Funeral Mtns. Pictographs

For the last twelve thousand years, people have been living in and around Death Valley. There have been four anthropologically distinct eras– the Death Valley I, II, III, and IV peoples have left behind evidence of their inhabitance. Throughout the region, pottery, stone points, beads, burial sites, trails, and rock art dot the landscape, and with enough searching, you can find the most precious and delicate remains of all.

Here, painted on the surface of rocks in a canyon in the mountains, are the spiritual paintings of a long-dead society. These paintings are hundreds of years old, perhaps as old as 1,200 years, and are from the Death Valley IV occupation, the only native population known to have left paintings. These paintings, called pictographs, tell an unknown story. What they mean, why they were painted, and there spiritual significance will never be known. Not in any other other sites I’ve visited have I seen so many people designs, and never have I seen white in Death Valley before.

There are several dozen paintings along about twenty meters of this rock wall in alcoves and under overhangs. These people eventually became known as the Timbisha Shoshone, a band of probably a little over a hundred people that lived in Death Valley for thousands of years and still lives there today. The modern Timbisha do not know the meaning of any of the thousands of rock art, paintings and carvings, in the Death Valley area. The ways of the “Old Ones” are largely lost, which is an unfortunate consequence of the moving-in of those pesky European descendants. So we are left with these– these delicate remains from a people that lived and died in this hard land.

Sometimes when you visit these sites, you feel out of place; an unwelcome visitor to the lands of the past. Other times, you feel a connection to the past that is hard to find anywhere else. Either way, the mysticism and awe that fills the quiet atmosphere lingers long after you leave.