Indians of the Mesa Verde

by Don Watson

The five ruins, taken in chronological order, show very clearly the architectural progress of the Developmental Pueblo period:

850 A.D. The first ruin is a slab-house pueblo. The floors of the living rooms were a foot or more below ground level and the earthen walls were lined with slabs. The upper walls consisted of slender posts, set a few inches apart, with the intervening spaces filled with adobe. In front of the long row of living rooms were four pitrooms, each one being about six feet deep. The roof of each pitroom was supported on four posts set in the floor of the room.

900 A.D. The second ruin is a post-and-adobe pueblo. The floors of the living rooms were not dug below ground level and no stone slabs were used. The walls consisted of posts, set upright a foot or more apart. The spaces between the posts were filled with adobe into which had been forced many small stones. In front of the living rooms was a kiva of a very early type. The walls were of plastered native earth. The roof was supported on four posts but instead of rising from the kiva floor the posts were built into the face of a bench which encircled the room.

950 A.D. The third ruin is a small masonry pueblo. The walls were built of stones and adobe but the masonry was exceedingly crude. The stones were irregular in shape and only a few were laid in even rows. An excessive amount of adobe was used; actually the walls were about fifty percent adobe and fifty percent stone. In front of the living rooms was an early type kiva. The walls were of plastered native earth and the roof, instead of being supported on posts, was supported on four stone pillars, or pilasters, which rested on the bench.

1000 A.D. The fourth ruin is a small pueblo built of single-coursed masonry. The walls of the living rooms contain stones which were well shaped but without smoothed faces. The stones were laid in even rows but the walls were only the thickness of a single stone, measuring less than a foot in width. The kiva, which was located in front of the living rooms, approached the standard Mesa Verde type. The walls below the bench were faced with stone and the roof was supported by six stone pilasters which rested on the bench.

1075 A.D. The fifth ruin is a pueblo built of thick, double-coursed masonry. The faces of the stones were smoothed and some retain the peck marks of the tools used in the shaping process. Some of the walls were two stories high. The kiva, located in front of the living rooms, was of excellent construction. The roof was supported on eight stone pillars which rested on the bench, and the walls, from the floor to the top of the pillars, were faced with masonry of good quality. One new architectural feature, the tower, appears in this ruin. There are three of these tall, circular structures—we shall consider them in a moment.

The five ruins demonstrate graphically the steady architectural progress of the Developmental Pueblo period. In the beginning the houses were crudely built of posts and adobe and the underground rooms, which may not have been entirely ceremonial at first, were merely deep pitrooms. At the end of the period the houses were of good masonry and the standard Mesa Verde kiva had developed. Certainly this development shows that the people were constantly experimenting and as a result the architecture improved steadily. During the latter part of the period few large pueblos were built. Usually a village consisted of a few living rooms joined together in a compact unit. A short distance south of the living rooms was a single kiva.

Pottery also made rapid advances during this period. The women had become convinced of its value and they experimented endlessly, probably in a spirit of friendly competition. During the preceding period pottery was dull gray in color and the crudely painted designs did not contrast well with this drab background. The women now learned to apply a thin wash of white clay to the vessels. This wash or slip, as it is called, produced a clear white background and against this the constantly improving designs stood out in bold contrast. Corrugated pottery appeared and vessels of this type were used chiefly for cooking purposes.

Good baskets still were made but pottery vessels were superior to baskets for most purposes. As a result the quality of the baskets began to decline. Sandals were much like those of earlier periods except that the toes were rounded and there was less elaborate decoration. Cotton came into use about the middle of the period and loom-woven cloth made its appearance. Recent experiments have indicated that cotton will not grow in the Mesa Verde so it must have been imported from warmer areas to the south.

Minor arts and crafts improved as the people became more proficient in the use of bone, stone and wood. An interesting change occurred in the metate, or milling stone, during this period. Earlier metates were trough-shaped, with a shallow groove for a grinding surface. Now a flat metate came into use and the entire surface was used for grinding the corn.