There is a certain awe that comes about when visiting an ancient site ritually painted and marked like this one. Somehow invisable layers of time seem more aparent, which creates a wide and vast feeling… Generations and cultures blend together at this place to infuse the present moment potent with clarity. "Now it is our turn to be here, to be alive in this place…live wisely".
This mountain area has many granite boulders along teh arroyos naturally carved by thousands of years. It was specified as kind of a gateway to spiritual realms by the ancient Pericúes tribes. I can see why, as it is has a magical feel. Nature's elements are strong here, if one can stop thier own thoughts to rest in meditation one can hear nature singing. I rejoice in that. A good time for prayers, mantra, chants and good wishes toward all sientent beings, no matter what religion or culture. We are all in the same boat.
This mountain area has many granite boulders along teh arroyos naturally carved by thousands of years. It was specified as kind of a gateway to spiritual realms by the ancient Pericúes tribes. I can see why, as it is has a magical feel. Nature's elements are strong here, if one can stop thier own thoughts to rest in meditation one can hear nature singing. I rejoice in that. A good time for prayers, mantra, chants and good wishes toward all sientent beings, no matter what religion or culture. We are all in the same boat.
Thinking to include some of this series ("BCS, New Works")
in the March 2014 Photography Exhibition planned at Galariá Casa Tota.
More inforamtion about the Pericúe Indiginous people below.
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| Red Rock Boulder |
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| Self portrait on granite rocks |
Pericúes
The Pericues or Pericue
Indians of Baja California Sur were an indigenous people that inhabited western
Mexico and the southwestern United States. The Pericu made pottery, recorded
events in art and text, as well as cultivated the arid environment of the
desert. Archaeological finds even point to an irrigation system of sorts that
spread as far as 1700 miles in one location. Mysticism also seems to have been
an integral part of Perician culture. Many aspects of god were part of the
culture and nature was highly respected. These characteristics are two of just
a very few shared with other Native American peoples.
From “ Discovery” A number of groups arrived in the Americas via
different routes and at varying times, possibly as early as 25,000 years ago.
The finding, released at the British Association for the Advancement of Science
(BA) Festival of Science in Exeter, England, adds support to the theory that a
number of groups arrived in the Americas via different routes and at varying times,
possibly as early as 25,000 years ago. The study also suggests
that the two oldest known Americans — Penon woman and Kennewick Man — might
have belonged to the Pericues tribe. Even before the DNA analysis, Silvia
Gonzalez, lead author of the study and a geoarchaeologist from Liverpool John
Moores University, noticed that the Pericues skulls were long and narrow, as
opposed to the more broad and round features found in early Native American
skulls. "Because of their skull morphology, long and narrow (dolicocephalic)
the Pericues could be related to the oldest Americans known, which are Penon
Woman in the Basin of Mexico at 12,755 before the present, and Kennewick Man at
9,700 years old," Gonzalez told Discovery News just before Monday's
announcement. "Hence, if this was true, they would be older than the
Native Indians. The oldest dated Pericue material is only 3,000 years before
the present, although there are cave paintings in Baja California dated to
7,500 BP and Clovis points that must be 11,000-11,500 years old."
Pericues were a hunter-gatherer society that lived on shellfish, fish, cacti
and other plants in the desert area of Baja California. Objects found in the
area suggest that the Pericues used stone tools. Gonzalez indicated that they
had a complex burial system involving mortuary-like burial areas located both
along the coast and in caves. She said they also used wooden spear throwers,
and likely painted bones with red ochre, as early decorated shells and pearls
have been found in Baja. "The missionary descriptions indicated that the
men were naked and the women wore grass skirts, and they were very tall and
slim," Gonzalez added. "They became extinct during the 18th century
due to changes imposed by the missionaries."
Territory The southern edge of the Baja California
peninsula, from Cabo San Lucas east to Cabo Pulmo, together with the large Gulf
of California Islands of Cerralvo, Espíritu Santo, La Partida, and San José,
have been recognized as aboriginal Pericú territory. William C. Massey (1949)
thought that the eastern portion of the Cape Region, including Bahía de las
Palmas and Bahía Ventana, were occupied by a Guaycura group known as the
Cora. Subsequent reexamination of the ethnohistoric evidence suggests that Cora
was synonymous with Pericú.
The status of the La Paz area
is uncertain. Massey assigned it to two Guaycura groups, the Cora and the
Aripe.W. Michael Mathes (1975)
argued that it had belonged to the Pericú in the 16th and 17th centuries but
was taken over by the Guaycura some time between 1668 and 1720. An alternative
interpretation is that it was disputed ground between the Pericú and Guaycura
throughout the early historic period.
Prehistory The archaeological record
for Pericú territory extends at least as far back as the early Holocene, about 10,000 years ago,
and perhaps into the late Pleistocene. The distinctive hyperdolichocephalic skulls
found in Cape Region burials have suggested to some scholars that the ancestors
of the Pericú were either trans-Pacific immigrants or remnants of some of the
New World's earliest colonizers. The distinctive Las Palmas burial complex,
involving secondary burials painted with red ochre and deposited in caves or
rockshelters, was particularly noted. The continued use of the atlatl and dart
alongside the bow and arrow as late as the 17th century, long after their
replacement in most of North America, has been used to argue for an exceptional
degree of isolation in southern Baja California.
Harumi Fujita (2006) has traced the changing
patterns in the exploitation of marine resources and in settlement within the
prehistoric Cape Region. According to Fujita, after about AD 1000, four major
centers of socioeconomic and ceremonial importance emerged in the Cape Region:
near Cabo San Lucas, at Cabo Pulmo, at La Paz, and on Isla Espíritu Santo.
History European contacts with
the Pericú began in the 1530s, first when Fortún Ximénez and
mutineers from an expedition sent out by Hernán Cortés,
the conqueror of central Mexico, reached La Paz, followed shortly afterwards by
an expedition under Cortés himself (Mathes 1973). Sporadic encounters,
sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, linked the Pericú with a succession
of European explorers, privateers, missionaries, Manila galleons, and pearl
hunters throughout the 16th, 17th, and early 18th centuries.
The Jesuits established their
first permanent mission in Baja California at Loreto in
1697, but it was more than two decades later that they felt prepared to move
into the Cape Region. Missions serving the Pericú, at least in part, were
established at La Paz (1720), Santiago (1724),
and San José del Cabo (1730).
A dramatic reversal came in 1734 when the Pericú Revolt began, resulting in the
most serious challenge the Jesuits experienced in Baja California. Two
missionaries were killed, and for two years Jesuit control over the Cape Region
was interrupted (Taraval 1931). The Pericú themselves suffered most, however,
with combat deaths added to the already devastating effects of Old World
diseases. By the time the Spanish crown expelled the Jesuits from Baja
California in 1768, the Pericú seem to have been culturally extinct, although
some of their genes may survive in local populations of mixed descent.
Traditional culture The Pericú are known
primarily through the accounts of early European visitors The most detailed of
these were left by English privateers who spent time at Cabo San Lucas in 1709-1710
and 1721.
Subsistence and
material culture The
Pericú are best known for their maritime orientation, harvesting fish,
shellfish, and marine mammals from the waters of the southern Gulf of
California. Terrestrial resources such as agave, the fruit of cacti, small
game, and deer were also important.
The Pericú were one of the few aboriginal
groups on the California coasts to possess watercraft other than tule balsas,
making use of wooden rafts and double-bladed paddles. Nets, spears or harpoons,
darts, and bows and arrows were tools for procuring fish and meat. Bags,
baskets, and gourds were used for carrying.
Social
organization Communities
seem to have been politically independent. Leadership positions were hereditary
and were sometimes held by women. Conflicts with the Guaycura were chronic.
Religion Fragments of Pericú mythology were recorded in
the early 1730s (Venegas 1979(4): 524-525) ... Shamans claimed to be able
to effect supernatural cures of the sick. Mortuary and mourning observances
were particularly elaborate. The people believed in a god as creator of heaven and earth.
