Horse crippler

March 3, 2015 blog -

Months ago we learned about “dog hobble” (blog post - May 7, 2014) and today its horse crippler.

This hardy barrel cactus grows both in the tall grasses of Central Texas as well as the dry Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas. Many a cowboy and his livestock has been injured by the horse crippler’s formidable spines.

Yesterday Mike told us that the sheep and goat herds and the agriculture in the are was slowing down and one of the attractions that is driving the local economy is  Amistad Park, under the control of the National Park Service. Since it was only 4 miles from our overnight campground and on the way to Seminole Canyon State Park we decided to stop. From literature that we found in the RV Park office we knew that there was a 1.5 mile trail that we could enjoy before we moved on.

Amistad, which means “friendship” in Spanish, lies on the United States-Mexico border. A reservoir, it was created for flood control, water storage, power generation, and recreation 1969 by the completion of Amistad Dam. Two bronze eagles at the dam’s center symbolize the cooperation between Mexico and the US in building and managing the dam. The park extends 81 miles up the Rio Grande; 14 miles up the Pecos River; and, 25 miles up Devils River. There is one place into par were there are exceptional examples of Lower Pecos River rock art, one on the densest concentrations of Archaic rock art inNorth America. Unfortunately it is accessible only by boat so we had to pass. Fortunately, the hiking trail was nice.

The Headquarters building had some nice displays on the flora and fauna of the area and some artifacts of the early inhabitants of the area.

 Here’s our old friend the beaver (it’s name is castors in Spanish/ castor in French [blog post September 14, 2014]). After being nearly depleted by the fur trade of the 1800s, the American Beaver made a gradual comeback in some areas of the country, including the Big Bend and Amistad sections of theRio Grande. Their successful breeding has helped repopulate Mexico’s beaver populations well.

Here are some artifacts from the prehistoric Native Cultures of the Amistad area.

After viewing the artifacts, it was on to the hiking trail.

Here’s Frederik is a thicket of Blackbrush. A member of the pea family, it is characterized by its long, straight spines and dark green leaves. 

Archaeological evidence suggests it may have been a food source for prehistoric peoples.

The ever present Mesquite. Insect and drought-resistant, mesquite may be one of themostunderappreciated commodities of the Trans-Pecos region. Though considered a nuisance by ranchers and farmers, the bean pods are an excellent source of protein, sugars and carbohydrates. Once an important food staple in the diets of prehistoric people, the gum, roots and bark are still used medicinally.

This is the Pitaya cactus. It will have fruit that looks like a strawberry.

We learned about these plants from the Guide in the Park Headquarters and from her husband who had just dropped by to bring her lunch.

Daisy and…

Miguel.

Miguel helped us identify this skeleton we found along the trail as a Javelina, or wild pig.

As we walked along we disturbed quite a few white-tailed deer.  I have no pictures because they are fast and won’t stand still for a picture. But they graze on the edge of the flat plain that extends to the reservoir.

Texas is mostly limestone, the last remnants of a vast sea that covered this part of Texas during the Cretaceous Period, nearly 100 million years ago. Over many millions of years, the shells that had been pressed down into the clay fossilized. 

Erosion from rainwater and wind help expose these fossils. They look like modern marine creatures but many of the organisms represented by these fossils died out during the mass extinction that marked the end of the Mesozoic Era. 

As we left Amistad Park we drove up high enough to get a view of the reservoir.

There are many little inlets, nooks and crannies.

This road-cut shows the various rock sequences. The yellowish-brown Del Rio Clay was laid down during periods of relatively shallow water. As the water grew deeper, organic material from shelled organisms formed the overlaying Buda Limestone.

Nice road-cut.

Nice wind-mill at the entrance to Seminole Canyon State Park and Historic Site where we will be for the next tree days.

During the Pleistocene ice age (12,000 - 10,000 years ago), the land where Seminole Canyon State Park is located supported lush vegetation that included pine, juniper and oak woodlands in the canyons and luxuriant grasslands on the uplands. Ice Age hunters pursued now-extinct species of elephant, camel, bison and horse across the plains. 

By 7,000 years ago, the ever-drying landscape resembled what we see today. At about this time, a new culture emerged in this changed environment. The Archaic people lived in the dry rock-shelters that line the canyon walls and subsisted on many of the same arid-adapted plants and small animal species that inhabit the park today.

The past inhabitants of Seminole Canyon left their mark most notably through rock  paintings called pictographs. The park contains some of the most outstanding examples not only in Texas, but in the world. Extensive pictographs of the Lower Pecos River Style, attributed to the Middle Archaic period of 4,000 years ago, adorn rock-shelters throughout its canyons. 

In order to view the pictographs it is necessary to go on a guided tour of the only site that is available to the public, Fate Bell Shelter. Guided tours are at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. I had thought that we would go on a tour tomorrow after settling-in today. But when we checked-in the Park Ranger told us that the weather forecast for the next two days isn’t great. Rain tomorrow and possible ice and snow on Thursday. Since we had the time, we signed up for the 3 p.m. tour today.

This is Kevin our tour guide. He provided information on the Park’s flora and fauna as well as conveying what is know and speculated about the pictographs.

This is in the main canyon in the park. This is Kevin’s third year here and he said he has never seen this much water in the canyon.

This is a rock-shelter formed by water erosion. This is a smaller one about a quarter mile down the canyon.

Kevin explained how the people who lived here 4,000 years ago used the native plants for food or convenience such as vessels or hunting objects.

The Fate Bell Shelter is in the canyon right below the visitor’s center, and is quite large. There is a pretty steep trail leading down into the canyon. 

No one knows why the canyons’ past inhabitants produced pictographs. Recent research into the meaning of Lower Pecos River Style (Kevin suggested that we think of the Lower Pecos River Style as a type of font. Pictographs in a fifty-mile radius all use the same “style”, or font, of drawing)  murals suggests that the images may communicate important elements of the culture’s belief system, such as shamanic journeys to the land of the dead and a symbolic relationship between deer and peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus.

Eighty years ago an artist, Forrest Kirkland, came to the canyon and made watercolor drawings of the art created on the walls and published in the book, “The Rock Art of Texas Indians.” 

And this is what the drawings look like today. They are rapidly fading away and the rock on which they are drawn is eroding. There is some thought that when the Amistad Reservoir was created that it raised the level of humidity in the area and that is contributing to the rapid decay.

Half-way down the rock shelter is an area where cooking was done. There were areas where the ash and cooking stones are 15 - 20 feet deep.

There are some interesting pictographs here, particularly the red box with the two lines extending from it. This may be an example of perspective and the artist is showing a sacred place where a cave allows closer contact with Mother Earth. Examples of perspective in cave art is very rare.

Here is the actual pictograph.

At one end of the rock-shelter there are some pictographs that are more vivid and realistic. This is the drawing from Kirkland’s work 80 years ago.

And this is what they look like today.

There is some thought that this fellow is a shaman.

An interpretation of the surrounding figures is that they may be moving around the Shaman in the center - from the position of their feet. But this is all speculation. 

There are also red balls in this picture which represent peyote which was used in ceremonies, scholars think.

Up in the rock-shelter was an exposed rock with some interesting fossils in it.

And this mesquite tree that is estimated to be over 200 years old and still living.

Back up the trial, just behind the Visitor Center, is this contemporary art work titled, Maker of Peace, depicting a Shaman in a style similar to the ancient pictographs and intended to be a tribute to the Desert Archaic people.