National Spanish Trails Symposium

Southern Utah University,

October 2007Cedar City, Utah

Parowan Gap Trails Exploration:

Early Historic to Aztec, Paiute, Fremont, and Toltec Contact Routes

by V. Garth Norman

The purpose of this paper is to examine ARCON’s Parowan Gap Archaeological Project data (1993-2002) for communication routes evidences and trail maps prior to pioneer settlement of Utah in the 1850’s.

Dated inscriptions and private collections of Spanish artifacts have been reported along the Spanish trail in Iron County (Matheson 1990: 150, 172-187), but no Spanish site has yet been formally excavated. The close proximity of the Spanish trails, and possible Spanish petroglyphs at the Parowan Gap (Gap Field Report, Part 2), and at Cedar City and Fillmore (Castleton 1979: 65, 115), warrants a more serious consideration of this subject than is presently available in the archaeological literature.

Several dated inscriptions are found in the Baffits Canyon area near Johnson Springs, which was a stop on the Spanish Trail. A Spanish name JOLO is dated 1821. The year 1821 is when wagon train trade was introduced to the Spanish Trail, and the wagon trail tracks have been traced through parts of Iron County (Matheson 1990: 172-173). In 23 years of trade between 1821 and 1844, the annual value of transported merchandise averaged $130,000. About 80 wagons and 150 men used the trail each year to transport manufactured goods to exchange for mules, furs, gold, and silver (The World Book Encyclopedia).

Another historic inscription recorded by Matheson in the Baffits Canyon area, is an 1831 date with AW U inscribed beneath a cross. There is also a P Smith to the side. Jedediah Smith comes to mind as one who may have traveled part of the Spanish Trail in 1826 from Salt Lake south to cross the Mohave Desert while exploring new routes to California (The World Book). After extensive exploration in the Far West, Smith was killed by Indians on the Santa Fe Trail in 1831, the year of this inscription. I rather believe the inscription is from Thomas “Pegleg” Smith, a trapper who formed an alliance about 1829 with Chief Wakara who raided southern California and drove horses back along the Spanish trail to sell to the trappers to carry their fur trade back to Santa Fe and St. Louis (Conetah 1982: 81). Perhaps a trappers’ rendezvous occurred here on the southern rim of the Colorado Plateau drainages.

Archaeological research in recent years has been uncovering evidences for Spanish Trail ties with Native American trails, so that the history of trails is developing favorably for a continuum with discovery of earlier Native American trails—the point being that the history of travel routes in the West did not begin with Spanish contact. This has been implied for some time by the fact that Spanish explorers employed Indian guides who knew the country and we can assume traveled at times on existing Indian trails.

This condition is implied in the first Mormon pioneer expedition led by Parley P. Pratt to southwestern Utah territory to explore areas for suitable settlement (Smart and Smart 1999). They were unaware of a well traveled Indian trail through Clear Creek Canyon. Near Aztel, they met an Indian camp where Ute Chief Wakara told them about Parowan Valley and the Parowan Gap that he said was “God’s own house,” which enabled expedition members to locate the Gap where they sketched some petroglyphs. The most difficult part of their journey was across the mountains from the Sevier River into the north end of Parowan Valley over an almost impossible route because their Indian guide had to drop out from illness. The fact that the three communities established in Parowan Valley at Parowan, Paragonah, and Summit are all located at earlier abandoned Fremont villages contributes to a history continuum in resettlement.

This history continuum perspective stretching back over a thousand years has developed favorably in trails research with the Parowan Gap Archaeological Project, connecting Parowan Valley with the Parowan Fremont village at Baker, Nevada, which we will examine in some detail.

From an archaeological perspective, the proto historic period begins with literacy manifest in writings from the first Spanish contact. Extensive petroglyphic “doodling” on rocks that cannot be read throughout the West have been mistakenly attributed to illiterate Native Americans. The Parowan Gap Archaeological Project research for petroglyph interpretation has effectively exploded that misconception. Researchers now favor recognition of Indian petroglyphs as “rock writing.” As we learn how to read these rocks associated with other archaeological remains, it may be possible to move recorded history back in time, which I propose here in Fremont turquoise trade with Mexico.

After spending a decade studying petroglyph rock writings in Mexico, related to Maya hieroglyphic writing, to decode Izapa sculpture (Norman 1976), I became intrigued with the prospect that similar success is possible in rock writing research in the Southwest. The opportunity finally came in the early 1990’s to research an extensive petroglyph site at the Parowan Gap where archaeological contexts with ARCON’s excavation of a cave shelter was able to identify culture and chronology in association with petroglyphs and related archaeology sites in the area (Norman in Helton et al 2002).

I started the Parowan Gap Archaeological Project with the BLM in 1993 to test excavate a cave shelter in the Narrows and begin recording and analyzing the extensive petroglyphs. The project expanded in 1996 with assistance and interest of Parowan City, Iron County, the Southern Paiute Tribe, and Baseline Data help with the excavation. A Federal Highways matching grant provided funding for field work and data collection analysis for the first year. My consulting firm ARCON Inc. and associates continued to fund the project to completion in 2002. In 2007 I published a self guided interpretive tour book from technical reports with additional research (frequent reference to this work is VGN).

The Parowan Gap Project is the first major multi-disciplinary archaeological project in North America developed to interpret a major petroglyph site. We excavated the Gap cave shelter and were fortunate to be able to establish a cultural chronology profile of nearly 5,000 years from historic, through Paiute, Fremont, and Archaic back to about 3,000 B.C.E. The earliest level was a C14 dated fire pit in association with calendar petroglyphs, buried by a large boulder in the first century A.C.E. These early petroglyphs are the same style as was being used by the Fremont 3,000 years later (VGN, Panel G2 bottom, p. 151), which has profound implications for deep antiquity of peoples living here.

A Paiute fire hearth at 1350 A.C.E. yielded a Desert Side Notch projectile point that is the same type point that was being used by Archaic peoples in the Great Basin at 3,000 B.C.E. Archaeologists see evidences of Paiute movement into Utah from southern California after the Fremont hiatus at around 1250 A.C.E. This implies Archaic Numic peoples were already here, even if somewhat displaced by the Fremont.

Some Paiute and Hopi elders regard extensive rock writings as the Indian’s Bible that recorded religious beliefs and historic traditions.

Paiute tradition relates that their ancestors migrated into southern Utah territory in the remote past from the northwest after crossing a great river, apparently the Columbia. Native Americans living close to the earth have a sense of place that defies rigid historic classification. They moved across the landscape at times, but their mythic origin is from the earth at the time of creation, like the plants and animals. So, when the white man asks an Indian where he came from, he may respond that he has always been here; it is the white man who moved.

Some Gap petroglyphs could relate to undated history, and the Gap Project has helped elucidate some of that history in my trails research discussed next.

Petroglyph Research

The Parowan Gap Project recorded nearly a hundred petroglyph panels with over 1500 figures. Additionally, over 50 local archaeological sites were recorded and integrated. Comparative study of remote petroglyph sites in Utah and Nevada and ethnographic research also aided interpretation. In this way several Paiute traditions were tied to the Gap site and petroglyphs. We have penetrated a lot of new territory, and know a great deal more about the peoples who inhabited this region over the past 5,000 years that is challenging conventional anthropological views of Fremont society, raising it on a par with the contemporary Pueblo Anasazi of the Southwest, and even linking with Mesoamerican civilization through long distance turquoise trade contact that resulted in significant cultural exchange (see Norman 2007:10).

Some of the most revolutionary new Gap discoveries include:

Four thousand years of calendar culture in petroglyphs that endured from at least 3,000 B.C.E.

A sophisticated calendar observatory in a wilderness temple center laid out geometrically and astronomically with survey cairns to natural terrain.

A sophisticated lunar-solar calendar observatory with over 30 observation stations that developed during 500 years of Fremont history, which includes the Mesoamerican 260-day calendar at its core, revealing the origin of that calendar system as a fixed segment of the agricultural year.

Multiple panel records of a 2920-day sun-moon-Venus conjunction cycle that predates the Post Classic codex records of this cycle in Mexico (after 1,000 A.C.E.).

These Gap records are so well integrated with the extensive lunar-solar calendar petroglyphs at the Gap, that I suspect these more sophisticated calendars either have ancient local roots, or they were in place almost from the inception of the Parowan Fremont culture settlement by 700 A.C.E. from Mesoamerican influence. More research is needed to resolve this question.

Fremont cosmology expanded considerably when I decoded a small stipple disk with 50 dots as a map of the northern stellar horizon circle with ten constellations. This remarkable record reveals the fine tuned keen observations of the heavens by Parowan priest astronomers. This Panel G7 by the cave shelter has for the first time linked the triangular Fremont God in a large image above the stellar disk with the North Star at the hub of the visible universe as the home of the supreme creator God (VGN 153). It may also reflect Paiute cosmology that is tied closely to the North Star (VGN. 16-17).

Research with the Parowan Gap Archaeological Project from 1993 to 2003 has given me a rare opportunity to explore evidences of earlier trails contact with this region, including long distance trade communications through the Southwest with Mesoamerica during Aztec and Toltec times (Norman 2007: 10). We will examine seven different petroglyph maps below.

1. There are developing evidences that some Spanish routes traveled were along existing trails established by the Spaniards with the aid of Indian guides. For instance. A historic period petroglyph panel with linear figures at Cedar City (Fig. 1) was considered by Castleton (1987, 2: 115) to be modern. However, related panels have been found extending north along the Wasatch front near Fillmore, Nephi, and Ogden, to Franklin. Proto historic period figures are obvious in the humans with a brim hat and horses (see figure). The same type panels have been found in Colorado and along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These panels include pictographic Indian signs, and some figures are identifiable as Aztec glyphs. The panel at Ogden has an Aztec tecpatl glyph which means “precious stone,” so could relate to a Spanish mining pack trail. The best explanation in my view for these panels is that they were pictographs of Aztec guides who accompanied Spanish explorer expeditions as records of their travels.

2. Two Spanish crosses at the Parowan Gap (Figs. 2 & 3) confirm that Spaniards traveled this route. The Papal cross in Figure 2, with ribbons at the ends of the bottom cross, is the standard type that was carried by expeditions. The relative light patination of this cross shows it’s later age compared to adjacent older dark patinated petroglyphs.

3. I have interpreted several petroglyph panels at the Gap as Indian trail maps through comparative study with terrain and topographic maps. One on a boulder near the east end of the Gap maps a trail to the top of Red Hills through the north draw. The large V-lobe panel at the Narrows pictures the Gap itself as pictured in the overlay (Fig. 4), with the lobe as the basin on the east side of the Narrows. It can be read with other trail signs for both local and long distance trails. The serpentine line at the side maps the terrain around the basin for observatory and hunting trails (fig. 5).

4. A central petroglyph in panel A8 consists of meandering lines over a saw tooth and lizard and spider effigy maps (Fig. 6). Tracking prominent spots on this trail to two predicted strategic hunting sites convinced me it is real (Fig. 7). A lower section map (not shown) has two spiders that match the southern Red Hills peaks ridges. These figures map a hunting gathering trail system through the Red Hills east of the Narrows petroglyph spanning approximately fifty square miles. The saw tooth section is a very realistic depiction of the terrain through the three mile stretch of the Gap pass east to Little Salt Lake. The clue to this map came from my prior research tracking long range petroglyph maps in the Book Cliffs across the Uinta Basin from the Book Cliffs and at Nine Mile Canyon (Norman 1982), and at Capitol Reef.

An adjacent horned-bird-serpent on this panel records the 260-day calendar and documents trade contact with the Toltec God, Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan (see VGN, Panel A10b, Figs. 6:14, 14:5).