Artisode; El Morro: Inscription Rock

Two of the gentlemen who inscribed the rock right here were beheaded in the Sennife Plaza. In no other place in the country can you experience so many different aspects of American Archaeology and History. Luhan was the first to mention what we know today as El Mora in the history books and he mentioned it on March 11th, 1583 as L .S. Duncan Del Peniel, the tank of the rock. And this is the first petroglyph panel that you come to and in the mid -30s a gentleman from Zuni told a ranger here what this meant

and it's supposed to read up where the birds fly high if you use your hand and feet and go over these obstacles you'll come to a pool of water. Oldest inscription at El Mora by Don Juan de Oñate, the first governor and founder of New Mexico and he inscribed the rock here on April 16th, 1605 on his return from the South C or the Gulf of Cortez or Gulf of California as it's called today. This is one of the more elegant inscriptions, the one that's blocked. It reads essentially an English

translation is the 25th of June, the whole year of 1709. Passed by here for Zuni Ramón Garcia Urado and he eventually became the, I'll call to him, Bernalía, but he was one of the settlers that came, came into New Mexico with DeVargas. The first English inscriptions were done by Lieutenant Simpson and R .H. Kern and those were inscribed in 1849 and we also have several inscriptions dating to 1858 and these are the members of the wagon train that was heading to California and you see John Udell, he was the leader of the

wagon train. Well this is the point of the rock and of course you see a tremendous number of inscriptions here mainly in the 1800s and many related to the railroad surveys that came through here. What's interesting here is that you can, you can see that there's quite a change in the lithography of inscription rock. You can see it's a lot softer and there's more clay in it and given its location here it's the lowest point of the rock but it's taking a beating from the winter storms and we're seeing a great deal of erosion right here at the point. You know rather than

big events playing out right here which they really didn't. Historically anyway through the inscriptions you get an opportunity to talk about the various events that happened across New Mexico. Here was the General Dundee, Ego DeVargas who conquered for our holy faith and for the royal crown all of New Mexico at his own expense year of 1692.