Cave Visit
Octavius Seowtewa: Well, I guess what we are doing is asking permission from them to be here. Once we do the offering and do the smoke and everything like that, that now we can have that opportunity to talk about this place. I’ve been to a lot of different caves, and this is the first one that’s really down in the bottom. Most of those caves are out a little higher to have protection from the elements.
Octavius Seowtewa: Just walking up here this is an ideal place. As we were walking up, I could feel the heat that preserves and make sure that everything it…
Octavius Seowtewa: … is really an ideal place especially back there and having a small opening and protection.
Octavius Seowtewa: …And left information behind for us to give to children and giving information about what these things are. Because all of our history has been passed down from generation to generation orally. We don’t have it written down except on petroglyphs and pictographs and coming up here and looking at all of these paint images that somebody put here…
Octavius Seowtewa: …Its our history, its information that was specifically left by our ancestors and having those disappear as part of our history, part of our way of life, part of who we are has now been erased because somebody came up here and started scratching or putting paint on it. So, hopefully once this gets the adequate protection that there is a way to eliminate all of this graffiti. Not scratching it but I was telling Fumi (Arakawa) that we used lemon juice from a spray bottle spray, spray those and it eventually disappears when you wipe it off. There’s written stuff here that shouldn’t even be here because of that, the place that we hold as being very important and sacred. Now somebody came in and put things here that wasn’t up here in the right frame of mind, so we want to make sure that this cave, this area here is protected for the future generations to come. Because it’s difficult for our children now to really try and get a hold of or grasping information of who they are because they’re being bombarded with all the white man information. They’re going to school, they’re learning how to go into a computer, how to run the computers, they’ve got phones, they’ve got tablets, and not having elders that would give them that information now they’re just getting all their information in school not at home, where all that information needs to come from. I’m glad that our generation had ancestors that had that knowledge and information and passed it down to us. Now it’s our responsibility to pass on that information, coming to places like this it’s like this really strengthens and would strengthen that information base where our children are growing up. Because what was required here is information that was left like I said, by our ancestors, and I know it’s difficult for non-natives to get a better understanding of that information because all of their information is written down and ours is just oral history. To have that information and coming to a place like this we can now put things together. Like I mentioned it looks like a page being opened every day and hopefully we can acquire that information from all of these places and complete the book and give that to our children growing up. Every time I’m asked to come to a place like this I always jump at the opportunity because what we talked about last night you never know how long we have on this earth, what we can accomplish, and what we can acquire in our lifetime, our short lifetime that we have here on earth because the information that was acquired here really goes back a long way. But it’s still very important to us because what they left behind and I always want to stress that because that I’m glad they did leave that information behind. I always thank them because either they knew what they were leaving behind or not knowing they left that information. But it’s still very useful for us at this time.
Garrett Leitermann: They mentioned that they were able to see some red pictographs and I believe they mentioned that they appeared to be in the form of like masks or faces but with probably the use over the years, maybe if we have like a high-powered camera and like a Dstretch or some sort of filter,1 we might be able to see those elements. Usually, they just were focused on collecting the artifacts as opposed to kind of putting this cave in a wider context or landscape
Octavius Seowtewa: Yeah, there’s an app called Dstretch that can pick up any paint pigments or anything that was left behind. We’re talking about the mortar and the slicks back there. And this is also a place that just because what’s left behind it’s important but there’s a place there that we came upon that has concretions and conglomerates and they’re very important also to us to this day. So when we found that and Mike [unknown person] was asking me if I’ve ever come upon a place where there was a lot with in one place, and I said no it’s the first time. It’s like I said it’s a page at a time it’s revealing itself a little and that information hopefully at some point that we can start putting all of that information together with the vast travels of our ancestors and having that information presented to our children as information that they didn’t have a chance or never acquired before, and hopefully with what we’re doing is to further that information based to our children, are now going to schools and learning different sciences, different ways, different math’s but what happened here is very important to us and we want them to know and acknowledge that this is a place where our ancestors survived. And without their survival we as a tribe we as people would not be able to make this track this journey here and see this place for ourselves. I’m just walking, what we saw up there is a lot of information and a lot of things that we need to discuss, and we need to talk about because of what they are.
Fumi Arakawa: Our collections you saw this morning came from right there and those are collected by the kind of collectors in 1960s. So, we have like three different repositories for this site collections, one is ours at the University Museum and another one is at the Peabody at Harvard, and another one is at Centennial Museum in El Paso. So, we only have a small portion of that but that’s still pretty good.
Octavius Seowtewa: Well, we were up in that crevice there and I don’t know, I was informed by Michael [unknown person] that there’s probably something in there. With the flashlight that we could see that there was a smaller cave going way back. I don’t know if anybody had an opportunity to explore that but I’m pretty sure there’s more information in there that has not come out to the light of day yet. I’m pretty sure that there’s more information here that our ancestors have not opened the eyes of people to collect. So, without their okay, without their blessings that there’s still probably intact artifacts that are still here. I’m glad that hopefully they’re still here and that just getting to know about some of the caves that I’ve been to there has been a lot of that information has not come to the light of day yet. At some point hopefully with the environment changing that they can reveal themselves but for now they’re in the safe place.
Octavius Seowtewa: This is a big part of this is information that we want to save for future generations.
Fumi Arakawa: Probably you know this, archaeological resources in southern New Mexico it’s just bad or just terrible compared to other areas in the American Southwest. It’s just people they just don’t have any good ideas so the concept of preservation and conservation.
Octavius Seowtewa: Well not only that but the information that is out there for the public to read or research is information that is not totally accurate. So, with us being a part of places like this and talking about what was left behind would further enhance the protection of this place because now people will understand what was left behind by our ancestors a long time ago. That also would be very important for people doing research now, because the past information was all through western knowledge and western science. Now we’re incorporating our traditional and ecological knowledge of what we know from our oral history of what we acquired from our ancestors our elders that is now being utilized in incorporated into university studies and education for people that want to further explore and know about places like this. Now they have information that is coming directly from the source communities that were part of the space.
Footnotes
Dstretch is a plugin for ImageJ written by Jon Harman. The tool uses decorrelation stretches for enhancing photographs of rock art.↩︎