A great deal of exploration and careful study will be necessary before the actual archeological wealth of the Mesa Verde will be known.
Balcony House
Balcony House, shown here, is an excellent example of the medium-sized cliff dwellings. In size it is near the top of the group for it contains two kivas and about forty-five rooms. In several respects Balcony House is one of the outstanding ruins and is the favorite with most visitors. Its location on the face of the cliff gave it outstanding defensive possibilities. The only entrance was a narrow ledge that ran about 400 feet along the face of the cliff. At one point the trail passed through a narrow crevice. This the Indians blocked with high walls and final access to the village was through a narrow crawl tunnel.
The outstanding feature of this ruin is an excellent spring in the back of the cave. With this supply of water and their strong defenses, the people had little to fear from enemy raiders.
Below are four ruins that fall in the medium-sized group. They contain from twenty-five to forty rooms and are typical of the scores of ruins of this size that are to be found in the many canyons. In some of the ruins pictured few structures remain standing but careful search reveals evidence of the many rooms that have disappeared. These were once bustling little agricultural towns of a few dozen people. Without doubt the peaceful farmers prized the security of their high-flung villages.
As more and more of the ruins are entered and studied, one fact becomes increasingly evident. Of the entire population of the Mesa Verde, relatively few people lived in the larger cliff dwellings. For every cliff dwelling of more than fifty rooms there were scores of smaller villages.
The larger towns may have been important centers in some respects. They no doubt offered excellent trading possibilities for the men from the small towns. Perhaps a man from one of the small villages had a fine tanned buckskin that he wished to trade for jewelry. Certainly his best business opportunities would have been in one of the larger towns like Long House or Cliff Palace. When an important ceremony was held in one of the big communities, probably men flocked in from all the nearby small villages to enjoy the event. They came not only to view the public portions of the ceremony but to participate in the feasting, gossiping, trading and gambling that accompanied it.
If the large communities were important to the people of the small towns it probably was only in the ways mentioned above. They did not look to them for leadership for certainly there was no union among the people. Probably there were never more than a few thousand Pueblo Indians in the Mesa Verde at any one time. They lived in hundreds of more or less independent villages. While some of these villages seem large and impressive today, they may have had little real importance in ancient times for only a small percentage of the people lived in them. The bulk of the population was in the hundreds of small towns each of which was an independent community that contained no more than a few dozen people.
