In Indian Country, the historical record goes back thousands of years, inscribed for eternity upon the land itself.
It comes to us in the stories passed through each generation, yes: an oral history for peoples who often decline to reduce their languages to written form, so as to avoid dilution of its power resulting from invasive access to it by those for whom it is not meant. Our peoples have always known, better than most, that words have power. They have also long known the importance not only of choosing one’s own words wisely, but of choosing who may hear them.
But even in those places where, as here, the language remains unwritten, embodied only in the voice and sound of its Native speakers to whom it was given by blood, there remains a written record. It may be difficult to decipher now, particularly for those who are not of the blood of those who first wrote it, painstakingly etching its images and meaning in the earth’s own surface. And perhaps that is only as it should be, reserving our various peoples’ own true histories for them, one less piece to be stolen.
We are told constantly, by white “experts” both professionally-appointed and entirely self-styled, that our forebears’ record is not language: that it is “primitive,” that the images could not possibly be considered the written word. Why, then, do they all universally accept the old adae of he dominant culture that “a picture is worth a thousand words?”
It’s an example of the cognitive dissonance of cultural superciliousness, an attitude and practice that ignore reality in order to elevate one’s own culture and keep others “in their place.” After all, what is an alphabet but a collection of images, of symbols used, when combined in specific ways, to represent words, and concepts and sounds? The modern conception of the written word has flexibility and diversity on its side, true, but older conceptions have efficiency on theirs. And there can be no question that our ancestors understood the utility of putting their thoughts, their experiences and histories, visions and dreams, down in inscribed form for posterity, using the tools and tablets available to them.
In this part of Indian Country, we have several monuments in which such writing is enshrined and (to a degree) protected: The Petroglyphs on Albuquerque’s west side; Three Rivers Petroglyphs in the south-central part of the state; the petroglyphs at the ancient site that is now known as Pueblo San Cristóbal in the Galisteo Basin some distance south of here. There are others, too, smaller sites ensconced within the safety and security of tribal boundaries, but those are not open to the public. The three mentioned above are all open, but have protected status, although that has prevented neither individual graffiti nor industrialized destruction.
Wings took these photos at San Cristóbal some eight or nine years ago, on a brilliantly sunny day when the light shows off the artwork of the land of itself. It is an ancient volcanic land, this place: once covered entirely with water, millions of years ago, waters that carved canyons through the earth’s surface and, receding, left exposed mesas and cliffs and great stacked hoodoos of old stone. Now, it is a silent village of sandstone and slate and basaltic outcroppings, of ancient spirits and ancestral memory etched in the earth.
The images themselves come clear on the dark gray rock silhouetted against the indigo sky, their meanings less so: It’s possible to identify human figures, some engaged in clearly-defined activities; some are animals, but it’s not possible now to tell whether they were representations of actual animals or spirit beings, or both simultaneously; some clearly evoke the sky spirits, but their significance still escapes definition with any kind of certainty. One orb-like image is edged in rays — fifty-two of them, to be precise. Was it an expression of the sun cycle of a year, divided into fifty-two weeks? It stands upon a slender stalk; could it be something as simple as a sunflower, or as complex as the linking of the flower to the sun that is its modern namesake? Or perhaps it’s an invocation of the spirit world, in which the sun is tethered by powers greater yet, to ensure that it does not fall out of the sky? [Such a conceptualization, by the way, would be entirely scientific, and would certainly comport with modern principles of physics. There’s nothing “primitive” about an understanding of the natural world expressing itself in such a way as that.]
Close up, the images change, grow more specific, their stories more individualized. On the left, a clearly human figure preceded by an animal of some sort: Coyote? Wolf? Spirit creature? On the right, what looks like a human face, yet entirely outsized when compared to the other figures. A representation of Father Sun? Another spirit being? Or simply a human face added by another scribe at a different time, with a meaning known only to him or her?
What interests me about this photo is the surface upon which its artisan[s] chose to leave the marks. It captures the warm grays of the slate, accented with the subtle reds of eons of oxidation and run-off; the silky, velvety texture of the stone’s surface, an almost tactile perception despite its two-dimensional form. But step back, and the sections of stone, fitted together at bold rents in the surface like a child’s jigsaw puzzle, assume another, larger form: the entire rock formation resembles a giant gray tortoise, eye, mouth, and great chin at upper left, short legs below, massive plated body forming the bulk of the outcropping.
Seen up close, the image changes yet again:
The plates of the tortoise’s giant shell assume pride of place, rifts and clefts in the rock face forming the sections of his armor, fitted together with seamless perfection. Across the cleavage of the surface, a human figure dances, arms aloft, next to his animal companion.
It’s human art, the artwork of the ancestors, layered atop the art of Nature herself. Both have survived eons’ worth of weather and sun and human exposure, eroding and shifting and melding together into something truly worthy of the word timeless.
Whatever its original intent, whatever its ultimate message, it’s one that has survived the test of time far better than most of what we think of as “words.”
That alone is a message for our peoples.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
