Exploring Ancient Communication at Seminole Canyon State Park, TX

Our next stop for the night was a town called Del Rio, Texas, another of the many border towns that we passed (with no sign of any wall….).

Before you hit town, however, you come to Seminole Canyon State Park, which has good reviews in the Campendium App, an app that people write reviews for all types of places to camp. When we pulled in around 3, they informed us that the campground was closed for construction.

They did have a guided tour starting soon, that would take you down into a canyon, and where you could see some incredible pictographs and other evidence of native peoples in a cave they used for gathering. We signed up and waited for the guide. It was another hot afternoon, so we loaded up with water, and after introductions began the descent.

One thing that is always amazing is how resourceful the people that were here before us were. Plants that seem so harsh to us, like cactus, were a source of food and tools, and healing to them. They made thread to sew with, pouches for carrying things, medicine, and used plant materials for weaving and even footwear.

We climbed up into a huge cave, one that the guide said could hold up to 100 people and saw evidence of fires, grinding stones, and as you looked out down to the river bottom from above, you could see how this place was the perfect respite from the desert heat or infrequent rains which create flash floods down in the canyon bottom.

The other remarkable feature of this cave were the pictographs throughout the length of the cave. They are estimated to be at least 4000 years old, and based on some reproductions that some people had done 60 years ago, time has not been favorable to these paintings. What we saw did not match the reproductions, and we could see the degradation. Due to flooding which had occurred in the nearby town, a reservoir was constructed for protection of the town, however the humidity added to the atmosphere locally began to negatively impact the cave paintings. Also, pollution has apparently contributed to the degradation of the paintings. The State of Texas only acquired the land where this cave lies in the 1970s and prior to that, many artifacts had been removed from the site.

So it’s a guess that the shaman would chronicle their spiritual journeys in these pictographs, as an interpretation of that journey, which was most likely aided by peyote, a psychoactive byproduct of a cactus found in this region. It is believed that the dots seen on this wall to the right of center indicate peyote doses, and it wasn’t clear to me if there were multiple journeys or this was how many peyote buttons were consumed in a joyride (which based on my research, I doubt, cause it sounds like one button is/was enough).