How much hard evidence is there for the deterioration of the Lower Pecos paintings in historic times? (Part II)

Part II Clearly, the most devastating process affecting the rock art of the Lower Pecos is exposure to humankind. In the last newsletter, I presented several cases of the loss of specific pictographs to catastrophic natural events, but even there the lurking hand of modern economic development can be seen as a contributing if not precipitating agent. Although the flood of 1954 was caused by a hurricane stalling over the watershed, the potential for damage had been expanded by the effects of grazing animals. Denudation of the landscape is undoubtedly one of the major culprits in rock art deterioration. Another, less dramatic side effect of animal husbandry is seen in innumerable shelters where sheep and goats brushing against the walls have left a dense oily coating that obscures low-lying rock art. Some shelters, especially in Mexico, have been converted to corrals with the predictable results. Although it is commonly held that hundreds of sites were inundated by Lake Amistad, we have no accurate estimate of the number that held rock art. It is clear that some of Kirkland's sites are now under water. Other sites recorded previous to impoundment are also inundated, some unfortunately with little to no documentation. A number of pictographs have been recorded along the reservoir above water - these are usually smaller and more obscure sites. We must remember that the survey archeologists sent out in advance of reservoir construction labored under the burden of limited time, poor access, inadequate maps, and the constant bugaboo of little funding. Their mandate was to locate sites that could be excavated as well as significant rock art sites. It is to their credit - and that of the ranchers that helped them - that so many sites were documented. The downside is that excavation in itself is deleterious to rock art unless the wind-blown ashy dust can be kept from the paintings (a pet theory of mine based on observation only). Many local observers attribute the fading and blurring of the pictographs to heightened humidity from the reservoir. To my knowledge, this has yet to be objectively tested. My own personal (and untested) belief is that acid rain is a factor in accelerating deterioration. We can be sure, however, that the reservoir opened many previously inaccessible and well-guarded sites to the public - hunters, fishermen, recreational boaters, smugglers, artifact collectors (who definitely outnumber the archeologists and who undoubtedly sent up clouds of dust that dwarf the quantities unearthed in scientific digs) and the dreaded vandal horde. Long before the reservoir was conceived, the railroad exercised its right of eminent domain, disregarding the petroglyphs at Flat Rock in Upton County. There, the tracks now parallel a number of glyphs but others are lost beneath the berm. Nobody knows how many sites were obliterated in the Lower Pecos but it is recorded that an Indian Cave (Painted Cave?) was used to bury workers killed during the collapse of a bridge span. The most obvious and odious acts of individual or personalized destruction are vandalism, some patently purposeful and others a product of ignorance. The visitors to Seminole Canyon State Historical Park can no longer see the obscenities that once blazoned the walls of Fate Bell Shelter because the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department had the foresight to mask the bright green and orange epithets with water-based earth-tone removable paint that blends with the limestone. Such is not the case on private land where diverse media - pencil, magic marker, house paint, spray paint, charcoal, crayons, and ocher - have been used to deface the paintings. Too bad we will never know the true identity of the "Kickapoo Gang" who blazoned their name across the paintings at an elaborate pictograph site near the Devils River. A civil suit to force payment for its cleanup might have a sobering effect. Although the most modern substances are the most visible and difficult to remove, the human desire to obliterate and superimpose their own mark upon those of their predecessors apparently began in prehistory. Many paintings have been deeply scratched, some to the point of obliteration. A good example is the eponymous panther of Panther Cave, the most visited site in the region. The entire lower portion of the cat has been scraped and scratched as far as a person could reach from a perch on the ledge below. The most extreme case I can recall is in the Devil's River State Natural Area where an entire panel of figures, perhaps 20 feet long and encircling the walls of moderately sized shelter, had been so badly abraded that only traces of color remained. My friend and long-time rock art pioneer in Lesotho, Lucas Smits, tells how the modern native population scraped paint from the pictographs of their linguistically unrelated predecessors to mix it in the drinks imbibed by initiates during puberty ceremonies. The object was to capture the spiritual essence of the ancients. Although we can not securely credit the later Lower Pecos native people with a similar motive, the very few examples of overpainting that crosscuts styles (thus time) suggest that in general some sanctity was accorded to the paintings of artists from a bygone era. Such an honorable rationale can not be applied to the Buffalo Soldiers who used the bison-hunting scene at Meyers Springs for target practice, leaving the horses and riders riddled with bullet holes. Nor to the hunters on the Devils River who sighted their rifles on the turkey pictograph that gives Turkey Bluff its name. Both these sites were badly damaged decades ago so we can hope for a much more enlightened hunting ethic. The same early historic contempt or disregard for the work of what were considered to be primitive barbarians was deplored in some of the early accounts of travels across the Lower Pecos. In his 1854 diary of mineral explorations, Burr Duval bemoaned the stupidity of the soldiers and their officers whose untutored scrawls defaced the paintings at Meyers Springs (with additional comments on our vaunted civilization). He and others noted that the paintings at the much-frequented Painted Caves crossing of the Devils River had been obliterated by graffiti. Later, the railroad workers left their names in indelible black at many of the sites near the track in Seminole Canyon where they are sometimes now considered to be of some historical value although their contribution is, in my mind, dubious. By the time A.T. Jackson and Forrest Kirkland arrived on the scene in the 1930s, so much damage had been done by the supposed advance of civilization that both included severe criticisms in their publications. Recall that A.T. Jackson selected Fate Bell for excavation because it was the ravaged site on Seminole Canyon. Nevertheless, the sins of omission and commission continued. At San Martin, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, a Pecos River style panel was destroyed when the sheepherders fired the brush under the overhang in an attempt to destroy a flea infestation. I have seen fishermen sheltering in the site Kirkland called Hanging Cave (made accessible by the reservoir), lighting their camp fire under the paintings and installing their porta-potty on the talus cone - fortunately, I saw more of them than they saw of me. At Leaping Panthers on the Pecos River, a collector attempted (and may have succeeded) in cutting a slab from the face of the bedrock, removing the paws and claws of one of the leaping cats. Although I have not seen the site, one old-time rancher told me his mother had repainted the pictograph on their place with house paint in an attempt to keep the colors bright. I have seen several modern renditions (and pretty poor ones at that) of Pecos River style figures, one of which actually passed muster with the archeologists who originally recorded the site. The rancher knew better. Petroglyphs are not immune; they are just rarer in this region. Rude attempts at humor aimed at the genitals of a lizard-man figure at Lewis Canyon were scratched into the rock and will prove difficult to remove. Spilled paint has left luminous blue and green blotches amidst the glyphs, surely an accident but nevertheless disconcerting. Luckily, the modern attempts to create glyphs have failed due to lack of skill and patience on the part of the vandals. This litany of overt acts could go on for pages but the point has been made - the single greatest enemy of the rock art is people and as exposure grows so does the risk. This certain knowledge is one motive for the RAF's Lewis Canyon Preservation Program. In cooperation with the landowners, the RAF plans to reduce the potential for active, aggressive vandalism and less dramatic wear-and-tear from increased visitation.