Gordon´s Polychrome Panel

About This Experience

Two Flat Tires, an Ancient Gallery and an Unexpected Connection to the Past Reaching Gordon’s Polychromatic Panel was an adventure long before we saw a single pictograph. The site lies in a very remote part of the western Grand Canyon country, and even reaching the trailhead required a capable Jeep. The road became progressively rougher, rockier and more isolated, and it was obvious that this was not a place for an ordinary passenger car. We were already concentrating on negotiating the difficult track when, about a mile before the trailhead, the first serious problem appeared: the pressure in the left rear tire was dropping. It did not take long to realize that we had a flat. Since we were so close to our destination, we decided to continue very carefully for the remaining mile and change the tire once we reached the relatively level ground at the trailhead. Fortunately, we made it. Almost immediately afterward another vehicle arrived and parked nearby. A man stepped out with his two sons, noticed our problem and without hesitation offered to help. Together we lifted the Jeep, removed the damaged wheel and installed the spare. At that moment they were simply three very friendly strangers who happened to arrive exactly when we needed them. We had no idea that they would become such an important part of the story of that day. As we were finishing the tire change, they shouldered their packs and disappeared down the trail without saying exactly where they were heading. Once our Jeep was ready, we began our own descent into the canyon. The trail was small, faint and essentially unmarked. It was a fairly long hike, although still manageable as a day trip, and the deeper we descended the more we became aware of what awaited us later. Going down was one thing; climbing all of that elevation again at the end of the day would be another. Every steep section made us think, “We will have to come back up here later.” Nevertheless, the canyon was spectacular and somewhere below us was one of the most extraordinary pictograph sites in the Southwest. The history of this panel is almost as fascinating as the paintings themselves. Today it is commonly called Gordon’s Panel, Shamans’ Gallery or Spirit Shelter, but its modern documentation involved several different people. Mary Allen visited the shelter in 1980, years before it became widely known through later archaeological work, and became deeply interested in this unusual type of rock art. As she studied related sites across the western Grand Canyon, she recognized that the paintings formed a distinctive regional tradition and proposed the term Grand Canyon Polychrome. Gordon Smith, a mule wrangler, guide and explorer familiar with this remote country, later brought the site to the attention of the National Park Service in the mid-1980s, which explains why his name became attached to it. He should therefore not really be described as the person who “discovered” the panel, since others clearly knew of it earlier, but his report played an important role in bringing it into formal archaeological attention. In 1987, archaeologist Polly Schaafsma and her team carried out a detailed recording of the shelter, carefully separating the many overlapping figures and documenting an extraordinary concentration of imagery. Her study was subsequently published in 1990, and the name Shamans’ Gallery became widely associated with the site through her interpretation of its possible ritual significance. The paintings themselves appear to be much older than the Ancestral Puebloan rock art found throughout much of the Grand Canyon. They are generally placed within the Western Archaic artistic tradition and show strong relationships with Utah’s Barrier Canyon Style. Their exact age remains uncertain because the figures themselves have not been directly dated, but they are likely several thousand years old. Schaafsma documented more than forty elongated anthropomorphic figures, along with animals, circular forms and other geometric elements. Mary Allen considered the Grand Canyon examples distinctive enough from classic Barrier Canyon imagery to justify treating them as their own regional style. One of the most remarkable characteristics is the astonishing use of color. Instead of the predominantly red or white pictographs familiar from many Southwestern sites, Grand Canyon Polychrome imagery can include dark red, lighter red, cream, white, yellow, black and several shades of green. Some researchers have distinguished numerous individual pigment shades. The figures are also extraordinarily detailed. Some contain complex geometric designs inside their bodies; others have clearly indicated eyes, fingers, toes or unusual head forms. Tiny anthropomorphs sometimes appear beside much larger beings. One particularly striking figure has an almost skeletal or “X-ray” appearance, with internal lines resembling ribs or internal anatomy, while other figures seem so strange that it is difficult to decide whether they were intended as humans at all. Perhaps the most important discovery made during archaeological recording was that the wall was not painted during a single event. Figures overlap one another, some were apparently renewed or repainted, and new images were added over older ones. People therefore seem to have returned to this shelter repeatedly, possibly over many generations. That repeated attention suggests that this particular place had enduring importance. Schaafsma proposed that the imagery might reflect ritual activities, visionary experiences or concepts involving supernatural beings, which led to the name Shamans’ Gallery. But that name remains an archaeological interpretation rather than a known Indigenous name or proven explanation. We cannot know whether the figures actually portray shamans. They might represent transformed humans, supernatural beings, ancestors, visions or ideas whose meanings disappeared with the people who created them. What is clear is that the paintings reveal an unexpectedly sophisticated symbolic world among the Archaic hunter-gatherers of the Grand Canyon. These people invested considerable effort in collecting and preparing different pigments, creating enormous and complicated images and repeatedly returning to the same shelter. Their lives were clearly about much more than simply finding food and water in a difficult landscape. By this point in our hike, however, archaeological interpretation was temporarily less important than simply finding the place. We were not walking together with the man and his sons whom we had met at the trailhead, and at one point we actually began to pass the overhang without realizing it. In such an immense canyon, even a spectacular site can disappear completely into the surrounding cliffs. Fortunately, they had arrived before us. They spotted us continuing in the wrong direction and called us back. They then showed us where we needed to climb a steep section of sandstone to reach the shelter. Without them we might have continued quite some distance before realizing that we had missed it. We climbed the steep section, approached the overhang and suddenly the wall came into view. The first impression was unforgettable. We had visited many remarkable pictograph sites, but this was something completely different. The panel was incredible—unusual, gorgeous and almost overwhelming. Dozens of strange elongated beings covered the sandstone, painted in colors we rarely saw elsewhere. Reds, creams, whites, yellows, blacks and greens appeared among overlapping bodies and intricate internal patterns. Some figures seemed almost human, while others looked as though they belonged to an entirely different world. Everywhere we looked there was another detail: an animal, a tiny figure, a faint older image beneath a later one, an unusual head, another patch of color or another complicated design hidden inside a body. It was one of those places where the longer you look, the more the wall seems to reveal. While photographing the panel, we began talking again with the man and his sons. Our conversation moved from the paintings to the surrounding canyon, then to the history of the region, and finally to their own family. What they told us became one of the most memorable parts of the entire experience. They were descendants of the Schmutz family, one of the early ranching families connected with the remote Tuweep country. The man was bringing his sons into the landscape associated with their ancestors and passing those family stories on to the next generation. The Schmutz family had established itself in this extraordinarily isolated region in the early twentieth century. John Henry Schmutz took up a homestead in the Tuweep country around 1916, and surviving family accounts describe just how difficult life there could be. Water was one of the greatest challenges, and reservoirs had to be constructed with mules and scrapers to capture enough water for cattle. Ranching meant traveling enormous distances through rough country that even today can be difficult to reach with a modern four-wheel-drive vehicle. Listening to their family history while standing beneath paintings created thousands of years earlier was almost surreal. In front of us was one layer of human history: unknown Archaic artists who repeatedly came to this shelter and covered its walls with extraordinary polychromatic beings. Beside us stood descendants of another generation of people whose family had struggled to live and work in the same remote landscape centuries later. And we were there only because, earlier that morning, a flat tire had brought us together. The coincidence became even more remarkable when we thought about everything they had already done for us that day. First they had helped us change the tire at the trailhead. Then, hours later, they had prevented us from walking straight past the pictograph shelter. Now we were standing together beneath one of the most extraordinary rock-art panels we had ever seen, discussing the history of the canyon and listening to them pass the story of their own ancestors from one generation to another. The western Grand Canyon can appear almost empty, but in reality it contains layer upon layer of human history. Archaic hunter-gatherers moved through it thousands of years ago and created complex symbolic imagery. Later Indigenous communities continued to live, travel and maintain relationships with this landscape. Much later, ranching families attempted to survive in the same dry country, confronting the same fundamental realities of distance, rough terrain and scarce water. The land connected all of those stories. We stayed beneath the overhang for a long time because it was difficult to leave. No photograph could fully capture the experience of standing in front of such a complicated wall. Some figures were bold and immediately visible; others almost disappeared beneath later paintings. The overlapping images made the shelter feel less like a single artwork and more like a record of generations returning to the same special place. Every few minutes we noticed something we had missed before. Eventually, however, we had to begin the long climb back to the rim. As we had feared during the descent, the return was demanding. The trail was long and steep, and every section we had walked down earlier now had to be regained step by step. We eventually reached the trailhead before the Schmutz family, tired but extremely satisfied with everything we had experienced. The Jeep was waiting with the spare tire we had fitted that morning, and for a moment it seemed that the drama with the tires was behind us. We started the long drive back through the deserted country. Then, without warning, the tire-pressure display showed another problem. A second tire was losing air—and this time the pressure was falling much faster. Almost immediately we understood how serious the situation was. The first flat had already…