Wings of Prophesy

Gustave Baumann

Baumann used a similar image in his 1939 book, Frijoles Canyon Pictographs. His text in the book reads, “In the following and last pictograph, flying birds. One of these birds with a design suggesting stars and stripes makes a prophecy transcending the arrival of the Spaniards. Like an old-timer friend of mine, you may insist this design stems from the thirteen colonies; but here it is in a pre-Spanish pictograph.”

In October 1918, Baumann explored the caves in El Rito de los Frijoles Canyon. He wrote about his discovery: “What with rain in the canyon it was advisable to take refuge in one of a long row of caves and wait for the rain to subside. Judging from scratches on the soot-blackened walls, animals had been in there to get out of the weather just as I had. With nothing else to do those scratches intrigued me since some of them appeared to be man made. Indicating that somebody had sat there at sometime, taken a sliver of bone and recorded something that had meaning. It was a fine example of the untutored mind at work and I found myself crawling in and out of a long row of caves to find similar scratches in most of them.”