Texas - A search for cultural roots has led a band of Comanche Indians to West Texas to study what could be some of their tribe's oldest writings. About 15 people from Oklahoma spent Monday afternoon at Fred and Kay Campbell's ranch, learning about the painted rocks that gave the nearby town its name. Etched onto stone centuries ago, those silent paintings now could help inject new life into the dying Comanche language. The committee, with about 30 members in Oklahoma, was organized nearly four years ago in hopes of passing the Comanche language on to present and future generations.
Many elders die without passing on their knowledge.
To further complicate matters, the language had no written form until 1993 - after the federal government stepped up funding for the 1990 Native American Languages Act. That is one reason the Paint Rock pictographs were so exciting to members of the Preservation Committee. The Oklahoma group, which included several fluent Comanche speakers, gazed through binoculars or videocams at the paintings as Kay Campbell explained the symbols. Several times, she and her husband offered different suggestions for the meanings of the vague drawings, but both were eager to learn from their guests as well. Fred Campbell noted that although the bluffs along the Concho River often were used as Indian campsites, no burial grounds have been found on the land.