A SHAMANISTIC PICTOGLYPH IN OAKBROOK PARK

A rock art panel in a north facing rockshelter along the southern side of the Albertson Motorway in Oakbrook Park in the City of Thousand Oaks contains a single red figure. The figure is undoubtedly the recording of a Chumash shaman of a vision. At the Chumash Interpretive Center, I have heard it referred to as a possible “water strider.” However, I believe that another interpretation is more reasonable given what is now known about rock art in general.

The panel appears to represent an anthropomorphic figure in a common dance motif, i.e., a figure with the lower legs bent upward at the knees. The headdress that is shown is a vertical line with a “V” at the terminal end. In much Chumash rock art, the rays of the sun, shown as the supreme deity, terminate in the same way. This head decoration may identify the figure as a solar shaman. There are several photographs, taken in 1878 by Leon de Cessac, of  Rafael Solares, in the Simi Valley Branch of the Ventura County Library. One of the photographs shows Mr. Solares in the full ceremonial regalia of a solar shaman. A broad white “V” is painted on his chest. His Spanish name, i.e., Solares, refers to his profession as a solar shaman. It should be noted that his headdress does not include a “V.” A rock art panel in a cave on the southern side of Simi Valley exhibits several images of the sun with forked terminal rays. Some of the rays make contact with anthropomorphic figures, whose arms and legs terminate in the same way. Those figures undoubtedly represent solar shaman.

Another possible interpretation of this figure is that it represents a swordfish dancer. John Peabody Harrington’s Chumash informant Fernando Librado (kitsepawit), in The Eye of the Flute (1977), pages 75-76, describes: the swordfish “...dancer had a crown consisting of two long feathers of egret, pilipil, on his head as shown in Fig. 13.”   Figure 13 shows the feathers crossed above the head in a similar way as is exhibited in the pictograph. Certainly the pictograph depicts a dancer. On a nearby boulder is a pictograph of an anatomically correct, vertically oriented swordfish. God, i.e., the sun, lived in a quartz crystal hut, i.e., ap, in the sky, while swordfish lived in a quartz crystal ap at the bottom of the sea. Swordfish, as the complement of the sun, is represented as bearded swordfish.

The “hands” and the feet of the Oakbrook Park figure each have three (3) digits. Elsewhere I have written that in shamanistic visions, the shaman often sees himself as a bird, with bird feet. In this transitional state to the spirit world, the shaman can fly to the spirit world. The vision of a shaman was thought to represent his experience in the spiritual world and was recorded immediately afterward in order to avoid the short-term memory loss that accompanies all forms of dreaming. The three (3) digitted hands and feet on the Oakbrook pictograph represent the spiritual bird form of the shaman.

Is either of these interpretations correct? It’s impossible to say at this late juncture. However, this analysis should caution one against giving interpretations that simply reflect what the latter day viewer thinks a pictograph looks like through our own cultural perspective.

This pictograph and that of the swordfish can be visited on a guided tour out of the Oakbrook Park Chumash Interpretive Center.

                                                                                    Mike Kuhn

12-5-04