Basket Maker cradle
Pueblo cradle board
From this time on we are going to know the people as Pueblo Indians. “Pueblo” is a Spanish word meaning village, or town, and was applied by the early Spaniards to Indians whom they found living in large, compact, many-roomed villages. It is an excellent term, as far as architecture is concerned, for from the eighth century on the Indians of the Mesa Verde showed an increasing tendency to join their houses together to form compact villages. The term, Developmental Pueblo period, means exactly what it says. It was a time of development and expansion and during this period the groundwork was laid for the Great Pueblo period which followed.
Once again we should stress a very important point. Even though we have changed names, even though we have stepped from the Modified Basket Maker to the Developmental Pueblo period there was no abrupt cultural change. The only real difference as we move from one period to the next is in the appearance of the people. Because of the adoption of the hard cradle their heads became broad and deformed but otherwise the changes were gradual and it is difficult to draw a sharp line between the two periods.
During the Developmental Pueblo period there was the same gradual development in all lines that we have seen throughout the earlier periods. The people were alert and curious: they were energetic and ambitious and the result was steady development. It was a period of peace and the people seem to have lived without fear of an enemy. The caves were deserted and villages were built on the open mesa tops or in broad valleys near the fields of corn, beans and squash which provided them with food in abundance. The population grew rapidly and spread over a vast area in the Four Corners region where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico now meet at a common point. It was a far-flung culture and there is every evidence that for a long time there was peace and prosperity among the people.
The most important development during this period was in the field of architecture. At the end of the previous period most of the villages consisted of groups of individual pithouses. Some of the villages, however, were made up of long curving rows of flat-roofed houses built of poles, stone slabs and adobe. In front of the living rooms were one or more pithouses which probably served as ceremonial rooms.
At first the Developmental Pueblo villages were merely continuations of these earlier villages. As time passed improvements came, indicating that the builders were doing a great deal of experimenting. Walls of many types were built and with each generation there was progress. During this period the population of the Mesa Verde evidently was large for the mesa tops are dotted with scores, perhaps hundreds, of ruins.
Recently five ruins dating from this period have been excavated in the Mesa Verde. Two of the ruins are at the Twin Trees site, with one ruin sitting on top of the other. The other three are less than three hundred yards away at Site 16. And here again the ruins are piled up one on top of another. The people showed a strong tendency to build villages on the ruins of earlier villages.