Participants in a ritual anoint themselves with
red paint. The scene is a rockshelter in the
Lower Pecos as envisioned by artist Reeda Peel.
Petroglyphs of various styles also occur in the
Lower Pecos. This example has incised lines cut
by sharp flint tools. Photo from ANRA-NPS
Archives at TARL.
This rock art panel has several styles of Lower
Pecos rock art. Most of the elements including
the large shaman figure just to the right of the
sign board are of the Pecos River style. But the
smaller dark red anthropomorphic figure with
down-turned arms just to the right of the shaman
element is of the Red Monochrome style. Photo
from ANRA-NPS Archives at TARL.
Example of one of Forest Kirkland's original
watercolors of pictograph panels at Painted Rock
Shelter in Painted Canyon, a small side canyon
of the Rio Grande near Comstock, Texas. Most of
these figures are of the Red Monochrome style.
Kirkland made these "copies" as he called them,
on July 13, 1937. As subsequent recorders have
learned, copying rock art is a subjective
process—what is copied depends on lighting
conditions, condition of the pictographs, and
the eye and skill of the beholder. Photo from
ANRA-NPS Archives at TARL.
Today the Red Monochrome pictographs at Painted
Rock Shelter persist despite periodic inundation
and fluctuating moisture levels. Photo by Steve
Close up of Red Linear pictographs. Photo by
Pecos River style pictographs in Rattlesnake
Canyon. One of the serpentine "rattlesnakes" can
be seen to the left of the dark shaman figure.
Photo by Steve Black.
Close up of pictograph of European man, probably
a Spaniard, at Vaquero Alcove. This was
obviously painted by an Indian who had
personally witnessed the man. This style shares
strong similarities with the Plains
Bibliographic style. Photo from ANRA-NPS
Archives at TARL.
The painted images adorning the walls of
hundreds of rockshelters and minor overhangs uniquely define
the Lower Pecos archeological region. The striking and
inspiring rock art is celebrated, photographed, illustrated,
recorded, and studied by hundreds of enthusiasts across the
country and a much smaller number of dedicated researchers.
Typing "Lower Pecos Rock Art" into your favorite search
engine will yield dozens of web pages, many with beautiful
images and some with useful information. (See
Credits & Sources for select links, including several
elsewhere on this website.)
Here we will simply provide some examples
illustrating the diversity of the imagery and the kinds of
physical contexts within which Lower Pecos rock art occurs.
A few quick points:
"Rock art" includes more than just
pictographs—painted images. Petroglyphs—carved,
pecked, or incised images—also occur in the Lower Pecos
Canyonlands. So do various kinds of mobile art including
Pictographs are the most numerous and best
known rock art images in the Lower Pecos. Four main styles
were defined by W.W. Newcomb. From oldest to most recent
these are: Pecos River, Red Linear, Red Monochrome,
and Historic. The oldest, the Pecos River style, is
also the most common, most complex, and most carefully
Many of the Pecos River pictographs are
widely regarded as expressions of shamanistic ritual. As
summarized by Carolyn Boyd and Phil Dering in a 1996
Shamans are found primarily within
Native American societies that rely heavily on hunting
and gathering or fishing … In these societies, the
shaman serves a crucial role as diviner, seer, magician,
healer of bodily and spiritual ills, keeper of
traditions, and artist. Acting as the guardian of the
physical and psychic equilibrium of the society, the
shaman, through altered states of consciousness,
journeys to the spirit world where he will personally
confront the supernatural forces on behalf of his
group.… Access to the spirit or Otherworld can be
achieved through such methods as the use of
hallucinogenic or psychoactive plants, fasting,
thirsting, blood-letting, self-hypnosis and various
types of rhythmic activities ….
As the article documents, there is clear
evidence of hallucinogenic plants including peyote, mountain
laurel beans (seeds), and datura (jimson weed) in the rock
art and cave deposits of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands.
Controversy has arisen concerning the
specter of prehistoric "drug" use, despite ample evidence of
the ritual and medicinal importance of such psychoactive
plants in many Indian cultures in the New World. Politically
correct or not, the use of these plants was part and parcel
of shamanistic ritual in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands as
elsewhere in the hunter-gatherer world. While ingesting
psychoactive plants can be very dangerous and even fatal,
they obviously played a critical role in certain of the
rituals depicted in the Lower Pecos rock art. The ritual use
of peyote continues today by members of the Native American
Church, a traditional religious practice that has been ruled
constitutionally protected by the United States Supreme
The rock art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands
dates to at least 4,500 years ago and possibly considerably
earlier. Within the past decade or so, chemist Marvin Rowe
at Texas A&M and researchers at other institutions have
devised clever ways of directly dating elements of the
paint. As this research matures, dating will become an
important tool in understanding the evolution and meaning of
rock art in the region.
The most comprehensive catalogue of Lower
Pecos rock art is still the work of Dallas artist Forest
Kirkland who with his wife and partner, Lula, visited dozens
of rock art localities across the western half of Texas in
the 1930s. His watercolor renditions of what they observed
are often the sole surviving record of images that have
since been destroyed by time, "progress," and thoughtless
vandals. Shortly after Kirkland first laid eyes on Indian
pictographs in the summer of 1933 at Paint Rock near San
Angelo, he dedicated almost every available moment to saving
these fragile, disappearing images for posterity. Until he
died in 1941, the Kirklands took extended camping and
working vacation trips each summer to remote places in
different parts of Texas where rock art was known to occur,
including the Lower Pecos Canyonlands.
The Kirklands took a systematic approach to
their work, capturing each grouping of paintings they could
make out on panels of high quality English linen mounted on
heavy cardboard plates. All drawings were done to scale and
were considered "copies" as faithful to the original as
possible. The story of the Kirklands' work and most of his
drawings appear in the 1967 book The Rock Art of Texas
Indians (text by W.W. Newcomb), reissued in 1996 by UT
Press. You learn more about Kirkland's work and see many
examples of his renderings elsewhere on this website—see
On the Trail to Lower Pecos Rock Art.
The two leading researchers who study Lower
Pecos rock art today are Dr. Solveig Turpin and Dr. Carolyn
Boyd. Their approaches and interpretations vary
Turpin, an archeologist by training and
former Associate Director of TARL, has been at it for a lot
longer and takes a more traditional approach to her work.
She has published numerous scholarly articles and book
chapters documenting and interpreting many different aspects
of Lower Pecos rock art including work in northern Coahuila.
She also co-authored and edited several rock art volumes
including a beautifully illustrated coffee-table book
entitled Pecos River Rock Art (with Jim Zintgraff,
the leading rock art photographer of the region). Turpin and
Zintgraff are co-founders of the
Rock Art Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to
the preservation and study of rock art.
Boyd, an artist and anthropologist by
training and has pioneered what she calls an ethnographic
approach to Lower Pecos rock art interpretation. She argues
that many rock art panels represent coherent mural-like
compositions rather than randomly added elements as many
have assumed. She sees many parallels between the Pecos
River style symbolism and that expressed in the mythology
and belief systems of many living and historically known
cultures in Mexico and the Southwest. Boyd has published
several scholarly articles and book chapters on her work and
has just finished a book that has been published by Texas
A&M Press. She is the Executive Director of the
Shumla School, a non-profit educational and research
center located on the lower Pecos River. Today Boyd and her
collaborators and students continue studying and documenting
the rock art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands.
Another important group actively involved in
research is the Rock Art Recording Task Force of the
Texas Archeological Society. The Task Force is devoted
to documenting the rock art of Texas. Each year they
concentrate on different localities and thoroughly record
rock art imagery through photography, mapping, tracing, and
illustration, carrying on the work started by the Kirklands.
Pecos River style pictographs near the mouth of
Rattlesnake Canyon, a side canyon of the Rio Grande.
Photo by Steve Black.
Photographer examines Historic style pictographs at
Vaquero Alcove. Photo from ANRA-NPS Archives at TARL.
Painted pebbles such as this one are common in
the Lower Pecos Canyonlands but are also known
from south and central Texas. They are almost
always made on smooth, flat, rounded river
pebbles. Although they share some elements in
common with pictographs, they are usually less
elaborate and painted in black. From the ANRA-NPS
collections at TARL.
Four painted pebbles and a handful of Mountain
Laurel beans rest on a mat in front of two men
in a painted cave in a scene envisioned by
artist Reeda Peel.
Close up of Red Monochrome pictograph. Photo by
Several of the Red Monochrome figures at Painted
Rock Shelter as they appeared in 1958. Only 20
years after Kirkland, the deterioration of the
images is evident. This shelter is at the bottom
of a canyon just above a spring-fed pool of
water. As you can also see, direct sunlight adds
to the problem. Photo from ANRA-NPS Archives at
The dark band obscuring some of the Red
Monochrome pictographs at Painted Rock Shelter
is the high-water mark left by repeated, though
infrequent floods. Photo by Steve Black.
Close up of an animal figure, perhaps
representing a deer. Photo from ANRA-NPS
Archives at TARL.
Art history researcher Penny Lindsey traces
Pecos River style pictographs onto a clear sheet
of acetate in 1963. Direct tracing is thought by
some to be the most accurate, albeit cumbersome,
method of copying pictographs. Photo from ANRA-NPS
Archives at TARL.
Vaquero Alcove is known for its Historic style
pictographs depicting a Christian church and a
man dressed in European-style clothing. These
were painted on the curving canyon wall
protected only by shallow overhang. Being near
the canyon bottom, the rock art panel is
periodically covered by flash floods. Photo from
ANRA-NPS Archives at TARL.
Introducing Lower Pecos Rock Art
Native peoples—Indians or Native Americans—came into what is now
Texas by at least 13,500 years ago and never left. The 13,000-year
prehistoric legacy they left behind represents over 500 human
generations, but most of this legacy is recorded in bits and pieces of
broken things, layers of dirt, and scattered campsites. Easy enough to
find, but hard to decipher. In contrast, the vivid art native peoples
left behind on protected rock walls are haunting and evocative reminders
of their presence. These pictographs and petroglyphs help us understand
how native peoples viewed their physical and supernatural worlds.
Though Indian peoples left their marks on the walls of hundreds of
sites in the western half of Texas, the largest and most distinctive
collection of rock art comes from the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, where the
Pecos and the Devils Rivers flow into the Rio Grande. For a more
comprehensive introduction to the area, check out the extensive
exhibit elsewhere on this website.
Hunting and gathering societies inhabited the Lower Pecos area for
13,000 years, finding everything they needed for survival within the
canyons and across the sheltering uplands. They often visited and stayed
in the many natural rockshelters (overhangs) and shallow caves found
within the canyons. Because of the arid climate (today the area gets an
average of only 14-18” of rain per year), the dry rockshelters preserve
evidence of everyday life as well as their art.The evocative images left
behind by Lower Pecos peoples provide us with a connection to their
lives and experiences.
Cross cultural studies have shown that the world’s hunting and
gathering peoples often believe that everything has a "cosmic soul" or
is alive. Animals and people are equal. Plants and stones are also
thought to have spirits. The peoples of the Lower Pecos may have
believed that nothing could be taken without some kind of payment;
relationships were reciprocal.
They practiced shamanism, a type of “primitive” religion shared by
most hunting and gathering peoples the world over. Shamans were
individuals with a special calling who acted as spiritual leaders,
doctors, historians, scientists, and teachers for their people. They
functioned as go betweens for the people and the spirit world. By
entering trance-like states of conscious, shamans were thought to be
able to transform themselves temporarily into part human and part animal
beings. To visit the other world they became flying birds, swimming
fish, or prowling cats.
Shamans and shamanistic scenes dominate the pictographs and murals
painted on the protected rock walls of the Lower Pecos. Intricate,
colorful paintings depict the shaman's trip and the physical and
Research on these paintings offers fertile ground for archeologists
and ethnologists as can be seen in the work of contemporary researchers.
Of those active today, Carolyn Boyd and Solveig Turpin are the leading
interpreters of Lower Pecos rock art and both have written books and
articles explaining their views.
Here are some basic facts about Lower Pecos rock art.
- The art of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands consists of:
- Pictographs- drawings or paintings on rock.
- Painted Pebbles- portable art painted on
smooth oval pebbles.
- Petroglyphs- carvings or inscriptions on
- The paints were made of natural minerals such as iron oxide
(hematite) that was ground into a red paint pigment with stone
wooden tools. To liquefy the pigment, binders like animal fat and
emulsifiers such as soapy yucca root sap were added.
- The colors were shades of red, black, yellow, orange, and white.
- The leaves of desert plants like sotol and lechuguilla provided
fiber for brushes. Sometimes crayons were also used. These were
molded from dry pigment. (One 14-inch yellow crayon was found.)
Sometimes finger painting and spattering were used.
- River claim shells and thin stone tablets served as palettes.
- The artists, probably shamans, created some incredibly large
pictographs that could only have been done by using special
equipment. At Panther Cave, one panther is nine feet across and the
top of a shaman figure is 12 feet above the shelter floor. Some
murals are 30 feet wide. These heights indicate that the artists
used wooden ladders and scaffolds.
One of the many watercolor paintings created by artist Forrest
Kirkland, this image is a rendering of rock art he came across in
Seminole Canyon. Kirkland was struck by the distinctive appearance
of the panther image on the cave wall and named the site Panther
The Pecos River gives the Lower Pecos region its name and provided
natural shelter in hundreds of rockshelters along its canyon walls
and those of its many side canyons. Photo from ANRA-NPS Archives at
In addition to his mural depictions, Forrest Kirkland reproduced
painted pebbles he found in the Lower Pecos region. The painted
pebble are almost always made on smooth, flat, naturally rounded
river pebbles. Although they share some elements in common with
pictographs, they are usually less elaborate and painted in black.
(from Plate 68)>
Forrest Kirkland saw this partially preserved scene in a long
shallow shelter high on the west bank of the Pecos River. The blank
space below the two cats is bare limestone where the rock art
painting had weathered away. (from Plate 33)
In this shamanistic image, a winged shaman with a horned headdress
appears, suggesting a deer in flight. (from Plate 12)
A large shaman hovers over a group of diminutive deer. The bodies of
the deer are composed of stripes and crosshatching. Many of them are
pierced by atlatl darts or spears. Feather-like objects radiate to
the right from the shaman and point toward a human form. These
features can be seen in other rock art images belonging to the same
period. (from Plate 23)
These petroglyph images, reproduced by Forrest Kirkland at Tardy
Draw Shelter, are composed of scratching and carving done on the
rock wall surfaces with a sharp instrument such as a flint (chert)
flake. Some of the forms resemble Perdiz arrow points, which are
found at some Late Prehistoric archeological sites in the Lower
Pecos region. (from Plate 50)
Pecos River Style Rock Art
|These few photos illustrate the
distinct style of pictography found near the confluence of
the Pecos River on the Rio Grande.
Notice the second photo's depiction of the spear throwers.
The repetition may represent an attempt to convey motion.
The sites shown below include Fate Bell Shelter, Panther
Cave, and another cave, Black Cave in Pressa Canyon, all
inside the boundaries of
Seminole Canyon State Historical Park.
The Uneasy Science
Archaeologists, in general, are most uncomfortable with things of the past that we can't put a number on. Oh sure, we talk about using ethnographic sources, and
discussing the sacred and social structures, but it still makes us nervous. This is precisely why books such as Carolyn Boyd's Rock Art of the Pecos is so
interesting and important.
The Pecos River Style of Rock Art
Boyd's area of study includes southwest Texas and northeastern Mexico, a semiarid climate with dry winters and hot summers. More than that, local vegetation is
part of the rock, part of the art. For the purposes of this book, she examines in detail panels in five rockshelters: Rattlesnake Canyon, White Shaman, Panther
Cave, Mystic Shelter, and Cedar Springs. Each panel is rendered in soft color pencil and pastels and presented as a color plate.
The images addressed by Boyd are from the Archaic period, when hundreds of rockshelters in the lower Pecos mountains were painted in Pecos-River style, dated by
the accelerator mass spectrometry method of radiocarbon testing between 4100 and 3200 years ago. This kind of rock art is dominated by human and animal figures
with outstretched arms as if flying. Sometimes the figures are headless, sometimes they are clearly blended beings, animal and human or two different animals.
As illustrated in Boyd's renderings, the colors used by the prehistoric artists are reds, oranges and blacks, primarily. The images are in groups called panels,
some as large as 70 meters wide by seven meters tall and including hundreds of images.
In Chapter 3, Boyd provides us with an intimate look at the learning process revealed in recording rock art. Even if there were effective mechanical means to
reproduce rock art images, she argues that the process of rendering scale drawings and paintings of the panels is the cornerstone of the research. She says,
"Drawing and painting each pictographic element in the rock art panel not only increases awareness of imagery content but also helps identify variations and
consistencies in artistic styles and recurring patterns in the art."
Of course, the most intriguing question for the rock art researcher is why was it done. Boyd makes the salient point that it is only in recent times--and of
course, in western culture--that "art for art's sake" is the standard. Art is not utilitarian in modern western society; but was it so in the past?
Shamans and Hallucinations
Several researchers over the past decades have connected cave paintings and rock art to shamans and hallucinations in megalithic period Ireland (Jeremy
Dronfield), Upper Paleolithic Europe (David Lewis-Williams), Arnhem Land (Paul Tacon), the Great Basin (David Whitley), Minnesota (Mark Dudzik), and of course
the Lower Pecos (Solveig Turpin). Rightly crediting Turpin for the direction, Boyd detects recurrent images of traveling to the underworld and depictions of
local hallucinatory agents such as datura and peyote.
Rock Art of the Lower Pecos is a very interesting book on several levels: on the mechanics of reproducing rock art images, on the artistry of Archaic people of
the the Lower Pecos River, and on the possible meanings of the images from three to four thousand years ago.