THE MUSEUM
An ancient medicine man’s pouch with its magic treasures—mummy of a Basketmaker maiden who lived 1,500 years ago—the primitive hunter’s atlatl—might pique your curiosity and lure you to visit the Mesa Verde Museum. Soon you would discover, however, that this is not just a storehouse for dry-as-dust dead things, but rather a living center of knowledge and its interpretation—the key to your understanding and enjoyment of the real museum which is the Park itself.
CLIFF PALACE IN 1270 A.D.
From a Painting by PAUL COZE
Collaborating with the staff of the Mesa Verde Museum, the artist has shown typical activities at 3:00 P.M. on a sunny autumn afternoon in 1270 A.D.
In the left foreground an unmarried girl with butterfly hair-do is husking corn of several colors and gossiping with a married lady who has the matron’s two rolls of hair behind her ears. Three women in the painting wear the pueblo dress, while the others have string aprons; both would have been used in the summer. Nearby is a ladle and a corrugated pot—on the wall top a Classic Mesa Verde mug and a decorated jar.
Between the girl and the wife fixing her husband’s hair lies a snare. Close to the couple are a bowl, a squash, a stone axe, and a peculiar submarine-shaped jar.
Above the couple a dog barks at a youngster who has broken a big jar. Two women are making pottery; behind them two women replaster the lower room of a two-story house, on top of which a man is pointing out to some children that the town crier is making an announcement, and they should keep quiet. Two priests, one with ceremonial kilt and evergreens, climb a one-pole ladder.
Beneath the crier a woman closes the doorway of her house with a stone slab, and below her on the near roof an old lady keeps warm with a rabbit-skin blanket, while her daughter grinds corn. In front of the house a woman, whose baby snoozes in a wooden cradle, bakes blue corn meal “pancakes” on a hot stone slab. The kiva door is closed with a mat, turkeys wander about, and the woman in the right-hand corner, sitting on the beautiful brown textile (to be seen in the Park Museum), strings turquoise beads.
To the right, two bow-and-arrow-makers ridicule a returning unsuccessful hunter, women bring water in jars from the spring, and turkeys pick over the trash pile.
Visible in the painting are a round and a square tower, ten of 23 exceptionally small kivas which occur in the ruin, and rectangular and T-doors. Beyond the square tower with its balcony, people are finishing a third-story room.
Cliff Palace had 200 living rooms and sheltered perhaps 400 persons.
MORFIELD VILLAGE AND CAMPGROUND