Larom Summer Institute in Western American Studies

Points of View: Shared Perspectives on Western American Art

July 13 – 17, 2009

Prehistoric Wyoming: 2001 Class Overview

The wisdom of the ages in written in the stones. May we see with eyes of stones!
- John Trudell, Santee Dakota; poet, American Indian activist

For twenty-two years, the Larom Summer Institute has gathered the top academics in the country to teach a select group of students at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. The summer of 2001 saw the first field class held at Summer Institute, Prehistoric Wyoming: Like No Place on Earth. The students spent more than half of the course time in the field studying various types and styles of rock images or petroglyphs and pictographs found throughout the Big Horn Basin and southern Montana.

To augment their understanding of the art, the students first learned about the Native American cultures of Wyoming and Montana, exploring their origins and time depth, and examining what evidence there is to assign various petroglyphs and pictographs with its makers. The class learned about and visited the pictographs and petroglyphs of the Big Horn Basin, Pryor Mountains, Big Horn Mountains, and Wind River drainage all within a few hundred miles of Cody, Wyoming.

During the lecture portion of the class, students heard about new techniques in dating petroglyphs and pictographs, recording techniques, the types of pigments, paints and techniques used to create the art; the importance of the art to Native people, explanations offered by Native experts and archaeologists for the art, and the conservation of rock images through site condition assessment and proper site management.

Dr. Lawrence Loendorf, an archaeologist whose research focuses on the Great Plains, the U.S. Southwest, ethnography, and rock images, taught Prehistoric Wyoming. He has conducted many field researches in the Pryor Mountains of southern Montana; an ethnographic overview for Yellowstone National Park; the recording of a large petroglyph site in Torrey Valley, Wyoming; and an intensive effort to date the pictographs and petroglyphs in the Big Horn Basin.

Dr. Loendorf recently initiated a multi-year project to document the condition of thousands of rock paintings in Cañon de Chelly, Arizona.

Due to his expertise in the field of parietal art, Loendorf has had the privilege of being one of five Americans allowed to enter Chauvet-Pont-d'arc cave in France. Discovered in 1994 by spelunker Jean-Marie Chauvet, the contents of the cave date at 31,000 B.P. (before present), and contain the oldest known examples of parietal art in the world. The discovery has set the archaeological and art worlds on their ear, as the previously oldest known cave art dates at 15,000 B.P. Chauvet-Pont-d'arc debunks the theory of art and the human mind evolving with time, due to the fact that the art of Chauvet is as spectacular as the caves of Lascaux and Altamira that are 16,000 years younger.

At a Historical Center Twilight Talk, Loendorf gave the Cody community a rare opportunity to view the interior of Chauvet, its art and artifacts in a presentation titled "Painted Ponies from Chauvet to Cañon de Chelly" in which he compared and contrasted the pictographs of the Old and New Worlds.

Loendorf emphasizes how rock image sites are an integral part of today's Native life, religion and culture. The imagery in petroglyphs and pictographs as well as in other media was and is important for expressing ideas and beliefs. Unfortunately, today and since the opening of the frontier, vandals have defaced and destroyed numerous sites of this ancient art. The best solution is education, to obtain a better understanding of the significance of the art and other sacred sites to Native people, as well as its importance to non-Indians. Rock images are also part of the national heritage and deserve the same reverence and respect as a piece of art in a museum or as a house of worship. Polly Schaafsma, artist, writer and scholar of North American rock imagery emphasizes this point:

Paintings on stone and petroglyphs pecked, scratched or abraded into natural rock surfaces have the distinction of being art forms that have remained through the centuries in their original setting and in which settings they had certain specific functions. Even though meanings and the symbolic importance of the many motifs may be lost to the modern viewer, the mere presence of imagery within the natural scene inevitably conveys a sense of significance and heightens the sense of the place.¹

Loendorf suggests, "it is essential that Native people be consulted before starting a major recording project. Rock art sites are among the most important to Native Americans who consider them 'places of power' and are equivalent to the dominant culture's shrines and churches."

Students at the Larom Summer Institute saw that what they have learned in the classroom is indeed part of the political and cultural fights of the real world. The recent case of Weatherman Draw in the Pryor Mountains of Montana has brought national attention as an example of this ongoing struggle for the preservation of this art and attention to Native beliefs. Anschutz Exploration Corporation of Denver pursued an option to drill an exploratory well in the area named "Valley of the Shields" or "Valley of Chiefs." The area was once part of the Crow Reservation and is still used for Crow ceremonies. The site is also significant to numerous tribes of the Plains. The Bureau of Land Management designated the Weatherman Draw as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern in 1999.

The Sierra Club, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and 10 American Indian tribes were fighting the move by the Anschutz Corp. As recently as June 2001, negotiations between the two parties have taken place, and the drillings plans have been put on hold while the developer and tribal officials work to find an alternative. Members of the Crow and Blackfeet tribes have offered to look at other development potential on their reservations for Anschutz. A spokesperson for the National Trust for Historic Preservation stated "it is a positive step in the right direction to protect Weatherman Draw."

Update! In April 2002, Anschutz Exploration Corporation dropped their plans to drill in the sacred valley, and also made the unprecedented move of giving two leasing rights in Weatherman Draw to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In a Billings Gazette article, William Miller, vice-president of Anschutz Corp. said, "We recognize there are significant cultural values connected with this site." Miller believes that the transfer of the leasehold rights to the National Trust "will be the most effective way to see that the interests of all parties are met." A Sierra Club representative said, "The significance of these amazing places and the inappropriateness of energy development within them is affirmed by this decision."4

Students at Summer Institute had the very rare opportunity to visit a breathtaking rock shelter dubbed the Alcove. Located on private land in the canyon country around Tensleep, Wyoming, the Alcove was partially excavated in 1970. The maximum height of the feature is 50 meters, giving the visitor an overwhelming feeling of insignificance. A series of pictographs inhabit the shelter, and many of the figures are only a few centimeters above the present ground surface, suggesting that a great deal of deposition in the cavern has buried an unknown number of paintings. Scholar Polly Schaafsma states, "The presence of rock art alone can suggest that a location is powerful." These words are never truer than when one enters this awe-inspiring, reverent place.

If you ever have the privilege to visit a site, these words on the preservation of rock images from archaeologist David Hurst Thomas are important.

When visiting a rock art site, your best move is to keep hands off. Do not make rubbings. Do not enhance the rock art with chalk outlines. Do not collect any artifacts that might be scattered about. Also keep in mind that many ancient rock art sites are considered to be sacred sites by some modern Native American people. Please respect their customs and beliefs when you visit the sites of their ancestors.²

There are still ancient
symbols
alive
I did dance with the prehistoric horse
years and births later
near a cave wall
last winter
...
I am memory alive
not just a name
but an intricate part
of this web of motion,
meaning: earth, sky, stars circling
my heart
centrifugal.
- Joy Harjo; Muscogee (Creek), "Skeleton of Winter"

1. Schaafsma, Polly. (1987). "Rock Art: Ideas in Time and Space." In Marks in Place: Contemporary Responses to Rock Art. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
2. Thomas, David Hurst. (1994). Exploring Ancient Native America: An Archaeological Guide. New York: Macmillan.
3. Harjo, Joy. (1983). She Had Some Horses. New York: Thunder Mouth Press.
4. Gransbery, J. (24 April 2002). Sacred sites preserved by exploration company's donation of leases to national trust group. The Billings Gazette.