Mesa Verde National Park: Home of the Ancestral Puebloans

                             Wednesday, August 20, 2014

In the 1880s and 1890s, a number of prominent cliff dwellings in Southwest Colorado were partially excavated, and many artifacts were removed from the area. The removal of these artifacts angered the public and inspired the first efforts to protect Mesa Verde. Lucy Peabody and Virginia McLung engaged in a campaign to inform the American public and members of Congress about the need to preserve the cliff dwellings and to protect the rich cultural resources of Mesa Verde. McLung enlisted the help of the Federation of Women's Clubs and established the Colorado Cliff Dwellings Association.  On June 8, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act.  On June 29, 1906, the subsequent signing of the bill created Mesa Verde National Park.

The first Spanish explorers referred to this area as mesa verde,  "green table". Geologically speaking, the area is not actually a mesa, it is a cuesta which means it is tilted rather than flat.

Mesa Verde dips toward the south at about a 7% grade. This tilt toward the sun created warmer conditions for successfully growing corn and other crops. Cold air moves down the slope, leaving the cuesta surface warmer and wetter than the lower areas. The growing season for the Ancestral Puebloan people at Mesa Verde was 20 days longer than in the surrounding valleys. The park includes over 4, 500 archeological sites. 600 are cliff dwellings.

                                                                       Visitor's Center

These four photos show our drive into the park. 

Walk to Spruce Tree House

Spruce Tree House is the third largest and best preserved cliff dwelling. It was occupied by Ancestral Pueblo people between A.D. 1200 and 1280. The alcove is 66 meters long and 27 meters deep. It has 120 rooms, 10 lodge rooms, 8 kivas and 2 towers. The village grew over time and not all rooms were occupied simultaneously. The estimated peak population was 60 to 90 people, about 19 households. Early explorers named it for the towering Douglas fir trees (historically referred to as spruce trees) found in the canyon below the alcove.

Spruce Tree House was part of an extended community that included a few large cliff dwellings, many small settlements in alcoves, and some mesa top villages, farms and gardens. There are several hand and toe hold trails near the head of Spruce Canyon that Ancestral Pueblo people pecked into the stone cliffs and used to travel up and down the canyon walls. They climbed up to work their fields, gather food, and hunt on the mesa tops, then climbed down again, carrying what they needed back into Spruce Tree House. 

 Spruce Tree House contains a large, plastered sub-floor pit that may have been a cistern where water was stored for later use. During summer thunderstorms, the Ancestral Pueblo people collected rain water in pottery vessels placed to catch the run off from above. They maintained reservoirs on mesa tops and in canyon bottoms and built check dams across drainages. The small dams captured the soil and moisture important to farming. Tucked into the cliff above are ten storage rooms that are part of the Spruce Tree House Community.

A ladder leads down into a kiva. In modern pueblos, kivas are the gathering places for religious observances, social activities, and weaving. The Ancestral Pueblo people who lived here may have used them in similar ways. They may have also been used as living spaces. Alcove sites tend to be quite cold in winter. Kivas are well insulated by the earth around them. Over the centuries, most kiva roofs collapsed. Models from partial roofs still intact at other dwellings were used to reconstruct this kiva roof in 1908.  The kiva has a fire pit in the center of the floor and an adjacent standing stone deflector. There is a ventilator opening in the kiva wall, and a chimney-like shaft that drew in fresh air from outside. The kiva also contains a sipapu. Modern Pueblo people consider the sipapu a symbolic entrance into a former world. As well, there are small, rectangular openings in the wall called niches, likely used for storing objects.

From Spruce Tree House, we hiked a three mile loop trail. 

This rock shows evidence of ripple marks made in the sand of an ancient shallow sea. The ripple marks were preserved when another layer of sediment covered them, and through the ages the sand cemented into sandstone. When the rock strata weathered and broke down, a crack occurred along the border of the the 2 sediments exposing the ripple marks. 

The crusty orange, yellow, gray, and black growths on this rock are lichens. Pueblo people ground lichens into powder and applied it to sores or to teeth and gums as a toothache cure. The Hopi refer to lichens as the food of the War Gods. 

These are axe grooves on the flat rock. The Ancestral Pueblo people used stone for tools. They made axe heads out of hard rocks, sharpening them by rubbing the stones on sandstone. 

These are the the largest and best known group of petroglyphs in Mesa Verde. The Ancestral Pueblo people stood on the ledge and chipped the design through the exterior desert varnish to the light sandstone beneath. In 1942, Hopi men from northeastern Arizona interpreted some of the glyphs. 

North of Spruce Tree House ( a 3 km drive from Spruce Tree House), we hiked the Farming Terrace Loop trail. It winds along a series of farming terraces built by the Ancestral Pueblo people. Using check dams to collect moisture and soil, the farming terraces took advantage of natural drainage to augment crop yields from dry land farming. 

                                          In 2013, a fire started by lightning killed these trees.

Located near the trail head is Cedar Tree Tower.  Archaeologists speculate it was a special observation location or ceremonial site.

Cortez Cultural Center

  

In the evening, we attended a dance performance by the Lopez family from the Ute Mountain tribe. They performed some traditional and contemporary dances. 

The drummer (his mother is from Regina, Saskatchewan) plays in the Midnite Express band. 

The band has released 12 albums, and won a NAMA for 2009 Powwow Recording.

The design and colors of her dress are from the Ute tribe. The colors represent the sunset.

    This dancer's jingle dress is from the Navajo tribe. The eagles on the arms are from her Ute culture.

After the dancing performance, we listened to Sam Sandoval speak about his experiences as a Navajo code talker during WWII.