The Western Mono are an offshoot tribe from the Paiute, who travelled across the Sierra crest about 600 years ago to trade the desert on the eastern side of the mountain range for the acorns and pine nuts on the western slopes. They occupied a narrow range of land at higher elevation on the west side of the central Sierra and established villages all along the Kaweah River.
One of these villages, at about 2,000 feet elevation, was on our itinerary for the day. The remnants of the village, a rock shelter with pictographs and a lot of bedrock mortars, are right on the banks of the Kaweah River.
There are some really nice views to be had from the shelter, which is perched above a wide expanse of granite sloping down to the river.
In the shelter itself there are three shallow bedrock mortars – maybe they were ritualistic, since the shady shelter would have been nicer to work in than the exposed areas below it where most of the mortars are to be found, and yet these are very shallow and obviously not much used. Within view of the shelter there are many more well-used bedrock mortars on the granite shelves below.
The shelter is up on a shelf overlooking the Kaweah River.
This area has plenty of oak trees, and the acorns provided more than enough fodder for the mortar holes.
Acorns are rich in tannins that have to be leached before the nuts are fit for consumption. Thus grounding stations with many deep mortars are commonly found on the slopes of the foothills where the oak trees grow. Acorns were placed inside a woven basket that fit into the mortar hole before the hole was filled with water to leach the bitter tannin from the acorns. This process was then repeated with fresh water until the acorns were ready to be ground to a meal. In this way the mortar holes were used in two ways: as holes to soak the acorns in, and deepened when the acorns were ground.
We visited the site on a still-hot autumn morning. The endless summer had brought wildfires to the mountains and the river valleys were choked with smoke as we wound our way into the hills. Once we neared the site we found some parking and set off to hunt for it.
It is unfortunate that this site isn’t that hard to find: some knucklehead traced some of the designs with chalk, doing a bad job of it, as is usual with this type of vandalism. This is really unfortunate because if nothing else the vandalism takes away from the beauty of the pictographs – but more importantly It may also be hard to remove without damaging the pictographs.
So, if you visit please remember: keep your hands off the pictographs! Look and take photos, but do not touch.
The shelter faces west and is somewhat exposed, so the pictographs have faded. I took photos as best I could.
And then, one early winter weekend, I knuckled down with DStretch and a beverage to see what I could do. Let’s take a look!
What a nice shelter. There are three identically sized shallow mortar holes in a triangle on the slab that forms the floor of the shelter. Since these are uniformly shallow and evenly spaced, and since there’s a whole granite shelf covered in mortar holes outside the shelter where food was obviously processed, I think these may have been ceremonial.
A quick word before we look at the pictographs in detail. As I said before some of them have been chalked ( traced in chalk ), in places quite inaccurately.
This used to be a common way for researchers highlight elements, but it is inaccurate and destructive.
If you find any pictographs anywhere, please do not touch or alter them in any way. If you are curious about what there is to see and want more detail, use DStretch. I use it extensively and there’s simply no better way to examine pictograph panels in detail. If you want to show others what you think you are seeing, either hover your finger – don’t touch! – or take photos that you can DStretch or trace over later.
Now, let’s look at the pictographs. This is a detailed, polychrome panel that has several elements overlaying each other. We’ll use DStretch to target different colors and get a good view of everything there is to see. The panel is pretty steeply angled – I spent a good part of my time here on my back on the shelter floor, camera pointed upwards, trying to get nice square-on pictures of the elements so that they are not distorted – but the shelter is at the same time quite open to the elements, and therefore some of them are very faded.
We start with a panel overview. A light orange pigment is dominant in the inner half of the shelter. There is also white pigment, noticeably the upper center figure but also in the lower right, and black pigment around the white figure. Less obvious is the red pigment that was applied to the lighter-colored outer half of the shelter.
Let’s focus on the red elements first. And … wow! Look at that. There’s about two dozen hand prints – mostly right hand prints – above the panel and on its upper half. Take note of the cluster of six or so handprints to the left of the white figure. These handprints were heavily chalked – and completely inaccurately, too, as you’ll see later. To the right of the white figure, on the outer part of the panel, there are two figures in a style commonly found among the Yokuts, Chumash and even into Tübatulabal territory. One is an outlined anthropomorph with two horns/antennas. The other is a pelt-like figure with a dark center. There’s also a row of hashmarks below the latter.
A close look at those two figures. The hash marks extend to the right, up to the edge of the rock. Also notice the stippled outline by the anthropomorph’s head, extending from the top of the head to the left and right of it. There’s a triangle in between its legs, too. The handprints are a lot more visible too.
The lower right panel up close. At the top is the two angled rows of hash marks I pointed out earlier, with an indistinct element that might be a zoomorph between them. There’s an elaborate zoomorph / dragonfly / anthropomorph hybrid a little lower down and to the right, with digitate rear feet. The area between the toes on the left side is filled in with pigment. Below that, on the right edge of the picture, is another, now very faint, element that might be a zoomorph similar to the one between the hash marks. An abstract element to the left of this fills out the lower part of that panel. Also note the little stack of hash marks in the left center of the picture, the little burst element to right of that one, on the edge of the inner panel, and what looks like an upside-down anthropomorph right below the burst.
I want to point out how faint the elements we just examined have become. Here is a photo focused on the abstract element and the lower left leg of the figure. Not much to see with the naked eye!
And here’s the DStretch detail. Interesting figure, that. Three forked appendages at the top, and then six lines ending in circles. All but one forked appendage is joined to the right side of the conical body.
Here, let’s take one more good look before I’m done harping on the damage the chalking did to this panel – for now. In this picture the chalking around the handprints and the upper anthropomorph is very visible.
See how badly and inaccurately the chalk outlines were drawn? There really was no point to it. It was meant to aid data gathering but it just damaged the pictographs and led to faulty data. The handprints are actually extremely interesting – some were pressed against the rock very lightly, as evidenced by the gaps around the palm area of some of them, and the gaps corresponding to the inter-phalangeal joints, while others are more solid. I wonder if they were made by many individuals, or just one person? They all look rather similar in size.
Next we will spend some time looking at the most visible elements in this panel, the large anthropomorph at the top of the inner panel and the figure next to it. I will use different DStretch enhancements to focus on the different pigment colors so we can get a good idea of what was drawn in this panel.
First, here’s the panel in natural color. Remember, the thin white lines are chalk outlines that were drawn on the panel later, turning the nice cluster of handprints into a grotesque fake mask. The big light orange element at the left of the panel is fairly typical of Yokuts / western Sierra foothills rock art. Notice the tassel-like bottom. There is another example of this, albeit at the bottom of a very different element, over at the High Sierra Meadows site, which is at much higher elevation and quite a bit to the southeast of this site.
Here, the distracting outlines are bled away from the image at the left so you can see the details. This is also a good enhancement for black pigment. It is now clear that the anthropomorph is outlined in black, and there are also black outlines around and above the left-hand element. It looks like there is half a black starburst/snowflake showing at the lower left – we’ll see if we can take a better look at that later! This enhancement shows that the black areas of the panel are not just the natural color of the rock showing through beneath the pictographs – this truly is an elaborate, polychrome panel. There are two smaller elements below the anthropomorph that pop out here – the lower one looks like a dragonfly and the one just above and to the right of it might be a stylized millipede. Also there are three very bright little red dots to the right of the “tassel” on that large orange element.
This panel has some complex layering. I thought this image illustrated some of that. Here you can see the black outline of the white anthropomorph overlaying the orange element that bisects the figure around the midriff. That element in turn overlays the white portion of the anthropomorph – or perhaps the pigment is just much less opaque than the white pigment, though that is unlikely. White pigment tends to be quite opaque. There is a handprint, faint pink in this image, overlaying the wavy line to the left of the anthropomorph. Look closely, it overlays the orange element too.
Another natural-color look at the panel, enhanced just a little bit to pop out the white so we can take a good look at that anthropomorph. It looks like the hand / foot on the left are blended together, or else it has a stubby arm and a wavy outline running down its body to its foot. This style reminds me a little bit of the Atomic Man anthropomorph.
Ah hah – I found a picture that shows our black snowflake / starburst element more clearly! There it is. Quite a nice little element. Some of the lines terminate in little knobs or smaller bursts.
Now that we’ve taken a good look at the upper part of the panel, let’s look at the lower part. The elements are generally smaller in size, but still interesting. On that note, this panel exhibits a vibrance that I’ve felt at other rock art sites – where it seems as if the elements are flying upwards out of the rock.
This is the narrow orange element at the lower right of the panel. Again, the elements are chalked. Besides the orange pigment there are also some red handprints overlaying the top of the element. These handprints are part of a set that descends from the top of the panel to this point. In the lower left of the photo is a light pink element with an orange element overlaying it. Next a DStretch look at this picture.
This customized DStretch profile lets us take a good look at those handprints, colored purple. The three at the top of the long orange elements obviously overlay it. There are four or five more handprints at the upper left, and I think the faded pigment at the upper right may be more handprints but it is hard to tell for sure. In the lower left the pink element is also purple in color. It has two curved “arms” at the top of the figure and two more below. You can also see the light orange element that overlays it here – it consists of several loops that are linked together.
By blending all the darker pigment together with DStretch we can see several smaller elements hiding in the upper left and center left of the picture. This also gives another look at that element in the lower left. I count five loops around the center smudge, and a hooked top overlaying one of the pink element’s upper “arms”.
Here’s the best overview look I could get at the lower part of the panel. The long orange element we just looked at runs down the center. To the left and right of it are some elements we will look at next. In the upper left part of the panel you can see the “tassel” at the bottom of another orange element that we already looked at.
Here’s the burst element below the long orange element, and the element below it. ( And yes, both are chalked even though it really wasn’t necessary. )
This is the collection of elements to the right of the long orange element. They’re done mostly in white or a very pale pink. Some are outlined in black.
I added a touch of DStretch to show the little element in the left center better. It looks like a vertical line with half-circles to the sides – in other words, a image very similar to the much larger pale orange elements with the tassel that is painted towards the upper left of the panel!
Now we’re taking a good look at a zoomorphic element ( except for the two sets of back legs! ) that’s just to the right of the pale pink element with the two sets of arms that we saw earlier.
That’s an interesting figure. The upper four appendages are rudimentary but the lower ones are digitate.
This little dragonfly with its black outline is hiding right in the center of the panel, between the white anthropomorph and the large orange element to its left.
Our little dragonfly, enhanced.
Last pictograph! On the side of the slab that makes up the floor of the shelter this single zoomorph was painted.
Nice view. Looking downstream from the shelter.
This view is just as good! Upstream from the shelter. The granite expanse below is dotted with bedrock mortar holes.
Some of the mortars. This was a village site at one time and extensively occupied, judging by the number of bedrock mortars.
Wasn’t that a nice pictograph site? Pity about the vandalism, but it is still very interesting and you really get an idea of what a nice village site this was when you sit on the granite rocks in front of the shelter, looking out on the river and the trees. Fresh running water, bountiful food from river, tree and land.
If you visit, respect the site. This panel had meaning for the people who painted it. I didn’t go into it in detail but some of the elements exhibit entoptic characteristics, meaning they were likely paintings of imagery seen on a vision quest. If you visit, do not touch the panel at all. Look to your heart’s content and take photos, but leave no trace of your visit so those who visit after can enjoy the site as much as you did.
Great report!
For such a small place, there is a surprising amount of elements and layers going on.
Isn’t that the truth! The site is quite faded, and though it looks pretty busy and interesting with the naked eye it turns out you don’t see half of it without DStretch! I was astonished. I just loved the liveliness and vibrance that DStretch showed. This panel must have been marvelous when it was newly painted.
A great site! I can only image what kind of damage it would have endured, if all the elements (exposed by DStretch) were still clearly visible to the naked eye. I was there many years ago, and had no idea about all the hand prints Great photos, great info, great post!
That’s a very good point … this site is now protected by being faded! As we sat up in the shelter a dozen people walked by right below us, without a second glance up at the shelter. The DStretch-revealed handprints were my favorite thing about this site. I love seeing handprints at these sites … what a great connection to the past that is.
Absolutely fascinating. I’m a river rover / visitor center volunteer there and have walked past this site countless times in the last 5 years, every Friday during the summer. I always look up at it, but I had no idea what was there because, like you said, it is so faded from below. I always thought Hospital Rock pictographs were pretty neat but what you have posted here is “fantabulous”. Thank you so much. I learned a lot. I will print out your pictures and lay under the rock like you did, and imagine. Would love to meet you there sometime if you’re in the area on some Friday.
Fantastic! I felt such a thrill when DStretch revealed what this site really has on offer. How did Sequoia do with the bumper snow year? I am planning to head up there to visit another small site I know of sometime this spring / early summer for sure.
The river is flowing better than ever and we’ve still got snow higher up. We are getting lots of visitors. I am sad to report we have our first significant graffiti, in the five years I’ve been there, on the same rock and close to the pictographs, just above them. So sad to see that. I’ve been involved in cleaning grafitti off rocks and wood for a couple years now but the park wanted us to hold off cleaning there because they needed to contact Native American council and determine the best strategy. We’ve been using a product called “elephant snot” which works pretty good, but they don’t want it to drip down onto pictographs. If your interested I can send you a picture if you’ll give me your email or cell phone.
Oh, that’s terrible! That’s why I’m always guarded about these places. Unfortunately the world isn’t populated just with good people – thoughtless and downright destructive people also exist. I’ve wondered how graffiti is removed from rocks – I’m sure it is a time-consuming process. I can be reached at peregriffwrites@gmail.com.
Love that product’s name, though! How evocative.
” I didn’t go into it in detail but some of the elements exhibit entoptic characteristics, meaning they were likely paintings of imagery seen on a vision quest”.
YOU DIDN’T GO INTO DETAIL? WOW. I would love to hear more of what you have to say. I have learned so much, but I am a neophyte. You have certainly tweaked more interest on my part, and a greater appreciation in the art of pictographs.
I think I read somewhere they were made around 1800’s there at Potwisha?
What kinds of dyes did they use to make the colors? = Red? White? Yellow?Black?
Shamens were the religious leaders?
I will do more research on the subject to answer some of these questions. A good reference book?
I’m about to head out on a trip, but when I get back I’ll add some additional information for anyone interested for sure. I actually have an ethnographic account on my reading list which may have more information available. I’ll let you know about it if I find that useful.
The pigments in use could vary by region. Red pigment was most commonly made with hematite. Black pigment was most commonly made with charcoal, white or yellow pigment was usually made using clay with the corresponding color ( so that again boils down to using a mineral, as with red pigment ). It was not uncommon, in this region, for the clay to be sourced from a hot springs, which has its own important place in the history of the area.
Of course, that just gives you a pigmented powder in some cases, so a binding agent was used – this could be water, or organic material like plant sap, blood, eg from an animal kill, rendered fat from animals, etc. With well-preserved pictographs you can get an idea of how wet the medium was when applied, the texture is often still very visible.
Some regions have legends or rituals that associate meaning with the color, eg in some areas black pigment is said to have been used for male puberty rites and red pigment for female puberty rites. In the case of the Chemehuevi part of their creation myth mentions Coyote running across the desert with the heart of his father/creator in his mouth, and the blood spilling here and there as he ran or rested. These blood spills are said to be red, hematite-rich soil, and hence red pictographs in the region is imbued with special meaning, having been painted with the blood of the creation myth figure. It is worth keeping in mind, as we look at these sites, that there are deep layers of meaning and traditions behind them that we do not know, and may never know.