The history of the sudden abandonment of dwellings and the vanishing of populations was shared by the Anasazi and the so-called Fremont Indians of the Nine Mile Canyon area in the 1300s.
   Ecologists and archaeologists from several universities joined forces in 2003 to study that area in a project called Legacies on the Landscape.
   Nine Mile Canyon, northeast of Price, with its vast wealth of dwellings and more than 10,000 glyphic writings, deserves a gargantuan research effort to discern who these Fremont Indians really were - before the written evidence is destroyed by Bill Barrett Corp. as it drills for oil and gas and sends thousands of trucks kicking up harmful dust along the canyon road.
   The Denver-based energy company wants to drill at least 800 wells on the West Tavaputs Plateau. Its big rigs would make hundreds of trips up and down the narrow canyon road every week for several years.
   As a student in the University of Utah anthropology department I had the rare privilege to study the Aztec language and glyphs under the renowned Dr. Charles E. Dibble.
   The language, Nahuatl, in the UtoAztecan language family, was written with pictures - glyphs - which combine to form the sounds and syllables of words or phonemes. Glyphs were used to indicate pronunciation, for a written record of names, places, events, ownership, genealogy, inheritance, boundaries of lands, tribute, commerce.
   The glyph for an animal, flower or other object, shown above the head of a human, indicates his name. The picto-ideographic writing system is rich in use of metaphor.
   Examples are the glyph for atl, water, which was combined with another glyph as a couplet, in atl, in tlachinolli, literally meaning "the water, the conflagration," which occurs frequently in ritual texts to mean war, pestilence, devastation. Or the often-seen couplet in petlatl, in icpalli - "the mat, the chair" - to express authority, rulership, government. Other Nahuatl pre-conquest glyphs, with their meanings:
   * Footprints: travel, or dispersement, (footprints going up, iau; footprints going down, temoc; footprints going in a circle, nenemi; footprints heading west, uallauia)
   * Digging stick: coa
   * Eye: ixtli
   * Bundled cadaver, or mummy bundle: death
   * Macamatlauitinemi: catching deer in nets
   * Ahauilia: great joy; literally, to play in an irrigation ditch, indicated by body in an irrigation ditch
   Between studies with Dr. Dibble and getting my bachelor's degree at the U., I took odd jobs as a ski instructor, ranch hand, photojournalist, editor of the Utah Environment News and photographer for the U. art department, documenting 80 percent of known Utah rock art.
   Then for 10 years I herded sheep. Between herding jobs one year I got a job as a ranch hand feeding the bulls on the Nutter Ranch in Nine Mile Canyon.
   I wanted to pursue a photodocumentary of Nine Mile Canyon I had been working on solo for many years. I knew I had seen, literally, some of the same glyphs for words I had seen in ancient Nahuatl codices.
   On the Nutter Ranch, the cowboys told me to check out a fantastic panel of rock art, off the main canyon behind the bull pasture where I worked. They said the Peabody Museum had been there to record it.
   I photographed a scene there that I believe to be one of the most important historical documents in Utah. It depicts a battle between two warring camps. One group has two horns on each head. The other group has a single "horn," or what looks like the tlatoa, the speech or word scroll glyph on the head. This rock art panel covers the entire south-facing side of the canyon wall.
   The battle is fought with spear and shield, bow and arrow and clubs, with deer prancing off, and coatl, the snake. A single man in the center has the one horn, or tlatoa, on his head, and holds a digging stick, coa.
   A giant boulder blocks entry to the canyon just before the panel, and on this boulder is inscribed a bold message, like a prologue to the battle panel behind it: a single member of the one-horned, or tlatoa clan, with a giant coiled glyph above him. This might be a sign for the word "cultic," or "twisted," often used to indicate members of the Aculhua.
   Hua meant "off in the distance, far away." Could this suggest the clan was from the Aculhua? The Aculhua writing system, as researched by scholars, was thought to have made an important transition from "ideo-pictographic" writing into a phonetic writing system.
   The Chichimeca and the Aculhua were known to have been at war for many years. And the UtoAztecan language families were known to embrace a vast expanse of territories both north and south of the Valley of Mexico.
   A recent study has found that the swirling dust clouds from increased heavy truck traffic in Nine Mile Canyon has already settled on the rock art glyphs, causing tremendous damage.
   We all need to act now before this priceless resource is ruined. In a hurry, because moilhuitimoteca in quiauitl - "the cloudburst grows in intensity."
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   * LAURIE RICH is a microbiologist and author of Herding Sheep in Northern Utah and Apologia for VietNam.