The Project Gutenberg eBook ofBandelier National Monument, New Mexico

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofBandelier National Monument, New MexicoThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Bandelier National Monument, New MexicoAuthor: Kittridge A. WingRelease date: June 17, 2015 [eBook #49225]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEW MEXICO ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Bandelier National Monument, New MexicoAuthor: Kittridge A. WingRelease date: June 17, 2015 [eBook #49225]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Title: Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico

Author: Kittridge A. Wing

Release date: June 17, 2015 [eBook #49225]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEW MEXICO ***

Department of the Interior Â· March 3, 1849

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIORStewart L. Udall,Secretary

NATIONAL PARK SERVICEConrad L. Wirth,Director

HISTORICAL HANDBOOK NUMBER TWENTY-THREE

This publication is one of a series of handbooks describing the historical and archeological areas in the National Park System administered by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior. It is printed by the Government Printing Office and may be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington 25, D. C. Price 25 cents.

BandelierNATIONAL MONUMENTNEW MEXICOby Kittridge A. WingDecorated potteryNATIONAL PARK SERVICE HISTORICAL HANDBOOK SERIES No. 23Washington, D. C., 1955Reprint 1961

by Kittridge A. Wing

Decorated pottery

NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HISTORICAL HANDBOOK SERIES No. 23Washington, D. C., 1955Reprint 1961

The National Park System, of which Bandelier National Monument is a unit, is dedicated to conserving the scenic, scientific, and historic heritage of the United States for the benefit and enjoyment of its people.National Park Service Â· Department of the Interior

National Park Service Â· Department of the Interior

Ceremonial Cave, reached by a series of ladders extending 150 feet above the floor of Frijoles Canyon.

Agave in bloom

In the picturesque canyon and mesa country of the Pajarito Plateau, west of the Rio Grande from Santa Fe, N. Mex., are found the ruined dwellings of one of the most extensive prehistoric Indian populations of the Southwest. Bandelier National Monument, in the heart of the plateau, includes and protects several of the largest of these ruins, in particular the unique cave and cliff dwellings in the canyon of the Rito de los Frijoles.

The Indian farmers who built and occupied the numerous villages of the Pajarito Plateau flourished there for some 300 years, beginning in the 1200â€™s. By A. D. 1540, when historic times open with the coming of Coronado and his adventurers from Mexico, the Indian people had already started to leave their canyon fastnesses for new homes on the Rio Grande.

From all evidence it seems that modern Pueblo Indians living along the Rio Grande today are descended in part from the ancient inhabitants of the Pajarito area. Thus Bandelier National Monument preserves ruins which link historic times to prehistoric, and which further link the modern Pueblo Indian with his ancestors from regions to the west, whence came the first migrants to the Bandelier environs. The continuity of Pueblo life traces from origins in northwest New Mexico and the Mesa Verde country of southwest Colorado, through the Bandelier region, to the living towns of Cochiti to the south, San Ildefonso to the northeast, and other local Indian communities.

The evidences of ancient human occupation in the Bandelier neighborhood are apparent even to the most casual observer. When driving over the approach road to the monument headquarters one cannot fail to observe cave rooms in the cliffs on every hand; the continuing spectacle of smoke-blackened chambers dug into the rock provides the stimulus of discovery en route. But the roadside introduction is an infinitesimal preview of the total scope of prehistoric manâ€™s activity in the region. In actuality, all of the ruins contained within the national monument represent but a small fraction of the ruins of the surrounding plateau.

Park ranger and visitors at the Big Kiva in Frijoles Canyon.

The entire eastern slope of the Jemez Mountains to the west, throughout the zone of moderate elevations from 7,000 feet down to the Rio Grande at 5,500 feet, appears to have been thickly settled in prehistoric times; this eastern slope has been given the name of Pajarito Plateau. The extent of the plateau is, very roughly, 30 miles north to south, and 10 miles east to west (from the Rio Grande west to the crest of the Jemez). From Santa Clara Creek on the north of the monument to the Canada de Cochiti on the south of the monument, this tract of forested mesas and canyons contains Indian ruins which, if not innumerable, at least at this writing have not yet been totaled. It perhaps may be said, to emphasize the concentration of these ruins, that an observant person can hardly walk a quarter of a mile in any direction through the once-inhabited zone without noticing some sort of ancient structure or handiwork of prehistoric man.

Base of a cliff of volcanic tuff, showing several cave rooms.

The habitations of the early people were of two types, basically: the cliff or cave dwelling, and the masonry or open pueblo structure. But these two types were frequently blended into composite dwellings, part cave and part masonry, wherein a cliff formed the back wall of the building. It is this third type, called a talus house, which is conspicuous along the canyon sides within and near the national monument.

The rock which forms the walls of all the Pajarito canyons is a cemented volcanic ash called tuff, with many erosion cavities which can be readily enlarged with tools of hard stone. It might be logical to assume that early migrants to the Pajarito country, 700 years ago, first took shelter in the natural cavities, then presently improved these crude holes into more livable chambers. There is, however, no evidence to support the idea that the cave rooms were lived in first. In fact, some authorities reason that since the firstcomers had been living in masonry dwellings in their earlier homes, they would first have built the familiar communal buildings on arrival here, leaving the caves to be taken up later by overflow population.

Whatever the sequence of construction, many thousands of cave rooms were prepared, involving the removal of thousands of cubic yards of tuffâ€”an industrious people, these. Although some rooms are found with a long dimension of over 10 feet, the great majority of them are smaller. A typical room measures about 6 by 9 feet, with ceiling height perhaps 5 feet, 8 inches. Such a chamber has a doorway not over 3 feet high and only half as wide; there is an opening or two in the front wall near the ceiling to permit escape of smoke; and there may be a corresponding hole at floor level near the door to admit a draft of air to the fireplace. The appointments of the typical home are completed with a cupboard niche dug into the rear wall, a coat of mud plaster on floor and walls, and a covering of soot all over the ceilingâ€”this last an inescapable penalty of cave living.

A room of such size might have provided sleeping quarters for a family of 5 or 6, considering the fact that no furniture took up space within. Frequently two cave rooms are found connected by a doorway cut through the interior wall, suggesting the expansion of a family beyond the limits of a single room.

The ruins of Long House, once a dwelling of some 300 rooms.

The most impressive ruins of the Pajarito country are the remains of communal masonry dwellings of pueblo architecture. (Pueblo is Spanish for village or town. The first Spanish explorers applied the word to the permanent dwellings or settlements of farming Indians; by association, the word pueblo has come to designate also the builders of these dwellings and their modern Indian successors.) At least one of these great buildings contained over 600 rooms; there are several which had over 500 rooms, to a height of 3 stories. These multistory towns were built of the local tuff, shattered and pecked into convenient size for masonry use, and laid with mud mortar. The great houses were situated both on mesa-tops and in canyon bottoms; some were designed as hollow squares or circles, others had only a haphazard ground plan. None of these dwellings today is more than one story high, so that their original height is unknown in detail, but great massivity and considerable defensive strength are apparent even from the remaining mounds of rubble.

The unexcavated ruin of Yapashi.

The rooms of the community houses were scarcely larger than the cave rooms already described; almost none of the surviving ground-floor rooms are more than 10 by 12 feet, and the typical room measures perhaps 7 by 10 feet. These chambers were quite dark and unventilated, since there were almost no windows or even connecting doorways between rooms; almost every room of the ground floor was entered by a ladder through an opening in its ceiling. It is conjectured that these first-floor cells were designed in this fashion to serve as storage places for foodstuffs, more secure from rodents by reason of having only one opening in the roof. Moreover, the lower-floor walls were a stronger foundation for the upper floors when built without door or window openings. Finally, this design provided maximum security for defense against human marauders.

It has been mentioned that a composite type of building, combiningcave rooms and masonry walls, is common in the area. This sort of construction was responsible for the many rows of small holes still to be seen in the cliffs, evenly spaced some 2 feet apart above the cave doorways. These holes were cut and used as sockets to support the ends of roof beams extending forward from the cliff and providing ceilings for the masonry rooms which once stood there. These evenly spaced holes, which you first see along many of the canyon walls, give mute evidence of the early aboriginal occupation of this area. Many of these talus dwellings reached a height of 3 stories and pushed out from the cliff 3 and 4 rooms deep, so that the cave rooms which were occupied first became relegated to storage space in the dark rear interiors.

To conclude this general summation of ruin types, some description should be made of kivas. Kivas were, and are, the ceremonial chambers of the Pueblo people; as such, they are universally present in the Pajarito communities and their design makes them identifiable even in the ruined state. The local kivas were always round and were dug almost full-depth into the ground, except for certain examples which were excavated into the relatively soft bedrock of cliff or mesa-top. The circular depressions still to be found in the plazas of the great communal houses are the remains of kivas with their roofs collapsed and with the wind-borne debris of centuries accumulated in the hollows. A more complete discussion of kivas and their functions will be found onpage 12.

Entrances to cave rooms.

Bandelier National Monument is divided into two parcels of land: the Otowi section of about 9 square miles and the Frijoles section of nearly 33 square miles. Within these two areas are contained great concentrations of ruins, including several of the largest on the plateau. A number of the Bandelier ruins have been excavated, so there is quite a detailed knowledge of the culture which once flourished on the monument lands.

Tyuonyi Ruin, with the Big Kiva at left rear, and the trees of the campground at top of the picture.

The most frequently visited part of the monument is the canyon of the Rito de los Frijoles, wherein is located the monument headquarters. In this well-watered and wooded canyon are to be found ruins of the three types described above, which had well over 1,000 rooms in their prime some 500 years ago. Here also is the excavated remnant of the largest kiva found anywhere in the Pajarito countryâ€”a chamber which perhaps was the community center of religious practice for the entire canyon.

On the floor of Frijoles Canyon, a little upstream from the headquarters museum, is Tyuonyi, the chief building of the area, and one of the most impressive pueblo ruins in the Rio Grande drainage. Situated on a level bench of open ground, perhaps 100 feet from the Rito and 15 feet above the water, Tyuonyi at one time contained over 400 rooms, to a height of 3 stories in part. Its modern aspect is greatly reduced in height; although excavated, no walls have been restored, so that only the ground floor is still evident, with outer and inner walls standing to a height of 4 or 5 feet throughout.

The ruins trail; the south rim of Frijoles Canyon shows in the background.

To appreciate the size and lay-out of Tyuonyi, you should climb the nearby slope until a birdâ€™s-eye view reveals the entire ground plan of the huge circle. From above, more than 250 rooms can be counted, placed in concentric rows around a central plaza. The most massive part of the circle is 8 rooms across, narrowing to 4 rooms in breadth at the brook side. The 2- and 3-story parts of the building, as computed from the height of the original rubble, were at the massive eastern side.

One of the most striking features of Tyuonyi is the entrance passage through the eastern part of the circle. This passage was apparently the only access to the central plaza, other than by ladders across the rooftops. An arrangement of this sort, of course, suggests a concern for defensive strength on the part of Tyuonyiâ€™s builders; certainly the circle of windowless, doorless walls would have presented a problem to attackers, once the ladders were drawn up and the single passageway blocked.

It is believed that a good part of the first-floor rooms of Tyuonyi were storage chambers of the type previously discussed. This belief is borne out by the fact that during excavation many of these rooms were found to be without fireplaces, a condition which would have made such rooms unlivable in cold weather. The problem of smoke clearance was very serious in the larger pueblos, since the builders had no knowledge of modern fireplaces with chimney flues; hence the building of fires on the lower floors of multistory buildings worked a hardship on upstairs occupants and must have been avoided whenever possible.

The age of the Tyuonyi construction has been fairly well established by the tree-ring method of dating, so widely and successfully used by archeologists in the Southwest. Ceiling-beam fragments recovered from various rooms give dates between A. D. 1383 and 1466. This general period seems to have been a time of much building in Frijoles Canyon; a score of tree-ring dates from Rainbow House ruin, which is down the canyon a half mile, fall in the early and middle 1400â€™s. Perhaps the last construction anywhere in Frijoles Canyon occurred close to A. D. 1500, with a peak of population reached near that time or shortly thereafter.

On the talus directly above Tyuonyi to the north, at the foot of the prominent cliff, there once stood a cluster of houses. The group here had as its nucleus 12 or 15 cave rooms which were supplemented by at least as many masonry rooms at the front. Excavationof these rooms was completed in 1909 and the name Sun House was given to the building, because of a prominent Sun-symbol petroglyph carved on the cliff above. A part of this house group has been restored on the old foundations, with its new ceiling beams placed in the ancient holes in the cliff. This restoration work, done by the Museum of New Mexico in 1920, serves to show faithfully the original appearance of this typical specimen of a talus house. Here again the rooms are small (by modern standards) with doors only large enough to squeeze through, and no windows. During the 1400â€™s, it is probable that several such dwellings were occupied along a 2-mile stretch of this cliff.

A restored talus house.

About one-fourth of a mile up the canyon from Tyuonyi, also against the northern and sun-warmed cliff, is the ruin of one of the largest combination cave-and-masonry dwellings to be found anywhere on the plateau. This great ruin is known as Long House for an obvious reasonâ€”it stretches almost 800 feet in a continuous block of rooms. For all of this distance, the masonry walls are backed by a sheer and largely smooth wall of tuff some 150 feet high. Into this cliff are dug many cave rooms, several kivas, and a variety of storage niches, all of which were incorporated into a single dwelling of over 300 rooms, rising 3 stories high. At Long House the rows of viga (roof-beam) holes in the cliff are particularly conspicuous, defining the onetime roof levels for hundreds of feet at a stretch. The site of Long House isespecially pleasing, having an elevation of 40 or 50 feet above the canyon bottom, but close enough to the creek so that the sound of running water may be heard, and near enough to the huge stream-bordering cottonwoods to partake of the coolness of their foliage. If it is conceivable to envy any of the people of prehistoric times, surely we should envy the dwellers of Long House.

Associated with the numerous ruins in Frijoles Canyon are various kivas, both in the canyon floor and in the cliffs. The large kiva previously mentioned is a short distance east of Tyuonyi, very nearly in the center of the widest part of the canyon floor. The rock-walled circular pit is 42 feet across and 8 feet deep, with a ventilation shaft at the east side and a narrow entranceway opposite. When the roof was intact above the chamber, there must have been little evidence of the existence of the subterranean room; perhaps a ladder protruding from a center hole in the roof was the only conspicuous indication of the kiva below. In its present and partially restored state, this kiva shows the butt ends of six roof columns similar to those which once bore the load of the roof, as well as the stub ends of roof stringers. The restoration work in this kiva was accomplished by the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was responsible for much valuable work in the monument during the late 1930â€™s.

Of particular interest in Frijoles Canyon are the unique kivas in the cliffs. Of the thousands of kivas found throughout the ancient land of the pueblos, there are no others of this cave style. The largest of the cave kivas in the monument is a few hundred feet north of Tyuonyi, at the base of a fantastically eroded block of tuff. The oval chamber, nearly 20 feet across its long dimension, has been restored by the replacement of rock work around its doorway and ventilation openings. The interior effect now presented, with soot-blackened ceiling, mud-plastered lower walls, and looms set in their ancient positions, must closely approximate the appearance of the kiva in the days when it was used. Many such kivas were decorated with painted or incised designs on the plaster of the walls. Although this particular kiva does not show evidence of mural paintings, it does still contain scratched designs in the plaster, unidentifiable because covered in part by later replastering.

A restored kiva of very different type may be found up the canyon nearly a mile. By climbing a series of ladders to a ledge 150 feet above the stream, the great rock overhang known as Ceremonial Cave can be reached. Under the shelter of this arch a number of masonry dwellings and a kiva were once built; the subterranean kiva, excavated and reroofed, is very small but would have served the needs of the few families who lived on this impregnable balcony.

Entrance to Cave Kiva.

Other noteworthy remains of the monument area lie outside Frijoles Canyon, accessible only by foot or horse trail across the mesas to the south. Perhaps the most frequently visited of these antiquities is the shrine of the Stone Lions, 10 miles from monument headquarters. Here on the mesa-top near an extensive ruin are two life-size crouching mountain lion effigies carved side by side out of the soft bedrock. This work of sculpture must have been accomplished many centuries ago, for long weathering and erosion have left small semblance of a true likeness. The shrine here is known to modern Indians, being visited occasionally by hunters who leave prayer offerings for success in their hunt. A second pair of stone lions was carved on a mesa-top several miles to the south, outside the monument boundary. These two pairs of life-size stone effigies are unique in the Southwest.

The restored kiva in Ceremonial Cave. The ranger and party are standing on the roof of the circular chamber.

A final feature of particular interest in the back country of the monument is the Painted Cave. This art gallery in the cliffs decorates a canyon wall some 12 miles from headquarters. Once a large population inhabited this canyon of Capulin Creek, but most of the evidences of habitation have vanished except for the extensive pictographs on the weatherproof back wall of the Painted Cave. Thearch of the cave is shallow but wide, so that a smooth area over 50 feet long was available to the artists; several dozen drawings in a variety of reds and blacks adorn this surface. It is probable that many generations of artists used the cave, since space finally ran out and later drawings are superimposed on their faded predecessors. Moreover, evidence of historic, or post-Spanish, artistry is hereâ€”a sketch of a conquistador on horseback, another of a mission church complete with cross.

The shrine of the Stone Lions: Twin effigies of mountain lions in a walled enclosure.

Painted Cave.

Trail worn into the rock, near Tsankawi Ruin.

The smaller section of Bandelier National Monument, lying some 15 miles from the headquarters area, takes its name from the Otowi ruin, the largest pueblo on the monument. Although not so impressive as the Tyuonyi ruin at first glance, the great spread and complexity of the rubble mounds surely dwarf all other ruined dwellings of the vicinity. Probably 450 ground-floor rooms were here, with an indeterminate number of upper-floor roomsâ€”perhaps 600 rooms altogether is a reasonable estimate. The Otowi rooms have not been excavated to any great extent, but two burial mounds south of the building group have been investigated with spectacular resultsâ€”over 150 interments were found in a space about 80 by 100 feet. With these burials was found a great variety of offerings to the dead, ranging from food bowls to bone awls and ceremonial pipes. Specimens of these handicrafts may be seen at the National Park Service museum at monument headquarters and at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe.

The Otowi house-group occupies a site atop a low ridge walled in by the cliffsides of steep Pueblo Canyon. Its nearest neighbor, Tsankawi, is sited on a very different terrain: Tsankawi is very near to being a â€œsky-cityâ€ in the style of the modern Acoma in western New Mexico. Not as large as Otowi, this ruin has equal majesty by reason of its commanding position on top of a cliff-ringed island mesa overlooking a vast north-south sweep of the Rio Grande and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains beyond. The location and the ground plan suggest defense as a first consideration. Of masonry construction in a rough hollow square, Tsankawi would have presented a serious problem to enemy besiegers. On the other hand, a siege would have cut off the defenders from their water supply, far in the canyon below. There is, however, some evidence of a rain-catchment basin close outside the eastern walls, and excavation may in future confirm the existence of an ingenious water-storage system.

The most memorable sight at Tsankawi lies along the trail that climbs from the end of the access road to the mesa-top. Here for 100 yards the path, crossing a bald slope of soft gray tuff, is worn down for almost 18 inches by the climbing and descending feet of thousands of Indian passersby. Granted that the rock is extremely porous and soft, it is nonetheless almost beyond the scope of imagination to conceive the vast traffic required to so entrench the path. Today, when you climb this trail, you cannot but visualize a procession of Indian farmers over several generations traveling to and from their fields, their sandaled feet scuffing each year a fractional inch deeper into the calendar of the rock.

The great number of Indian ruins in the Bandelier vicinity, some of which have been described, give evidence of the presence and labor of thousands of prehistoric people. Who were these people? Whence did they come, and where have they gone? A myriad of questions is inspired by the far-flung ruinsâ€”and in the ruins, of course, are the answers to these questions, answers which have been gradually unearthed by scientists over the past 75 years. Beginning with Adolph Bandelier, the Swiss-American ethnologist for whom the monument is named, a succession of scientists has brought to light many facts once buried beneath the rubble of the ruins.

Before entering upon a description of the life and times of the early Bandelier dwellers, it may be well to discuss briefly the efforts of the archeologists and others who have built up the picture of this long-lost culture. The work of the archeologist is essentially historical detective workâ€”in his digging and searching hemust find, assemble, and interpret clues. Some of these clues will be tangible, like pottery fragments. Other clues will be intangibleâ€”the very absence of pottery fragments in an ancient dwelling tells a story. The correct evaluation and interpretation of multitudinous clues by many experts over two generations have at last given us a very considerable knowledge of Southwestern prehistoryâ€”and the knowledge is being added to daily. H. M. Wormington, inPrehistoric Indians of the Southwest, wrote â€œ... the development of archaeology in the Southwest may be compared to the putting together of a great jig-saw puzzle. First came a period of general examination of the pieces, then a concentration on the larger and more highly colored pieces, and finally a carefully planned approach to the puzzle as a whole with serious attempts to fill in specific blank areas.â€

As a result of such concerted study and deduction, there exists today a fairly solid understanding of the general course of human events in the Southwest for the past 2,000 years. Many details are still missing, and some will always be, but the general outline of Indian life and customs is established back to the early centuries of the Christian era; beyond that, the picture becomes hazy. Those earlier years were seemingly times of a seminomadic, hunting-gathering existence for the early Southwesterners; only from about 3,000 years ago is there clear evidence of the advent of intensive farming and a settled life.

As soon as agriculture became their primary sustenance, the people began to live more or less permanently in one place. From certain early cave-shelters are derived the clues which begin to formulate the story of the days before history. Human burials have been found in the earth floors of shallow caves scattered through the San Juan river drainage; and in these same caves are found storage chambers prepared to protect the foodstuffs, principally corn. Their outstanding handicraft was basketry, as far as remaining evidence shows. Because of the great numbers of skilfully worked baskets found in their homesites, archeologists have named these people Basketmakers. It is now quite certain that the Indians who came much later to live in the Bandelier vicinity can claim as ancestors the Basketmaker people of the area to the west.

The life of these ancestral farmers was a primitive one, even by the standards which prevailed in Frijoles Canyon 1,000 years later. For one thing, no permanent dwellings appear to have been constructed until late in Basketmaker times, and even then dwellings were of crude pithouse typeâ€”an excavation some 3 feet into the ground, walled up and roofed with logs, brush, and earth. Further, the bow and arrow was not used by these people until perhaps A. D. 600; the early weapon of hunting and warfare was the spear and spear-thrower (atlatl).For the greater part of Basketmaker times, pottery was unknown; only after A. D. 400 was true fired pottery introduced in the northern Southwest.

Typical prehistoric pottery vessels made in the Bandelier vicinity.Photo courtesy Museum of New Mexico.

The production of decorated pottery late in Basketmaker times began a development which has had the greatest archeological significance. The long-enduring fragments of painted pottery found in subsequent housesites have been a principal tool by which students have pieced together the relative chronology of ruins and the migrations of the pottery-makers.

With successive introduction of pottery, the bow and arrow, and other new traits in the approximate period A. D. 450 to 750, the character of Basketmaker life became so modified that a new nameâ€”the Pueblosâ€”was applied to the subsequent peoples. Presently they began to move from the Basketmaker pithouse into masonry chambers above ground, perhaps with several rooms connected, the old pithouse surviving in use as the ceremonial kiva. Cotton came under cultivation and was woven into garments. Hoes and axes of stone with serviceable handles came into use. Turkeys and dogs were by this time commonly domesticated, the former being valued primarily for feathers which served to make warm robes and ceremonial garb.

BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT, NEW MEXICOHigh-resolution Map

The useful yucca plant.

The stage was now set for the great flowering of the Pueblo people; the way of life which had taken rough shape from A. D. 450 to 1050 now reached culmination in the Great Pueblo period. For about 200 years, or until around A. D. 1250, fortune smiled on the farming towns of the Four Corners country. The population grew and spread, and the handicraft arts reached a stage of impressive proficiency. The centers of this classic period which are today best known lie in three different States: Mesa Verde (in Mesa Verde National Park, Colo.), Chaco Canyon (in Chaco Canyon National Monument, N. Mex.), and the vicinity of Betatakin and Keet Seel (in Navajo National Monument, Ariz.) These three areas, all now under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, contain the great cliff dwellings and communal houses which mark the highest development of prehistoric Indian attainments in the northern Southwest.

It is beyond the scope of this handbook to present an adequate description of the Great Pueblo towns and their inhabitants. Although almost contemporaneous, the three largest centers differed greatly in development, so that the total story becomes most complex. In general it may be said that the skills of farming and production of foodstuffs became highly efficient, allowing the people more leisure inwhich to experiment with and improve their arts and crafts and their ceremonial rituals. Much elaboration and refinement of the potterâ€™s craft, for example, is traceable to these years; some of the worldâ€™s finest ceramic art, ancient or modern, comes from Chaco Canyon and the Mesa Verde. Again, in the field of jewelry-making and personal adornment, the craftsman of the 1100â€™s produced shell- and turquoise-inlay work which would have earned the admiration of Cellini. Finally, a multiplicity of kivas is to be found in all the great houses of the period, as well as a number of Great Kivas embodying various elaborate altar features. This expenditure of effort to crowd the towns with ceremonial rooms would seem to indicate something of a preoccupation with religion. The numerous discoveries of carved stone fetishes and other ceremonial objects serve to bear out a concept of elaborate ritual and unending dedication to the service of their gods.

It seems, however, that the gods were fickle. Some two centuries of growth and prosperity were all that were to be allowed the farmers of the Great Pueblo centers. In the last quarter of the 13th century, a period of drought came to the high plateaus of the Pueblo people. From the evidence of the tree rings of the time, the majority of the years between A. D. 1276 and 1299 were so deficient in rainfall that the Indian corn crops could not have matured. Although this drought was not actually continuous, and varied between regions, there was undoubtedly much starvation, and a decimation of the inhabitants of the great towns, perhaps from enemy raids as well as hunger. There were undoubtedly numerous migrations from the drought-stricken areas into places with reliable streams.

These troubled times in the western centers and emigrations therefrom were responsible in large part for the settling of the Pajarito Plateau and the canyons of what is now Bandelier National Monument. The streams of the Jemez Mountains continued to flow during the dry time, apparently, for large-scale colonization of well-watered canyons such as Frijoles appears to date from the end of the 13th century. The drift of the emigrants from the western areas is impossible to trace in detail, continuing as it did for several generations and originating from many sources. The Bandelier region may have been something of a melting pot, assimilating migrants from various distant places. A study of the pottery types produced in the early days of residence here affords the best clue to possible origins. Among these types are found precise copies of decoration styles from a number of the western centers, indicating that the women potters carried on their respective traditional decorations upon arrival in their new homes. One particular kind of black-on-white pottery can hardly be distinguished even by microscopic examination from a similar ware made in the Mesa Verde country.

The upsurge of population and the main construction activity in Bandelier began after A. D. 1300. Large towns grew up and down the Rio Grande drainage, and their people achieved in most respects as high a standard of living as their forebears had known in the Great Pueblo centers of 200 years earlier. Very possibly the Rio Grande pueblos might have gone ahead to a new peak of cultural development if they had not been interrupted and demoralized by the coming of the Spanish. In 1598, some 400 farmers and soldiers led by Don Juan de Onate, the first permanent Spanish settlers, came from Mexico, and with the entry of these land-seekers the ascendancy of the Pueblos was finished.

The typical male inhabitant of Frijoles Canyon in the early 1300â€™s, then, was a newcomer to the area. He was a man of Mongoloid cast of countenance, about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches in height, with medium red-brown skin and black hair. His wife measured 5 feet or perhaps a little less, and was inclined to a stout build. A few children and a dog or two completed the family circle. These newcomers had arrived in their chosen valley with only such belongings as they could carry on their backs, and were immediately faced with the problems of wresting a livelihood from a somewhat grudging environment. In the pattern of all mankind before and since, this Indian migrantâ€™s first requirements were food, water, shelter, and clothing for himself and his family.

As a practicing farmer, the manâ€™s chief reliance for food had been the crops of corn, beans, and squash that he knew how to raise. Perhaps the family had managed to bring some remnants of their most recent harvests with them to Frijoles; but these remnants had to be saved for seed, to insure crops for the coming year. What did the family eat meanwhile? In the warm season, a diet of sorts could have been pieced together by gathering various plants and fruit and nut crops. Spring brought out of the ground several annuals such as the mustard and bee plants which can be boiled for vegetable-greens while young. A bit later the local berry crop came into fruitâ€”currants, gooseberries, chokecherries, and a few raspberries. The ever-present yucca offered its bananalike pod of fruit toward August. When fall arrived, the countryside, in good years, abounded with wild produce: pinyon-nuts and juniper berries, the staples, with trimmings of prickly pears, acorns, and many other seed and nut crops. The ingenuity of the modern Pueblo Indian in coaxing sustenance out of his familiar native plants is extraordinary; very few things that grow are not ofsome use to him as food or medicine. It may surely be assumed that the Pueblo ancestor of 600 years ago was equally resourceful.

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