Sul Ross State University - Brand Yearbook (Alpine, TX)

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Preface M I T has been the custom of the Brand to emphasize through its motifs the Western background of Sul Ross and to link the life on the campus with the life and traditions of the Big Bend Section. The cowboy, the Indian, and the border Mexican have all contributed their wealth of folklore and legend to past volumes. The 1931 Brand has as its motif the Museum of the West Texas Historical and Scientific Society. This museum, the establishment of which was one of the chief pur¬ poses of the Society, is located in the Sul Ross Administration Build¬ ing. It has grown during the five years since its origin in December, 1925, from a handful of random contributions to a collection of approximately 2200 specimens, many of them rare and priceless. Recent additions have been the famous collection donated by Mrs. Susan M. Janes, a pioneer of Port Davis, and an unusual collection of fire arms lent by E. E. Townsend of Alpine. The section markers in this Brand are drawings made in the museum, actual reproductions of selected specimens including fossils, metates, rain gods, old coins, pottery, Indian baskets, rare books, and other relics. The powder horn, dagger, gun, hafted flint hatchet, and mountain goat ’s skull in the border are also drawn from objects in the museum. The end-sheet is a drawing of a case in the museum, and of the view of Twin Sisters from the window above it. Many of these objects were found in and around Alpine, and in the eaves and on the peaks of Brewster County and neighboring counties; others came from far away places such as China, Japan, and the South Seas. Many of them date back hundreds of years. The pictures in the views section are of caves, mountains, and cliffs in this region where some of the specimens were found.

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Bird Mine Shelter J UST a few miles from the Sul Ross campus there are speci¬ mens of perhaps the oldest type of graphic art in the world, an art that prehistoric man practiced, that of placing the im¬ print of his hand on the smoke-blackened walls of his dwelling place. In the side of one of the steep hills that dot Brewster County is a little cave, more properly called a shelter, not more than twenty-five feet wide and fifteen feet deep. The sloping rock walls and roof are blackened by the Indian fires that burned there years ago, and outlined on this dark background along the rear wall are a number of hands, thirty-two in all, varying in size from the hand of a child to that of a man. In some cases the entire fore-arm appears. Evidently the hand was placed on the wall and the soot was wiped from around the fingers, because the hand is black, outlined by the natural color of the rock. Most of these prints are of the left hand, the right being used to trace the outline. There have been many conjectures as to the motives that impelled primitive men of all lands to place the imprints of their hands on the walls of their abodes. Some think that these hand prints were of particular significance; others that they are a re¬ sult of a mere pastime on long winter evenings. Mr. V. J. Smith in his interesting study, “The Human Hand in Primitive Art,” holds that the hand drawings of the North American Indians are of two classes: those resulting from “that instinct which seems to impel the human animal to make his mark,” and those which have “a religious or magical intent.”