Indians of the Mesa Verde

by Don Watson

The early spring work consists of clearing the trash and weeds out of the fields and stirring up the soil for planting. Dead weeds are pulled out of the ground and burned and the first green weeds of spring are prodded out of the soil with digging sticks. Some of the men even begin to stir up the soil where they will later place the seeds. Corn is sometimes planted almost a foot in the earth so each hill requires a great deal of effort. The plants grow better if the soil is loosened up so the men select the spots for the hills and begin to dig up the soil and turn it over.

The only tool is a digging stick, a slender hardwood limb that has one end sharpened into a chisel-like blade. Small digging sticks may be only an inch screen in diameter and a foot in length but the large ones are sometimes three inches in diameter and five feet long. The upper end of the large ones is rounded into a knob that serves as a handhold and near the base may be a prong so the foot can be used in forcing the blade into the soil.

Sometimes a stone blade is attached to the digging stick. The stone for these blades is found down across the big river, forty miles to the southwest. That is a short easy journey: the young men make the round trip in three or four days and return with long slabs of stone. For days the men grind these on pieces of sandstone until a long thin blade, two or three inches wide and from six to ten inches in length, is formed. The stone is a light tan color, with thin bands of red and brown and it takes a beautiful polish. When one of these blades is bound firmly to a long handle it makes a very serviceable tool for turning up the soil and chopping out weeds.

While the men are preparing the fields the medicine men are watching the weather very carefully. It is their duty to set the planting date. There are countless signs they must take into consideration. The return of certain birds from the south is observed and the appearance and growth of spring plants is watched carefully. The clouds and the sky are observed constantly and the wind is tested many times a day. All of these things have a meaning. Countless generations of medicine men have developed a “weather sense” and barring occasional mistakes they are quite accurate in their predictions.

Old men sit in the sun and talk of better times

A busy afternoon in a cliff dwelling

The planting date finally will be set by the Sun Watcher, a priest who throughout the year observes the movements of the sun. Each evening, as planting time approaches, he stands on the roof of his house and notes where the setting sun sinks behind the western horizon. Each day it comes closer to a large crack in the opposite canyon wall: when it reaches the crack it will be planting time. The moon also is watched and the priests note with satisfaction that a thin new moon is climbing higher in the western sky each evening. Planting must be done while the moon is growing larger. The corn will then grow as the moon grows. If it is planted while the moon is waning the corn will wither and die.

In addition to setting the planting date, the priests must also perform certain ceremonies over the seeds that are to be planted. Spring is not an important ceremonial season for the men are too busy to spare time for the long, elaborate ceremonies. Certain rites must be performed, however, and offerings must be made to certain gods so they will smile upon the people. It is a simple form of “crop insurance.”