THE SKY SERPENT IN THE ART OF BAJA CALIFORNIA:

In the American southwest as well as down through Mesoamerica there are found ancient traditions around the spiritual significance of snakes, including the famous Plumed Serpent of Mexico and the American southwest. The area of this cultural tradition includes the peninsula of Baja California.

Cueve de la Serpiente,  Photograph from the Instituto Sudcaliforniano de Cultura.

 Drawing of the panel from Cueva de las Serpiente. Image from the Bradshaw Foundation.

In his seminal volume on Rock Art of the American Indians, Campbell Grant (1981) included a majestic example of the plumed serpent in the Baja. “In the San Francisco Mountains of central Baja California, there is a spectacular plumed serpent sixteen feet long surrounded by black and red men and six deer. We can only guess that the snake deity in this case was somehow related to hunting magic.” (Grant 1981:57) The fact is that we do not have to assume that there was any relationship to hunting magic. The long serpent might well have represented the Milky Way while the deer and men could have been meant to represent constellations. This particular panel is located in what is known as Serpent Cave.

Serpent cave. Photograph from the Bradshaw Foundation.

According to the website of the Bradshaw Foundation “the Serpent Cave - Cueva de la Serpiente falls within the Archaic Great Murals Rock Art tradition, found in the central sierras of the Baja California Peninsula: San Borja, San Juan, San Francisco and Guadalupe. The two deer-headed serpents of Cueva de la Serpiente on the Baja California peninsula are spectacular and practically unique. Today, the right-hand one is complete, with deer-like ears and antlers and a long banded body. The left-hand one has lasted less well and only the head is preserved; the rest of the serpent was painted on a section of rock that fell away. The mural is almost 8 metres wide, with more than 50 diminuitive human and animal figures.” (Bradshaw Foundation)

Serpent cave. Photographs from the Bradshaw Foundation.

“The panel is about 8m long and includes 106 motifs. The composition is led by two fantastic deer-headed snakes. The most complete one reaches up to 4m in length and has an undulating body, small antlers and a fish-like tail. It is surrounded by 45 small human figures of between 16 and 41 cm long. The other one, measures 1.8 m and shows contrasting characteristics: a static attitude, and large six-pointed antlers. In both snakes the mouth is half opened, the body is red with black segments, and a white outline that has been almost completely lost.” (Roberto Martinez et al. 2008)

“In the early 1960s, American author Earle Stanley Gardner was exploring Sierra de San Francisco when he heard about a large painted rock shelter along Arroyo de San Pablo, known among the locals as Cueva Pintada. He visited the site and later made his ‘discovery’ public in an article for Life Magazine (Gardner 1962). That first visit was followed by several visits in company of Californian archaeologist Clement Meighan, who then launched the first systematic study of Great Mural Rock Art. Meighan (1966) had some wood fragments from the floor of Cueva Pintada and dated through radiocarbon. The obtained date of 1435±80 AD suggested to Meighan that the rock art belonged with the Comondu archaeological complex, the last phase preceding the historical Cochimi groups. In several occasions Viñas (1989) and colleagues (Viñas et al. 1986-1989) questioned the assumed age and cultural affiliation of Great Mural Rock Art, suggesting that the origin of this tradition might go back several thousands of years BC. The themes indicated that the rock art was created by scantily hierarchised hunter-gatherer groups whose myths, rituals and beliefs were portrayed in the art. A possible relation with the North American Southwest was also put forward.” (Roberto Martinez et al. 2008) In other words they associated it with the ancient cultural significance of the serpent throughout the American southwest and Mesoamerica.

The Great Snake coiled in the sun, Near the Kumeyaay community of San Jose de la Zorra, Baja, California.  Photograph from Jerome Levi.

The sleeping head of the Great Serpent near the Kumeyaay community of San Jose de la Zorra, Baja, California. Photograph from Jerome Levi.

The Cochimi cultural groups mentioned above inhabited the central portion of the Baja Peninsula. Somewhat to their north, overlapping the border with the San Diego, California area resided the Kumeyaay peoples. According to Jerome Levi the Kumeyaay shared the beliefs that centered the serpent in their spiritual and ceremonial life. They, in fact, had actual, physical proof in the form of a rock formation that was shaped like a gigantic coiled snake “near the Kumeyaay community of San Jose de la Zorra, Baja California” (Jerome Levi 2017) between Tecate and Ensenada, Mexico, and known to the Kumeyaay people as “Maayha-Awiity” which he says translates as “snake of the high water.” (Levi 2017)

Levi (2017) directly associated the painting in Cueva de la Serpiente with Maayha-Awiity, associating both with the widespread cultural beliefs in the spiritual significance of serpents in the Southwest and Mesoamerica. And over this wide area that shares so many spiritual beliefs “the horned serpent is frequently related to celestial elements. In Spiro it bears bird wings, in Mayan pottery decorations it is associated with heavenly deities, in Baja California and the Southwest it often appears above other beings, in Michoacán it is portrayed with a bird’s beak and feathered body, and in Wizard Lake, Ontario, it holds an ascending posture. In these examples, the horned serpent is associated to the heavenly realm. - Sky, water and earth appear to be symbolically linked by the image of the horned serpent. Just as the Chorti and Zapotec think that horned serpents inhabit the sky and the land, in the American Southwest it is said that in its human form, this animal is identifiable under the character and attire of the Hopi god of Heaven.” (Martinez 2008:36)

The Milky Way that I am suggesting represents the Sky Serpent. Image from Reddit.

In my opening paragraphs, I suggested that the sky serpent could well represent the Milky Way. While I do not have any direct citations indicating that, it seems logical, and Martinez et al. (2008) do cite a number of heavenly associations for serpents among cultures of the American southwest and Mesoamerica. The long serpent pictured in Cueva de las Serpiente could easily be seen as the long light streak of the Milky Way across the night sky.

NOTE: One image in this posting was retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If this image is 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:

Bradshaw Foundation, The Rock Art of Baja California, The Serpent Cave – Cueva de la Serpiente, https://www.bradshawfoundation.com/baja/serpent_cave/index.php. Accessed online 2 September 2024.

Grant, Campbell, 1981, Rock Art of the American Indian, Outbooks, Golden, Colorado, p. 57.

Levi, Jerome M., 2017, Flight of the Sky Serpent, Observations on Yuman-Cochimi Worldview in Relation to Mesoamerican and the Southwestern United States, 26 October 2017,  XXXI Mesa Redonda de la Sociedad Mexicana de Antropologia, Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico.  Online PowerPoint presentation accessed 27 October 2023.

Martinez, Roberto, Larissa Mendoza and Ramon Viñas, 2008, Cueva de la Serpiente: Inerpretive analysis of an Archaic Great Mural Rock Art panel Mulege, Baja California Sur, Mexico, pp. 31-46, from Rock Art in the Americas: Mythology, Cosmogony, and Rituals, Proceedings of the 2nd REEA Conference, Edited by Francoise Fauconnier and Serge Lemaitre, Published by Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeologiacal Reports, Gordon House, Oxford, England. Accessed online 2 September 2024.