Indians of the Mesa Verde

by Don Watson

There are no windows in the house and it has no firepit. Few of the women have fires inside their houses and cooking is done in the courts. Some of the older women who suffer from rheumatism and arthritis have fires in their houses but the smoke is very bad.

The final step in the construction of the house is the plastering. This is left to the young bride-to-be and she does it with loving care. A smooth coat of plaster, a few red designs and the house is finished. Her husband will come to live in it with her but it will always be her property. She is terribly proud of it. Being uncivilized she feels that her home and children will be the most important things in her life.

All of the houses in Cliff Palace are much like this one. They are small, simple rooms that serve principally as sleeping quarters and for the storage of possessions. Most of the activities take place in the open courts and on the roofs of the terraced structures so there is no need for large houses. They would be difficult to warm in winter and would reduce the number of families that could live in the cave.

After weeks, sometimes months, of leisurely preparation it is time for the boy to move to the girl’s house. He has finished the presents he will give to her, the house has been built and the two families have exchanged the presents originally agreed upon. There is no actual wedding ceremony. The boy moves his personal property; his clothing, weapons and tools from his mother’s house to the girl’s house. They are now husband and wife. Although he is only eighteen and she only fifteen they have entered the serious phase of life and must bear their share of the community responsibility.

The first few weeks of married life are difficult for the young husband. He is living in the midst of his wife’s relatives who are watching him critically. If he fails to fit in, his life will not be pleasant and the marriage may not last. Most marriages, however, are successful for the young husbands, being still pliable, are able to adjust themselves to their in-laws. In some cases the house is not built until the young husband has lived for a time with the wife’s relatives and is fully approved by them.

If the marriage is not a success, divorce is simple. Perhaps the husband decides it is hopeless, not because he does not love his wife, but because he can not stand her relatives. He simply picks up his personal belongings and goes back to his mother’s house. If the wife decides to call it off, it is equally direct. One day when he is out hunting or working in the fields she throws all of his personal possessions out of her house. When the husband returns, he cannot argue for all of her relatives are there to defend her decision. So back to his mother he goes.

If there are children in the family they remain with the mother for children always belong to the mother’s clan. They will be cared for by her relatives until she marries again.

In April a period of frenzied activity begins for the men of Cliff Palace. It will soon be planting time and the fields must be prepared for that all-important time when the precious seeds will be placed in the earth. The frost has left the soil and it is dry enough to be worked so each morning the men and boys trot up the trails to the mesa tops to spend the day preparing the soil for planting. The fields are scattered far and wide over the mesas. Most of the men from Cliff Palace have their farms nearby but some trot miles across the flat mesa tops to farm certain favored plots. These men who have descended from a thousand years of farmers have an uncanny ability to select the best areas for farming.

The fields are seldom large and they are never regular in shape. An acre here, a few acres there, they dot the mesa tops, the rich red soil standing out sharply against the green cover of the vast “green table.” The heavy snows of winter have filled the earth with moisture which will carry the crops through the dry, hot weather of early summer. Then the late summer rains will come and the worries of the farmers will be over.

Many of the men like to farm in the low draws above the heads of the canyons. There is deep, rich soil there and a concentration of moisture that produces the finest crops. Such draws are not large but they make excellent farming areas. The men even enlarge them by building terraces where the draws are too narrow and steep for normal farming. Low dams of stones are built across the drainage, seldom more than three or four feet high and twenty or thirty feet long. The heavy rains of summer wash rich soil from the mesas and deposit it behind the dams. Soon each one becomes a terrace large enough for a few hills of corn, beans or squash. Sometimes there are as many as a hundred of these terraces in a single small draw. In a dry year, when the plants on the mesa tops die from lack of moisture, these terraces usually produce a crop. Even a slight rain causes water to drain down across them and they assure a small harvest.