Rock art is always evocative. Whether the imagery is painted on a cave wall or pecked into a boulder, we can’t help but wonder what it means, and about the people who created it and the world in which they lived. But answers are often elusive. Rock art is tough to date – and images at a single site might have been created thousands of years apart, by very different cultures.
In our region, a rock-art style called “Big Bend Bold” seems to be an exception. Archeologist Tim Roberts, who recently retired from Texas Parks & Wildlife, named the style in 2010. He argues that this imagery is connected with an identifiable culture, and a very consequential chapter in West Texas history.
“Others had this inkling that something was going on,” Roberts said of Big Bend Bold rock art, “but I just managed to put the time in and visit these sites and pull it together. One thing with archeologists is that we're all basically building on the work that's been done by others before us.”
Roberts described Big Bend Bold in a Journal of Big Bend Studies article, based on five sites. One is at the western edge of Big Bend National Park. The others are in the Bofecillos Mountains of Big Bend Ranch State Park.
The images are truly distinctive. All are painted in black or dark green. They’re larger, and their lines bolder or thicker, than other rock art here. There are human, animal and abstract images. And then there are figures that evoke a very particular moment.
“There were horse-and-rider figures done in that style,” Roberts said, “including one that had a Spanish-style saddle. So I was able to say that that style continued at least into early contact with the Spanish in the region.”
The Bofecillos sites are near the Rio Grande, and present-day Redford. When the Spanish arrived, the area around the confluence of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos, known as La Junta, sustained thriving farming villages. The Spanish counted 15 communities, and as many nations or cultural groups. Big Bend Bold rock art, Roberts argues, was likely created by La Junta villagers, both before and after European contact.
Why would La Juntans have painted these images, on canyon walls in the rugged Bofecillos? Spanish missionaries wrote dismissively of villagers journeying into the mountains for their “witchcrafts and idolatries.” These sites, Roberts said, may have been places of ceremony.
The images may offer a glimpse of that ceremonial life. One site features a human image next to that of a canine. Then, there’s an image of a canine with six legs – as if the person and the creature have fused. Roberts believes this represents a shamanic transformation – in which a religious specialist in a trance state merged with an animal ally, to secure guidance or healing.
The arrival of Europeans was, of course, an event of great significance. Cabeza de Vaca is thought to have passed through in 1535; the La Juntans fed the starving Spaniard. But in the decades that followed, La Junta people mostly experienced Europeans via their periodic slave raids.
An intrepid hiker might encounter Big Bend Bold imagery, but park officials don’t publicize locations, to protect the sites. And these images are fragile. Most are painted on volcanic tuff – a material that crumbles easily.
“There's really no way to prevent weathering at this point,” Roberts said. “It's going to be another situation where the most we can do is document this imagery and record our thoughts about it, because it eventually will go away.”
The descendants of La Juntans endure in our region. As, for now, does this striking rock art – speaking of a tumultuous time in the Big Bend.
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