Tag Archives: Tübatulabal pictographs

“Floret Field Find” Pictographs

2 Replies

The Tübatulabal have lived in the Kern River Valley for time immemorial – they do not have a migration myth of any kind. Instead, their stories tell that they have always been here.

During the summer months they ranged into the foothills of the southern Sierra, gathering the pine nuts that gave them their tribal name – pine-nut eaters. During winter months, they retreated to their winter villages, semi-permanent settlements dotting the Kern River Valley, close by good water sources.

We went out to a very well-preserved Tübatulabal pictograph site during springtime. It is close to a couple of traditional village sites – maybe it was within the village, given the presence of several grinding slicks nearby.

Continue reading →

“Go Robot” Pictographs

Leave a reply

What do you do when you need to escape the heat and questionable air quality of lower elevations in mid-summer Central California? We went driving up into the Sierra foothills which – spoiler! – was almost as hot and smoky as the lower elevations. Dang!

But we did find something to make the trip worthwhile – a nice little site on a large boulder with a scenic view.

Continue reading →

“Tale of Years” – The Twins

Leave a reply

A couple of years ago I was in the area and went to visit the “Tale Of Years” site again, since my pictures from my first visit to this site were not that great. The site was still in good condition back then, and now, more than two years later, I finally get around to posting the pictures.

For a complete overview of the site, see the original post I linked to above. Here I’m just going to touch on a handful of highlights that are better shown with this set of pictures.

Continue reading →

“Indian Slate” Pictographs

2 Replies

This is a little site in Tübatulabal territory, on the bank of a seasonal creek. The site is a bit unusual in that the pictographs are not painted on granite. Instead, they are on the side of a slate outcropping on the creek’s eastern bank.

There are also some bedrock mortars down by the creek bed – beautiful conical mortars, worn about ten inches deep. One of the mortars is on a smallish boulder that has washed down the creek since it was originally made. We know this because the boulder is now wedged at an angle in the creek bed. There are also a couple of grinding slicks on a nearby boulder.

Continue reading →

“Graupel Grapple” Pictographs

Leave a reply

This pictograph site is on a ledge partway up a canyon wall. I’ve known about it for many years and visited it twice, but each time I came away with pictures that were less than satisfactory, so I haven’t written about it yet. This past winter I decided it was time to do something about that!

Continue reading →

Wasp Nest Cave Pictographs

2 Replies

We went hiking in the foothills of the Sierra on an absolutely perfect day – blue skies, fluffy clouds, a light breeze, an ambient temperature that was neither hot nor cold. Some distance from the trailhead, where the trail had petered out and we were going cross country, hopping or wading through the creek we were following, we came across something very unusual – a tubular cave in a small granite outcropping.

We do not pass such things by, so we climbed up and had a look. And we found pictographs, painted around the cave entrance and on the ceiling!

Continue reading →

“High Sierra Meadows” Pictographs

1 Reply

Several of the sites I’ve written about ( and some of the ones I haven’t written about and hope to one day write about! ) are sites that I’ve been hunting for a while: through tedious and meticulous research I gradually build up an idea of where I should go look, and then I head out and look and look and look, and often come away with no more than a pile of “well, it is not here, here or here” to add to my data set!

Continue reading →

“What Lies Beneath” Pictographs

Leave a reply

The meaning of Native American rock art is poorly understood. The ethnographic record, combined with thoughtful research, have suggested meanings to us – some still considered current, others fallen out of favor: boundary markers, hunting magic, shamanistic recordings of vision quests, markings for shaman’s caches … there is a long list of possible interpretations.

Part of the debate is whether pictograph and petroglyph sites were held sacred, created in hidden corners of the world, or whether they shared living space with the people who created them.

Continue reading →

“Cornerstone” Pictographs

Leave a reply

This little site gave me a surprisingly hard time!

For starters, the first time I was in the area I missed discovering it by about 150 yards. During that visit I was hunting for a somewhat well-known pictograph site that is very close to this one, forming part of the same habitation complex. I was hunting all along a drainage for that site, and had forged about as far as I could go when finally, there it was! By the time the photography for that site was done it was high time for lunch and my companion was in no mood for more rocks so we headed back and had a great lunch at the local microbrewery, instead of exploring the area more.

Continue reading →