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Buffalo Dancer |
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The reproduction rights for this image belong to Jim Zintgraff.
It may not be reproduced without written permission.
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| Over a period of at least four millennia, the people, whether indigenous or intrusive, who lived near the juncture of los tres rios, painted their worldview, their concept of the social order, and their way of life on the rockshelter walls. Whether stimulated to imitate the ancient ones or by artistic impulses inherent in their own culture, at least three new and different styles of cave painting postdate the Pecos River shamanic art. Each mirrors different concerns of such complexity that another photographic essay would be required to explore their iconography and ideology. The last of the native peoples were the Plains warrior tribes who in their days of glory lived according to two seasons of the year -- the time to hunt buffalo and the time to raid the ranches and settled communities across the Rio Grande. Hunted to extinction, man and beast, theirs is the final portrait of the indivisible dual nature of animal-human painted on the limestone canvas of los tres rios. Clad in his buffalo robe, the impersonator shaman dances erect on human feet beside the man who cannot see him. Although it may not have been the artist's intent, this painting reflects the ultimate destiny of an ancient religious tradition brought to the New World by one people and destroyed by the coming of another. |
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