BIGHORN SHEEP HEADDRESSES AND HORNED ANTHROPOMORPHS - PART 2: FREMONT AND LATER.

Bighorn Sheep Headdresses, Continued:

Fremont horned figures, Utah.

Photo Sherman Spear.

Last week I presented Part 1 of this look at Bighorn Sheep Headdresses and Horned Anthropomorphs in rock art of Archaic peoples. This continuation looks at examples from the Fremont and later Ancestral Pueblo and Navajo cultures.

Bighorn sheep headdress, Utah

State University Eastern Prehistoric

Museum, Price, Utah.

Photo provided by Tim Riley, curator.

"An amazing artifact, a prehistoric bighorn sheep headdress, is part of the Tommy Morris collection exhibited at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price, Utah. The artifact was apparently found on the eastern edge of the San Rafael Swell near the Colorado or Green River. This region is home to both Desert Archaic and Fremont peoples, both regularly hunted bighorn sheep and created rock art galleries featuring horned anthropomorphs and bighorn sheep imagery." (Garfinkel 2014:2)

Fremont, McKee Springs, Dinosaur

Nat. Mon., Uinta County, UT.

Photo Peter Faris, Sept. 1994.

The radiocarbon age for this material provided a measured determination of 720 plus or minus 30 before present (BP) with a conventional age of 950 plus or minus 30 BP. With a 2 sigma calibration that radiocarbon date converts to a calendar age of AD 1020 to 1160 (cal 930 to 790)." (Garfinkel 2014:8) This date establishes the bighorn sheep headdress as a Fremont artifact.

Fremont horned figure, McConkey

Ranch, Vernal, Uintah County, UT.

Photo Peter Faris, 1986.

"The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah, where the culture's sites were discovered by local indigenous peoples like the Navajo and Ute. - It inhabited sites in what is now Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from AD1 to 1301 (2,000 - 700 years ago). It was adjacent to, roughly contemporaneous with, but distinctly different from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples located to their south." (Wikipedia)

Fremont horned figure, Moab, UT.

Photo Peter Faris, 2000.

The horned headdress is actually

created by the superimposed 

heads of two bighorn sheep.

Many of the anthropomorphs portrayed in Fremont rock art are shown wearing horned headdresses. A few of these can be identified as pronghorn antelope horns or deer antlers by branching shapes but most are un-branched projections upward from a headdress - often curved - and are assumed to represent bighorn sheep headdresses.

Muyingwa, Hopi horned kachina.

Alph Sekacucu, 1995, Following

The Sun And Moon, p. 24.

The tradition of horned headdresses can be followed down to the present day with the example of the Puebloan people's Two-Horn Kachinas Aalosaka and Muyingwa, and the Two-Horn society members, all of whom wear two-horned headdresses.

Two-Horn Society priests,

Photo chaz.org.

"Aalosaka is a supreme being, a deity of the Two-Horn society. He is revered by the society members as supremely wholesome and spiritually powerful. He is one of the Mongkatsinam, appearing singly with the mixed katsina group. Muyingwa is a Germination god possessing the great knowledge and duties related to agriculture. He ritually insures that the processes for plant life will properly develop and the plants sprout for eventual life sustenance. He is one of the Mongkatsinam, appearing singly with the mixed katsina group." (Secakuku 1995:25)

Two-horn society headdress,

15th Annual report of the Bureau

of American Ethnology to the

Secretary of the Smithsonian

Institution, 1893, Pl. 60,

facing p. 301.

Members of the Two-Horn Society seem to act as security for some Hopi ceremonials. On the fourth night of the Wuwuchim - - "the One Horn and Two Horn Societies close all the roads that lead to our villages. They do that so as to clear the spiritual highway that leads from there to the rising sun." (Tyler 1964:16) And on other occasions - "another fertility god, Germinator, who may be called either Muingwu or Alosaka. Germinator is highly specialized as a fertility god, and his underworld aspects are closely confined to the subject, although the Two Horn Society members represent him on the night of the dead." (Tyler 1964:19)

Navajo Ganaskidi petroglyph,

Largo Canyon, New Mexico.

Internet photo, Public Domain.

Navajo Ganaskidi impersonator,

Photo Edward S. Curtis, 1904,

Public Domain.

The Navajo equivalent of Muyingwa is Ganaskidi (meaning humpback), the "God of harvests, plenty and of mists. He is said to live at Depehahatil, a canyon with many ruined cliff dwellings north of San Juan. According to tradition he is the apotheosis of a bighorn sheep. His priest wears a blue mask with no hair fringe but with a spruce crown and collar." (godfinder.org)

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

I wish to thank Dr. Tim Riley, Curator of Archaeology of the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum, in Price, Utah for providing the photograph of the Bighorn Sheep headdress and accompanying information.

REFERENCES:

Garfinkel, Alan P.

2014 Age and Character of the Bighorn Sheep headdress, San Rafael Swell, Utah, July 9, 2014, AGG Associates Research Paper Number 3, Bakersfield, California, Available on Academia.edu.

godfinder.org/index.html?q=Navaho

Powell, John Wesley, editor

1897 Fifteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893-94, Government Printing Office, Washington D.C.

Secakuku, Alph H.

1995 Following The Sun And Moon, Hopi Kachina Tradition, Northland Publishing, Flagstaff, AZ.

Tyler, Hamilton A.

1964 Pueblo Gods and Myths, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_culture