INDIAN BEGINNINGS
Before the coming of the white man, this land belonged to nature’s children, the Indian. Centuries before European nations came into existence, peoples from Asia, crossing by the Bering waters, had discovered, explored, and settled the American continents from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. They mastered the plains, the northern forests, the jungles of Central and South America, and the arid regions. In the deserts and mountains of the Southwest, they conquered elements and terrain, first to survive and then slowly to ascend the ladder of culture.
At first they were foragers, living on what nature provided. At the time of Christ, several groups could be distinguished: In the Colorado River drainage, south of the Grand Canyon, were the Yuman Foragers; in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico were the Mogollon people; in the Four Corners area (where the states of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet) and in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico was a complex of cave sites that evidenced a forager type of culture. But, as man always aspires to rise above his environment, the Indian slowly and painfully learned to make tools, developed new techniques, and finally made the great step upward; he domesticated plants. Agriculture, based primarily on the growing of corn, came to the Four Corners before the Christian era. Gradually, out of the primitive foragers, there developed across the Southwest a complex pattern of agricultural societies; peaceful farmers intent upon harvesting the utmost from a harsh land. In Arizona, the Hohokam peoples created a culture based upon irrigation. In the valleys of the upper Gila and Mimbres rivers of southwestern New Mexico, several branches of the Mogollon culture grew and prospered. In the Four Corners area and in the upper Rio Grande Valley, the Mesa Verde, the Gran Chaco, and later the Rio Grande branches developed, at first in the cliffs of the high country, then in open villages along the main tributaries of the Rio Grande. That there were numerous and varied cultures is attested to by the ruins one finds scattered throughout the Southwest. Along now dry arroyos, on buttes overlooking rivers or dry river beds, among cliffs in the mountain fastnesses and in caves wherever they appear, there are thousands of sites whose people and history are lost in antiquity.
Prehistoric Indian cliff dwelling
And these people were builders. They lived in caves at first, then in crude pit houses. Finally they moved above the ground and evolved building techniques and styles of architecture that stood the ravages of time and still serve the people of the Southwest. In the city of Santa Fe, the Palace of the Governors was built upon the ruins of an Indian pueblo (village), the name of which has disappeared even from tradition, and its massive walls of puddled adobe, laid down before the art of making bricks was introduced by the Spanish, may be seen under glass in some of the rooms of the Palace at the present time. Perhaps most spectacular are the great houses of Chaco Canyon, some of which must have sheltered from one to two thousand people each, and which as achievements in building, both from the standpoint of durability and graceful construction, rival the structures of the historic valleys and plateaus of the ancient eastern world.
In addition to agriculture and building, the Indian of the Southwest achieved great heights in artistic forms. The ceramics of the American Southwest become increasingly important when compared with products of the Old World. The Indians of America and the Southwest are a race of artists. Their aesthetic culture towers above anything achieved by the white man, with the general exception of ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy.
As impressive as his achievements in domesticating plants, in building massive structures, and in developing symbolism and aesthetic values to match his material advances, the Indian’s greatest heights were reached in his philosophy on nature and life. He conceived himself to be, not master of creation, but a single factor in the scheme of things. He shared with all things—beasts, birds, rocks, trees, everything in nature—a life principle which permeated all, a gift conferred by the mighty powers of earth and sky. He observed orderly procession of natural phenomena and ordered his own life in harmony therewith. His was no egocentric point of view which has become so much a part of the philosophic base of the European mentality. His natural philosophy entered into every facet of his life—his daily work, his art, his ceramics, his religion. In short, this singularly fine outlook upon the world helps to account for his success in conquering the diverse elements of earth and sky which constantly threatened his very existence.
But this fine culture did not survive in the fullness of its bloom. What eventually destroyed the vast and complicated agricultural system was not the rigors of Mother Nature but a migration of new people into the flow of Southwest history. Sometime after 1000 A.D., a nonfarming, nomadic, warlike people entered the Southwest. The peaceful farmers, weakened by drouth, were unable to cope with this new force. Gradually they fell back, leaving behind their homes, their fields, their culture. By 1300, only a small remnant remained, that located in the Rio Grande Valley of north-central New Mexico. Across the rest of the Southwest the nomadic tribes, technically called Athapascan from their linguistic affiliation but better known by their modern name, Apache, had replaced the farming cultures. The picturesque Indian pueblos we see today in the valleys of northern New Mexico are the direct descendants of the great cultures that existed at Mesa Verde, Gran Chaco, Frijoles, and other centers of cultural achievement.
The Indians of the Rio Grande Valley and the Apache who controlled most of the Southwest managed an uneasy coexistence. The Pueblo Indians remained basically farmers, holding fast to the cultural advances made by their ancestors during the millennium preceding 1300. The Apache, for the most part, remained nomadic predators, living off nature’s bounty, or better still, raiding the pueblos for food. The Apache groups began to take on names and traditional areas which they called their own. In northern New Mexico were the Jicarilla Apache and in the southeast, the Lipan, the Mescalero, and the Natage Apache. In northeastern Arizona were the Navajo and in the drainage of the Gila River, the Chiricahua, the Gila, and other groups of the Western Apache. Each of these groups made its mark upon the face of the land.