There is a magical and mysterious Indian cave in the southern California desert. It’s not on any maps and is hard, but not impossible to find. The cave has played host to generations of Native Americans over thousands of years, Indian hunters who stayed within its environs as they hunted. Unlike any other native archeological sites in the area, the walls of the cave feature indigenous paintings in green, a rare paint for the local Native Americans to use. What’s even more significant are the multitude of twig figurines that were found in the cave. These have been found nowhere else in California, and are indicative of native tribes inhabiting the Grand Canyon region of Arizona, hundreds of miles to the East. Why these figures, small enough to hold on the palm of your hand, were made and left in the cave is a mystery. They represent effigies of bighorn sheep, which was a major food source for Indians in this region of the Mojave Desert, so perhaps they were an offering or totem to ensure good hunting. Were they ritualistic, used to invoke hunting magic? Probably. Were they just toys? Unlikely...
We will never know for sure, but these mysterious objects, so different and out of place in the California desert, are a curiosity all unto themselves…
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