Indians of the Mesa Verde

by Don Watson

The painting was cleverly done and the final effect is strikingly beautiful. The young woman is artistic in everything she does. Her pottery designs are the best in the city and she even wears her little yucca-string skirt at an artistically rakish angle. The men of the neighborhood often speak of her artistry. Their wives speak of her extremely poor cooking.

As spring progresses the weather grows warmer. The wet, heavy snows come less frequently and most of the days are full of sunshine. Sometimes sharp winds sweep off the snow-covered mountains to the north and cut across the mesa tops but the sheltering cave keeps them out of Cliff Palace.

As April arrives the effects of sunshine and moisture become evident. The grass is green, leaves are coming out on the shrubs and the earth is broken by the first tender shoots of myriads of growing plants. There is a damp, earthy smell in the canyons; the dank odor of rotting leaf mold, the heavy odor of wet clay. Through it all is the delicate fragrance of growing, budding plants. Back from the south come the first birds and spring is definitely in the Mesa Verde.

The earth-loving Indians are bursting with restless energy and everyone is busy. Sometimes the town is almost deserted as the call of spring draws them out of the cave. The cliffs echo with the laughter of small children as they play along the slopes and down in the bottom of the canyon. During the winter in the shadowy cave their skins became pale but already the spring sun is tanning them to a warm brown. Their hearts are light; they are like unrestrained little brown animals as they play the days away. They have fewer cares and troubles than the chipmunks and squirrels whose lives they make miserable. Each small boy carries a bow and each one knows how to set cord snares in the runways among the rocks. Sometimes a small hunter is successful and the cliffs ring with his exultant shouts as he brings a chipmunk or a squirrel or even a fat rat to his mother. At the next meal he is a hero and receives the choicest morsels from his kill.

Some of the older boys go out on the mesas for larger game. The wet, silent earth makes it easy for them to stalk the deer and mountain sheep that have never been alarmed by the thundering reports of firearms. At long range their flint-tipped arrows are not effective but they are clever stalkers and at close range the silent arrows are deadly. In the evening they return with their game. They trot proudly down the precipitous trails and through the city, hoping that the eyes of the maidens will rest upon them. But the soft brown eyes are always turned away—still they see.

Most of the men climb up to the mesa-top fields even though they are too wet to be worked. Their love of the soil draws them to their farms and they boast about the crops they intend to grow, or listen to the old men as they tell of the miraculous crops of bygone years.

Even though it is too early to farm, the men are soon busy. New land must be cleared to replace fields that have been farmed too long. The sagebrush and shrubs are pulled up or are dug out of the ground with digging sticks. Small trees are cut with stone axes but the larger trees are burned and in all parts of the Mesa Verde columns of smoke rise as men of the different villages clear the land. Usually this clearing of new land is done in the late winter and early spring when the cool damp weather makes it easier for the men to control the fires. If the burning were done in the summer, forest fires would result and vast areas would be rendered uninhabitable through loss of fire wood and logs for house construction.

The fields are owned in common by the village but they are allotted to the clans, which are groups of families related through the female line. The clan in turn allots the fields to its various households, or families. After a generation or two the lands farmed by members of a household seem almost to belong to it but the real control is by the clan. As long as a piece of land is farmed properly it remains with the household but if it is neglected or if the household dies out, the clan heads allot it to other households within the clan. Since the clans are matrilineal, with descent of property in the female line, a man farms land belonging to his wife’s clan.

In the early spring no one is busier than the women. Each day they scour the canyons and mesas for early plants that will lend variety to the diet. During the late winter the food became monotonous. Day after day it was cornbread, beans and meat. Principally it was cornbread and although it was prepared in a number of ways it became tiresome.

The early spring plants bring a welcome variation to this restricted diet. The green shoots of beeweed and tansy mustard and the first tender leaves of saltbush make delicious greens when boiled with pieces of fat and a dash of salt. Wild onions and juniper berries add an exciting flavor to a pot of deer meat stew. The puff-ball, a spherical, fungus-like growth six or eight inches in diameter, is sought eagerly after each warm spring rain. Toasted slices of puff-ball, eaten with a sauce made of salt and wild onions, are a real spring delicacy. Innumerable plants are edible and by countless generations of experimenting the Indian women have discovered their good qualities. They know exactly how to use each plant and new aromas rise from the cooking pots.