Show interesting IN EMERY COUNTY UTAH I 1 in buckhorn wash emery county utah are a number of very wonder tul ful examples ot of ancient indian work manship on the rocks the rocks there are a red sandstone just a few rods below where these groups are found the lock wall rises in a sheer precipice to the height ot of about 1200 feet the dome of 0 it can be seen tor for twenty five miles and on the red sandstone a duller red de do sign was painted by the indians indiana in the long ago the figure at the upper left hand is in dull red paint of a man with his left arm extended with dripping rain falling from it and the long arc of a monstrous rainbow over his head and through that extended arm I 1 do not wish to go on record as saying except with a question mark that those lines dropping from his arm are really a rain sign but it Is tentatively interesting to think that jit could be for it Is among a num her ber of rainbow signs and the snake brother who Is prayed to to bring rain the paint ip lp about reaching the critical point and Is fast beginning to weather even now the feet have become lost in the years note that the head is a mere but ton the whole story is stressed in the rainbow sign everything else Is to sub to that in size this design Is very nearly natural scale the varied design immediately be low the man with the rainbow arm Is a group which may be likened to sand paintings of the navaho and hop hopi in which they depict their ye balchak gods in long thin dangling forms and in that respect these are similar note that a little man in the group holds a then note that the most prominent man in the group he atop the rainbow in turn holds a snake hie his a bigger one while nearly from his feet away glides a third wriggling serpent this one with can ve we say plumes 9 it has the appear ance that the artist purposely put on an embellishment of such sort as to chint hint at plumes though to try to force a filtration of the cult of the great plumed serpent of old mex ico of aztec days may find much op position and then to it must be remembered that states south of us have a horned rattlesnake with more or less prominent horns horna over the eyes which are lacking in ours ours here have a flat horny plate on ly over the eyes so we will not press too strongly then drop down to the lower right hand figures the two enormous men with wings these are larger than life alfe size they are the only wings on any figures of the ancient pleto graphs it if wings they are that I 1 have ever seen the left hand personage has lust just the hint of a toot foot remaining the right hand man terminates in a more or less abruptly tapering point note the little variation tn in the wings the left hand man has one of them rather lines than corn com posed of solid paint and more of that effect on the right hand personage Is this intentional 9 or just wear and tear in the years they have weathered the elements 7 did the man start gut sketching the wings in these lines as his first firs t draft of the a subject and then the paint wear down to those lines again after it had begun to hake off T the figures were too weathered to tell and then the whites had very badly defaced this design by writing their initials over the design itself to photograph it was very disa digap P pointing a jumble of john smiths and tom browns who t have done so so it was necessary to make a drawing over the negative nega and thus eliminate the objectionable initials there were more white persons names wantonly put over the very designs themselves than I 1 have ever seen in a similar area too bad those initials bad had accompanying i dates of more than thirty five years ago when the better road Is built from Cast ledale to green river it wll pass within easy auto distance of these groups they can be ap pro preached ached by a car without any trou brou ble though the going la is not fast now turn to the upper right group look closely and you will see at the left a small man standing with a basket or bowl in his hand nearly on top of a man with a rain bow arched through his neck then the very highest design Is another but larger rainbow and far to the right the very last figure a small but heavy rainbow the de signs which seem to be given aromi nence in this group are the rainbow and that peculiar net like design at the bottom I 1 had made use of this entire group on my christmas card tor for 1931 and said that I 1 thought the intent of the artist might have been to depict a bowl with slanting geo goo metric designs painted on it this group is the best drawn of any that I 1 have seen up to this time I 1 have not seen those at dry fork near vernal but from photographs of them they are certainly the best in utah and said by some soma to be the best in the entire united states it of course means with such an en dor that they are very very tine fine specimens but this group on perron forron creek are very good too and worthy a long trip to photograph they are a combination of pecked and painted work it looks as if the full design bad had been pecked and afterward parts of it embellished by adding a rich red pigment this ad delon Is gulte quite ornamental drawing by courtesy of el palacio Pall cio clo santa fe new mexico frank beckwith sr |