Delectable Mountains

Hueco Tanks pictograph

The earliest peoples present at Hueco Tanks TX, 10-11,000 years ago, were the peoples we refer to as Paleo-Indians and belonged to the Ice Age peoples that spread across North and South America at least 12,000years ago and possibly as long as 40,000 years ago.  Think mastodons, giant bison and other big grazers.

Hueco Tanks pictograph

Then 8,000 years ago, after the large animals had disappeared, the human population depended more on small game, such as sheep, deer, antelope and rodents...in addition to collection and processing grains, nuts, fruits and tubers.  The artwork painted on the cave walls depict what appears to be hunting scenes.

Pictograph: relative size

Lightning pictograph

Arriving about 2000 years ago where peoples who had domesticated corn, beans, chili peppers, squash, and wild grasses.

 The people are known to anthropologists as the Jornada Branch of the Mogollon who arrived sometime around 450AD.  Their paintings have a strong religious influence...that continued through the centuries in the Pueblo peoples of today.

This abstract painting has a strong resemblance to the Delectable Mountain quilt pattern...and to some of the cave paintings in Australia.  The Hueco Tanks' guide actually refers to these as quilt patterns.  What is not easily seen is that there is an abstracted face with huge eyes.  All symbols of rain and lightening.

I was thrilled with the day.  Hueco Tanks has one of the largest concentrations of Indian rock paintings in North  America.  Impressive arrays of prehistoric and historic Indians...designs that continue in today's Indian cultures.

Delectable Mountains: 1800's quilt