The Rio Grande:
RIVER OF MYSTERIES
by Howdy-Nocoma Fowler
T
Rio Grande at Santa Elena Canyon
he mighty Rio Grande flows
1,896 miles from its headwaters
in Colorado down through New
Mexico, across the rugged lower por-
tion of Far West Texas, and then con-
tinues along the border of Northern
Mexico before it empties into the Gulf
of Mexico. For thousands of years,
Natives, Spanish, Mexicans and
Gringos have depended on this river's
life-giving waters. Even today, farmers,
ranchers and tourists are all still con-
nected to this awesome river.
The Rio Grande has helped support
the crops, game and livestock of count-
less cultures. Some people stayed and
prospered, rising to prominence and
then fading into history. Others just
16
Cenizo
passed through the territory. If the Rio
Grande could talk, what stories it
would reveal! But the Rio Grande con-
tinues to flow as it has for thousands of
years, silently protecting its secrets.
Every so often it offers up a clue, but
with no explanation—letting us know
that even with the latest technology, we
don't have all the answers.
Long before Columbus sailed,
Natives have had oral histories of being
visited by bearded white men, known
among different tribes as 'Hair-Faces.'
Some tribes have even portrayed these
encounters in cave paintings and rock
carvings, featuring then-unknown ani-
mals that are not found in North
America. These have been document-
First Quarter 2016
ed; for example, the giraffe carved on a
large boulder at the base of Bob Cat
Mesa in New Mexico, or the painting
of a llama found under a rock overhang
between Comstock and Langtry,
Texas. Then there is the big boulder in
the Organ Mountains in New Mexico
that has a large stickman and an arrow
pointing east with the date 1534 carved
on it. Who carved it?
Along the Rio Grande there is a
whole trail of evidence indicating that
Natives and hippies have not been the
only ones skinny dipping in the cooling
waters of the Rio Grande. One of these
mysteries, according to Elton Miles,
was discovered in 1962 near Boquillas,
in the Big Bend country of Texas.
A young man, Donald Uzzell, was
free climbing the face of a small cliff
when he found a number of small clay
tablets. The tablets were inscribed in a
very old style of Iberian text which pre-
dated any known white or Spanish
explorers in the Americas. The tablets
were a prayer to a Sun God called
Mithras who was worshiped by follow-
ers of certain teachings known as
Zoroastrians. Photos of the clay tablets
still exist and are widely published.
These rare antiques, the original Big
Bend Tablets, unfortunately disinte-
grated. Information about them can be
found in Elton Miles’s book Stray Tales
of the Big Bend. A scholarly paper on
Texas exploration through the