Astonishing! Cliff Palace - November 21

On our trip we have viewed the remains of Ancestral Pueblo dwellings and villages at 6 or 7 sites throughout the Four Corners area.  Still we were astonished when we saw Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park in southwest Colorado.

The largest and one of the best preserved cliff dwellings (built on a ledge beneath overhanging cliffs) in America, it was constructed over roughly a 20-year period in the 13th century and contains 150 rooms for living and storage, as well as 21 kivas and many open spaces, for about 100 residents. It was a bustling and busy community, surrounded at Mesa Verde by many other dwellings and small villages.  Leaving their cliff dwelling – to farm on the mesa top, to hunt, to gather materials, water and foods, or to visit – meant climbing to the mesa top using hand and toeholds carved into the rock face.  Everyone, whatever their age, did this. Even using a regular ladder, erected by the Park Service to facilitate guided tours, is daunting enough! The people of Cliff Palace were not new residents of Mesa Verde but had been living there for at least 600 years on the mesa top. Why they left the mesa top and erected their cliff dwellings is not known but may have been for security.  Whatever the reason by the 14th century, perhaps only a few decades after Cliff Palace was finished, it and practically all of Mesa Verde had been evacuated. Again the reason or reasons are not clear but probably involved environmental pressures like the major drought which occurred at the end of the 1200s and/or social conflicts.

Where did all these people go? They migrated south and east. Their descendants are the same people we visited at Hopi, Zuni, Pojaque, and the many other New Mexico pueblos we did not visit.  And the similarities between Walpi and Oraibi villages on the Hopi reservation, which are built on the mesa top (though not as cliff dwellings), are interesting.

There is another interesting history related to Cliff Palace, and that is related to its “discovery.”  Cliff Palace was known to the Ute Indians, a hunting and gathering people who inhabited the area north of Mesa Verde at least as early as 1400.  But it didn’t become widely known until a Ute Indian named Acowitz told his rancher friend Richard Wetherill about it.  Wetherill, an amateur archaeologist viewed it in December 1888 and began to explore the area with other whites, after which it  began to be looted.  Concerns about protecting it and other sites led to the establishment of Mesa Verde National Park in 1906 and then to the Antiquities Act the same year.  Wetherill was a Quaker whose family had settled in the area a few years before to become cattle ranchers. He was fluent in Navajo and Ute and he and the family were close to the Indians, something that was very unusual at the time (or even today). He became a leading archaeologist and he and his brothers recorded hundreds of cliff and other dwelling sites in the Four Corners area. One of the mesas in the park is named after him. 


Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park



Richard Wetherill and his brother on the left at a Ute wedding

Toe holes carved into rock wall

Sculpture of Anasazi climbing rock wall at Mesa Verde Visitor Center

Our car in empty lot at trail head of  Point Lookout Trail  in Mesa Verde








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zuni (Ashiwi) Pueblo – Tradition and Change - November 8

Image
Zuni Pueblo is the largest of the 19 pueblos in New Mexico.  Each of the pueblos is a sovereign Indian nation though relatively small in size (Zuni encompasses about 450,000 acres and less than 10,000 residents). They have a common history and are descendants of the Ancestral Puebloan inhabitants of the Colorado Plateau/Four Corners area.  In Zuni we spent a very busy 24 hours, including 4 ½ hours with a Zuni archeologist/religious leader/tour guide,  Kenny  Bowekaty . The highlight of our time there was a visit to the ancient Zuni Village of the Great Kivas, about 17 miles from the currently inhabited Zuni village. This site was originally excavated in the 1930, but has recently been rediscovered with some further excavation done. Over 1,000 years old it appears to have been a small village but with major religious significance due to the presence of two great kivas, large circular spaces used for religious/community ceremonies, associated with smaller undergro...
Read more

Ancient Indian Libraries - October 30

Image
The southwest abounds with wondrous petroglyphs created as early as 2,000 or more years ago by Fremont, Ancestral Puebloan and Hopi peoples which we have viewed in the last week. Their meanings are not clearly known, but are thought to provide detailed information about their lives, including maps, journeys, clan symbols, geography, spirituality, animals that were important to their lives, and economy.  They can be artistic expression as well. Petroglyphs are carved or pecked into the rock (pictograph are another form of rock art which are painted on rock surfaces). Many of the petroglyphs we saw at Capitol Reef National Park along a number of sheer rock walls were faint, but others were clearer.  We saw images of long horn sheep, people, perhaps families, dogs or dog-like animals, perhaps deer. At Taawaki, or Dawa Canyon on the Hopi reservation, a horseshoe shaped 200 foot high cliff considered sacred to the Hopi contains numerous petroglyphs, varying in size and style....
Read more

Navajo Code Talkers - November 8

Image
We are not sure how many of our friends and family know of the Navajo Code Talkers, but their image throughout the Navajo Nation is very powerful and ubiquitous. Practically everywhere we go there is a memorial or exhibit dedicated to them or a road named for them, and every museum and visitor center seems to have something about them.  The most unique, perhaps, is in a Burger King in Kayenta. Owned by the son of a Code Talker, it displays a large selection of paraphernalia and descriptions of their war role.  But there are many others and new ones are going up regularly. The Code Talkers played a unique and important role in World War II and received national honors for it, and this swells the pride of the Navajo.  But beyond this, military service itself appears to have a certain resonance among American Indians who provide more military recruits per capita than any other ethnic group and have been awarded 27 Medals of Honor. During World War II, almost 50,000 Indi...
Read more