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Anasazi Indians of the Mesa Verde - Kayenta Period
by
O. Ned Eddins

After the demise of the Chaco Pueblos, there was marked contraction in Pueblo territory. The peak population of the Mesa Verde period in southwestern Colorado, A.D. 1000-1300, is estimated at twenty-five-to-fifty-thousand inhabitants. Today, the same area (Montezuma County) supports eighteen-to-twenty-thousand people (Anasazi Heritage Center).

As the Chaco system begin to fail, two areas in the Four Corners region had increases in population, Mesa Verde and Kayenta along the Virgin River of Utah and Arizona. During the early Mesa Verde development, there were a great many villages on the valley floor, as well as, in the mouths of canyons.

Painted Hand

Hovenweep Castle

The round tower construction of Hovenweep and at Painted Hand is a mystery that is yet to be resolved by archeologists.

Lowry Pueblo

The main Lowry Pueblo was built in stages on top of abandoned pithouses of the eighth century peoples. Initially it consisted of only five rooms, and over a thirty year period was expanded to include forty rooms and eight kiva, or ritual rooms. The central part of the Pueblo had two or three stories. Not all rooms and kiva were used at the same time. Some rooms were for sleeping, some for storage, some for work areas, and some for social and religious events. The presence of a great kiva suggests that Lowry Pueblo was a regional urban ritual center. At its population climax, Lowry housed about one hundred people. It was abandoned around 1150 A.D. (BLM sign).

From 1150 A.D. to 1200 A.D., the small outlying villages on the mesas and in the valleys were being abandoned. The people were moving into larger more protected villages.

Cliff House Canyon

After 1150 A.D., the Mesa Verde area of the San Juan Basin had the largest number of people in the Southwest. Increases in the number of people in cliff dwellings reduced the inhabitant's ability to raise enough agriculture products to feed themselves. Around 1276, a long drought began that continued until the end of the century. Even without a drought trying to raise enough food on the mesas and getting water out of the canyons played a big part in the abandonment of the Four Corners area--while the people were in the cliff dwellings who protected the crops from marauding raiders?

Many reasons are given for the Ancestral Puebloans leaving the Four Corners area. Prolonged drought, famine, disease, raids by marauding nomads, exhaustion of resources, and quarrels among the Puebloans are given as causes for abandoning the Pueblos. There is evidence of intra-regional conflict at some sites. According to Cordell there were "…numerous burned dwellings and human skeletons that had been burned and cannibalized…."

The San Juan Basin was completely abandoned by 1300 A.D. (Walker). The major migrations from the Mesa Verde area were to the Rio Grande and Little Colorado River in Arizona. Some of the people joined the Hopi of northeastern Arizona and the Zuni of western New Mexico.

The idea of widespread warfare in the Four Corners region remains controversial, but new evidence suggests that some villages suffered violent attacks during the 1200s. Sand Canyon Pueblo, in the Montezuma Valley below Mesa Verde, was burned, and as many as two hundred and fifty people killed. Archaeologist, Stephen LeBlanc believes that the Ancestral Puebloans split themselves into at least three warring factions: Mesa Verde, Montezuma Valley, and the Aztec area. These otherwise peaceful agrarian people may have turned to violence when faced with starvation (Walker).

The cliff dwellings and the Pueblo villages in the Mesa Verde area had been abandoned several hundred years before the first white men saw them. On July 29, 1776, Father Francisco Dominguez and Father Silvestre Escalante left Santa Fe with eight men to explore a trading route to Monterey, California. Father Escalante recorded in his journal the presence of ancient Indian villages near the Delores River.

Upon an elevation on the river’s [Delores River] south side, there was in ancient times a small settlement of the same as those of the Indians in New Mexico…

The Anasazi Heritage Center near Delores, Colorado is located close to where Escalante made his observations. The nearby "Escalante Ruins” have been excavated and stabilized.

Ancestral Puebloans used kivas for social and religious gatherings. The small hole in the center is called a Sipapu. During the Chaco era, kivas were built above ground and were surrounded by rectangular walls. This great kiva was fifty- to sixty-five-feet in diameter.

Escalante Kiva

After the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition, there is no recorded evidence of anyone seeing the Anasazi Pueblos until the mid-eighteen hundreds. In September 1849 while on patrol, Lt. James Hervey Simpson came upon a pueblo ruin, Pueblo Pintado. A few days later, the army patrol under Lt. Colonel John M. Washington saw the great houses of Chaco Canyon (Frazier). Hovenweep and Lowry Ruins on the valley floor were undoubtedly observed by the mid-1800s. William Henry Jackson, who had photographed the Yellowstone and Jackson Hole area a few years earlier, photographed Two Story Cliff House in Mancos Canyon in 1874.

Mesa Verde Spruce Tree House

Richard Wetherill and Charlie Mason discovered Spruce Tree House and Cliff Palace in December of 1888 (Wenger).

Mesa Verde Cliff Palace

In 1901, Richard Wetherill homesteaded land in Chaco Canyon that included Pueblo Bonito, Pueblo Del Arroyo, and Chetro Ketl. Wetherill operated a trading post at Pueblo Bonito until 1910. During an argument over a horse, a Navajo killed him. Wetherill is buried in a small cemetery near Pueblo Bonito (Chaco Culture).

1680 Pueblo Revolt

Spanish expeditions in the sixteenth century visited the Pueblos villages of northwestern Arizona and western New Mexico. Fray Marcos de Niza made the first recorded contact with the Zuni in 1539. Coronado’s Expedition reached the Zuni villages a year later, and found out that the Zuni villages were not the seven cities of Cibola, as Coronado had believed from Niza's report.

After the Spanish Conquistadors, the Franciscan Friars come to convert the Pueblos to the Christian religion. One of the earliest missions was San Geronimo de Taos. At that time, the Taos Indians had lived in the Taos Valley of New Mexico for more than 800 years.

The Franciscans Friars imposed taxes on the Pueblo Indians. The only way Puebloans had to pay these taxes was with labor, corn, pottery, and blankets. At first, most of the Pueblo Indians accepted the Franciscan Friars, but over the years, resentment grew against the taxation and the Spanish religious oppression. The Taos Pueblo played a prominent role in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. Po'pay(Pope), the leader of the rebellion, lived at the Taos Pueblo. Fifteen years after being driven out by the Pueblos, the Spanish retook the land, and the Spanish missions were re-established.

Warfare between the Pueblos and the neighboring tribes of Navajo, Ute, and Comanche took its toll on the Pueblo villages. Following the Mexican War, the Taos people resisted the Americans, just as they had others that had tried to take their lands. In 1847, Pueblo Indians killed the newly appointed Governor, Charles Bent. Prior to his appointment as Governor of New Mexico, Bent and his brother William had established Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River. Despite the occasional warfare, the Taos Pueblo was the major southwest trade center during the fur trade period (Weber).

The southwest Pueblos with multiple languages and ethnic groups are the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the United States

Old Oraibi 1051 - 2006

The Hopi village of Old Oraibi and the Pueblo village of Acoma have been continuously occupied since 1150 A.D. (Southwest Indian Council). Inhabitants at Old Oraibi claim their village was founded in 1051.

Acoma - The Sky City

The Acoma Pueblo was built on a three hundred and fifty-seven foot sandstone mesa. In 1598, the Spanish Governor Juan de Oñate and seventy soldiers killed and maimed many of the villagers because the villagers had killed thirteen soldiers that were stealing grain from the village storehouse.

...A reader recently pointed out that the Acoma Pueblo people were not part of the Zuni. I really appreciate it when readers point out errors on my part.

It should be noted that the Ancestral Puebloans were not the only American Indians that built large structures during this time period. The American Indian mound builders, primarily east of the Mississippi, built spectacular structures. Cahokia was a flourishing population center and a city in every sense of the word when London was a few scattered huts. The Mississippian Culture in North America reached its peak around 1450 A.D., although it lasted into the 18th century with the Natchez. Some forms of mound building lasted well into the late 19th century (mound builder internet site).

Recent archeological data indicates that American Indians were using some form of agriculture as early as 10,000 B.C. Over fifty percent of the world's agriculture comes from plants first domesticated by American Indians, primarily in Mesoamerica.

Just as the Southwest Pueblos, the Mound Builders were many different cultures that shared common traits.

The Anasazi Mesa Verde article was written by O. Ned Eddins of Afton, Wyoming. Permission is given for material from this site to be used for school research papers.

Prehistoric Indians Anasazi Fremont Indians

References:

Cordell, Linda S. Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C. 1994.

Ferguson, William M. and Rohm, Arthur H. Anasazi Ruins of the Southwest in Color. University of New Mexico Press. 1990.

Frazier, Kendrick. People of Chaco: A Canyon and its Culture. W. W. Norton, New York, NY. 1999.

Stone, Tammy. The Prehistory of Colorado and Adjacent Areas. University of Utah Press, 1999.

Walker, Paul Robert. The Southwest Gold Gods & Grandeur. National Geographic Society. 2001.

Warner, Ted J., Ed. The Dominguez-Escalante Journal – Their Expedition through Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico in 1776. University of Utah Press.

Weber, David J. The Taos Trappers-The Fur Trade in the Southwest 1540-1846. University of Oklahoma Press. 1982.

Wenger, Gilbert. The Story of Mesa Verde National Park. 1980.

Internet Sources:

Anasazi Cultural Center, Delores, Colorado
www.co.blm.gov/ahc/anasazi.htm

Anna Sofaer
http://www.solsticeproject.org

Hopi Indians
http:\\www.hopi.nsn.us/village3.asp
http://inkido.indiana.edu/w310work/romac/hopi.htm

Harrison Lapahie
http://www.lapahie.com/Chaco_Sun_Dagger.cfm

James Q. Jacobs
http://www.jqjacobs.net/southwest/sw_notes.html

Jay W. Sharp
http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/ind_new/ind11.html

John Kantner
Sipapu--Frequently Asked Questions

Southwest Indian Relief Council
http://www.swirc.org/

http://www.newmexico.org/culture/indianculture.html