Pictograph at Red Rocks

Pictograph of Five Bloody Hands

The canyon at Red Rocks has a maternal splendor about it, and it is no surprise to me that evidence of encampments can be found throughout the park. Interpretive signs explain how the Paiute Indians would harvest the agave in the canyon roasting the plant in rock pits.

Signs of a literal sort, like the five red hands are further evidence of human activity from earlier times. The five red hands above are a pictograph, painted onto the rock, whereas the carvings at Valley of Fire are petroglyphs.

So five red hands…what story do they hold?

My own associations went to that common craft project all children seem to do at one time or another of tracing their hands. And then I was led to a sense of the passing of childhood, of the loss. These were adult hands, and clearly encountering them as I do know, but even as contemporaries of the image would have, it felt like these marks would be left to mark the passing of five individuals at this spot. Could it be a memorial?

Returning to the best resource on the subject my hunch was pretty close. In his book The Rocks Begin to Speak, LaVan Martineau explains that the colored hand, or bloody hand, signifies a death. Interpreting a different location where the hand is denoted in a petroglyph, he writes:

“The bloody hand above the figures head denotes death which blocks them from continuing on their old paths. the hand is solidly pecked to indicate something on it, referring to blood. It is the bloody hand of one who would kill them (the soldiers).” pg. 101.

So perhaps these five hands speak of a more difficult encounter, one where those that where lost were attacked by the five whose hands carry their blood.