As autumn fades into winter the people of Cliff Palace face it with confidence. Winter is always an ordeal but they are well-prepared. There is an abundance of food and there is ample clothing. Great piles of wood have been gathered and the houses have carefully been rechinked. There will be suffering and many deaths during the cold months that are ahead but spring is just beyond.
7
WINTER
Winter is the least enjoyable of all seasons for the people of Cliff Palace. It is a long, quiet, cold season, when the witches plague the people with their evil deeds. There is much sickness and suffering and often the sadness of death hangs over the town. Those who are active and healthy do not mind it so much, but it is an uncomfortable season for the children and an agonizing time for older men and women who suffer from rheumatism and arthritis.
During the late fall the weather has grown colder and colder and now in December comes true winter. Cold winds sweep down from the mountains to the north, bringing the snow: soon the mesa tops are white. In the vicinity of Cliff Palace it seldom gets deep. When it reaches a depth of a foot, it is considered heavy, but if it reaches a depth of two feet or more the people talk excitedly about it and the old men begin to recall the heavy snows of by-gone days. The snow will not remain on the ground all winter for the mesa slopes to the south and the rays of the sun beat directly down upon it. The first December snow will soon melt and the mesa tops will be dry for a time. Then another snow storm will turn it white again but that, too, will melt away and so it will continue through the winter. Occasionally, there will be warm days when the mesa tops will be muddy and small streams of water will come trickling down the cliffs.
As the cold increases the people gradually become accustomed to it. Their houses are never perfectly warm and comfortable so their strong, healthy bodies become hardened to the chill of the shadowy cave. Sometimes the night temperatures drop close to, or even below, zero. Since the cave faces west the sun does not come in until the middle of the afternoon and during the morning the temperature rises very little. When the sun finally comes into the cave in the afternoon it brings a sudden warmth and for a couple of hours the people are almost comfortable.
There are old men in the town who can remember when all of the people lived in pueblos on the mesa top and they never stop telling about those better days. The moment the sun came up in the morning the temperature began to rise and all through the day it warmed the open pueblos. The old men insist the people were happier then, the witches were less troublesome and there was less sickness. Remembering those sunny days the old men mutter about the depressing shadows that chill Cliff Palace during the winter.
Dozens of small fires burn constantly in the cave and those fires, in addition to the natural warmth of hundreds of closely crowded people, dull the sharpest edge of the cold. Clothing is the final defense and as the severity of winter increases, more and more is worn.
Cotton cloth, feather blankets and buckskin robes are worn in every conceivable manner except as actual tailored garments. The nearest approach to tailored clothing is an occasional slip-over buckskin jacket without sleeves. Sometimes a robe is slit in the center and slipped, poncho-like, over the head. Pieces of feather cloth, cotton cloth or buckskin are tied about the body as close-fitting jackets or draped, skirt-like, from the waist. Large, soft feather blankets and buckskin robes are draped over the shoulders and drawn in about the body. Short leggins are made of buckskin, or woven of human hair, to add to the comfort of the lower legs.
Taken as a whole, they are a raggedy-looking crowd but the clothing does give protection against the cold. The people have tanned buckskin in abundance, there is considerable cotton cloth and each person has at least one feather robe. By utilizing these in every possible way the desired effect is achieved, even though neat tailoring is unknown.
Shadowy though the cave may be, it is free of wind and snow and while complete comfort may seldom be attained, except in the kivas, most of the people become accustomed to the chill. But those who are naturally weak and those who are weakened by illness or age suffer greatly from the cold of winter.