In one of the threads here, someone mentioned Paint Rock, Tx. Upon doing a little research, I found that there are some Indian paintings on the rocks of a cliff near Paint Rock, Tx. A couple weekends ago, my wife and I drove to Paint Rock to take a tour of these painted rocks. I've attached some photos from that trip.
Leaving Paint Rock, we stopped in Melvin, Tx for a photo of the local post office, community sign and some lunch at Jacoby's cafe. (I recommend the Keltz burger).
Squirltech, post: 425356, member: 11959 wrote:
Note that John Coffee Hays aka "Devil Jack" Hays departed Texas for California in 1849 where he was appointed a Deputy Surveyor and engaged in speculative land dealings, among them the townsite of Oakland. He never returned to Texas (or Tennessee, for that matter, which is where he came from). If you've ever examined any of his work, you may agree that this was not the worst thing that ever happened.
Squirltech, post: 425356, member: 11959 wrote:
One thing that catches my eye about those pictographs is that I wonder how many Comanche motifs there are are among them. In West Texas, the Comanche left images of riders on horses and buffalo (even though the Trans-Pecos was pretty far off the beaten migration paths of bison). Some of the images look so fresh that I assume they probably date from historic times. Even into the 1840s, the Comanche were the parties in possession in that area and the only reason that surveys were made without decimating the population of Deputy Surveyors was that a German company that had contracted with the Republic and State of Texas entered into an agreement with them that involved a substantial payment of money and other things. So, it may well be that some of the paint dates from a time as late as the 1840s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meusebach%E2%80%93Comanche_Treaty
Pretty durable paint. Too bad they didn't come up with a recipe for Day-Glo pink.
Funny story...During the tour of the pictographs, the guide, Bill, suggested that he needed to "clean the rocks" so tour attendees could see the paintings better. He was referring to trimming the brush along the rocks so the pictographs were more visible from the vantage point of being at the bottom of the cliff but someone in our group asked if he used a "wire brush and Windex to clean the rocks?"
Bill quickly made it clear that they do NOT touch the paintings.
Personally, the part that I really find interesting, (and I'm sorry it's not really visible in the photos), on some of the rocks, NEXT to the paintings, you can see where the "artist" placed their hand against the rocks to either clean their hand of paint or to get a solid footing before changing position. To think that someone, however many years ago, was standing on the side of that cliff telling a story is very cool!
Original N.A.
Taggers
There are a large pile of rocks
Den of rattle snakes
surrounded by cacti
I can see "rite of passage" happening
Bill (the tour guide) mentioned being warned by a rattlesnake(s) while cleaning some of the brush a week or so before our visit. It looks as though this would be a great place to find more than one rattlesnake.
It was also mentioned that the Indians who used this area used the cliff as a buffalo jump. They didn't have horses so they would run the buffalo toward the cliff and like a bunch of lemmings, the buffalo would fall to their death or Indians waiting at the bottom would kill the ones who didn't die from the fall.
