The Marks they Left: Indigenous Biographic Rock art and Early Ranching Boulder Glyphs Along the Rio Grande of Southwest Texas

In 2018 the Center for Big Bend Studies of Sul Ross State University began a thorough investigation and documentation of 390 petroglyphs pecked on 227 small, vesicular basalt boulders located in the Sierra Vieja breaks, a subset of the Chihuahuan Desert near the Rio Grande in the Big Bend of Texas. The recorded figures on the boulders span from anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures to enigmatic designs and historic brands, initials, and dates. The variation in iconography suggests both Indigenous peoples and Anglo/Hispanic settlers made the boulder petroglyphs, offering us the opportunity to study a time-transgressive phenomenon not previously reported from the region and with few corollaries outside of the area. Many of the anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures are depicted in combat and bear similarities to the Biographic rock art tradition more commonly seen throughout the Great Plains. The proximity of these glyphs to a series of sites we interpret as defensive gives insight into the interactions and social/political influences of pericolonial Indigenous people in the Big Bend ca. AD 1640–1880. This book will discuss the evidence of Biographic rock art, pericolonial Indigenous violence, and historic lifeways along the Big Bend Rio Grande corridor.