ARMORED HORSE PETROGLYPHS IN SOUTHEASTERN COLORADO REVISITED:

Armored horse, Farrington Springs, Colorado.

Photograph: Peter Faris, May 2002.

Drawing of armored horse, Farrington Springs, Colorado.

On August 20, 2009, I posted a column entitled Armored Horse Petroglyphs, about the discovery by Mark Mitchell of two petroglyphs of armored horses at the great rock art site of Farrington Springs, in Bent County, Colorado. I wish to study the phenomenon of armored horses in Plains Indian art, especially rock art, in greater depth, and share a few more photographs with you.

Armored horse, Farrington Springs, Colorado.

Photograph: Peter Faris, May 2002

Drawing of armored horse, Farrington Springs, Colorado.

For any student of rock art who wishes to study the subject of horse armor worn by Native Americans one excellent source is the painting on hide known as Segesser I displayed in the Palace of the Governors Museum in Santa Fe. This painting shows in detail horses wearing leather horse armor.

Segesser I hide painting, Museum of New Mexico.

On June 16, 1720, a Spanish expedition set out from Santa Fe to reconnoiter French activity on the northern Plains. “They had camped in tall grass near the confluence of the Platte and Loup rivers in present-day eastern Nebraska, six hundred miles northeast of Santa Fe. The force numbered forty-some presidial soldiers, sixty Pueblo auxiliaries, and a few citizens and servants, all well outfitted.” (Kessell 2002:210) The Spanish expedition had been following the tracks of a large mixed group of Pawnees, Otos, and others. “A message in French had brought an unintelligible response. The populous camp of Pawnees, Otos, and others whose tracks the Spaniards had picked up, appeared not especially welcoming, so the Spanish column had  turned back. According to angry critics later, Villasur made careless decisions that determined the expedition’s fate: he chose an indefensible site for the camp; pastured the horses at some distance, which left his people afoot; failed to post sentries; and went to sleep as casually as if they had reposed in Santa Fe. At sunrise on August 13, while the men were busy catching their unsaddled horses, a horde of gaudily painted Natives who had silently encircled the camp fell screaming upon it. – Only thirteen Spaniards and some forty Pueblo auxiliaries escaped.” (Kessell 2002: 210-11)

The relevance of this Spanish defeat to our subject is that two contemporary paintings were done on elk or buffalo hide, one measuring 17 feet long by 4½ feet high was produced to illustrate the disastrous defeat described above. This colorful illustration was probably created by a mission-trained artist who was informed by the survivors but today the creator is unknown. This remarkable artifact, now known as Segesser II, was shipped in 1758, by Jesuit missionary Felipe Segesser von Brunegg, to his brother in Switzerland, and in 1988 was purchased by New Mexico where it is now displayed at the Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe. (Kessell 2002: 211) 

Riders on armored horses, Segesser I, detail.

Hotz, The Segesser Hide Paintings.

A companion painting measuring 13½ by 4½ feet, known as Segesser I, shows a battle between two tribal groups, with the attackers possibly accompanied by a Spaniard. The painting shows hills and cliffs with deciduous trees populated by bison, deer, and pumas. It is theorized that it represents an encounter between Pueblo Indians and Plains Apaches. Such skirmishes occurred between 1693 and about 1719. (http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/press_releases) Illustrated in this battle two of the attackers ride leather-armored horses. “The attackers’ horses wear neck protectors, like the collars worn by horses in jousting contests, and rawhide armor reaching almost to the ground. – Both of these riders, confined in the long horse armor, remind one of Eskimos in their kayaks.” (Hotz 1970:23)

“They are a later version of the medieval covers worn by horses used in jousting contests. Such coverings for horses were common in seventeenth and eighteenth century America and served as protection both from enemies and from thick underbrush and cactus. They are shown in Spanish drawings on the walls of Canyon de Chelly, in Arizona. The Padouca Apaches are supposed to have adopted them and to have glued sand on the outsides for reinforcement.” (Hotz 1970:55) In the examples shown in Segesser II the legs and hips of the riders are inside the leather cover which comes up to fasten around their waists.

There is considerable disagreement as to the tribes involved in various depictions of hide-armored horses, but Lewis and Clarke did describe hide horse armor among the Shoshone so examples from the Plateau and the northwestern part of the Great Plains may well be Shoshone. Farther east and south the issue becomes cloudier as many references exist that say the armored horses were ridden by Padoucah warriors, and the identity of the Padoucahs is not agreed upon. The great George Bird Grinnell identified the Padoucah with Plains Apache groups early after the contact period (Grinnell 1920) while others associate the name Padoucah with Comanches, although, as seen above the Museum of New Mexico identifies the portrayals in the Segesser I as Plains Apache. Either of these groups could have been responsible for the two armored horses at Farrington Springs. This is an area that both Plains Apache and Comanches passed through, and these figures represent a fascinating part of the history of the west.

NOTE: For pictures of most of the armored horses currently known in rock art check out the Mavis and John Greer’s site at http://greerservices.com/html/armored_horses.html.

REFERENCES:

Grinnell, George Bird

1920    Who Were The Padoucah?, American Anthropologist, Vol. 22, No. 3, July-September 1920.

Hotz, Gottfried

1970    The Segesser Hide Paintings, Masterpieces Depicting Spanish Colonial New Mexico, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe.

http://greerservices.com/html/armored_horses.html

http://media.museumofnewmexico.org/press_releases.php?action=detail&releaseID=20

http://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/armored%20horses

Kessell, John L.

2002    Spain in the Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.

ARCHITECTURE IN ROCK ART – TIPIS – Part 1:

In their records left on the rocks by Native Americans of their deeds and situations, we can look for clues to the environment that these feats were performed in. One common feature of the environment in Great Plains rock art is one or more residences, their tipis. In the tradition of Plains Biographic Art much of the imagery in a composition is intended as information. In this way a figure seen in relation to a group of tipis would represent a specific person involved in some activity next to that tipi village.

Horseman in lower left, Anubis Cave, Cimarron

County, OK. Photo Peter Faris, 21 Sept. 1986. 

My awareness of this came back in the 1980s on one of a frequent number of trips down into southeastern Colorado. In the so-called Anubis Cave in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, I saw a small equestrian figure on horseback in front of the upside-down “V” of a tipi. It occurred to me at that time that it placed a figure in a specific place, and thus at a specific time, the time when he was there. In other words it was telling a story, a simple story certainly, and one that did not provide me with much information, but a story nevertheless. This is the basic premise of James Keyser in his statement that the Biographic art of ledger books and painted robes can provide a lexicon toward the interpretation of some rock art.

Tracing by James D. Keyser and Mark D. Mitchell, Box

Canyon site, 5LA8464,  Picketwire Canyonlands,

Las Animas County, CO. 1999.

Photograph of a portion of the Box Canyon site, 5LA8464, 

Picketwire Canyonlands, Las Animas County, CO.

Photo Peter Faris, August 1999.

Detail of tracing showing tipi near the center (directly

under the elk). Box Canyon site, 5LA8464,  Picketwire

Canyonlands, Las Animas County, CO. August, 1999.

In the Box Canyon Site in the Purgatoire river canyon in southeastern Colorado a couple of panels illustrate combat in relation to tipis. 5LA8464 was recorded in 1999 by a crew led by Jim Keyser and Mark Mitchell. This is a large panel, faintly scratched into a large flat side of the rock. This panel apparently records an attack upon a tipi village or family encampment by a group of equestrian warriors on the right, whom I believe are Pawnees by the details of their portrayal. The village or encampment being attacked is represented by a tipi on the left side of the panel and would probably have been Cheyenne or Arapahoe based upon the location. One defender seen by the tipi has been struck by an arrow. A number of unridden horses suggest that this combat bay have been in conjunction with a horse raid upon this encampment.

Red Rock Ledge, Picketwire Canyonlands, Las Animas

County, CO. Tracing by James D. Keyser and

Mark D. Mitchell, August 1999.

Red Rock Ledge site, Picketwire Canyonlands, Las Animas

County, CO. Photograph Peter Faris, August 1999.

Another plains biographic rock art panel recorded by James Keyser and Mark Mitchell is the Red Rock Ledge site in the Picketwire Canyonlands, near the Box Canyon site. This smaller panel tells a story related by Keyser in his subsequent published report. “The lightly-scratched petroglyphs at Red Rock Ledge compose a Biographic scene showing a pedestrian bowman who has traveled from a tipi village to engage and enemy represented by a crooked lance or coup stick. Beginning at the right margin of the scene, and following the action to the left, the composition consists of four major elements. At the far right is a group of nine triangles with forked tops representing a camp of tipis. One other incomplete figure probably represents a tenth tipi with one side no longer visible. A series of seventeen more or less horizontal dashes and four “C” shapes extends from the tipi camp toward the bowman. Based on comparisons with other Biographic drawings in various media, the dashes represent human footprints and the “C” shapes represent horse hoofprints. The third element, the bowman, is a simply drawn, rectangular-body figure with a circle head. His legs are shown with thighs, calves, and feet. The short diagonal lines that extend outward from the front of each leg indicate fringed leggings. In his right hand he carries a carefully drawn recurved bow that is shooting an arrow with a large triangular point. The fourth element, located at the far left of the scene, is a horizontally-oriented crook-neck coup stick, from which trail four groups of paired streamers or feathers. Each group extends diagonally downward to the left, and the four groups are spaced about equidistantly along the shaft, with the last at the end of the crook.” (Keyser and Mitchell 2000:26-7)

Picture Canyon, Baca County, CO. Photograph Peter Faris, 1986.

In the well known horse pictograph/petroglyph from Picture Canyon, in Baca County, Colorado, a number of very faint tipi shapes can be made out with careful observation. Indeed, a group of four or five very faint upside-down “V” shapes in the upper right corner of the photo represent a tipi village, with at least two more at the top just left of center.  These presumably represent the tipi village that the horseman himself is associated with.

Numerous other examples of tipis portrayed in rock art can be found in the literature. My point here is that in contrast to the common assumption that “we can never know what rock art is saying” we can, in many instances determine quite a bit about a rock art panel. I will show some other examples and share some other thoughts in future columns.

REFERENCES

Keyser, James D. and Mark D. Mitchell

2000   Red Rock Ledge: Plains Biographic Rock Art in the Picketwire Canyonlands, Southeastern Colorado, Southwestern Lore, Vol. 66, No. 2, Summer, 2000, p. 22-37.

I DIDN'T SEE THAT THERE!

Rock art researchers have for years read ethnographic reports about Native American beliefs that some rock art images appear overnight, and we have consistently dismissed this as superstitious mythology.

Ute Indians believed that rock art was created by little people who may live within the rock itself. The Piikani Blackfoot believed that rock art would appear overnight to predict upcoming events, and they would often consult rock art panels about enemy presence, and to divine the success of war parties. They also attributed the presence of rock art high on the rock face, above the reach of people to birds. As no one could obviously reach high enough to create these images, they were obviously created by bluebirds under the direction of Thunder. The upshot is that we, of course, know better with our scientific acumen, and that there is no basis for a belief as obviously wrong as that rock art can appear overnight.

Fig. 1, 5LA8464, Box Canyon Site,
Photo: Peter Faris, 1999.

It is interesting, however, that all rock art researchers that I know agree that they have had experiences where they have noticed rock art that they had not seen before in places where they have looked many times, which seems to have appeared overnight. We know that differing light conditions affect the visibility and under the right conditions a pictograph that has faded to illegibility can sometimes be seen more completely, and a petroglyph made with shallow scratches can literally snap into visibility. An excellent example of this is represented by the Box Canyon Site, 5LA8464, in the Picketwire Canyonlands in the Purgatoire River Canyon, illustrated in Figure 1.

The Box Canyon petroglyph scene is shallowly scratched onto the darkened surface of a fairly hard sandstone cliff, and had been missed by numerous people walking past it for years. Then, on the right day, under the right light conditions, it was clearly seen by a park ranger as he passed the cliff face. I believe that the ranger was Mark Mitchell whom I have mentioned before in my August 20, 2009, posting about Armored Horses.

Fig. 2, 5LA8464, Box Canyon Site tracing,
reproduced by Mark Mitchell.

The panel was recorded in August, 1999, under the direction of James Keyser. Because the images consist of essentially shallow scratches on the hard rock surface it was virtually impossible to properly photograph. The method adopted was to trace the images on transparent plastic sheeting with a permanent felt marker. The final image consists of photocopies of these transparent plastic tracings reduced to the same percentage in the photocopier, and the resulting reduced-scale photocopies were pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, for further reduction through the same process. The final result can be seen in figure 2 as a whole scene in Plains Biographic style.

A group of Pawnee horsemen on the right have made a horse raid on a tipi village represented by the tipi on the left. Defending horsemen have taken at least one casualty represented by the mounted figure with an arrow in his chest in front of the tipi. The attackers, recognized as Pawnee by their distinctive moccasins with flaps at the ankles, and their hair in a queue at the back, are riding away with some dismounted horses representing the success of their raid. I have assumed that the victimized group are Cheyenne or Arapahoe because they inhabited the area in historic times.

As mentioned above, this complicated panel had been scratched onto the cliff face, probably between 150 – 250 years ago, but had not been noticed until the late 1990s. Why, one might almost imagine that it had appeared overnight!

ARMORED HORSE PETROGLYPHS:

Some of the early rock art representations of horses equipped with tack or gear illustrate it with the body covered by a tent-like hanging covering. These represent horses that are covered with rawhide horse armor. John Ewers related an early report of this which was found in Lewis and Clark’s 1805 description of the Lemhi Shoshoni. “They have a kind of armor like a coat of mail, which is formed of a great many folds of dressed antelope-skins, united by means of a mixture of glue and sand. With this they cover their own bodies and those of their horses, and find it impervious to arrows”.
Citing a number of early sources Ewers continued:
“The earliest known description of the use of armor by any Plains Indian tribe refers to both body and horse types. In 1690, Tonty found the Caddo on Red River wore “body-coverings of several skins, one over the other, as a protection from arrows. They arm the breasts of their horses with the same material, a proof that they are not very far from the Spaniards.” The French explorers Du Tisne and La Harpe found the Wichita and their neighbors on the Arkansas wore hide body armor and decked their horses with breastplates of tanned hide in 1719. Five years later Bourgmont remarked that the Paduca (Apache) went to war dressed in “specially tanned buffalo skins with which they protect themselves. They also hang them around their horses to protect them against arrows” A Ponca tradition refers to their fights with mounted Comanche, before the Ponca themselves obtained horses, in which the Comanche employed horse armor “of thick rawhide cut in round pieces and made to overlap like the scales of a fish. Over the surface was sand held on by glue”.

Armored horse petroglyph, Farrington

Springs, Colorado. Photo: Peter Faris.

Imagery of armored horses has been discovered at the monumental rock art site of Farrington Springs, in southeastern Colorado, by Mark Mitchell.

Rock Art Depicting Commanches, Horses Clad In Leather Armor Discovered In Colorado, ScienceDaily, April 1, 2004 — Several new rock art discoveries by a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher depict mounted warriors, likely Comanche, astride horses clad in leather armor and created around 1700 to 1750, the first such petroglyphs found in the state. CU-Boulder anthropology doctoral student Mark Mitchell, who identified the art, said Plains Indians like the Comanche probably acquired horses from the Spanish in northern New Mexico beginning about 1650 through raiding or trading. The idea of leather-armored horses and riders to deflect spears and arrows probably came from American Indians seeing armored Spanish horse soldiers in the Southwest or Mexico.
"This art tells us about Comanche history through archaeology," Mitchell said. "There is some recorded history but virtually no archaeology of the Comanche, which makes these rock art depictions very valuable. They should point us to additional places to look for Comanche sites containing artifacts associated with horses."

Armored horse petroglyph, Farrington

Springs, CO, photo: Peter Faris

The new finds by Mitchell include three in Colorado and one in central Kansas. He identified two separate rock art depictions of armored horses on the Purgatoire River in southeast Colorado, both showing the horses' armor as rough trapezoids of leather on each side with straight to slightly flaring front and back margins and curved at the top and bottom. "Both also clearly show an armored collar from which horses' heads protrude," said Mitchell.

Page 34, Rock Art of Western North Dakota and the Southern

Black Hills, James D. Keyser and Linea Sundstrom, South

Dakota Archaeological Society, No. 9, 1984.

In order to pick out the image of the armored horse in the first photo from Farrington Springs, Colorado, you need to first see the fairly large, tent-like shape in the middle of the picture. That represents the body of the horse draped in a cover of leather armor. Protruding from the right side of that shape is a parallelogram representing the cylindrical neck covering of the armor. The horse’s head protrudes from the right side of that cylindrical neck armor with a pointed ear, and is almost ludicrously small in comparison with the size of the neck and body. This is much like the larger of the two armored horses in James Keyser’s illustration from Rock Art of Western South Dakota, the North Cave Hills, and the Southern Black Hills (South Dakota Archaeological Society, Number 9, Special Publication) as seen above.

Mark Mitchell’s exciting discovery adds important new evidence for interpreting the prehistoric/historic transitional period in the American west. It also illustrates beautifully one of the most important axioms in rock art research. We really do tend to see what we look for. This site has been visited by hundreds of visitors over the years, including yours truly, and as far as I know not one of us recognized the important image of the armored horse. We certainly saw it, but it did not register. Then Mark Mitchell stood in front of the panel in the same place that so many of us had stood in before, and he realized what it was he was seeing. Congratulations Mark, on your important contribution.