The Ancestral Pueblo peoples of the US Southwest never took rain for granted: their survival depended on it. Water was sacred as well as essential, and clouds were believed to be animated by cloud spirits, or Cloud Beings, who brought rain. For more than a thousand years, from 1000 BCE to 1500 CE, images of these Cloud Beings were painted on canyon walls across the Colorado Plateau, spanning parts of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The rock art, and the rituals associated with it, were intended to maintain good relations with the Cloud Beings, and these traditions have been passed down to the Pueblo peoples of today.

Shown here are three prehistoric Cloud Being paintings alongside renderings of the figures, and the kind of Cumulonimbus storm clouds that likely inspired them.

At the top is a painting dated to 600-1250 CE showing a thin rain priest, adorned with prayer features, blowing smoke and sprinkling sacred rain. To the priest’s right is a wide-eyed Cloud Being whose body becomes falling rain, reminiscent of the Cumulonimbus downpour spotted over Bluff, Utah by Paul Martini (Member 27,060).

The middle image, from a similar period, depicts a broad-shouldered Cloud Being with arms outstretched to represent the vast sky and a ‘rain beard’ hanging between its legs, much like that beneath the Cumulonimbus spotted over Santa Fe, New Mexico by Brenda Laurel (Member 54,024).

The bottom painting, dated to 1300-1500 CE, shows a slender Cloud Being pouring rain, with lightning shooting from its feet. One companion holds prayer wands, while another stands beneath a thunder cloud. A real-world equivalent is the lightning-filled Cumulonimbus spotted over Fountain Hills, Arizona by Michael Isenberg (Member 51,789).

The message of Ancestral Pueblo cloud art is clear: when life depends on rain, nurture relationships with the Cloud Beings who bring it.