Touching Stone​​​ Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA
Bighorn Ruins Pastel on paper Akiko Hirano
Bighorns & Water Babies
Akiko Hirano & Tim Wong
It was unseasonably warm for October. Kuro-e paused at the edge of a mesa where the smooth slickrock plunged down on both sides like rollercoasters, leaving a narrow spit of land squeezed between two canyons. A distinctive rock formation perched on the promontory like a giant mushroom. She took out her binoculars to look at a rock pile on top of another large boulder. It was remnant of a fallen stone structure, too small and exposed for habitation, perhaps a lookout. The broad area around the giant rocks was flat like a plaza. She walked to the tip of the promontory. It had a 360-degree view of the surrounding canyons that drained into the San Juan River. The sacred Navajo Mountain beckoned on the distant horizon. It occurred to her that this location could be ideal for ceremonial gatherings. If so, the participants must live in the vicinity.
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She scrambled down the side of the promontory. There, protected under the overhang of the massive caprock, were a row of seven remarkably well-preserved rooms. The smaller rooms were granaries with roofs of juniper branches and mud mortar, their floors scattered with corncobs. The larger rooms at the far end made use of the alcove ceiling as their roofs. The last room was especially long and spacious, and apparently received special treatment. Its front wall by the entrance was decorated with delicate pieces of stone inlays, creating zigzag patterns. Its long side wall bore imprints of corn ears and fat finger impressions. The floor was devoid of any corncob inside. Even though that room had ample space for habitation, its square opening seemed too small for a doorway, and the opening had door stops for a tight seal with a stone slab, a feature more common in granaries.
Door with inlay decorations
Photo Tim Wong
Bighorn sheep pictographs & Granary Photo Tim Wong
She sat under the caprock taking out an apple for lunch. On the wall above her were two conspicuous pictographs of bighorn sheep, painted with red ochre. They perched over the ruins like guardians of the community. Bighorn sheep are considered a sacred animal, symbolizing strength and resilience. Desert bighorns are a subspecies of the American bighorn sheep that first migrated across the Bering land bridge from Asia to the New World some 75,000 years ago. It once numbered in the millions, ranging from North America to present day Mexico. Numerous pictographs and petroglyphs of the animal throughout North America indicate it was once the mainstay of Native Americans. Disease and overhunting have reduced the populations to the mere thousands before conservation efforts to save the species. The remaining populations cling to remote rugged territories. Kuro-e once encountered a family of bighorns on a hike on a desert peak in California. Rounding a corner, she heard erratic hoofbeats and turned in time to catch a male leading two females scrambling across a steep slope. In the blink of an eye, they vanished like ghosts over the ridge. She tried to imagine hunting such an agile animal with bow and arrow. The Edge of Cedars Museum in Blanding has these extraordinary items found in a nearby ruin: two strings of exquisitely made arrowheads tied with yucca cords, no doubt the prized possession of a hunter. A Ute guide once told her arrowheads were disposable and often damaged once used. Good arrow shafts were hard to make and were often reused. She imagined the hunter carrying strings of arrowheads like an ammunition belt. Those tiny arrowheads almost seemed inadequate against a big animal like bighorn sheep. Even after a hit, it must have been an arduous trek to track down the injured animal. Perhaps that pair of bighorn pictographs were a commemoration of a particularly memorable hunt.
Arrowheads on Yucca Cords
Photo Tim Wong
Newspaper Rock Photo Tim Wong
On the far side of the rooms were a jumble of car-sized boulders. Kuro-e squeezed between them and found a large rock covered with old petroglyphs. There were stars and spirals, snakes and figures, many badly eroded. It was like a ‘newspaper rock’ recording past events. She found a deep cave behind that rock. The wall by its entrance was covered with red handprints, some bold and some barely visible. This place was occupied for a very long time. She lowered her head and walked into the cave. The ground was black and moist. Hidden in the dark recess was a seeping spring.
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Beyond the cave, a large boulder leaning against the cliff wall formed a low arch. She ducked under to crawl through and emerged on the other side to a small amphitheater with natural rocks to sit on. It could have been a good gathering place for a family or two. On the cliff wall, she spotted three most unusual and puzzling pictographs: fish-like creatures with human faces, fins instead of arms and legs. She could not recall seeing any image like these anywhere else. Unlike the red bighorn pictographs, these were rendered in white. Could these be painted by a different people?
Mysterious pictographs
Photo Tim Wong
Mythological stories of half-human-half-fish creatures were held by many Native American tribes. In particular, the Ute who occupied the area around San Juan River believed a mysterious being called Pa’ ah a pache (Water Baby) lurked in the river. Water Babies had the body of a human baby and the tail of a fish. They cried like human babies and could lure people into the water and drown them. One story told of a woman who left her baby in a cradleboard by the river. A Water Baby removed the woman’s baby and climbed into the cradleboard. The mother returned but did not realize her baby was switched and nursed the Water Baby. It swallowed the mother and disappeared back into the river.
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Back on top of the caprock, a light breeze washed away the lingering afternoon heat. Kuro-e stood at the edge of the promontory, watching the sun slowly sink behind clouds over Navajo Mountain. Between here and there, on the walls of every convoluted canyon, lived the stories of untold generations. In a few hours, when the sky gave back the colors to the stars, the land would transform into a domain of dreams and fantasies. Until the next sunrise, the imagined and unknowable would take form, and become real.