Twenty-three years of Indigenous-based research on the rock art of Minnesota's Red Rock Ridge - Thomas Sanders

ARARA presents...

The cultural landscape of Southwest Minnesota's Red Rock Ridge is the greatest concentration of rock art in the Midwest. Sixteen miles of the Ridge contains 27 petroglyph sites on its 311 Sioux quartzite outcrops, six petroform sites, one pictograph site, rock cairns, sacred springs, sacred waterfalls, and countless lithic scatters. The petroglyph sites have over 8000 American Indian images carved into them. Most of the Ridge’s carvings are found at Jeffers Petroglyphs Historic Site on an irregularly shaped, 300-yard-long by 50-yard-wide exposed Sioux quartzite rockface. The rock carvings are diverse in style and subject matter. Some of them illustrate bison, salamanders, turtles, elk, human figures, birds, leather bags, and various weapons (atlatls, spear points, arrowheads, and lances).  Some of the carvings express narratives. Others have been described as abstract by researchers. Their creators made them over an estimated 11,500 years, with the earliest dating to 9,500 BCE and the most recent to the 1600s or 1700s CE. The Ridge is a unique destination site for ancient travelers from across North American who recorded cultural traditions otherwise lost to history.

Rising one hundred feet above the plain, the Ridge dominates the landscape. Its highest points created observation posts where ancient hunters monitored herds of elk and bison miles away. Its diverse habitats create vibrant and diverse plant communities that produce many medicines and foods. Its rocky surfaces are the color of life-giving blood. The Ridge speaks its sacredness to all. People from distant parts of the continent have been drawn to the area since it was free of glacial ice 12,500 years ago. The water necessary for life emerges from springs on the slopes of the Red Rock Ridge. These springs form the headwaters of the Little Cottonwood, Cottonwood, and Watonwan Rivers, whose waters flow through the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. Ancient people followed these rivers upstream to their origins to worship at these sacred upwellings of water, leaving their prayers with the carvings. The Dakota homeland includes the southwest Minnesota ridge.  This presentation will show examples of the Ridge's rock art and discuss ongoing 23 year-long Indigenous-based research by the Red Rock Ridge Research Group made of Dakota elders and archaeologists.

Sanders worked at historic sites for 35 years. From 1998 until 2016, he was the Site Manager at the Minnesota Historical Society's Jeffers Petroglyph Historic Site. With the guidance and participation of members from the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Dakota, Lakota, Shoshoni, and Anishinaabe communities, he developed the educational and preservation programs at Jeffers Petroglyphs.   Sanders has worked with Dakota Elders to record and preserve cultural histories, traditional parables and interpretations of the carvings and culture sites along the Red Rock Ridge. He retired after 28-years with the Minnesota Historical Society but is still engaged in the preservation and archaeology of the Red Rock Ridge.  Since 2011, he has been a principal investigator along with Hamline University’s Brian Hoffman on archaeological surveys for over 1400 acres along the Red Rock Ridge. Tom is employed as an Indigenous Archaeology Specialist at Hamline University. He is a member of the Council for Minnesota Archaeology, Plains Anthropological Society, and the Society for American Archaeology.  He has an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Archaeological Studies from the University of Minnesota.