Barrier
Canyon Southwest Indians
by
O.
Ned Eddins
Mountains
of Stone
and
The
Winds of Change
are now available as Kindle e-books on Amazon.
The Kindle edition of The Winds of Change
is not footnoted and does not contain the Western
Trivia chapter. The picture CD is not available
with the Amazon books.
The
Barrier Canyon article discuses three of the best
rock art panels in Utah. There
is a rough dirt road to Barrier Canyon from the
town of Green River, Utah, and another road across
from Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park. The other
two sites Buckhorn Wash and Sego Canyon can be
reached by car with little difficulty.
Buckhorn
Wash
Sego
Canyon
A
group of Indians in Utah's Maize
District of Canyonlands
National Park are classified as Barrier
Canyon Indians (Barrier
Canyon is shown as Horseshoe Canyon on recent
maps). Barrier
Canyon Indians are dated from the mid-Archaic
Period (~4000
B.C. to 2000 B.C.). Classification
is based on pictographs and clay
figurines. The clay figures were excavated from
Cowboy Cave by Dr. Jesse Jennings of the
University of Utah. Cowboy Cave is eight miles
beyond the Great Gallery in Barrier Canyon. The
clay figurines found in Cowboy Cave match the
style of some Barrier Canyon pictographs. Barrier
Canyon style rock art is found on the canyon walls
of the northern Colorado Plateau in southeastern
Utah, western Colorado, and northern Arizona.
Southeastern Utah's Four Corners Area
From
a parking lot with no facilities except a portable
out house, the trail descends a 750 foot
switchback trail to the Barrier Canyon streambed.
The approximately 6.5 mile round trip trail is
well marked and maintained.
Barrier Canyon Trailhead
Trail into Barrier Canyon
Early Visitor - Three Toed Dinosaur
April Rains in Barrier
Canyon
The
Barrier Canyon style pictograph rock art consists
of larger-than-life-size anthropomorphic
(manlike) forms. The identifying
characteristics are vacant looking or missing
eyes, the frequent absence of arms and legs, and
the presence of vertical body markings (Horseshoe
Canyon Archeology). Unique
to the Southwest, the Barrier Canyon pictographs
are regarded by many as the finest rock art in the
United States. Barrier Canyon's Great Gallery is
over three-hundred feet long with over sixty
figures.
Barrier Canyon Great Gallery
Archeologists
speculate the life-sized human-like figures
(anthropomorphic images) were painted by different
individuals between 4000 and 2000 B.C.. Despite
this several thousand year period, there are very
few occurrences of images being painted over by
other Indians...this indicates the spiritual, or
mystical, significance of the Prehistoric Indian
pictographs to the Anasazi,
Fremont,
and historic Indians. Anyone visiting these sites
cannot help but feel an aura of mystery.
Barrier Canyon Holy Man
Barrier Canyon Animals
Mountain
sheep and deer with the hunters carrying spears on
the left end of the Great Gallery site are a later
date than the typical Barrier anthropomorphic
figures.
The
Great Gallery area has several distinct panels.
Not all of the art panels are from the same time
period (Jacobs). Horseshoe
Shelter contains a mixture of Barrier, Anasazi,
and Fremont
pictographs and petroglyphs.
Horseshoe
shelter was under a huge rock alcove. Based on the
rock art and other artifacts, this site was used
as a shelter for thousands of years.
Horseshoe Shelter - Fremont
Buckhorn
Wash
Late
Barrier Canyon style rock art pictographs and
Fremont petroglyphs panels are found in Buckhorn
Wash east of Huntington, Utah.
Buckhorn Wash
Several
panels in Buckhorn Wash have been covered with
bullet holes and initials. Emory County and the
BLM restored
this panel in 1996.
The
most famous pictograph is the Buckhorn Wash
Angels.
Buckhorn Angels
Buckhorn
Wash empties into the San Rafael River.
Mexican Hat - San Rafael River
Sego
Canyon
The Sego Canyon rock
art site is at the end of an oiled road north of
Thompson, Utah. This is an excellent site to see
Barrier, Fremont,
and historic Indian panels.
Barrier Canyon Style
Fremont petroglyphs imposed on older Barrier
Canyon pictographs
Sego
Canyon Historic - ~ 1800's
Horses
were brought to Mexico by Cortez in 1519, and onto
the Great Plains by Coronado in 1540. It is
doubtful if horses reached the Canyonlands area
before the late 1700's. The first known horses to
reach this area were the horses with the
Dominguez-Escalante Expedition in 1776.
The Barrier Canyon
article was written by O.
Ned Eddins of Afton, Wyoming.
Permission is given for material from this site to
be used for school research papers.
Citation:
Eddins, Ned. (article name) Thefurtrapper.com.
Afton, Wyoming. 2002.
References:
Barnes,
F. A and Pendleton, Michaelene. Canyon country
prehistoric rock art: An illustrated guide to
viewing, understanding and appreciating the rock
art of the prehistoric Indian cultures of Utah,
the Great Basin and the general Four Corners
region. Wasatch Publishers, Salt Lake City,
Utah. 1989.
Diamond,
Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The fates of
Human Societies. W.W. Norton, New York, N.Y. 1996.
Dillehay,
Thomas D. The Settlement of the Americas. Basic
Books, New York, NY. 2000.
Koppel,
Tom. Did They Come By Sea? American
Archeology Magazine, Spring. 2002.
Madsen,
David B.. Exploring the Fremont. Utah
Museum of Natural History/University of Utah, Salt
Lake City, Utah. 1989.
Schaafsma,
Polly. The Rock Art of Utah. University of
Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah. 2004.
Stone,
Tammy. The Prehistory of Colorado and
Adjacent Areas. University of Utah
Press, Salt Lake City, Utah. 1999.
Taylor, Allan. American
Colonies: The settling of North America.
Penguin Books. New York, NY. 2002.
Internet
Sources:
Archeology
of Horseshoe Canyon
www.nps.gov/cany/horseshoe/
Barrier
Canyon Rock Art
http://www.jqjacobs.net/rock_art/barrier1.html
Jacobs,
James Q - These are excellent sites.
http://www.jqjacobs.net/rock_art/ne_utah1.html
Paleo-American
Origins
Pennsylvania
Archeology
http://www.paarchaeology.state.pa.us/pub_penarch_over_prehisa.htm
