Parowan Gap Trails Exploration: - Three-Peaks



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).

5. A large boulder adjacent to the road in the middle of the Gap Narrows is covered with seven horizontal trail lines labeled by a 7-comb at the bottom (Fig. 8). A bird in the center stands on a trail and gazes at a sun disk on a trail at its head toward sunset. A checkered oval above has 45 sections, which is the cross-quarter day count for marking the season changes between solstices and equinoxes in the Parowan Gap calendar (VGN 2007, Fig. 4:2).

I have interpreted this panel as a record of the observatory sunset calendar sightings through the Narrows window from observatory stations in the Gap basin. But it is more than just a map of those calendar sight lines. A 55 degree variance between the top and bottom lines is close to the angle between the summer and winter solstices sunsets. The bird signifies the flight of the sun on its different calendar paths through the year. The lines lengths vary, and the top line bends northward. The two bottom lines are forked. So, the paths must be more than a map of observatory sight lines. They could also relate to actual travels through the Gap during the different seasonal cycle dates. In other words, the observatory kept track of the calendar for annual seasonal events involving travel between Parowan Valley and points west. By orienting to the sun’s path and calendar in this manner, the sun on certain dates in this petroglyph panel might have also been used to navigate toward some predetermined long distance travel routes. To test this hypothesis, we will track the top summer solstice line with other petroglyphs and markers moving westward.

6. Next, we can establish a double trail-line path sign on a panel E13e across the road (Fig. 9, VGN 120). This trail sign maps a switchback trail through the escarpment ledges above to the south peak. Recognition of this trail sign helps identify a similar trail petroglyph on a large boulder off the west side of the Narrows.

The Panel E1 boulder (Fig. 10) has a V-lobe figure like panel A7 as a picture of the Gap Narrows. By orienting it to the Narrows pass, we see a trail pointing out of the Narrows and bending to the right (north), just like the adjacent right arm, and like the top trail line on boulder C10 previously noted that we identified with the summer solstice sunset trail.

Note how this trail goes to the right of the boulder’s rounded top, which looks like the summer solstice as it sets off the north slope from the top of Lost Springs hill, and is pictured on the V-lobe panel A7 (Fig. 1, second horizon sun in V from top). Also, note the boulder trail sign below the trail as a label with a concentric sun for observing the sunset path. Over the top of the boulder is a human figure with raised arms as a sign to look up to the sky. There are four adjacent foot prints with different toe counts – 3, 4, 5, and 6—that could relate to different trails. Or they might tie to months starting with the 3rd month after winter solstice. Crescents at the top of the trail line suggest new moons. The 3-toe foot would target the end of February when the Snowy Geese are migrating north (see No. 7 boulder D7 discussion below).

Field Test

If the E1 boulder pictures Lost Springs Hill where summer solstice sets, there should be a solar trail marker for overland travel from the Gap on that hill. To test this, we start with the long distance sight-line through the three mile stretch of the Parowan Gap from Parowan Valley. The hill top on the east end of the Gap by Little Salt Lake, has a U shaped geoform composed of eight carefully selected stones to simulate the visible terrain looking west through the three mile stretch of the Gap to the Narrows ridges (see VGN Fig. 15.4). The two sides of this U can relate to the double line petroglyph as a trail corridor. This three mile sun related map is confirmed by the sight-line intersecting the observatory cairn B1 on the basin’s east hill with cairn XC8 on the north peak of the Narrows (VGN Fig. 15:1). An extension of this sight line on the summer solstice axis projects 10 miles WNW to Lost Springs hill and 60 miles to the distant Indian Peaks range near the Nevada border (see VGN Fig. 15:1 upper right).

An inspection of cairns on the Lost Springs hill in the summer of 2007 confirmed the relay station for the Gap map to Indian Peaks, which is the best route with water for another 60 miles NNW to Wheeler Peak and the Parowan Fremont village at Baker, Nevada that I believe was established as a relay station for turquoise trade out of northern Nevada through Parowan Valley to Mexico during the Toltec era from about 850 A.C.E. I discovered the 260-day calendar at the Gap was incorporated from the foundation of Baker village by locating the village in the valley where it back sights from Wheeler Peak to sunrise on April 29/Aug 12. Then the architecture was oriented to sunset on the same date. Here we are finally connecting a thousand year old long-distance trail system with settlement and petroglyphs with the prospect of recorded history.

My inspection of the Lost Springs hill with T. Michael Smith to look for predicted cairns oriented to the Gap was successful, and exceeded our expectations (full study in progress). Three large prehistoric rock cairns with lithic associations are on each of the three high points of the Lost Springs ridge. The south one has a rock finger that points to the Gap. Other cairns have fingers that orient to the Gap, to Little Creek Peak above Paragonah, to Indian Peak west, toward the south pass beyond Cedar City, and possibly across the Escalante Desert valley toward Modena, Utah. This find is ample confirmation in my judgment of my hypothesis of a long distance trade route during Fremont times with interconnected long distance overland trail markers. Other sacred site functions are certainly possible at these sites. We expect to find other intermediate trail markers on hills along these routes, and will target locations for predictable field research.

One thing these markers are not, they are not markers for buried treasure as some fanatic treasure hunters think. Past peoples were too intelligent to put cairn signs over buried treasure for people a thousand years later to dig up. These discoveries are fragile irreplaceable cultural resources, and deserve the public’s deep respect for their preservation as they help us reconstruct past history.

7. I have identified the lower right section of Panel D7 (Fig. 11) with the Snow Geese migration in late February. Four realistic geese are flying northward as they would appear flying over the Gap to their temporary resting place in the river marshes of the Sevier River. This identification led to deciphering an adjacent long distance serpent trail petroglyph map. When an associate suggested the serpent overhead could be the Sevier River, with its headwaters east of Parowan, I checked the map and was impressed by the match. The number of turns are the same, but greatly exaggerated on the serpent map sketched from memory. The big bend on the north top with a hump behind the serpent head above Sevier Lake is a dead ringer for the real thing. Then a long straight trail south from Sevier Lake through WahWah Valley to Escalante Desert where the trail branches for overland travel in four directions, clinches the map correlation in my judgment. This simple but impressive map covers a circuit of 300 miles.

Conclusion

There is a vast new field of trials research open here, which we have just begun to explore. In addition to petroglyph trail maps at the Parowan Gap, I have researched petroglyph trail maps from..., a) Black Rock to Sevier Lake, b) routes through the Uintah Basin, c) Nine Mile Canyon hunting trail, d) and Capitol Reef canyons hunting sites. My method involves testable predictions to match the trails on topographic maps by pinpointing specific site features on the petroglyph, and then going to those spots and locating the mapped sites. It has been exciting to follow the maps directly to previously unknown sites. In this way I located strategic hunting sites along the Gap Red Hills trail map, and similarly correlated several sites on a Capitol Reef petroglyph map at Fruita, Utah.

These petroglyphs now being deciphered are written records of early Americans. Accordingly, some recorded history of the West preceded arrival of the white man with his written records. I have learned that few if any petroglyphs at the Gap are just doodling. They had meaning to the people who left them. How far back in time we will be able to penetrate history in the rock writings remains to be seen.

In conclusion, in the Parowan Gap Project I have probed the following trails interpretations in petroglyph research with other archaeological data for further exploration:

--Early Spanish exploration and mining trails with Indian guides.

--Pre-Spanish trails in search of the Aztec homeland of Aztlan that I believe to be Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake (separate study in preparation. see Appendix).

--Aztec and earlier Toltec turquoise trade routes (700-1250 A.D.) with Parowan.

--Numic-Paiute & Fremont origins in early archaic petroglyphs.

For more details, see my book The Parowan Gap: Nature’s Perfect Observatory, 2007, second edition.

APPENDIX

Early Exploration & Trade Contacts.

(From Norman 2002a, Culture History Overview section)

The history of early Spanish and earlier Mesoamerican contact in the Southwest is well known, but this subject has been given little consideration in Utah archaeology from lack of historic and archaeological data. Early Spanish presence in the greater Southwest has some clues for northern contact. Spanish contact among the Zuni and Hopi began with the exploration expeditions of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in 1540, and of Antonio de Espejo, west of Hopi land in 1583 in search of gold and silver. Spanish missions were established throughout the Southwest, but the Spanish rule proved harsh and was thrown off for a time by the Pueblo Revolt that was secretly scheduled for August 13, 1680 (Waters 1963: 251-255). The selected date does not seem arbitrary, since it is the base date of the sacred Mesoamerican 260-day calendar. The Hopi reportedly still observe the twenty-day cycle of this calendar today (personal informant 1997). This date would have been regarded as an ideal time for cyclical death-life renewal in Mesoamerican calendar ritual tradition. This detail has importance for consideration with the Parowan Gap calendar study discovery of the 260-day calendar.

O’Neil’s dissertation (1973) is a primary source of Ute Indian history. Fred A. Conetah’s A History of the Northern Ute People (1982) gives a brief account of Ute (and Paiute?) contacts with the Spaniards from secondary sources through Ute trade relations following the first Spanish contact in the mid 1500’s beginning with Coronado’s expedition in search of the legendary cities of Quivera. Knowledge of early Spanish contacts in Utah territory is vague but can be gleaned from a variety of secondary sources. Utah and Colorado territory extending north through Idaho and Wyoming came under Mexico’s territorial expansion as part of Nuevo Mexico by 1598 (Gerhard 1972: 65), but exploration did not result in permanent settlements. Escalante’s expedition in 1776 identified the Valley of Utah Lake as an ideal location to establish a future mission. The Utes resisted northern Spanish settlement. Ute attacks forced Spaniards to abandon a number of northern settlements, such as Abiquiu in 1747 (Schroeder 1965: 59-60).

Expeditions typically engaged Indians as guides and interpreters. According to historian Pedro de Castenada, Coronado’s expedition had 800 Aztec attendants. In 1604 an exploratory expedition sent by Juan de Onate met an Indian, probably a Southern Paiute who came from the north and spoke the Mexican (Uto-Aztecan) language. Evidently conversing with Aztec guides, he told of a land and a lake of Copala to the north of New Mexico. The encounter came to the conclusion that the land and lake was the Aztec homeland of Aztlan, and that the legendary lost city of Quivera may have been in that region to the east that reportedly spurred Spanish exploration. The lake was most probably Utah Lake, or Great Salt Lake. The Spaniards later called this area El Gran Teguayo. (Conetah 1982: 27; citing Tyler: 1952: 313)

The legendary Aztec place of origin from Aztlan, an island in a lake, correlates well with Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. One Aztec account relates how Montezuma sent an expedition back to their homeland where they walked to Aztlan island and got stuck in the mud or sand and could not climb the island mountain. This sounds like the low water causeway to Antelope Island. Vollemaere (1993) compiled extensive data, and attempted to identify Aztlan on the Colorado in the four corners area. In a recent book titled “Becoming Aztlan,” Carroll L. Riley’s (2005) argues persuasively for Identifying Aztlan with the greater Southwest Pueblo Anasazi kingdom. The Mesoamerica connection has become very clear. Riley just does not go far enough and needs to cross the Colorado into Utah to embrace the hunting gathering society of Uto Aztecan speakers who were a primary branch of migrants from Aztlan into central Mexico as recorded in the Boturinni codex. This important migration origin record of the Aztecs is engraved across the entry building’s upper wall at the National Museum of Mexico. Much of the Mesoamerican connection in the Southwest predates the Aztec migration from Aztlan.

The name Copala is identified with Cocula in northwestern Mexico, close to Lake Chapala in the State of Jalisco that some scholars regard as the mythical Aztlan of Aztec origin without historic significance. Another Cocula is located in Guerrero. New settlements often adapt old place names. Lake Texcoco where the Aztecs settled is only 250 miles distance. Uto-Aztecan hunting gathering tribes lie far to the north beyond Tarascan Indian territory in northwestern Mexico. At best, this Copala with Lake Chapala is a later mythic adoption for its descriptive likeness to the original northern homeland of Aztlan.

A late 1600’s Italian map of North America by Mezzodi, made during the New France expansion across eastern North America, shows the land of El Gran Teguaya or “Teguiaio” as the Rocky Mountain region beyond the headwaters of the Rio Bravo (Rio Grand) in northwestern Nuevo Mexico that embraces Utah and Colorado territory north to the 45 degree latitude in Wyoming (map in Vollemaere 1993: 165). “Teguillo” meaning “strip” in Spanish suggests a mountain range, and might specifically allude to the western escarpment “strip” of the Rockies along the imposing Wasatch Front through the valleys of the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake. These map details, while sketchy, reflect some knowledge of the Rocky Mountain region, probably from Spanish exploration forays, long before the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776-1777.

Clavijero’s Historia Antigua de Mexico (1971: 65-68) compiled in the mid 1700’s traced the migration origin of the Aztec tribes to central Mexico from the far north during a time of drought, and placed the original Aztec homeland of Aztlan north of the Colorado River above the 35 degree latitude. This is in the territorial range of the Uto-Aztecan peoples that includes the Hopi and the Numic or Shoshonean speaking tribes in Utah and Nevada north of the Colorado. The timing of Clavijero’s migration account agrees with the archaeological record and chronicles of massive migrations of

Uto-Aztecan hunting tribes migrating into the Valley of Mexico in the 1200’s (Coe, 1966: 152-153), which was precisely the time when the drought stricken Pueblo Anasazi and neighboring Fremont territory was on a decline and eventually faced widespread abandonment with movement south.

There are clues that the Spaniards might have been led by Aztec guides into the Utah territory on an ancient trade communication route established during the Toltec empire before the Aztec migration to exploit turquoise mines in central and northern Nevada. Trace analysis has identified ancient mines in Nevada as a resource for turquoise in Mexico during both the Toltec and Aztec periods (Harbottle and Weigand 1992), which was during the Parowan Fremont occupations in Parowan Valley and Baker, Nevada. I propose as a working hypothesis that turquoise mined in Elko, Battle Mountain, and the Toiyabe National Forest could have passed through Baker to Parowan as trade control centers for a coastal trade route via the Virgin-Colorado drainage to the Pacific coast, that could also account for the sea shell as an exchange item in Parowan Valley. Five Finger Ridge has some turquoise source from Nevada, and significant trade relations south with Parowan Valley and the Pueblo Anasazi, and west to Baker (Janetski 1998:75-77). Physical evidence for a Spanish-Aztec exploration trade route exists in a series of pictographic rock writings under study found along the western edge of the Colorado Plateau at Cedar City, Fillmore, Ogden, and Franklin that have historic Euro-American figures mixed with possible Aztec glyphs. The Fillmore panel has a Latin cross with flared ends like one at the Parowan Gap. It is typical of Mexican crosses.

(G. Norman paper in preparation; see Castleton 1979, Vol. 2: figs. pp. 65, 115.)

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1992 Legless Big Horn Sheep of Capitol Reef. Unpublished paper presented at the Annual URARA Symposium, September, 1992.

1995 A Possible Fremont Calendar Tablet from Fillmore, Utah. 1991. Paper presented at the Annual URARA Symposium, September 1-4, 1995.

2002a Parowan Gap Archaeological Project, Volume One: Field Report: Cultural Resources Evaluation of Proposed Phase 1 Construction. Research Report No. 2002-1. Archaeological Research Consultants (ARCON), American Fork, Utah.

2002b Parowan Gap Archaeological Project, Volume Two: Rock Art Catalogue. Research Report No. 2002-2. Archaeological Research Consultants (ARCON), American Fork, Utah.

2002c Parowan Gap Archaeological Project Interpretive Report. Research Report No. 2002-4. (ARCON) American Fork, Utah.

2002d Petroglyph Calendar & Observatory Map Decipherment Chart, Parowan Gap Panel A7, ARCON Inc., American Fork, Utah.

2003 Petroglyph Calendar & Observatory Map Decipherment Text, Parowan Gap Panel A7, ARCON Inc., American Fork, Utah.

2005 Exploring Native American Traditions at the Parowan Gap. ARCON Inc., American Fork, Utah.

2007 The Parowan Gap: Nature’s Perfect Observatory. CFI Publishers, Springville, Utah.

O’Neil, Floyd A.

1973 A History of the Ute Indians of Utah Until 1890. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of History, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Palmer, William R.

1958 Pahute Legends. Ms. Special Collections, Southern Utah University Library.

1978 Why the North Star Stands Still; And Other Indian Legends. Zion Natural History Association, Springdale, Utah.

No date Paiutes - Natural Science. Ms. Special Collections, Southern Utah University Library.

Riley, Carroll L.

2005 Becoming Aztlan: Mesoamerican Influence in the Greater Southwest, AD 1200-1500. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Schroeder, Albert A.

1965 A Brief History of the Southern Utes, South Western Lore, Vol. 30.

Smart, William B. And Donna T. Smart, editors

1999 Over The Rim: The Parley P. Pratt Exploration Expedition to Southern Utah, 1849-50. Utah State University Press, Logan, Utah.

Tyler, S. Lyman

1952 The Myth of the Lake of Copala and the Land of Teguayo. Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 20.

Vollemaere, Antoon Leon.

1993 Aztlan–Mexico. Vollemaere Publication. Mechelen Belgie-Belgique, Belgium.

Waters, Frank

1963 Book of the Hopi. Source material by Oswald White Bear Fredericks. The Viking Press, New York.

Wilde, James D, and Reed A. Soper

1999. Baker Village: Report of Excavations, 1990-1994. Brigham Young University, Museum of Peoples and Cultures, Technical Series No. 99-12.

FIGURE CAPTIONS

Fig. 1. Historic petroglyph at Cedar City with possible Aztec glyphs.

Fig. 2. Spanish Papal cross, Parowan Gap, Panel B11a.

Note characteristic ribbons attached to ends of lower cross

(from Norman 2007, Fig. 7:14).

Fig. 3. Spanish cross, Parowan Gap, Panel E13c. Note characteristic flared base

(from Norman 2007, Fig. 10:11).

Fig. 4. V-Gap Calendar Map and Observatory. Parowan Gap, Panel A7. Petroglyph cut out overlays a Gap photo. Tics around arms count the six month horizon calendar (182 days). Horizon lines inside the Narrows map observatory sunsets (from Norman 2007, Fig. 3:7).

Fig. 5. Serpent Trail Map, Parowan Gap, Panel A7. Deciphered as terrain around Gap basin

(from Norman 2007, Fig. 3:8).

Fig. 6. Red Hills Petroglyph Map, Parowan Gap, Panel A10a (from Norman 2007, Fig. 6:11).

a. Red Hills north hunting trails

b. Gap pass ridges – north slope

c. Lizard map of basin south pass and ridges

d. 2 spiders map of south Red Hills ridges

e. Bird track map of Red Hills south pass

Fig. 7. Petroglyph features in Fig. 6 identified on USGS topographic map.

Fig. 8. Observatory Trails, Parowan Gap, Panel C10 (from Norman 2007, Fig. 8:10).

Fig. 9. Trail Path Line Map, Parowan Gap, Panel E13e (from Norman 2007, Fig. 10:10).

Fig. 10. V-Gap Boulder southwest of Narrows, Parowan Gap, Panel E1. Top: north side. Bottom: south side. (From Norman 2007, Figs. 10:1, 10:2.)

Fig. 11. Snow Geese migration flight path to Sevier River and Sevier Lake, Parowan Gap,

Panel D7, lower right section (from Norman 2007, Figs. 9:6, 9:7).

By Garth V. Norman, October 2007

National Spanish Trails Symposium

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