Heritage, Volume 7, Number 3, Summer 1989 Page: 15
31 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Many symbols reappear frequently on the iron-red sandstone rockfaces in Alamo
Canyon. A bisected circle will lead you to water, but more often mountain sheep
(right) were pecked. Rock writing may actually be a more accurate description of
what we call "rock art" since so many shapes were probably messages or markersof that time.
He writhes across the ceiling in company
with a bear, a wolf, a collared jaguar, all of
them brought up from deep in Mexico by
the puchteca, the ancient itinerant traders
who built a network of trade trails north
and south the extent of which we're only
now beginning dimly to realize. Above the
cave, scattered along a trail and clustered
about fossil spring sites are Shumla style
petroglyphs and others even older in time.
A month spent hiking here at Site One
wouldn't be enough to explore its wonders-and
this is only one of more than 20
sites known to date in the immediate area.
Alamo Canyon country lies along the
path of the age-old trade trail. Aside from
the petroglyphs, the pecked designs, the
pictographs, the paintings-artifacts have
been found in the looted sand which tell of
their origin in Paquime, the trading center
in Chihuahua which was burned and all its
inhabitants killed in A.D. 1340.
We have deep and lasting ties with
Mexico, here in our Southwest. The ancient
trail comes north and west from south
of the Rio Grande. It skirts the foot of themesa-land, passes by Site One, the place
where Quetzalcoatl Cave is found. The
trail jogs west, then turns sharply north to
the one gap in the mesa, an easy climb to
the high country and other sites beyond.
And they are many: Alamo Mountain,
two days' march to the north; Comudas
Mountain, ten miles away and, like Alamo
Mountain, one-time site of a stage stop for
the old Butterfield Overland Mail. Northward
on Otero Mesa, 80 miles from Alamo
Canyon, is Three Rivers, another ancient
power spot, a magic ridge with petroglyphs
with the same art styles as the ones found in
the other three large sites to the south.
National treasures? In any other country
a national monument would have been
established covering the sites within those
80 miles, including the impressive volcanic
range at Samalayuca, some 30 miles
south of El Paso where the same cultures
left traces of their passing pecked and
painted on the rockfaces along that ancient
trading trail.
What was good for the puchteca then is
good for the mojados, illegal immigrants,today. Looking for a better life than what
they found at home, the mojados stream
north along the trail, giving fits to the
Border Patrol who are hard put to catch
them here in this dry and broken country.
The little rockshelters scattered in the
limestone just below the rimrock carry
evidence of the mojado trail in the piles of
empty Jumex fruit juice cans, the plastic
bottles filled with water and left for other
travelers coming on behind.
This trail felt the footsteps of the early
hunters. They roamed the West Texas
plain in a time of much more rain, when
mammoth and huge bison were dominant
life forms. The early hunters tracked their
game with stone-pointed spears and the
atlatl, the spear-thrower that came before
the bow and arrow were invented.
Huge game roamed the rainy landscape,
far different from the desertland we know
today. Then came a year when less rain fell,
and more years when no rain fell at all. The
big game disappeared and humans made do
with smaller animals-deer, antelope,
mountain sheep-and lizards, snakes and
HERITAGE * SUMMER 1989 15
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Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Volume 7, Number 3, Summer 1989, periodical, Summer 1989; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45431/m1/15/?rotate=270: accessed May 4, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.