About the Tree Carvings

This is an article about recent information regarding the tree carvings by Basque sheepherders.

It was published by The New York Times, here it is:

Early Herder's Life, as Seen Through Art Carved in Trees

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: July 30, 2006

FEATHERVILLE, Idaho, July 29 (AP) — For decades, anthropologists have combed the red rock landscape of the Southwest for petroglyphs, the prehistoric scrawlings of American Indians. Now researchers in the Northwest are beginning to discover a trove of arborglyphs: 19th- and 20th-century tree carvings tattooed on the bark of aspens and cedars by Basque sheepherders.

Some are rousing political slogans from the Basque homeland, and others depict sexual exploits. Like modern graffiti, a great many carvings note for posterity that Joe, Jose or, most likely, Joxe “was here.”

Scholars say the drawings provide a blueprint for Basque immigration patterns across the Western United States and give a look into the psyche of the solitary sheepherder.

“These give us insight into a group that largely did not leave behind a written word,” said John Bieter, the executive director of the Cenarrusa Center for Basque Studies at Boise State University.

Basques hail from a semiautonomous region joining the Pyrenees of northern Spain and a slice of coastal territory in southern France. Their culture and language are of mysterious origins, but Basques are believed to be some of the oldest inhabitants of Europe.

After the California Gold Rush in the 1850’s, Basques who had already emigrated to South America followed the ore’s elusive path across the West in what historians call a “secondary migration.”

Basques quickly branched out to sheepherding. Tree etchings soon began appearing in the alpine hollows of California, then Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and other Western states.

For more than a century, the nomadic routine of corralling sheep in the sagebrush lowlands of the Great Basin in winter and trekking the animals through the mountains by summer was a Basque rite of passage.

Throughout the forest, the legacies of men like Julio Ramon are etched into bark. In an undated inscription from the Crosscut Trail aspen grove in the Boise National Forest, Ramon trumpets a patriotic cheer into the empty wilderness: “Gora ETA.”

Roughly “Long Live ETA,” it was the rallying cry of the armed Basque separatist group. It is most common in engravings from a second wave of sheepherders who probably lived in Spain under the Nationalist dictator Francisco Franco, Dr. Bieter said.

“He could carve it into a tree in Idaho,” Dr. Bieter said, “but if he said it in Spain, he’d be imprisoned.”

Susie Osgood, a Forest Service archaeologist, said the aspen’s 80-year lifespan made it an ideal canvas for preserving the early Basque legacy. Ms. Osgood said she had identified about 300 with Basque carvings.

“It’s a realistic window into what you think and do out here when you’re all alone,” she said of the carvings. “Now, the herders have headsets and things, but in the 19th century you were your own entertainment.”

Basque sheepherders livened the hours by drawing, and many tree carvings are crude sketches. But often dotting the scribblings are finer artistic expressions.

Joxe Mallea-Olaetxe, the author of “Speaking Through the Aspens: Basque Tree Carvings in California and Nevada,” has documented portraits of churches and battleships, as well as the lonely bachelor’s doodling mainstay: naked women.

Some carvings reveal the dormant angst harbored by many Basques against the herder’s lowly social standing. A few poetic verses on an Idaho aspen declare, in a loose translation: “Together, but not neighbors. Brothers, but not family. In Spain, they consider us great men, but here we are nothing.”

Today, the Basque herder has largely been replaced by Peruvian or Chilean immigrants. Later generations of Basques — like Dr. Bieter’s brother, David H. Bieter, the mayor of Boise — have planted roots in cities across the West.

But Kurt Caswell, who has written several magazine articles on modern sheepherders near McCall, Idaho, said the practice of inscribing trees continued.

“One of the things that fascinates me is how little has changed,” Mr. Caswell said. “What it brings home to me is a universal story of immigration, that early generations really occupy a very lonely existence.”

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