We visited two Fremont Indian Petroglyph sites along the park road auto tour, one at swelter shelter and the other by the Morris Cabin.

The first site we visited was a Fremont Indian Shelter from about 1000 years ago nicknamed Swelter Shelter.  The Fremont were north of the Ancestral Puebloans in what is now Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Colorado.  They lived at the same time period (700-1300 AD) but were distinctly different.  They made and wore leather moccasins instead of sandals, they made a different type of pottery, and they made figurines.

 Their pictographs and petroglyph humans had triangular bodies and their arms and fingers were more distinctive and artistic. 

I don’t know about you, but some of their humanoids looked kind of alien-like to me.

 The Fremont were an adaptive people.  They hunted, foraged for nuts and berries, and grew crops like corn and squash.  They built granaries called Moki Huts to store their food and their houses were pithouses.

 The theory is that because they could farm here, it allowed them the time to create these elaborate depictions.

This is the second site.  It is near the Morris Cabin.  The desert varnish seemed a little darker here and the rock redder.

The art was spread all around the cliff face and it was fun to look and find them.  Some were really high up.  Can you see it?

Here it is!

Some were pretty ornate and may tell a story.

When archaeologists are digging and find ancient settlements and items, they look at what they have and try to discern the category in which these people fit, categories set up according to what findings indicate how a certain group normally lived.  Not alot is known about the Fremont, probably because they were so adaptable, they were hard to discern. 

Around 1300 AD they suffered under the same long drought conditions as the Ancestral Puebloans and, just as the Ancestral Puebloans did, abandoned their settlements and moved on.

It is believed that the Fremont may have relocated to south-central Idaho, to Nebraska and Kansas (as ancestors to the Dismal River Culture), those in southern Utah may have moved south and joined with the Ancestral Puebloans in the Four Corners area.

 These are the figurines previously mentioned.  They are called Pilling Figurines and are on display in the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum (you can see my visit to the museum here).  There are eleven of them and they were discovered under a rock overhang in 1950 by a man with the last name of Pilling.

 It is estimated that they were made 800 to 900 years ago.  They made from unbaked clay and are in matched male and female pairs.  There is one lone female that does not have a male.  Makes one wonder what happened… Did it break into dust?  Was it not made yet and they had to leave?  Did someone carry it off somewhere?

If they could talk, I’ll bet these figures could tell an amazing story.