of the reasons that people visit Europe is for the "sense of history palpitating from every brick." We have history here, too, but we Americans seem to ignore it. The stories of place are not "common knowledge." It is a wonderful blessing to find people that do treasure such knowledge. The Campbells are getting up in years, but still give tours of the pictographs. Visitors must call the Campbells for an appointment (915-732-4376), and pay six dollars a person.

Many of the visitors present that winter solstice day had been on earlier tours and heard of the sundaggers and returned. Each came up to Mr. Campbell and thanked him for the chance to see the sundaggers and for the stories. West Texans should make plans to visit the Campbells soon. In their small visitor's center, be sure to see the 6 stained glass windows that both Mr. and Mrs. Campbell made -- one is of the "star pictograph" mentioned below.

Mrs. Campbell joined us a little later. As we waited for the earth to move ever so slowly, we gazed upon the cliff. Mrs. Campbell kept pointing out subtle changes of light upon the wall. "When the light hits to the right of the pictograph down and to the left of the shield, you will be able to see the figure of a man with his arms upraised. When the sun moves on, you will not be able to see it. Right above it, the sunlight pattern will look like a wolf."

Fascinated, we became aware of the subtle changes of light and shadow, and it became a game to find shapes in the patterns of light. "Now -- see the wolf -- but you know, it looks more like a fox with pointed ears." A few minutes later one of the people nearby commented that the nose of the canine had grown larger -- "now it looks like a bear." As everybody looked for the bear, Deborah spoke up -- "It is sniffing noses with a roadrunner," and sure enough, the image of the roadrunner became obvious to all. Later she told me that in what the others had seen as a fox she saw as an owl or raven.

"I wonder if there was a story told around the changing shape of the animals, and the image of the roadrunner. I bet Indians sat here and did as we are doing, " mused Mrs. Campbell.

Bill Yeates, president of the Concho Valley Archaeological Society spoke up, "Indians often had lots of free time on their hands. Think about it -- if you kill a hundred buffalo you have meat for days and days and days. This area was the wintering ground of the southern herd of buffalo, you know. They probably would sit around with a full belly, on a beautiful sunny winter day like today, chatting and telling stories of the hunt, and watch the cliff and see the shapes the sun and the shadows create. And if a child was near and pointed out a shape, they surely would have made up a story to go along with what the child saw."

Mr. Bob Anderson, a garlic farmer from Bangs, Texas walked up with some papers in his hand. He had taken a picture of one pictograph and had superimposed the shapes on a star map. What had appeared to be abstract shapes took on a new meaning. One interpretation of that abstract form that I had heard from Mr. Yeates told a story of a figure walking up a shaft of light, carrying various objects. The slow, casual pace of the day, the stories of history and imagination, and the idea that stories are always in the process of creation made a powerful impression on me.

As we did last year, we gathered in a circle around Mr. Anderson playing his flute, raptly listening to his music, and watching the sun dagger that slowly crept across the pictograph until it reached the center of the design. The pictograph is of a shield, with five lobes outside of either side of the lower point of the shield. In the center of a dark space within the shield is a star, and the sun dagger’s light reached the center of the star at 12.37 p.m., the exact midday point of the winter solstice.

We Americans often want our information to be "definitive." We often defend our theories in a challenging tone, as if to say, "There is only one right interpretation - mine." The varying interpretations of the pictographs are all possible -- nobody really knows what meaning they might have once had.

The next day at the Sibley Center I had the above-mentioned visitor of Comanche heritage. We chatted about the loss of much of the Comanche language, and the old stories of places that have been lost. I asked him about the pictographs at Paint Rock, and he corroborated some of what Mr. And Mrs. Campbell have heard from other Comanches. I told him about the varying interpretations, and he observed, "When American Indian tribes met, they often sat and exchanged creation stories. When a Christian missionary joined in, the missionary usually condemned the Indian creation stories as heathen falsehoods and declared that there was only one true creation story. The Indians usually shrugged and said something like; "all religious trails lead to the top of the same mountain -- all of the stories are about good and truth and holiness." And, personally," my visitor continued, "I believe that is truly the American way -- to respect all people and their beliefs."

Related Essay: The Pictographs of Paint Rock