THE ANASAZI
Early man, a nomadic hunter of big-game animals, came to the Americas from Asia over the Bering Strait some time between 20,000 and 15,000 B.C. Thousands of years later, after the big animals had become extinct, larger bands of hunters and gatherers preyed on game animals of species still living today. Still later, groups began to settle in favorable areas and to grow maize (corn), which reached them from more complex cultures in what is now Mexico. From this time on, the spread and development of prehistoric Indian cultures in the northern Southwest can be traced in increasing detail.
No one knows exactly when the first people arrived in the Canyon de Chelly area. But a tree-ring date of A.D. 306 from the West Alcove at Mummy Cave and the accumulation of sweepings and ashes at this site suggest that people were living in Canyon del Muerto at about the beginning of the Christian era.
These early people were primarily farmers rather than nomadic hunters, although they still depended to some extent on game animals for food. They established their homes in the shelter of the many caves and alcoves in the canyon walls, and farmed the mesa tops and canyon bottoms. Dogs were their only domestic animal, and corn was their major crop and main source of food. Squashes (pumpkins) were grown in some quantity, and beans were introduced at an early time. Pinyon nuts and acorns, sunflower seeds, yucca and cactus fruit, and small seeds of other wild plants were gathered for food.
This burial at Sliding Rock Ruin shows pottery, baskets, corn, and the remains of a blanket used in the day-to-day life of the Anasazi.
Ring-baskets of split yucca leaves have been in common use from about A.D. 1100 to the present.
This coiled basket was used for carrying burdens.
Indian women fastened rabbit fur to lengths of twine by twisting them to form a rope of fur such as this one. A number of these would then be entwined to form a blanket or a robe.
The early farmers were accomplished makers of baskets, and for this reason archeologists commonly call them Basketmakers. Instead of pottery they used baskets for many utilitarian purposes: carrying sacks, burden baskets, food containers, cooking pots, water carriers, storage containers, and even “coffins.” Sometimes plain, often decorated, they are the most impressive surviving artifact of the culture which produced them. More baskets made by these early people have been found in Canyon de Chelly caves than in any other locality.
The caves in Canyon de Chelly have produced no evidence of houses built by these early farmers. If these groups had shelters at all, they were little more than brush-and-pole windbreaks or lean-tos made of poles and skins propped against the sides of the rock shelters. The only architectural remains found so far are pits lined with stone slabs and located in deposits on the cave floors. These pits were used to store corn and wild plant foods.
Permanent dwellings apparently were not constructed until about A.D. 500. The first such houses of which we have knowledge were small and generally insubstantial circular or squarish pits, shallowly dug into the ground. They were walled and roofed with brush and dirt or mud-covered poles. Later the people often built their houses in deep excavations, and then the structures became essentially roofed pits.
The atlatl, or dart-thrower, and dart constituted the early implement for hunting and warfare. There is no definite evidence that the Anasazi used a bow and arrow until the 7th century, but one find in Canyon del Muerto suggests that they were attacked by a group that did use such weapons. The evidence was found in a cave across the canyon from Antelope House at a typical dwelling site of the early people. It appears that a massacre took place inside the cave and the remains of the dead were scattered about the floor until almost completely dried or skeletonized. The bones were then gathered up and dumped into one of the many storage pits that dotted the cave floor, where the archeologists found them. Among the artifacts discovered with the bones was a short, slender piece of wood, more like the shaft of an arrow than a dart, between the ribs and dried skin on the left side of an old woman.
Little clothing was worn in these early years. Men usually wore sandals and a loin cloth and women an apron like skirt. In cold weather the only additional body covering was a blanket woven from strips of fur.
Several exceptions to this mode of dress have been found. One mummy recovered from the slope in front of Mummy Cave (perhaps of a tribal leader) was elaborately dressed and had a great many possessions to take with him to the spirit world. He was wrapped in a woven robe of rabbit fur and had a basket over his face and one under his head. His feet were covered with buckskin moccasins lined with soft juniper bark. Buckskin leggings were wrapped around his legs from ankle to knee. Another piece of buckskin was wound around his waist; one end fell like a breechclout to his thighs, and the other end was thrown over his shoulder like a toga.
The man’s moccasins are a surprising item, because the Anasazi of this time usually wore well-made sandals. These sandals were typically woven of plant fibers with intricate designs in several colors, and are outstanding among the textiles of any prehistoric people.
In the 5th century A.D., the Anasazi acquired from the south the technique of making fired pottery, and they adopted the craft rapidly. Ceramics was a significant addition to the equipment which these people needed to live in what was at best a difficult environment. It made the everyday business of cooking food and storing water much easier. During the next several centuries the Anasazi achieved a high degree of skill in the art of ceramics and produced handsome pots in a variety of shapes, decorated both by relief and painting. Various styles of design were developed by different groups.
The Anasazi used black-on-white pottery jars at home and also for trade with other groups.
Basketry, the ancient craft, survived the competition from ceramics but became less important. Sandals, coiled bowls, plaited yucca trays, and rush mattings were still made, but were not as well manufactured or designed as they once had been.
Other changes followed the introduction of pottery, and they profoundly altered the culture of the Anasazi. More substantial and permanent houses were developed, the bow and arrow replaced the dart-thrower and dart for hunting and fighting, and handles were placed on stone axes and hammers, greatly increasing the effectiveness of these tools. Turkeys were domesticated, and their feathers replaced some of the fur in the blankets which they used for clothing. New varieties of corn, squash, and beans became known, and, more importantly, the cultivation of cotton was introduced.
Gourd-shaped black-on-white Anasazi water jar from the period A.D. 500 to 700.
Sometime during these years of change the Anasazi adopted the practice of deforming the skulls of their children by the use of rigid cradleboards. The cradleboards of their direct ancestors were webbed and lined with soft rabbit fur, but a new conception of beauty led them to strap newborn infants onto flat, hard boards which flattened the back of the skull and broadened the forehead.
These characteristics of the Anasazi developed slowly and were well established only around A.D. 750. Sometime after that date they began to live above ground, building their homes of upright poles and mud plaster. Each family’s room adjoined one or more other rooms, making more and more compact village units. In the 900’s, these pole and mud structures gave way to masonry buildings, some of which eventually became two-and three-story terraced apartment houses.
The ancient pithouse was not forgotten. Its counterpart survived in almost all of the new villages in the form of a circular underground room that soon lost all resemblance to a house. Each of the larger villages had two or more of these underground rooms, which undoubtedly were ceremonial structures, serving as meeting places for men of the various clan societies and secret religious brotherhoods and for the performance of rituals. The rooms may have functioned very much like men’s clubhouses. Similar ceremonial rooms of present-day Pueblo Indians are called kivas.
Much of the ceremonial activity in the ancient kivas can be inferred from the religious practices of modern Pueblo Indians. A large part of their ceremonials takes place within the privacy of the kiva and includes praying, chanting, and dancing. Details of costumes, in which feathers are extensively used, and of dance steps are important, for the whole ceremony is a prayer. The rituals are performed as petitions for rain, to insure a good harvest, or for success in hunting.
In testimony to the traditions which endure in some human societies, a cache of bird feathers, undoubtedly saved to make a costume for such a ritual, was found in Big Cave in Canyon del Muerto. A carefully worked cylinder of wood was filled with packets of brightly colored feathers and bird skins. There were dozens of blue-green skins from mallard ducks, and even parrot feathers that must have come from Mexico. Skins of a red bird, still not identified, and bundles of hawk and eagle down were also found in the cylinder.
The Anasazi
Few regions in North America have such spectacular archeological sites as the Four Corners area of the Southwest. This semiarid high plateau country, drained by the San Juan River, saw the development and later the disappearance of an Indian culture that archeologists call the Anasazi.
During the Great Pueblo period, the Anasazi developed three important regional centers: Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the Kayenta country. Their influence extended deep into the territories of neighboring Indian groups, who followed different agricultural traditions. By A.D. 1100, all three had become heavily populated, and the Anasazi were building their largest towns and fabled cliff dwellings.
The fertile Chaco valley attracted aboriginals early in the 10th century. They first built on such sites as Pueblo Bonito, which expanded to a village of over 800 rooms. Their pueblos on the valley floor near the cliffs tended to be D-shaped, with central courts closed by walls often as high as four stories.
A hundred miles to the north, on the steep-cliffed fingers of rock of southwest Colorado, the Mesa Verdians built pithouses, pueblos, and about 300 cliff dwellings, the largest of which is Cliff Palace.
The decline of the Anasazi culture from its Great Pueblo period coincided with a concentration of population at Chaco, Mesa Verde, and Kayenta that made the people particularly dependent on a year-round flow of water. Long years of drought from 1270 to 1300 dried up the rivers and caused an exodus from the San Juan River region.
First the Chaco residents dispersed southwestward to join their cousins in the Little Colorado River area. Then the Mesa Verdians moved to the northern Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. Finally, the Kayenta people, the last holdouts, gave up and joined the population in what is now the Hopi country.
Between A.D. 1000 and 1050 the culture of the Anasazi reached its height and became stable for a few centuries, until about A.D. 1275-1300. Their homes were now substantial buildings of stone masonry, containing numerous adjoining rooms. Their kivas followed standard lines and were often incorporated in the house structures, though they were sometimes built as separate, semisubterranean chambers. No other abrupt changes or new forms distinguish this late period, which was essentially a continuation and fulfillment of earlier times. The large pueblos, most of which were begun about A.D. 1000, are the most outstanding development of this period.
In Canyon de Chelly, construction was started on White House and Antelope House during these years. Other important population centers were developing simultaneously at Mesa Verde (Mesa Verde National Park, Colo.), where the largest concentration of surviving cliff dwellings is located, and at Chaco Canyon (Chaco Canyon National Monument, N. Mex.), where spacious apartment houses, one with more than 800 rooms, were constructed on the floor of the canyon. Other villages were built in the Kayenta-Marsh Pass area (near Navajo National Monument, Ariz.).
As permanent homes gave them social stability and well-developed agriculture ensured adequate food, the Anasazi had leisure and sufficient security for greater activity in their arts, crafts, and ceremonials. As a consequence, trade with other peoples seems to have grown and flourished because it brought in the specialized and exotic materials needed for rituals and pleasure. Parrots were traded from Mexico for their plumage, and ornamental shells from the Gulf of California and the West Coast found their way to Anasazi settlements. Turquoise, jet, and salt also became important trade items.
The mode of dress changed little. Feather-string blankets were still commonly worn in winter. Cotton became almost the only fiber used for making cloth. Sandals, which were woven from whole yucca leaves, were crude, compared to those of earlier periods. But painted pottery reached its highest development in both variety and quality.
These great pueblo centers flourished for about two centuries. But this was a time of increasing dryness in the Southwest, and the end for these settlements came during a severe drought late in the 13th century. Tree-ring data indicate that there was not enough moisture to produce crops during most of the years between 1276 and 1299. The drought brought crop failures, and the ensuing erosion destroyed the fields. Hunger, decline, and migration followed. Family after family and group after group left their homes in the cliffs and canyons. Taking what few possessions they could carry on their backs, they drifted away in search of land with a dependable water supply suitable for farming.
The villages in Canyon de Chelly apparently lasted longer than most and may even have provided a temporary haven for refugees from other regions to the north. The four-story tower house at Mummy Cave might have been built for such refugees by skilled masons from the Mesa Verde area.
By 1300, however, all the great cliff dwellings were abandoned, and the people of the Canyon de Chelly area had moved on to new lands. Most of them probably joined the tribes that were gathering around Black Mesa to the west, near the location of the modern Hopi pueblos. Others may have turned south, settling finally near the middle of the present boundary between Arizona and New Mexico. Other Anasazi made their way to the upper Rio Grande Valley in north-central New Mexico. In these localities the Pueblo farmers renewed their way of life, and it was there that Spanish explorers found them on their first trip through the region in 1540-42.
At White House and a few other ruins there is evidence of structural additions made long after the villages were abandoned. These and other indications of occupation well after 1300 probably represent the work of Hopi Indians who used the canyons seasonally for agriculture, taking the harvest back to their villages about 70 miles to the west. Peach trees, which the Spanish introduced to the Hopi in the 17th century, were evidently brought to Canyon de Chelly in either that century or the next, and the small orchards still scattered through the canyons were started. The use of the canyons by the Hopi probably dropped off rapidly after the Navajos appeared in the area in the 18th century.
This pictograph of a soldier on horseback is taken from the Navajo rock painting in Canyon del Muerto near Standing Cow Ruin.