In Picture Canyon, southeast Colorado, there is a petroglyph of a woman’s figure with seventeen circles (sixteen complete and one incomplete) on her torso. Previous discussion as to what they represent has focused on decorative patterns on her clothing, or showing that she is a victim of smallpox with the circles supposedly representing the lesions on her body. I am writing this to suggest a different possibility - that the circles on her torso represent her age.
The petroglyph has been chalked (or perhaps highlighted with white paint) at some indeterminate time in the past and seems to sport an intricate hairdo. This hairdo has been speculated to represent butterfly hair whorls as worn by adolescent unmarried young Hopi women. The circles on her torso are not freestanding, most are connected to each other by short lines.
The first record of this petroglyph that I have been able to find is a black and white drawing in E. B. Renaud’s Eighth Report: Pictographs and Petroglyphs of the High Western Plains (1936). In this report Renaud illustrated the petroglyph and designated it as site 147. He defined it as a representation of smallpox. The illustration in Renaud’s report, however, fails to show the short line segments connecting the circles on the woman’s body. There are a number of other discrepancies in details between Renaud’s illustration and modern photos, but that is fairly common with Renaud’s illustrations and reports. He used many local residents as agents and informants and did not apparently double check much of the material they provided.
In his report “Picture Writing of the American Indians”, Garrick Mallery gave the following description of time notation by the Dakota tribe.
“Dr. William H. Corgusier, surgeon, U.S. Army, gives the following information: ‘The Dakotas make use of the circle as the symbol of a cycle of time; a small one for a year and a large one for a longer period of time, as a life time, one old man. Also a round of lodges or a cycle of seventy years, as in Battiste Good’s Winter Count. The continuance of time is sometimes indicated by a line extending in a direction from right to left across the page when on paper, and the annual circles are suspended from the line at regular intervals by short lines as in Fig. 182, upper character, and the ideograph for the year is placed beneath each one. At other times the line is not continuous, but is interrupted at intervals by the yearly circle, as in the lower character of Fig. 182.’” (Mallery 1893:285)
As Mallery’s Fig. 182 illustrates a succession of years can be presented by a row of circles connected by short lines exactly as represented on the body of the figure in Picture Canyon. The figure in Picture Canyon has sixteen full circles and one partial inscribed on her torso, suggesting that, if this interpretation is correct, it represents a young woman of seventeen years in age.
Picture Canyon is somewhat marginal to the area acknowledged as Dakota traditional hunting grounds according to the 1868 Treaty, but well within the area they would have claimed traditional rights to so a Dakota convention for illustrating time would seem to be a possibility.
This site was also studied by Dr. William Buckles in 1989 but notes on the margins of his slide suggest that he accepted Renaud's identification of the figure as a victim of smallpox. Buckles also inexplicably refers to this figure as masculine - "Smallpox Man."
Concerning the hair style indicated on the figure, some think it resembles the “butterfly” hairdo of young, unmarried Hopi maidens. This is sometimes suggested to have resulted from the influence of Pueblo Indian refugees from Deigo de Vargas’ reconquest of New Mexico in 1692, after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 that had driven the Spanish out. I have found no record of Hopi refugees in the area of southeastern Colorado, and no indication that any other pueblo refugees would have been wearing that hairstyle even if they reached the area, so I consider that particular assumption as unlikely. Could a Dakota Indian have traveled to Hopi and seen that hairstyle? Possibly. That particular question will have to remain open for now.
Picture Canyon, Baca County, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 21 September 1986.
So, is this particular figure in Picture Canyon, Colorado, a figure of a smallpox victim as Renaud suggested, or a picture commemorating a seventeen-year-old young lady? I don’t suppose we will ever know for sure, but it does suggest that we should not hurry to jump to conclusions about what rock art means. There will usually be other possibilities we have not yet considered.
NOTE: I wish to thank Aaron Ramirez, Manager of Special Collections and Museum Services, Pueblo City and County Library District, Pueblo, Colorado, for providing the photograph by Dr. Bill Buckles and all the information pertaining to it.
Also: 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.
REFERENCES:
Slide, Picture Canyon, Baca County, Colorado, in the Colorado Rock Art Association Collection, Pueblo City-County Library District Special Collections, Pueblo, Colorado, USA.
Mallery, Garrick, 1936, Eighth Report: Pictographs and Petroglyphs of the High Western Plains (1936) Picture Writing of the American Indians, in Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnography to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1888-1889, by J. W. Powell, Director, Government Printing Office, Washington DC., reprinted in two volumes in 1972 by Dover Publications, Inc. New York.
Renaud, E. B., 1936 Archaeological Survey of the High Western Plains: Eighth Report: Pictographs and Petroglyphs of the High Western Plains, September 1936, University of Denver, Anthropology Office, Denver, CO.
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Also in this same canyon there is a pictograph of what might be an antelope. Beside it are 3 lines topped by a dot all of which are in red. I can't imagine that some errant Mayan from Tikal was here on a hunting trip and found 16 antelope. It seems Picture Canyon contains more questions than answers.
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