2011 Wyndham Semiotics of Powerful Places

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The Semiotics of Powerful Places: Rock Art and

Landscape Relations in the Sierra Tarahumara,
Mexico
Article in Journal of anthropological research September 2011

DOI: 10.3998/jar.0521004.0067.304
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THE SEMIOTICS OF POWERFUL PLACES 387
Rock Art and Landscape Relations in
the Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico
Felice S. Wyndham
Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC, Canada.
Email: felice.wyndham@ubc.ca
KEY WORDS: Apache rock art, Cultural landscapes, Identity and material culture, Memory
and history, Rarmuri rock art, Sierra Tarahumara, Uto-Aztecan/Athabascan exchange
corridors
In northern Mexico, Sierra Tarahumara rock art sites are places of power, danger,
reward, and transformation in both Rarmuri and mestizo worlds. Situated in
places rich in symbolism, relationship, affect, and embodied history, the semiotics
of rock art are interpreted and re-invented by contemporary Rarmuri, non-
Rarmuri locals, tourists, and anthropologists. Rock art provokes narratives of
local history, past interactions with other peoples (especially Apache/Ndee), and
complex identity narratives. Though there is insufficient evidence to determine
authorship of most of the rock art in the Sierra Tarahumara, some of it was
certainly created by Rarmuri people in the past and present, and some is likely
Apache/Ndee. Based on descriptions of rock art as personal marks made by
owirames (Rarmuri healers) and warura (elders), I hypothesize a uniting theme
for much of the rock art, as signaling the practices, experiences, and relationships
of individual healers, and a reanimation of narratives of deep history.
THE RED OCHER IMAGES ONE CAN ENCOUNTER when walking through the precipitous
canyonlands of the highlands of the Sierra Tarahumara of Chihuahua (Figure 1)
are not simply temporally exotic, unknowable signs, as outsiders often initially
interpret them. For the people who grow up with the images, rock art is part of a
living landscapepart of a complex of signs that situate the viewer in relationships
of identity, history, and spiritual connections related to the landscape. When I first
began to explore the rock art of the highland Sierra Tarahumara, guided by various
Rarmuri (Tarahumara) teachers and companions, I was struck by the differences
between my response and theirs. Standing in the same place, viewing the same
marks on rock, we were both affected, but in different ways. The intention of
my gaze oscillated between appreciative consumer of sensuous, enigmatic art (as
learned in museum-viewing) and deciphering the meaning and origins encoded
in the symbols (as learned in comparative ethnology). My companions reactions
ranged from familiar acknowledgment to uninterested redirection of attention,
enthusiasm for the site as a whole but not particularly its contents, and avoidance/
warning of potential danger. Their gaze seemed to be motivated more by particular
relations to the specific place and what might be there as indicated by the presence
of rock art, rather than focused on the signs themselves. A ubiquitous response
Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 67, 2011

Copyright by The University of New Mexico
387
388 JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
from many Rarmuri commentators was to say that the art had been painted by
Apache (or [k]apache, in the Rarmuri pronunciation) in an unspecified, distant
past. Other comments affirm the continued creation of rock art, particularly by
local elders and children.
This article explores rock art in a focal area of the Sierra Tarahumara from
three perspectives. The first gaze is that of local Rarmuri commentators. The
second gaze is that of local Mexican/North American public. And the analytical
third gaze is my own and that of ethnologists comparing rock art in regional and
historical contexts.
The pinturas (paintings) and their rockshelter sites, found throughout the
Sierra Tarahumara region, are a constant and powerful reminder of the peoples and
lifeways of the past. They evoke stories that accompany family and community
memories and are a source for learning place-rooted visual languages and aesthetics,
as well as ways of relating to other worlds. The images preserved on rock are part
of a living semiotic landscape and are interpreted in diverse ways by different
people (Figure 1). Because most of the paintings are material manifestations made
in the past by people who left no written records, they may also hold clues to
ancient and more recent cultural ties, encounters, and migrations that formed the
connecting roots of the social and cultural landscapes of the Mexican Northwest
and U.S. Southwest.1
Figure 1. Rafael Largo Rejogochi next to a panel at the entrance to the Ajorachi rockshelter.
The painted plant at right resembles the wild Rarmuri food plant amari (Dahlia sp.) or
siwchari (sunflower). Note the barely visible kneeling figure at top right. Additional
elements above the kneeling figure (outside the photo) include a tripartite cross, which is
used in Rarmuri ritual patios and for healing. (Photograph taken September 11, 2001, by
the author; all photos by the author unless otherwise specified)
ROCK ART AND LANDSCAPE RELATIONS 389
For more than a century, Rarmuri lifeways and landscapes have been
construed by outsidersboth Mexican and North Americanas remote, hidden,
and inaccessible. But historically and prehistorically, Rarmuri communities have
been near significant flows of people and goods in a continent-wide trade system.2
Rock art can be a key to understanding the movements and relationships among
prehistoric peoples in the North American Great Basin (Murray 2000:29). It has also
been a key semiotic element of an isolating and othering gaze. To outsiders, the
marks on rock evoke an unknown, pre-colonized Americaa primitive, distant
past. To the visiting tourist, rock art is romantic, enigmatic, and evocative, but
ultimately of passing interest. To explorers such as Carl Lumholtz in the late 1800s
and to succeeding generations of ethnologists, the rock art of Northwest Mexico
and the U.S. Southwest has been a fascinating puzzle to decipher through stylistic
and comparative analysis. To local people, the petroglyphs are part of everyday
life. They are marks, however incomplete, of peoples perceptions, engagements,
and relationships in a complex and changing Rarmuri landscape.
After a brief introduction to the region and its social history, I describe three
sites of previously unpublished rock art in the Sierra Tarahumara. This is followed
by a discussion of Rarmuri first gaze interpretations of rock art, focusing on three
key relations that are evoked by the particular examples presented here: relations
with and meanings of depicting deer; relations with and meanings associated
with rockshelters and caves; and stories about past relations with Apaches and
Rarmuri ancestors. Then I briefly touch on the second gaze of local mestizo
interpretations and utilizations of rock art, as well as the North American public
audience more generally. This is followed by a discussion of interpretations in
the mode of a third gazethat of the comparative ethnologist. Here I make
a preliminary exploration of comparative interpretations within an analytic
framework of a sociogeographically networked and culturally interactive past for
the Northwest Mexico/Southwest U.S. region. I hypothesize a uniting theme for
much of the Sierra Tarahumara rock art, as signaling the practices, experiences,
and relationships of individual healers, and as a reanimation of narratives of deep
history. This hypothesis is based on verbal descriptions of contemporary rock
art as personal marks made by owirames (Rarmuri doctors) and warura
(elders), ethnographic awareness of the valence given to rock art and rockshelters,
and interpretations of the meanings of the iconography in the rock art itself.
RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODS
The rock art sites discussed here (Figure 2) are located in the general vicinity of
Bashuare in the highland Sierra Tarahumara of the Sierra Madre Occidental. The
communities in this area identify as mostly pagtame (baptized/Christian), and
a majority of residents continue as subsistence agriculturalists while negotiating
relations in a wider Mexican/North American context.
The lower elevations of the Sierra Tarahumara are arid and semitropical. The
highlands are mostly forested in pinyon-juniper-madrone and temperate pine-oak
woodlands. Several rivers transport rain and nutrients from the highlands to the
Sonora and Chihuahua deserts on the western and eastern slopes. In the high Sierra,
Figure 2. Location of fieldwork (shaded) in the Sierra Madre of northwestern Mexico.

(Modified from Graham 1994:3)
where plateau basalts came into contact with softer tuff deposits at river level,
erosion has commonly created small caves or rockshelters, leaving a ceiling of
basalt or other material and a floor of tuff (Martin et al. 1998:18). Shallow caves/
rockshelters and cliff overhangs were used extensively by prehistoric peoples in
the Sierra Tarahumara and today serve as temporary or seasonal homes, livestock
shelters, and storage areas. Rockshelters, cliff overhangs, and shallow caves
are materially and symbolically significant places in Rarmuri landscapesthe
context and canvas for the majority of the rock art in the region today.
Present-day Rarmuri-speakers live in rural territories as well as in urban
centers such as Ciudad Chihuahua and Ciudad Jurez in the state of Chihuahua.
At the beginning of the colonial period Rarmuri communities were primarily
located in the western and eastern canyons of the Sierra Madre Occidental and
the fertile foothills to the east and south of the mountainsthe present-day areas
of Cuauhtmoc and Ciudad Chihuahua (Deeds 1998:12). The highland area
discussed in this article was probably less populated before European colonization
and was settled as a region of refuge during the colonial period (late 1500s,
early 1600s) because of its relative inaccessibility (Crumrine and Weigand 1987).
At that time many Rarmuri moved into the high Sierra Tarahumara to avoid
infectious diseases, being forced to work in the Spanish mines, or conflict with
their dami (Tepehuan) neighbors to the south. Others remained in the lower
elevations and contributed to the rapidly transformed societies of northern
Mexico. In the highlands, interaction and exchange with other indigenous groups
along the north-south corridor continued, including encounters with Apache/Ndee
(and probably Comanche/Numunuh) bands beginning in the 1800s, if not earlier.
The rock art images that I describe and interpret are from a roughly ten by
ten kilometer area in Municipio Guachochi, where I lived and worked in 2000
2002, completing a study of plant knowledge contextualized in the landscape
environments of Rarmuri children (Wyndham 2004a, 2010).3 The documentation
of rock art was done opportunistically, guided by local people who decided where
to take me and when. Because they had experience with outsiders curiosity about
rock art, and they knew that I was interested in Rarmuri landscapes, art, and
history, local friends, acquaintances, and colleagues initiated interactions with me
over rock art, inviting me to see places they knew of, or had recently discovered
themselves and wanted to share. My discussion of the interpretations of these
images draws on participant observation over my lifetime of visits,4 informal
interviews during my residence, and a decade of research trips to the extended
Rarmuri communities near Bashuare. I am grateful to many individuals in these
communities for their guidance and instruction on this topic.
Each rock art site visit was guided by one or more local residents, usually the
owner of land (formally, aside from cultivated fields and house compounds,
land is communally owned in the ejido tenure system; functionally, however,
residence rights and inherited ownership of rockshelters are recognized among
the residents). I conservatively estimate that over the course of a decade I made
inquiries about rock art and its interpretations with 2025 local men, women,
and children (about 10% of the inhabitants of the valley) and had more focused,
extended conversations with six or seven people. I recorded rock art with
photographs and sketches, often under less than ideal conditions, such as sun
glare or shadow, or a distorted view or inability to record all the elements in a site
because of my position.
THE ROCK ART
Only a small part of the rock art of the highlands of Chihuahua has been documented,
and as with rock art anywhere, reliable dating has been difficult or not attempted
(Keyser and Klassen 2001:16). According to Murray and Viramontes (2006:4),
as of 2005 only 28 rock art sites had been registered in the state of Chihuahua
with the Mexican National Registry of Monuments and Archaeological Zones,
and 154 sites have been documented in recent surveys. Given that I noted six to
ten sites (depending on how site is defined) within a ten-kilometer radius of
Bashuare pueblo, and considering my experience in other areas of the region,
the total number of rock art sites in Chihuahua must be much higher. Murray
(1983, cited in Mendiola Galvn 2002:110) categorizes rock art in this area into
four periods: (1) prehistoric pre-Rarmuri; (2) precontact Rarmuri; (3) European
contact (1500spresent); and (4) Apache/Ndee (1800s). In this article I discuss
photographs and drawings of rock art mainly from three sites in the highland
Sierra Tarahumara. This is not a survey of all the rock art, even for the restricted
focus area treated in this essay. My aim instead is to explore the ways rock art
exists in relation to the past, to other living things and other peoples narrated in
the contexts of contemporary landscape.
Several writers have described and analyzed rock art in other areas of the
Sierra Tarahumara, including Murray (1983), Lewenstein (1990), Lumholtz (1987
[1902]), and Ruiz-Funes (1995). Mendiola Galvn (2002) has given us the most
comprehensive account of rock art in the region. Referring to the southeastern
zone of Chihuahua in particular, he writes, what we know of is a fraction that
does not yet allow us to establish clear stylistic relations with the rock art of other
areas, and also, due to its diverse morphologies we are still far from establishing
and defining a local style (2002:134). Most of the rock art surveyed to date in
Northwest Mexico is in the lowlands and U.S. border areas. The rock art described
here is in the southeastern archaeological subregion of Chihuahua, as denoted
by Mendiola Galvn, in an as-yet-undocumented area left blank in his useful
comparative map of Chihuahua rock art (2002:22, 27).
Rock images in this area of the Sierra Tarahumara are mostly painted
pictographs. Pecked and incised petroglyphs do exist, in fewer numbers. The
paintings are a common and salient feature in the landscape, but they are difficult
for outsiders to find without a local guide because they are as dispersed across
the mountains and canyon lands as Rarmuri households are, often situated near
a water source or on transit routes through rough terrain. Most pictographs are
painted in red or black with ocher (hydrated ferric oxide, a natural mineral pigment)
or charcoal, usually on vertical surfaces in or near rockshelter dwellings.
Today, locals make ocher paint by simply grinding the mineral with water. It
is daubed onto the desired surface with the fingers, or with a stick swabbed with
wool or cotton fibers. Ocher paint is still in frequent use, for decorating pots, church
walls, and ceremonial items such as drums and wooden swords. In some parts of
the Sierra Tarahumara, red ocher is among the medicinal/prophylactic substances
used to ritually cure human and animal bodies (Levi 2004:459). It takes some effort
to create ocher paint that effectively sticks to the rock surface: thus, graffiti made
with red pencil rocks or charcoal sticks are easily distinguishable.
In the region I discuss, Rarmuri people do not have a commonly used word
or phrase for rock art as such. In conversation with me the common denotation
was to use the Spanish word pinturas (paintings). When I inquired specifically
for the Rarmuri words used to designate the pictographs, the descriptive phrases
risoch osrame sitkame (literally, red cave writing/embroidering) and iytame
(anything that is painted) were given, with the commentary that people rarely
refer directly to the rock art in speech.
Risoch Korkachi
About a thousand feet above the valley where I lived is a series of rockshelters
called Korkachi, Place of the Crow, in a narrow, steep box canyon. Today the
small cliff overhang is used occasionally to shelter goats. When I visited, the floor
had been dug up. On a deteriorating east-facing cliff face are several red ocher
pictographs. My guide and compadre, Moreno Vatista, grew up with his family in
a nearby, seasonally inhabited rockshelter dwelling. The pictograph that he wanted
me to see is an antlered quadruped almost a meter long in red ocher (Figures 3
and 4). This painting, interpreted as a deer by Moreno, is remarkable for its size,
detail, and style. Though the body of the animal is depicted realistically, with a
broad back, barrel chest, and naturalistic stance, it bears a fantastically elaborate
set of antlers and an unusual horselike tail. The antlers appear to be meticulously
fingertip-daubed, decorated with loops, floating spots, and lines of spots.
Figure 3. This fantastically

antlered ungulate painting
(deer? elk?) is approximately
1 m long and 0.75 m tall.
The painting technique appears

to be finger-pad daubing, except
perhaps for the ends of the antlers
on the far right. (Traced from
photographs by the author)
Figure 4. Photograph of the original pictograph depicted as a tracing in Figure 3.

As indicated by photographs in the possession of a local resident that were
taken 1015 years ago, the painting has deteriorated significantly.
Near the antlered animal are several additional images (Figure 5 and 6).
Though deteriorating, a vertical series of three rectangular frames can be discerned
(Figure 5). The uppermost rectangular frame encloses two circles with descending
lines. In the middle frame, successively smaller rectangles are configured in a
diminishing corbelled arrangement, leading visually inward, stepwise, to a square.
The bottom frame shows at least three concentric rectangles framing a sunlike
element and other indistinguishable features. Earlier photographs show human
figures, possibly dancers and/or thunderbirds, under the third frame. Near this
image are four or five human figures. Figure 6 shows an edge of the panel with
thick, sequential ocher circles in a chainlike configuration.
Figure 5. These elements are painted in red

ocher at the Korkachi site, near the antlered
image in Figures 3 and 4.
Figure 6. Immediately to the
Each of the two rectangular frames is right of the panel depicted in
approximately 40 cm wide and 80 cm tall. The Figure 5, this narrow surface
rayed sunlike element in the lower rectangular is painted with a series of six
frame is similar to that seen in the antlers of circles vertically bisected by a
Figures 3 and 4. The dark spot on the lower line (about 30 cm long in total);
element is an obscure patch of layers of ocher. below are a curved line and
(Traced from photographs by the author) three parallel vertical lines.
Risoch Ajorachi
One early summer morning, my friend Efigenia Ramrez, then a young woman
of nineteen, came to visit me. After downing her requisite cup of coffee, she let
me know that she had made a discovery: I found some pinturas! Over in the
valley downstream from the hot spring. . . . I was herding my goats over there and
I followed a stray up a side canyonthere are some big paintings up there. Ill take
you! Efigenias enthusiasm was clear and contagious. I was fairly sure that I knew
of the place she had stumbled uponI had been there several years earlier with an
elder owirame (doctor/healer), Rafael Largo (Figure 1), whose family territories
were in the general vicinity. Though Efigenia had heard mention of these paintings
within a few kilometers of her home valley, she had not seen them in person.
In this rockshelter, called Ajorachi (Place of the Juniper), more than a
hundred elements are painted mostly on two facing walls of a spacious former
dwelling. All are in red/orange ocher (of different tones and apparent age) except
the thick cross and a few of the small elements around it, and three of the largest
figures in the scene in the upper right corner, which are in black (presumably
charcoal) paint (Figure 7). The floor had been violently dug up, leaving artifacts,
earth, and goat droppings in heaps.
Figure 7. The largest panel at Ajorachi rockshelter.

All the elements are painted in red/orange ocher, except
the thick cross at far left, the three largest animals at
upper right, plus a few other small elements, which are
black. The entire panel is approximately 4 m wide and
4 m tall. Traced from photographs taken September
2001 (see Figure 8).
Figures 7 and 8 show two views of the left panel. Beginning at the upper
left and working around in a counter-clockwise direction, I direct the viewers
attention to elements that also will be discussed below in the interpretive sections.
At the upper left is a double-outlined upside-down keyhole or T shape. A number
of four-legged animals are drawn below and to the left, some with raised tails
and others with lowered tails. Directly below the keyhole shape is a meandering
line with a closed loop, one of six on the panel that have similar characteristics.
Upon close inspection, it appears that the three middle lines were once contiguous,
stretching across the whole panel, seemingly dividing it in two upper and lower
portions. At the far left of the panel is a thick black cross. At this level there are
several human figures with upraised arms, more quadrupeds with ears and tails,
and to the right, six birdlike figures with outstretched wings. Six sets of concentric
squares are boldly painted in the panel, one of them distinctive in its inclusion of a
person in the center with what looks like plants growing around the border. Some
recent additions to the panel are visible in this central area, spelling out the letters
P-E-N-T(?), along with the scratched outline of an animal just below and left of the
P; all of these appear to be made with an ocher pencil rock rather than paint.
In the bottom center of the panel, two cornlike plants are depicted. The one
on the left is topped with two semi-orbs, the uppermost with rays or leaves. Just
Figure 8. The painted wall

more fully represented in
Figure 7.
Note the disturbed floor
of this shelter, probably
excavated by people looking
for buried treasure. Corn-
beer ollas (jars), metates,
tortilla-rolling dowels, and
other artifacts of recent
and ancient occupation are
strewn in the area. Also
found was a rusted sardine
can with a coating of what
looked like ocher paint
still in it. The difficult to
see P-E-N-T letters and
the animal immediately to
the lower left (see Figure
7) seem to have been
scratched on with a red
stone, probably relatively
recently. Photograph taken
September 2001.
above it is a figure with human-looking legs and birds wings and head. At the
bottom right we see a line that winds across two sets of concentric squares, ending
at the top in an S shape similar to that of three of the other winding lines in the
panel. Just above this is a two-lobed bulbous outline which, in close-up photos,
strongly resembles the body of a violin. To the right and left are more human
figures, quadrupeds, and birds. In the upper-right quadrant of the panel a group
of animals is painted (the largest three in black) among several curled lines (in
very faded orangepossibly painted at an earlier time). Above these is a striking
abstract cornstalk and tripartite cross along with a few additional figures, including
four-legged animals and dynamically posed humans.
The rockshelter wall facing the panel described above exhibits a more
integrated scene, though some elements were likely painted at different times
(Figure 9). Identifiably post-European contact in its depictions of people riding on
the backs of horses, donkeys, or mules, it shows a group of four-legged animals
some with one or two curved horns, others with nursing youngand what appears
to be a line of riders ascending a switchback trail. Two human figures appear to
be leading horses or donkeys with ropes; the other human figures are standing or
sitting on the backs of animals.
Risoch Wir
The third site described here, which because it lacks a local toponym I have
called Wir (long in Rarmuri), is a narrow, extended, very steep rockshelter
with several dwelling sites (Figure 10). In several areas the floor has been dug up.
Figure 9. This panel shows 36 of the 5060 elements on

this wall opposite to that shown in Figures 7 and 8.
Most of the animal figures are about 15 cm long. All of the figures depicted here are done in
red/orange ocher except for the three animals at the far left bottom corner, which are black. The
additional figures not depicted here are found below this scene, less clearly distinguishable,
in black paint, with a long ocher zigzag line underlining the whole wall. Under the figures
on the far lower right are a human/thunderbird figure and a second humanlike figure. Blank
portions of the panel at lower left may have been gouged and knocked off in an attempt to
destroy or carry away the art. Overall, this scene depicts at least nine people with ungulates,
including horses and possibly mules, sheep, cattle or bison, and deer. At least two appear to
be nursing young. Traced from photographs taken September 2001.
Figure 10.
Martn Sanchez,
Mara Elena Lirio,
their sons and I
visited this
extraordinarily
long, shallow
rockshelter in
February 2002.
It preserves several
panels of rock art,
including those
depicted in
Figures 11 and 12.
The rock art occurs in small panels on the rock-face walls and ceilings in
and near the rockshelter. Figure 11 shows a partial view of paintings on a low
ceiling. A cuadro or rectangle with painted diagonal triangles is juxtaposed with
meandering lines, one with a distinctive S shape, and another with four parallel
curvilinear lines. Figure 12 is on a rock wall nearby. Here, two tapering-spatulate
forms, linked by a line, exhibit many small circles connected by short lines. The
form at the left shows heavier outlines. The form at the right has two smaller and
one large, outlined, equal-arm-length crosses.
Figure 11. David Ribas, a visiting photographer, inspects several abstracts

painted on the ceiling of the long, shallow rockshelter shown in Figure 10.
The cuadro images at right are among several curved squares or rectangles that have
elements inside them. The hourglass cross is reportedly found in some Apache rock art of
Arizona (Murray 1983, cited in Mendiola Galvn 2002:110) and is common throughout the
Sierra Tarahumara. Nearby in a high, inaccessible area is another series of these cuadros,
one of which has a crescent moon shape.
Figure 12. This image (original in orange/red ocher) bears a remarkable similarity to a
petroglyph in Sonora, Mexico, depicted in Patterson (1992:125), claimed to be a map of
nearby irrigation systems. It also resembles an element in the Cueva de las Monas panel,
Chihuahua, depicted by Mendiola Galvn (2002:56). Traced from photographs.
INTERPRETATIONS
First Gaze: Rarmuri Interpretations of Rock Art

Over the years, most Rarmuri residents declined to offer specific
interpretations of pictograph meanings beyond, for example, identifying the more
figurative images (e.g., deer, horses, corn) and identifying the art as having been
made by Apache in the past. However, after nearly a decade of opportunistic
inquiry, listening, and asking questions when the subject came up in the course of
everyday life or travel across the landscape, I was told that though most of the rock
art was chab (from a long time ago), today the chrame (elders) and warura
(big peoplei.e., community leaders and healers) make new paintings as a way
to remember their great-grandfathers. In particular, oblique references were made
to the effect that these paintings are made within the domain of curingin other
words, cultivating and managing relations with beings in parallel spirit worlds,
including that of god, the devil, and other local beings, and plant allies such as
peyote. It is likely that this domain also includes sukurame (sorcerer) activity
since the means and practices are the same as those for curing, though the ends
and intention of the practitioner can differ.
Once this realm was articulated, the silences surrounding rock art became
understandable. The seeming lack of interest in interpreting specific meanings
fits within a more general Rarmuri etiquette of avoiding professing knowledge,
avoiding frivolous speculation, and avoiding meddling in other peoples
lives (even when, as in the case of most rock art, the people who expressed
themselves on the rock surface are said to have lived in the past). The silences
are in themselves cues to resituate the point of view of the observer of images
on rock in the Rarmuri landscape. Specifically, silences around other-world
relations are prescribed to ensure the well-being of all involvedthe speaker,
the listener, and anyone nearby (Burgess 1981:16; cf. Levi 2006). The silences,
or declining to interpret images, likely are means to avoid discussing sensitive/
esoteric iconography with an outsider who, it is presumedusually correctly
would not understand complex or otherworldly implications, particularly if the
paintings are related to jkuri (peyote, Lophophora spp.) healing ceremonies or
other powerful spirit entities. For example, baknowa (the name for powerful
spirit plants such as Scirpus [bulrush]), dislikes having its name spoken aloud
(Levi 1999:98). Thus, silence can be a form of responsible behavior, or gar
ntame (thinking well). Courteous Rarmuri avoid endangering the ignorant and
unprepared chabochi (non-Rarmuri adults), Rarmuri children, and those around
them, by not speaking casually about things that might bring harm.
We can also begin to move toward a Rarmuri-centric point of view in which
the place and the fact that the markings occur there provides a meaningful context
that is intrinsic to interpreting rock art. This is different from seeing the markings
as primarily discrete signs and symbols with individual, independent meanings
that are interpretable, or perhaps uninterpretable. Based on my understanding of
the local perspective, the rock art itself transforms sites, endowing places with
particular connotations and evoking particular narratives and webs of relations.
The Rarmuri landscape is peopled by diverse beings, little people, spirit beings,
ghosts, and sorcerers (Burgess 1981; Merrill 1988; Wyndham 2009), and places
in the landscape vary in their levels of safety and danger largely according to their
association with these beings. Rock art is strongly associated with the contexts of
risochcaves/rocksheltersand with a pre-Christian Rarmuri past when most
people lived at least part-time in these landscape features. The rock art in general,
and particularly rock art in risoch, commonly evokes local stories and histories of
Apache ([k]apache) raiders who sheltered there and were destroyed there, as well
as pre-Christian burials of Apache and/or Rarmuri, and others (see below).
Relations with Deer

The remarkable antlered ungulate painting at Korkachi (Figures 3 and 4)
was identified as a deer by my guide, Moreno Vatista, who grew up nearby.
This invites inquiry into local meanings and interactions with deer. The white-
tailed deer, or chomar, was until recently of central ceremonial significance to
the Rarmuri, particularly in relation with the important ymari dance that gives
strength to the world. The ymari was learned [by Rarmuri] from the deer
(Lumholtz 1987:339). The ceremony entailed sacrificial venison or other wild
animals cooked in the tnari stew prepared for the feast, though now this is almost
always made with beef, goat or mutton, as deer are scarce. I was told that the
offering of venison tnari is particularly prescribed when owirame prepare for
their work in the spirit realm, and it is requisite for sipame (peyote rasper-healers)
because of the spirit-strength of the deer. The linguistic similarity of the name for
deerchomarand the danceymari (note that the ch and y vary only
slightly in Rarmuri pronunciation) reflects this central ceremonial trope as found
among most of the related indigenous groups along the Uto-Aztecan language
corridor (Wixrika, Yoeme, Oodame, etc.). A common semiotic complex for
these linguistic groups is that of Deer/Sun/Flower/Corn/Peyote (Schaefer and
Furst 1996; see Hill 1992).
Though these associations
have not been well
documented in Rarmuri
iconography, the painting
described here also seems
to associate the fantastically
antlered deer with a sun or
flower symbol (see lower-
right branches in the antler,
Figures 3 and 4).
Deer heads are stuffed
with herbs and prepared
for use as a headpiece
by the chapeyoko (dance
crier/leader of matachin
dancers) for the January 6
fiesta (Figure 13). When
available, deerskin is used to
make ceremonial drums at
Easterthe Rarmuri ritual
time for renewing the world.
The drums are painted
with geometric images in
red ocher and then sold or
destroyed at the end of the Figure 13. The head of a recently killed deer being
ritual season. These drum prepared for ritual use as a dancing headdress. The
paintings often have similar head cavity has been stuffed with green leaves
geometric themes to those and the jaw is tied with a strip of red cotton.
seen in rock paintings.
Moreno Vatista, who grew up near the Korkachi rockshelter paintings
(Figures 36), recounted that this box canyon is used today, and was used more
regularly in the past, as the final trap for exhausted deer at the end of a long
pursuit. Upon being trapped, the deer may be killed by strangulation, as Thord-
Gray observed in 1914 (2010:162). This ancient hunting practice of the long run
or chase is complemented by local Rarmuri enjoyment of endurance racing for
ritual, social, and athletic fulfillment (Kummels 2001; Pennington 1963:100
101). Though few other examples of rock art in this area evoke the functionalist
hunting magic explanations of early interpreters of Palaeolithic European art
(Conkey 1996) and southern African rock art (Lewis-Williams et al. 1996), the
ethnographic description in this case lends some credence to the possibility that
the supernatural image of the deer is related informationally or meta-ritually to
the repeated practice of running down deer in this particular landscape. The site
of these pictographs was also reported to me to be a place where floating lights
are frequently seen. Floating lights are a sign of the presence of sukurames
(sorcerers) and/or their orom (spirit-bird familiars), both potentially dangerous
to a persons health. In mestizo lore, and to some extent Rarmuri lore, floating
lights indicate buried treasure.
As so often happens in the description of rock art, we have only enough
information to speculate (theorize) about connections, but this example highlights
some of the ways in which we can imagine (and confirm) interrelationships
between peoples ideas, actions, and representations on rock. Even though the
painting in Figure 4 is deteriorating rapidly, it may be in a phenomenological
sense recreated in the mind whenever deer are run into this box canyon. As Young
(1985) describes for Zuni depictions of deer and other hunted animals, this kind
of representation is likely less the exertion of power to effect a successful hunt
and more an expression of correct ways of thinking: a belief, not in magic, but
in the efficacy of reciprocal relations, the belief that if ritual activities are carried
out in the proper manner, with a good heart, the desired result will be obtained
(1985:27). Levi (2004:45960) echoes this for Rarmuri shamans in particular
when he describes their role as symbolically realigning relations of reciprocity
that have become unbalanced.
The unique qualities and somewhat entoptic features (cf. Lewis-Williams et
al. 1996) of this particular pictograph (Figures 3 and 4) suggest another possibility:
that the painting is related to jkuri healing ceremonies, which I know to have
been held in the general vicinity of the painting in the recent past. Jkuri as a spirit-
person is considered especially powerful, private, and somewhat dangerous for
the uninitiated to discuss, which may be why I (properly) was not told explicitly
about the possible connection.
A possibly complementary interpretation is that the pictograph in Figures 3
and 4 represents a male elk rather than a deer. The naturalistic stance of the animal
strongly resembles that of an elk in trumpeting posture, when it raises its head and
its antlers extend over its back. A particularly large individual, advanced in years,
might have antlers almost as long as those depicted in the pictograph. Carrera and
Ballard (2003) argue that elk did not populate the mountains south of the U.S./
Mexico border, and that reports of historical sightings are not credible. However,
the mountain meadow/valley habitats elk prefer extend contiguously south into the
Sierra Madres, and it is easy to imagine that their range once extended into the Sierra
Tarahumara. It is certainly likely that people with extensive experience observing
elk (for example, Apache, Comanche, or earlier travelers) moved through the study
area at times in the past, and that some Rarmuri traveled north on quests along
the north-south sierra corridor, and returned to share important elements of what
they had seen. The possibility also exists that the ungulate as depicted is an arcane
chimeric symbol, a meta- or supernatural ungulate with special spiritual meanings
for the painter and subsequent viewers (Peters 1999:870).
Relations with Rockshelters

In the past, and today, many rockshelters are comfortable, spacious homes and
are well-loved by their owners. Others, because of their association with burials or
other spirit-world connections, can evoke unease and require avoidance as sites of
danger, vulnerability, and transformation. Rockshelters known to contain human
burials are avoided in person and in speech, especially at night, and are sometimes
described as being venenosos (poisonous). Though today the Rarmuri people I
spoke with characterize rockshelter burials as belonging to [k]apache because
baptized (pagtame) Rarmuri are buried in cemeteries, Lumholtz (1987:383)
describes Rarmuri rockshelter burials taking place during his time in the Sierra
Tarahumara, as does Levi (2011) among simaroni (unbaptized) communities in
the 1980s downriver from Batopilas. Lumholtz also describes Rarmuri beliefs
that the dead (chuw) ambulate at night; he writes that they come running out of
the caves on all fours and whistle when they pass the living (1987:38182)
the latter of which I also heard in personal accounts a century after Lumholtz.
Other, non-burial rockshelters and artifacts therein are often avoided
altogether unless one has developed advanced relations with the powerful spirit
people that share Rarmuri landscapes. Growing up, young people are taught
which sites are harmless shelters (often ancestral family homes) and which are
potentially dangerous places to be approached with great caution. One dangerous
shelter in the valley where I lived is considered to be a site of potential gender
transformation. So, for example, if a man touches an ancient metate (grinding
stone) there, he is likely to undergo monthly gender shifts for an indefinite period
of time in which he alternately expresses female and then male sexual desires and
behavior. A woman who touches mens tools there, such as bows or arrows,
may experience a similar type of transformation (Wyndham 2004b). In many
shelters, one may find pottery, a basket, or the remains of a pouch that once held
someones powerful plant ally, such as peyote or bulrush. These are stored away
from the home because mere proximity can cause serious harm (particularly soul
abduction) to children. Even decades later the artifacts may retain dangerous
power, and children are taught never to touch such things.
Relations with Apaches and Ancestors

Most Rarmuri in the area where I worked agree that local rock art was
made by [k]apache in a past that is unspecifiedly distant in time. However, these
statements can be misleading for an outsider not familiar with the rather complex
Rarmuri understanding of history and identity, and their entangled genealogies of
relations with [k]apache, who are still spoken of with ambivalent, fearful respect
and disapproval. Local Rarmuri narrative history tells of a time when [k]apache
lived in the valleys that Rarmuri now inhabit; they were parame (Spanish:
bravo; English: fierce/brutish, with connotations of wild/savage) people. They are
also identified as the original Rarmuri. For example, Martn Gonzlez, whom
I interviewed in 2002, said that
los apaches vivieron junto con los indgenas antes pero vivieron aqu en las
cuevas, las cuevas que todava alcanzamos a verlo ves, no? [gestures to
a nearby rockshelter]. . . . Y luego se acabaron, ahorita todava alcanzamos
a ver esos huesos, no? Esos apaches fueron casi parecido, como por decir
original de los Rarmuris.
[The Apaches lived together with the indigenous peoples before but they
lived here in the caves, the caves that we can still seeyou see them, dont
you? (gestures to a nearby rockshelter). . . . And later they died out; we can
still see their bones, right? Those Apaches were almost the same, that is to
say, they were the original Rarmuri.]
In this and other Rarmuri narratives, [k]apache are strongly associated with
the rockshelters, immured burial sites, and ocher paintings that are a ubiquitous part
of the landscape. Chiricahua and other Western Apache bands reached this remote
area of the Sierra Tarahumara in the 1800s, if not earlier, and they frequented
areas nearby to the north extensively at least as early as the late 1600s.
I was told the following story by my friend Martha Sitnachi, explaining the
presence of human bones in the local rockshelters:
The bones are the remains of the people from long ago when the [k]apaches
lived here. People at that time behaved very badly, killing each other. One
day two children, a brother and sister, were given their dinner by their
[k]apache grandmother: deer-meat that their father had supposedly killed
that day in the forest. But earlier they had seen the severed feet of a human
in the forest. They had recognized them as the feet of their mother, and
knew that she had been murdered and cooked. They were outraged and
grieved so they traveled up to the sky and spoke with God, asking him to
punish all the people on the earth. The sun was then sent down close to
the earth to burn the people up. The people took refuge in the caves but
even there (especially the shallower caves) they were scorched to death,
and their bones are found even now lying there. The children went into the
sky and became the constellation Pamachi (Pleiades). Then new people, a
woman and a man, were placed on the earth. These are the ancestors of the
Rarmuri of today.
This is a variant of a widely told historia (history or story, depending on

the context) in the Sierra Tarahumara. Other, similar narratives that were told to
me recount the story of, for example, a brother and a sister who are washed over
and over by their [k]apache grandmother and become suspicious that they are
going to be cooked (the grandmother is later punished by being thrown over a
precipice, the precise location of which was pointed out to me on the landscape).
In another tale, [k]apache raiders are trapped in a cave by Rarmuri and killed by
a fire set at the entrance and the resulting smoke. In another example, Rarmuri
people from long ago tried to survive the suns (~Gods) punishing descent on the
landscape by immuring themselves in a cave with mud (Batista 1999:11). Other
variants include that of Lumholtz (1987:19293), who writes of a similar story
about cannibalistic cave-dwelling Cocoyomes, regarded by some Tarahumares
as their ancient enemies, by others as their ancestors: . . . long ago, when the
Cocoyomes were very bad, the sun came down to the earth and burned nearly all
of them; only a few escaped into the big caves. And, once, when the Cocoyomes
were together in the largest cave, which had no spring, the Tarahumares besieged
them for eight days, until all of the Cocoyomes had perished from hunger.5
Lumholtz (1987:70, 383) describes the use of fire (and thus visible smoke and
charcoal remains) at walled-in Rarmuri burials in the first nights wake for the
deceased. Though two of the eldest members of the community where I worked
recalled that Rarmuri used to bury their dead in caves or rockshelters, the younger
people who narrated the landscape to me interpreted the human bones, charcoal,
and mud walls we saw as material evidence of the histories outlined above.
The places evoked commentary or discussion of the nature of being Rarmuri
vis-a-vis other peoples, and the hardships undergone by those who went before.
There is a core storyline of a time of immoral/brutal ancestors who were punished
and replaced with the morally superior, contemporary population. This may be
playing on an important theme in Rarmuri identity in this community, in which
they speak of themselves first as pagtame, or baptized Christian people, and
secondarily as Rarmuri vis-a-vis other ethnic groups in the region. Even in this
latter usage, the label Rarmuri could be given to a person who thinks and
behaves in traditional Rarmuri ways, particularly if they grow, grind, and eat
corn and relate to landscapes and spirit worlds as Rarmuri do.
In the context of these narratives, and Rarmuri explanations of [k]apache
as both their ancient enemies and the ancestors/predecessors of contemporary
Rarmuri, the common attribution of the authorship of Sierra Tarahumara rock
art to [k]apaches is more complex than it might seem at first. People may be
attributing the art to one or more of the following: (1) the Apache/Ndee, who
are known to have traveled through, raided, and settled the area both before
and during the time of resistance to U.S. and Mexican control; (2) unbaptized
Rarmuri ancestors, who are thought to be in the same category as Apache/Ndee
based on assessments of moral behavior (i.e., akin to the category of simaroni:
cimarrn, barbarian or savage); or more generally, (3) kiywame, people
from very long ago (possibly the people who inhabited the high Sierra before it
was settled by lowland Rarmuri) or anayware, those who have passed on, the
dead, the ancestors.
It is likely that the term connotes some combination of all three of the
above. Contemporary Rarmuri identity in this area may reflect the reality of
Uto-Aztecan-speaking Rarmuri and Athabascan-speaking Apache/Ndee unions
in the past and their resulting families. The communities around Narrachi,
for example, are presently often spoken of as being more [k]apache than other
communities, and several families in the Bashuare area speak of [k]apache
relatives in their own genealogies (see Robinson 2000:136 and Goodwin and
Goodwin 2000:23235 for a discussion of Western Apache descendants in other
parts of northern Mexico). The ethnic category and histories of the Cocoyome,
which I never heard, but which Lumholtz did, may have amalgamated conceptually
with [k]apache in the context of the more recent, traumatic experiences of
Apache/Ndee encounters in the 1800s. This may have resulted in a layering and
repurposing of narratives, which nevertheless still draw on the same material in
the landscape (rockshelters, rock art) as cues to root oneself deeply in a complex
temporal and social environment.
The reality of mixed Rarmuri-Apache ancestry blurs our (etic) ethnic
categories based on genetic descent or cultural affiliation, instead reaffirming
that what is most important to (emic) Rarmuri notions of identity is ones
behavior, good thinking, and lifestyle (cf. Levi 1993). I believe that the use of
the term [k]apache is not only ambiguous to a chabochi researcher, it is inherently
ambiguous, reflecting a complex semantic category for Rarmuri speakers that
evokes a notion of a distant past, different lifeways, suffering, conflict, and
contact (including familial) with other peoples in an extended regional network.
The places where rock art is inscribed on the landscape evoke these complex
memories and revitalize vernacular local histories that contribute to Rarmuri
identities in the present.
Second Gaze: Mestizo Interpretations of Rock Art

Buried Treasure
Rock art and rock art sites ubiquitously evoke another kind of intersection
with the spirit world and the past for both Rarmuri and mestizo communities in
the Sierra Tarahumara. The mere presence of paintings is commonly understood
to indicate buried treasure. This perception draws on deeply rooted tropes of
treasure trove tales. Stories of finding buried gold and silver abound in this area,
through which the Camino Real mule-train route was used to transport enormous
amounts of silver, and some gold, out of the nearby Batopilas and regional mines
in past centuries (Merrill 1988). In the late 1800s, Schwatka (1977:316) estimated
that this region was the richest mining district in America, and probably the
world. Traffic to and from the Sierra was heavy when he visited in 1888. I
have collected stories from Rarmuri elder men who worked in these mines as
young men in the 1930s1940s. One can easily imagine that silver and gold was
relatively available across a broad area of the Sierra Tarahumara, and that some
of it may have been buried in rockshelters in moments of crisis, such as raids on
the mining company mule-trains, the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits, or families
fleeing assaults by Apache raiders, and later, revolutionary or federal soldados,
mercenaries, or (today) drug-traffickers. The floors of every rock art site I visited
had been dug up and perhaps plundered (Figure 8), probably many times over the
years. Murray and Viramontes (2006:9) write that this is a widespread problem
for archaeological conservation throughout Mexico.
The common Ibero-American narrative frame of these stories consists of
otherworldly signs, such as floating lights or seeing a ghostly figure repeatedly
in a particular place, and a search undertaken that is usually unsuccessful,
but even if successful results in some misfortune befalling the seeker and the
treasures location remains unknown (Hurley 1951). These tropes are found
throughout the Iberian-colonized Americas, including much of the western
U.S. and Mexico, probably transmitted by Spanish settlers, perhaps drawing
on deeper Moorish narrative roots. They are seen in American popular culture
depictions in such films as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Pirates of the
Caribbean. In the Sierra Tarahumara, these stories are shared by mestizo and
Rarmuri inhabitants alike, though each group may tell them slightly differently.
The Rarmuri accounts often integrate common themes regarding the colonial
experiencefor example, the belief that chabochis (whites) are particularly
talented at finding and keeping gold, but unsophisticated at perceiving and
relating to the spirit world. Also, that authorities will take the treasure away
from you, if you disclose what you have found.
Several such treasure site narratives were told to me, including one reported
discovery of buried gold that occurred while I was there, a narrative that includes
all the classic elements. The site was not a rockshelter, but a particularly tortuous
switchback along a roadway. It is known as a dangerous curve that had caused
many wrecksnot only because of its sharp descending turn among rock-strewn
steep ravines but because of a spirit hitchhiker who appeared in the road to startle
drivers or catch a ride and cause a wreck. As the cut from the recently paved
highway eroded, an old glazed pot was exposed in the hillside. It was found by a
local Rarmuri man, who knew to avoid the poisonous gas that emerged when he
broke the pot and found the gold pieces within. I was shown a number of recently
broken potsherds strewn on the ground, richly glazed in a green flower pattern. I
was not told what had become of the gold.
Because of the danger adhering to that particular place, local mestizo residents
had commissioned a priest to exorcise the ghostly hitchhiker and install a small
shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Virgin is probably the most common
subject for contemporary Mexican rock art. The cliff walls along the highways of
the Sierra Tarahumara are liberally painted with her image, sometimes in bright
paints, sometimes in chalk, occasionally accompanied by shrines, offerings,
candles, and statues.
Figure 14 shows a statement written relatively recently in Spanish on the lip
of a rockshelter on a high ridge that is easily accessible by a short hike from the
now-paved Avenida Gran Visin highway through the High Sierra. It reads: WE
HAVE FOUND A HEART OF GOLD. The Spanish we is repeated at the end,
creating an ambiguity as to whether the writer is announcing a romantic union or
the discovery of treasure.
Figure 14. This message is painted in (misspelled) Spanish on the lip of a

rockshelter near the main highway transecting the Sierra Tarahumara.
It reads: NOS AYAMOS UN CORASON DE ORO NOSOTROS.
Rock Art and the Tourist
Capitalizing on visitors fascination with rock art and cave-dwellers, local
mestizo tour guides regularly take tourists to various rock art sites near the tourist
town of Creel in the Sierra Tarahumara. One or two guides have even begun
painting their own traditional-looking pictographs in convenient places for
them to take customers who may not want to hike kilometers from a paved road to
see the rock art. This trade in cultural landscapes plays on outsiders notions of the
Rarmuri as people forgotten by time, living a romantically primitive lifestyle in
caves (more accurately, rockshelters). This chabochi (non-Rarmuri) othering
narrative was perhaps first commented on in the late 1800s when the explorer Carl
Lumholtz (1894:31) wrote about how attractive the various sections devoted to
the Cliff-Dwellers Exhibits were to the visitors of the Columbian Exhibition in
Chicago. Lumholtz goes on to say that the idea of cliff-dwellers is vague and
confused in the public mind, giving some blame to Frederick Schwatka (though
unnamed, it is clear to whom Lumholtz refers) for making living cliff-dwellers to
suit the imagined want of the public in Schwatkas posthumously published book
In the Land of Cave and Cliff Dwellers: Travels among the Tarahumara Indians,
18881889. In his ethnologically naive account, Schwatka describes Rarmuri
rockshelter dwellers as strange earth-burrowing savages (1977:186, 230). In
this and other descriptions Schwatka positions himself as an observer of savagery
and primitivism evidenced by material culture, particularly living in rockshelters.
More than a century later, the remarkable continuity of this colonial narrative
is seen in contemporary writing for the general public about the Rarmuri as
rockshelter dwellers. In his bestseller, McDougall (2009:4) describes Rarmuri as
a near-mythical tribe of Stone Age superathletes who live in the side of cliffs
higher than a hawks nest in a land few have ever seen.
Thus, the othering is performed by chabochis not only in social terms but in
temporal and spatial terms as wellRarmuri people living today are construed
as being somehow from the past (cf. Fabian 1983) and this is semiotically linked
to their landscapes, particularly their rockshelters and their rock art.
Third Gaze: Academic Observations and Interpretations in Local, Regional, and

Historical Contexts
The anthropological viewing and analysis of Sierra Tarahumara rock art
began more than a century ago and has been sporadic since then. In recent years,
scholars of the region have become increasingly mindful of the deep historical
connections between communities in what is now Northwest Mexico and
the Southwest United States (e.g., Sariego 2008a, 2008b; Wilcox et al. 2008).
Acknowledging the linguistic and semiotic commonalities, the extensive economic
trade systems that linked this region with North and Central America, and the
movement and interaction of peoples in the past, scholars are now turning their
gaze to understanding the peoples of the region in the context of long-standing
networks in a world system, rather than as isolated ethnic groups with separate
histories. Art on rock helps the scholar, as signs of both cultural expression and
movements of people across landscapes. In this section I first treat the question
of authorship of rock art in the Sierra Tarahumara, which is regularly renewed by
Rarmuri commentary on the art as being made by Apaches, and then I elaborate
on a selection of graphic themes that link the semiotics of this rock art to living
traditions among Rarmuri and other indigenous communities in the immediate
and extended region.
The Question of Authorship

Is it likely that some or most of the rock art described here was authored by
Apache/Ndee people? A comparison of Sierra Tarahumara rock art with that of
known Apache/Ndee sites in the southwestern United States suggests that the
Rarmuri attribution of authorship to [k]apache is not necessarily referencing
Apache/Ndee of Athabascan heritage. But this remains an open inquiry, because so
little is recorded about either Sierra Tarahumara or Apache rock art (Brown 1998:52;
Schaasfma 1980:333). Overall, the styles of the rock art recorded in this article and
that of known Apache pictographs are quite different. As might be expected, given
their shared Athabascan cultural roots, Apache paintings resemble Navajo/Din
rock art with thick (often white) painted lines and distinctive motifs, such as masks,
shields, horse-and-riders, plus numerous supernatural figures (see Schaasfma 1980:
figs. 27883; Slifer 1998: figs. 6, 17375, 17880, 201, 21416, 270).
A few similarities support the Rarmuri assertion of Apache/Ndee authorship
for at least some of the highland Sierra rock art. These include a predilection for
depicting horses and riders (Schaasfma 1980:335). In the large panel of quadrupeds
in Figure 9 we see a variety of horse-and-rider configurations. Some of the rock
art in the borderlands between Chihuahua, Sonora, New Mexico, and Arizona,
such as the paintings at El Paso Plpito, Sonora (Goodwin and Goodwin 2000:
fig. 7), more strongly resemble Apache styles, including supernatural figures and
well-attested shield designs. Lumholtz photographed a Sierra Tarahumara pecked
image near Norogachi in the late 1800s that has a wheel-like double-concentric-
circle image like those seen at El Paso Plpito, and a curvilinear head and torso
enclosed in a triangular cartouche (Lumholtz 1987:203), which suggest Apachean
forms. A panel near Paquim (Casas Grandes), Chihuahua, strongly suggests
Apache authorship, with a large horned serpent and a two-horned human figure
resembling an Apache medicine man in his horned headdress (Mendiola Galvn
2002: fig. 25).
At Korkachi, the images shown in the upper panel of Figure 5 suggest twin
shields with hanging fringes, an Apachean theme. The frame below it could be seen
as an architectural representation of an Apache/Ndee hogan seen from the inside,
with a corbelled roof in a traditional overlapping arrangement of logs or branches
such that each course extends further from the vertical of the wall than the course
below, leaving a square smoke hole in the center. Aside from these speculative
comparisons, not enough material is available to satisfactorily answer the question
of which, if any, of the rock art in the Sierra Tarahumara is of Apache/Ndee origin.
However, given the amount of time Apache people spent in this area, and their
lasting influence on Rarmuri narratives, it remains a strong likelihood that some
of the rock art was authored by Apache/Ndee. Further investigations would benefit
by involving artists, tradition-holders, and historians from both Apache/Ndee and
Rarmuri communities in onsite discussions of these possibilities.
We can be sure that at least some of the rock art in the Sierra Tarahumara
is authored by Rarmuri individuals, up to and including the present day, contra
Murray and Viramontes (2006:3), who state that no Mexican indigenous group
produces rock art today. Lumholtz wrote that in the caves [the Tarahumare]
sometimes draw with ocher clumsy figures of animals and women, and on some
rocks may be seen outlines of feet scratched with stone in order to leave their
imprint in this world when they die (1987:168). When I asked whether new
paintings were being made, I was told that though the majority of the paintings
visible today were made in a distant past, the chrame (elders) and warura
(big people; community leaders) make new paintings, as a way to remember
their great-grandfathers.
I have seen Rarmuri boys pecking images of trucks into the patina of
sloping rock faces, and several people have told (and shown) me that they have
carved shapes, maps, or figures onto rock as a way to pass the time (e.g.,
while tending goats). Levi took a photograph of a Rarmuri boy in the lowland
barranca Sierra Tarahumara beside his recently created pecked rock art (on a
boulder) in 1989 (Sanger and Meighan 1990:169, fig. 6-12). Over the years I
have seen a few new ocher paintings on the rock walls near well-trodden trails
connecting valleys near where I lived. The new paintings may also have been
made by children. For example, the one in Figure 15 depicts a large smiling
child accompanied by a dog. These, as well as the peckings and carvings that
I have seen being made by children, are situated on exposed rock surfaces that
erode and weather quickly. One carving described to me by one of its creators
as a map of the Sierra on a horizontal surface has almost completely eroded
away over five years time. This piece was an example of a collaborative
creation on rock, carved, extended, maintained, and transformed over time (e.g.,
the highways of the map were newly paved with red ocher mud when I first
saw it) by several young authors. In this case, it was maintained over at least ten
to fifteen years, by perhaps four or five children successively, in a small valley
where they took care of their goat herds.
Figure 15.
Recent pictographs at a
well-traveled pass between
valleys depict a smiling
person (interpreted as a
child by locals) in a smock
(approximately a meter tall),
with a dog or small animal,
a sun with a face, a thick-
bodied human figure,
and three dots.
Just to the right of the image of the child is what appears to be the paint-well, a pock in
the rock face that was used to mix the ocher paint. These paintings were probably created
between 2001 and 2005.
Graphic Themes in the Semiotics of Sierra Tarahumara Rock Art
This section elaborates on some of the patterns that emerge by comparing
some elements in the rock art described in this article with those recorded and
published by other authors in Chihuahua, and the extended region of Northwest
Mexico and Southwest U.S. The outlined cross, the thunderbird, concentric circles,
and zigzag lines are a few of these common images. Though I do not venture
here to discuss the merits of identifying rock art styles for these regions, I will
describe some commonalities that suggest the complexity and range of ancient
cultural exchanges in the wider region, and I highlight a few salient elements and
relationships with apparent broader significance. They are discussed in the order
they were introduced in the descriptive section above.
Concentric squares/rectangles/circles. The marked boundary (Figures 5, 7,
and 8) evokes Leroi-Gourhans (1993:327) comments about radial space: the
nomad hunter-gatherer visualized the surface of a territory by crossing it; the
settled farmer constructed the world in concentric circles around a granary. This
type of intuitively plausible interpretation is commonplace in the academy, and
appealing to many who theorize about the meaning of rock art; however, it is
difficult to confirm or disconfirm such a statement.
Thunderbirds. The many birdlike paintings (figures with outstretched wings),
some with human-looking legs and feet (Figures 7 and 8), may be interpreted as
thunderbirds. The thunderbird with rainlike feathers dripping from extended
wings is common throughout northern Mexico and the western United States. For
example, very similar forms are documented for Baja California by Sanger and
Meighan (1990:93, fig. 3-18).
T shapes. The T shape in Figure 7 appears intuitively to be similar to the
altar stones and doorways of Casas Grandes (Paquim) and the doorways of
(Anasazi) Mesa Verde cliff houses and some other ancestral Puebloan dwellings,
although it is upside-down in this depiction. In Rarmuri thought, spirit worlds
are often seen as inversions of the world as we know itpeople and beings there
live upside down or in mirror image to living human landscapes. Similarly, Paiute
informants are reported to have identified upside-down painted rock art horses as
depictions from the world of the dead (Stoffle et al. 2000:21). Thus, an elaborate
academic interpretation might be constructed with some justification.
Animals. The bovinelike figures in Figure 7 resemble four animals depicted
in the Los Ojos del Chuviscar site in central Chihuahua, surmised to be from the
historical period by Mendiola Galvn (1998:1213). One could interpret these as
oxen or perhaps coatimundi or other animals trampling and eating a cornfield,
perhaps defended by a dog (upper right). These may or may not be plausible
interpretations, depending on ones intuitions. As an example of diverse readings,
the painting in Figure 12 was interpreted by a local non-Rarmuri as the face of
a jaguar. The groups of animals (apparently deer, big-horned sheep, horses) in
Figures 79 stylistically resemble petroglyphs of a procession of game animals
in Tapia Canyon, New Mexico, identified as Anasazi (Slifer 1998: fig. 140). Slifer
notes that Indians visiting today are said to be impressed by the experience of
power in that canyon (1998:147). At Ajoreachi rockshelter (Figure 9), the human
figures seem to be riding and leading animals up what looks like a switchback trail
(common in this steep region on the edge of the Copper Canyon complex), with
a herd of animals depicted below. Panels with somewhat similar depictions of
groups of ungulates (though no humans) in Texas include one on the Rio Grande
and another west of Fort Davis (Kirkland and Newcomb 1967:109, 134).
Crosses. The outlined cross of equal-length arms (Figure 12) has been
documented in at least four other sites in southern Chihuahua (Mendiola Galvn
2002:49), as well as in Sinaloa and other states in Mexico, and interpreted to
represent the morning star/Venus/Quetzalcoatl (Brown 1998:50; Patterson
1992:163). The (Mayan) Dresden Codex denotes Venus with just such an outlined
cross (Brotherston 1992). Schaafsma (1975:8687) describes an outlined cross at
Tularosa Creek in southern New Mexico and suggests it is a southern Mogollon
trait possibly related to Anasazi influence ca. AD 1000. The links between Anasazi
and Rarmuri iconography have not been systematically explored. However, Hill
(1992) illustrates the extensive reach of the Uto-Aztecan flower world, a symbolic
complex that includes Rarmuri crosses at least by associationthe generic
Rarmuri term for flower or sunflower is siwchari, cited by Levi (2004:459) as a
term also used ritually for cross. At Easter, showy leaf wreaths called siwchari
are hung over the three crosses in the ritual patios. Both the equilateral cross
and the krusi (crucifix) are highly significant in Rarmuri iconography as sites
of transformation and communication between worlds. The so-called Maltese
cross is commonly found in nineteenth-century and contemporary weavings,
which can look like an abstract thunderbird in Rarmuri sashes (cf. Beardsley
1985). The crucifix is used as an agricultural sun calendar device (Wyndham
2004a:15), and in spiritual curing. Similarly, for the Yoeme of Sonora, Olavarra
(2003:1014) highlights the central importance of the cross as a ubiquitous index
of sacred space, and Young (1985:16) describes Zuni conceptualizations of the
cross or X as denoting the four (semi) cardinal directions and the center as the
heart/navel of Earth Mother. We should not assume that this cross is homologous
to the Christian cross, though the latter is of course also highly significant in
Rarmuri landscapes today, particularly used in tripartite form (top, Figure 7),
with a larger cross flanked by two smaller ones, sometimes explained as standing
in for God (onorame), Gods wife (eyerame), and their son (variably kuristo or
the morning star/Venus).
The thick black Christian crucifix at left in Figure 7 raises the possibility
that Catholic missionaries (or Christian converts) practiced in northern Mexico
the same censorship or exorcism at rock art sites that they frequently did
in New Mexico at Pueblo sites, painting crosses near or over pictographs. Rock
art sites were clearly interpreted as having to do with indigenous spirit worlds.
In 1763 a colonial official of Abiqui, New Mexico, records that on the side
of a cliff were drawn the figures which appeared on the margin of my previous
dilijencia. They were erased and destroyed by me; and in the surroundings we
drew crosses and the place was exorcised (cited in Slifer 1998:86).
Human figures. The standing human figures in Figure 7 almost all have
upraised arms, interpreted by several authors cited in Patterson (1992:161) as
a worshiping or praying stance, another example of intuitive interpretation.
Lumholtz (1987:378) published two sketches of human stick figures with
upraised arms, one labeled Tarahumare Medicine Figure and a similar
one sent to him by Frank Cushing called an Ancient Ritualistic Petrograph,
Arizona. Lumholtz writes that it is the custom of the [Rarmuri] shaman to
draw underneath his resonator-gourd a mystical human figure in the sand, and
to place the hikuli [jkuri] in its centre (1987:378). Cushing calls his recorded
figure a water-animal god, one only of a number of semi-human mystic
monsters (in Lumholtz 1987:379). The stylized stick figures are often found
in rockshelters as the only marking. Figure 1 depicts two strangely humanistic
elements (in the center of the photo) as well as a figure kneeling before three
crosses (not shown), with one upraised arm.
Cornstalks. The tall, fruiting cornstalk in Figure 7 strongly resembles the corn-
cloud terrace-bird complex that Schaafsma describes (1980:230, fig. 189a), which
is found in rock art throughout the Uto-Aztecan corridor and in contemporary
Hopi and Pueblo iconography. Schaafsmas example from the Three Rivers
Petroglyphs of southern New Mexico also shows the cloudlike motif on the top of
the plant, rather than below it as is usual. The top radiating lines seen in Figure 7
may represent sun rays or lightning. Note the detail of the apparent roots in these
corn plants. The apparently upside-down plants at the upper right in Figure 7 may
connote the underworld (in this region especially, located under streams), which
for Rarmuri entails many things done backwards and reversed.
Cuadros or gourds. Lumholtz (1987:22021) illustrates in detail the
elaboration of the inverted triangles design, as in Figure 11, as a magical, . . .
strongest symbol of water, originating with the depiction of the double water-
gourd of the Huichol/Wixrika jkuri seeker. He leads the reader to believe that
his interpretations of this iconography come from descriptions by the artists
themselves, which he elicited when he purchased crafts. Subsequent (probably less
ethnologically informed) descriptions by students of rock art label this common
geometric element an hourglass or the more culturally neutral cuadro (square/
frame). Lumholtzs analysis is convincing yet seems to have fallen out of our
conversation over the past century. The stoppered water-gourd was until recently
an essential accoutrement for Rarmuri travelers, and the double gourd can still be
found hanging in many rural Rarmuri homes. The inverted-triangles pictograph
is found throughout northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. Several
Rarmuri described these rock art elements to me as nakaroari, or butterflies.
Diverse examples of the square motifs, or cuadros (Schaafsma 1998: fig. 14)
are found in the Sierra Tarahumara as well as throughout the Paquim region in
northern Mexico.
Winding lines/river/squash tendrils. The curvilinear lines with spiral offshoots
seen in Figure 7 could be interpreted as depictions of sections of the Urique
River, which wends tortuously through steep canyons only a few kilometers
from Ajorachi rockshelter. An important north-south passage through the Sierra
Tarahumara, the Camino Real, crosses the Urique near an S curve in the river (upper
left of Figure 7?), and knowledge of shortcut trails is crucial if one is traversing
this area on foot. Though we should not assume that north would be depicted as
up here, the angle and direction of the tributary loops also generally follow
those of the tributary streams to the Urique River near the rockshelter. Alternative
interpretations include these lines as representing squash tendrils or water more
generally. This is a noteworthy example of the alternative interpretations that are
possible when we operate at the intuitive level of theorizing (Kuchka 2001).
DISCUSSION: ROCK ART IN CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
Rock art in the Sierra Tarahumara is still alive and meaningful for those who live
there. Images on rock are privileged among symbolic artifacts and may have a
special role in the reproduction of symbols in that, in the right conditions, they
persist across generations, they are relatively salient in the landscape, and they
embody aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual information. Rock art is an important
source of cultural continuity and reinterpretation, as externalized, persistent
representations of ideas and relations that have intergenerational significance.
For the Rarmuri, and those of us who have had the opportunity to begin to
be educated to their perspectives on the landscape, the images on rock evoke a
wealth of relations in history, memories, identity, aesthetic delight, danger, fear,
morality, and links to the spirit world.
Rock art is used by local people to reference the time of interaction with
[k]apache, and if elaborated on, to tell the story of moral transformation after
the punishment of the ancient people. Thus, rock art in Rarmuri landscapes is
informationally connected to choices made in the past for right-living and proper
ways of being Rarmuri (cf. Basso 1996). As Young describes the Zuni experience
of rock art, the images have the power to evoke parts of tales and myths and,
furthermore, they do so in an affective manner. The rock art images not only evoke
these stories about the time of the beginning but also the emotions associated
with them (1985:11).
The paintings that I have described here are diverse and likely date from
different time periods and cultures, but all are part of the contemporary Rarmuri
landscape. Many symbols found in local pictographs have contemporary
parallels in modern Rarmuri life and artwork. They also provide semiotic links
to traditions and lifeways in other areas of Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. There
are multiple layers of affect, interpretation, and relationship to rock art, and these
change over a lifespan of interaction, and over generations of changing social
and ecological relations.
If there is a uniting theme for the rock art discussed here, and, indeed, that
of the Northwest Mexico/Southwest U.S. and perhaps beyond, it is this: the
paintings are signs of relationships with other (spirit) worlds, whether in curing,
mediation, or remembrance. Similar themes have been recognized for the rock
art of southern Africa (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1989; Lewis-Williams et al.
1996), Australia (Lock and Nobbs 1999), and instantiated in the North American
case of the Southern Paiute Ghost Dance rock art site in the Grand Canyon
(Stoffle et al. 2000), among others. In addition to the otherworldly relations that
are marked by much of the rock art discussed here, I recognize that children and
other doodlers create images for a myriad of reasons.
Particularly unique to the rock canvas is the way it allows for collaboration
among people who are separated in time. The impulse to add to existing rock
art panels, to leave a mark, to participate in the creative process of that place is
found around the world. In the Sierra Tarahumara it is children at play and elders
remembering the past, as well as local mestizos and perhaps tourists, who are
most actively contributing to the ongoing narrative.
As we have seen above, just as popular touristic notions of rock art and
cave-dwellers evoke colonial narratives of otherness, Rarmuri narratives
about the rock art in their landscapes also strongly evoke the ethnic other and
notions of primitive/uncivilized behaviorin this case, by the Apacheas well
as time in the distant past and sites of power, transformation, and morality. Above
all, Rarmuri notions and narratives about rock art are multivalent and diverse,
depending on context and personal history. Rarmuri recognize mundane and
playful aspects of rock art: some petroglyphs, particularly those that are created
today by children, are known as evidence of a personal whimsy while the artist
is spending time in a particular place on the land. Other rock art is recognized
as markings by owirames and treated with reserve and respect. To some, the
paintings most strongly communicate the possibility of finding buried treasure.
Common to almost all the individuals who see this rock art, regardless of which
social or cultural narrative is evoked, is the feeling of being in the presence of the
past, of sharing an otherworldly experience with people who once stood at the
same place in another time.
NOTES
My thanks to Kelley Hays-Gilpin for editing a previous version of this paper, to two
anonymous reviewers, and to Jay Levi and Lawrence Straus for constructive commentary.
I thank Bill Merrill for bringing to my attention the semantic layers of what contemporary
Rarmuri mean by [k]apache, which allowed me to make follow-up inquiries, and Edie
Wyndham for finding many rock art resources. I am, as always, grateful to the women
and men with whom I worked in the Sierra Tarahumara, for their patience, generosity,
and teachings. I am particularly indebted to Rafael Largo Rejogochi and his wife Ribechi,
Moreno Vatista and Margarita Len, Efigenia Ramrez, Ma. Elena Lirio and Martn
Sanchez, Roberto Gonzlez Morales, Martha Sitnachi, Irma Chavez Cruz, Francisco
Cardenal, and Martn Gonzlez for their guidance. This research was made possible in
part by NSF grant BCS-0135306 and SSHRC grant 410-2008-2740. Thanks to Monika
Wyndham for creating the graphics in Figures 7, 9, and 12; to Susan Matson for Figures 2
and 5; and to Emilie Gladstone for editing assistance. An early version of this paper was
presented at the sixty-eighth annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology
in April 2003, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and as a poster at the Vas del Noroeste Common
Roots/Races Comunes conference in May 2006, Flagstaff, Arizona.
1. Murray and Viramontes (2006:3) contextualize these relations and the work needed to
understand them: Rock art manifestations in Mexican territory are continuous both northward
across the U.S.-Mexican border and southward into Central America. To the North, specific
shared rock art styles and traditions include Jornada Mogollon in the Upper Rio Grande
valley and Hohokam rock art along the Arizona/Sonora border. More broadly, many rock art
motifs are shared between the Mexican portions of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, the
Baja peninsula and the rest of the North American Great Basin. Other motifs are shared with
. . . the Mississippi valley and south central Great Plains. What these similarities mean is one
of the great challenges facing North American rock art studies.
2. For example, they lie within what Spicer called the Apache corridor, denoting
transaction zones of the Apache from the High Plains to the interior of Sonora during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (1989:237). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
vast amounts of mineral wealth were extracted by the Spanish from the Sierra Tarahumara,
accompanied by periods of intense social contact. Resource extraction has continued and
intensified to the present day. Much earlier, the Sierra Tarahumara was likely linked into
the Paquim (Casas Grandes) regional networks of trade and travel through what is also
an ecological exchange corridor. This has also been called the Casas Grandes interaction
sphere (Schaafsma and Riley 1999:6).
3. I do not disclose the exact locations of the rock art I discuss: visitors or investigators
will properly go through local authorities and landholders for permissions and guidance to
any sites on Rarmuri lands.
4. I grew up with imaginative stories about the rockshelter places in this Rarmuri
valley as well. I first visited the community as an infant, then as a small child with my
family on yearly trips in the 1970s. My siblings and I would often ask my father to retell
the spine-tingling story of his hike to an Apache rockshelter with Rarmuri guides, what
he found there, and what he thought he saw floating around his Volkswagen pickup truck
later that night. My first guided introduction to rock art in Rarmuri landscapes was on
September 11, 2001. That morning, Rafael Largo and his wife Ribechi invited me to visit
the Ajorachi rockshelter pictographs, near the rancho where he had grown up 5060 years
prior. During the couple of hours return hike he shared a great deal of information about
his practice as an owirame and the ontologies of the parallel worlds he traverses as a curer.
Upon our return I was told by a friend, while we washed clothes together in the stream,
that there had been a big attack on the other side (meaning the United States), that Los
Angeles and New York had been bombed with airplanes (it was only later that I was able
to piece together what had happened by listening to shortwave radio broadcasts). Thus,
an otherworldly context for my interaction with the rock art was created for me early that
day by my guide and later reinforced by the coincidental shifting of world relations that
occurred on 9/11.
5. The Cocoyomes are also known as Tubares (or Tubriki, as Jerome Levi heard
Rarmuri refer to uncivilized inhabitants from the distant past [personal communication
2010]). In the 1690s the Cocoyomes appear in the written record as resistors to the Spanish
colonizers (Gonzlez Prez 2002) in the southern region of the Sierra Tarahumara; recently
a cliff-dwelling was discovered in a remote area of the Sinforosa canyon, said by locals
to be made by Cocoyomes (La Razn 2010).
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2011 Wyndham Semiotics of Powerful Places

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The Semiotics of Powerful Places: Rock Art and

Article in Journal of anthropological research September 2011

Historical ecology through personal life narrative View project

Ethnobiology From the Ground Up View project

Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 67, 2011

RESEARCH CONTEXT AND METHODS

Figure 2. Location of fieldwork (shaded) in the Sierra Madre of northwestern Mexico.

THE ROCK ART

Figure 3. This fantastically

The painting technique appears

Figure 4. Photograph of the original pictograph depicted as a tracing in Figure 3.

Figure 5. These elements are painted in red

Figure 7. The largest panel at Ajorachi rockshelter.

Figure 8. The painted wall

Figure 9. This panel shows 36 of the 5060 elements on

Figure 11. David Ribas, a visiting photographer, inspects several abstracts

First Gaze: Rarmuri Interpretations of Rock Art

Relations with Deer

Relations with Rockshelters

Relations with Apaches and Ancestors

This is a variant of a widely told historia (history or story, depending on

Second Gaze: Mestizo Interpretations of Rock Art

Figure 14. This message is painted in (misspelled) Spanish on the lip of a

Third Gaze: Academic Observations and Interpretations in Local, Regional, and

The Question of Authorship

DISCUSSION: ROCK ART IN CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

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