Gesture and performance in Comanche rock art

Abstract

This paper examines a corpus of rock art images produced by ancestral Comanches during the early eighteenth century. The images were lightly scratched and the gestures that produced them left behind only the faintest of traces. With careful study, one can read these traces, organize them into icons, and interpret them as finished products. Yet in doing so one obscures the core logic that made the rock art a potent mode of expression within Comanche society. Indeed, the primary ‘image’, we propose, was not the scratched icon left behind, but instead the gestural hand and body movements of the rock art as a performative event. This proposition leads us into a broader consideration of mimetic performance, the sociality of rock art, and the role of image production in the careers of Comanche warriors.

Keywords:

• rock art
• American Southwest
• performance
• Comanche society

Notes

1. Both the chronological placement and cultural affiliation of this sort of rock art can be difficult to ascertain. Here, the chronology is relatively secure. The abundant iconography of equestrianism indicates that it post-dates the Pueblo Revolt period (1680–1692 CE) when Western tribes first gained access to the horse in significant numbers. The absence of gun iconography suggests it pre-dates the 1740s, by which point French traders had made guns widely available on the South Plains. Cultural affiliation is a more complicated matter, particularly insofar as the Comanches were not the only tribe with a broadly Plains-style equestrian adaptation in the region during the early eighteenth century. Nevertheless, stylistic, technological, and historical evidence all converge to make a compelling case for Comanche authorship. See Fowles et al. (forthcoming) for the extended argument.

2. The Biographic Tradition appears to have begun as a distinctive style of Plains rock art and later came to include bison hide paintings, as well as, during the mid-nineteenth century, the famous Plains ledger art (Keyser 1996). Overall, the tradition is notable for its narrative quality and its depiction of actual events within the lives of Plains tribes during the colonial period.