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UTAH
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Yukuwa was born in A.D. 142 along the San Juan River near Butler Wash,
as the sun rose the morning of the summer solstice. She was the second
child of five, and the only one to live past a year. Her father died
when she was thirteen, but he had already witnessed her strenth. She
lived with the extended family of her mother, twelve people at the time,
now eleven. They were hunters and gatherers moving with the wildlife
from Rainbow to Grand Gulch to Barrier. Each year making a circle like
the sun. Sometimes going as far north as Nine Mile, other times as far
south as Red Rock. She gave birth to her first child at fourteen, then
another, two years later. Both her children were healthy and strong. From her great-grandfather she was taught to mix native ores and mineral
clays with seed oils, blood, and egg white. And then by further
thinning with plant juices, water, and urine, she learned the secret.
On her nineteenth birthday she gained the holy right to mark the canyon
walls. In the spring of A.D. 168 she fasted for nine days. Then
hallucinating, she mixed a pigment the color of dried blood, and using
brushes made of animal hair and yucca spines, she painted what she saw.
J. Benning
To find Barrier Canyon go to Hanksville, Utah and ask where you can find
the Great Gallery.
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