Indians of the Mesa Verde

by Don Watson

There is much evidence that the culture became more and more stabilized with each succeeding generation. Farming methods improved and the harvests became more abundant. With dependable supplies of food, the added comfort and security of the dwellings and the improvement of living conditions the population increased. By the early part of the eighth century a large population of farming Indians occupied the Mesa Verde and surrounding regions. It must have been a peaceful time for the villages were widely scattered over the mesas and open valleys, evidently with little thought of concentration for safety.

Ruins of this period are found in abundance in the Mesa Verde. Scores of pithouse and slab-house villages have been found on the mesa tops and one pithouse village has been found in a cave. In most cases pithouses which were built in caves are now underneath the cliff dwellings which were built later. Step House Cave, however, proved to be an exception. In this cave, located in Long Canyon, the cliff dwelling occupies only the north end of the cave leaving a large clear space at the south end. This area was covered with several feet of trash which the occupants of the cliff dwelling had thrown out. In 1926, Supt. Jesse L. Nusbaum excavated under this trash layer and found three pithouses which had been built about 600 A.D. This discovery indicates that some of the early pithouses were built in caves and that excavation under some of the cliff dwellings should reveal further evidence of cave occupation during Modified Basket Maker times.

DEVELOPMENTAL PUEBLO PERIOD. 750 to 1100 A.D.

As we move into this new period it should be stressed that there was no radical change in the culture. The same people continued to occupy the Mesa Verde and they showed the same progressive tendencies which we have seen in the earlier periods.

At this time, however, the people did a surprising thing. They adopted a new cradle. Offhand, this may not seem especially important but it had a startling effect and early archeologists were confronted with a baffling problem. The new cradle caused such a radical change in the appearance of the Indians that until recently the archeologists thought a new people had moved into the region.

When the Basket Makers first were recognized half a century ago it was noticed immediately that their skulls were strikingly different from those of the people who had lived in pueblos and cliff dwellings. Skulls of the Basket Makers were longer and narrower and there was no deformity on the back. In contrast, skulls of the later people were broad and this broadness was emphasized by a flattening on the back, a deformity caused by the hard cradle board. The head shape was so radically different that early archeologists assumed a new, broad-headed people had moved into the region during the eighth century and merged with the Basket Makers.

As southwestern archeology progressed through uncertain early years this assumption that the Basket Makers and Pueblos were two different people was generally accepted. In those early days there was not enough skeletal material for an exhaustive comparative study and while many questions were unanswered and doubts were often expressed by archeologists, the separate identity of the Basket Makers and Pueblos was generally accepted.

Now the story has changed. Recent intensive study of a large amount of skeletal material, ranging from the ancient Basket Makers to recent Pueblo Indians, has thrown new light on the problem. The result is that after all these years it now becomes apparent that there was no radical change of physical type at all. The Basket Maker type seems to have persisted with little evidence of any great addition of new blood.

The radical change in the shape of the heads seems to have resulted from the new cradle which the people adopted during the eighth century. The soft, padded cradle of the Basket Makers was discarded and within a short time all of the women of the tribe were using a cradle made of wood. No pillow was placed under the baby’s head and the result was inevitable. The back of the head flattened, the sides bulged and a broad, deformed head resulted.

How can this change of cradles be explained except by saying that it was a craze, a new beauty fad which caught the fancy of the people. Where it came from is not known: surely it must have been borrowed from other people with whom the Basket Makers came in contact. Evidently the new head shape became fashionable for within a short time the new cradle was adopted throughout the area. Instead of changing the hat or “hairdo”, as is the custom among modern people, they went to the very root of the matter and changed the shape of the skull itself.