Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest

by H. M. Wormington

“In no instance did a room boundary remain to a height sufficient to reveal the position, size, or shape of the entrance. At the approximate center of each floor was a heating pit (heating pit is used advisedly, because fire does not seem to have been maintained in the pits). Metates, varying from basin to trough shape, were a normal feature of each living surface. Interior storage devices occurred with great frequency. Some were merely slab-lined pits dug into the floor. Others were mud domes built entirely above the floor. The most common variety consisted of a combination of the two—a sub-floor, slab-lined basin surmounted by a mud dome with an opening in the top.”[96]

Even before these discoveries were made it had been known that the Basketmakers had some knowledge of construction. In the caves or shelters they built cists which provided storage space for corn and which often served a secondary purpose as a final resting place for the dead. Some were lined with grass and bark and may have been used as temporary sleeping places. The cists were oval or circular pits, usually dug in the cave floor. The average diameter was between three and five feet and the average depth about two feet. There were also larger cists which reached a diameter of over eight feet and were four feet deep. Some were divided into bins by slab partitions. Cists were sometimes simply pits but in other cases they were lined with stone slabs and reinforced with adobe. Covers were usually provided. For the smaller cists they were normally only sandstone slabs. The larger cists often had more elaborate roofs of wood and plaster and some even had above-ground superstructures of poles, brush, and bark, sometimes capped by adobe.

Clothing and shelter are, of course, subordinate to man’s main physical need—the need for food. In the period in which we first find evidence of the Basketmakers they were no longer solely dependant on hunting and the gathering of wild foods but had two cultivated crops, corn and squash. Where the Basketmakers gained their knowledge of agriculture is not known with certainty. Everything seems to point to the first domestication of corn far to the south in Central[126] or South America and it Is believed that knowledge of corn and its cultivation spread to the north by [diffusion].

Most of the corn cultivated by the Basketmakers was a tropical flint with small ears. Agricultural implements were so primitive that a modern farmer would be appalled at the thought of using them, even under the most favorable climatic conditions. They consisted simply of digging sticks of hard wood some forty-five or more inches in length. In most cases two thirds of the stick was round and the remainder was worked down to form a thin blade a few inches wide, with a rounded point and one sharp edge. Others had plain flattened points instead of blades.

The implements available, as well as climatic conditions, naturally influenced planting techniques which remained unchanged for many centuries. Probably several kernels were placed in a hill at a depth of a foot or more. This type of planting gives the seeds access to the subsurface water on which they must depend to a great extent in a climate like the Southwest’s. Fields were usually in the flood plains of intermittent streams, and if there was any irrigation it was of the flood type.

Corn was undoubtedly stored for the winter and for emergency use in case of crop failures. Shelled corn found in skin bags and in baskets suggests that selected seed may have been kept for the following year’s planting. Squash plants were apparently grown not only to provide food, but the fruit, when hollowed out, served as vessels. Other vegetable foods were provided by nature and included roots, bulbs, grass seeds, sun flower seeds, pinyon nuts, acorns, berries, choke cherries, and probably yucca and cactus fruit. The suggestion, that cactus fruit served as food, stems from a find which shows clearly the detective methods which archaeologists employ to gather evidence from tiny clues. No cactus fruits have been found in Basketmaker refuse, but a cactus seed was found in the decayed molar of a skull.

Meat was undoubtedly an important component of the diet and quantities of animal bones are found in all sites. Many smaller animals such as rabbits, prairie dogs, gophers, badgers, and field mice, and some birds were snared or netted. The Basketmakers developed some remarkable snares and nets. One particularly interesting net, found at White Dog Cave near Kayenta, weighed twenty-eight pounds, and contained nearly four miles of string.[38] It was two hundred and forty feet long, over three feet wide, and somewhat resembled a tennis net. It is thought that such a net was placed across the mouth of a narrow gorge or canyon and that animals were driven into it and shot or clubbed. The specimen from White Dog Cave had two sections, one nine and one six feet long, woven of a hair and [apocynum] mixture which gave them a darker color. It is thought that this may have been done to produce the effect of an opening toward which a frightened animal would rush. Various ingenious snares, many made of human hair, were also used.

Larger animals, including deer, mountain sheep, and mountain lion, were also hunted, and their bones and skins utilized as well as their flesh. These animals were shot with darts propelled by atlatls. An [atlatl] is a rather remarkable weapon which gives great propulsive force to the missile and which produces the same effect as would lengthening the arm of the individual throwing the dart. It consists of a throwing stick about two feet long, two inches wide and half an inch thick, with a prong in one end into which was fitted the hollow butt of a spear or dart. Near the middle were two loops through which the fingers of the thrower passed. The spear portion consisted of two parts, a feathered shaft five to six feet long and about half an inch in diameter with a hollow end which fitted into the prong on the atlatl and a foreshaft of hard wood, some five or six inches long, tipped with a stone point. It was set into a hole in the end of the main shaft. This foreshaft was probably used to prevent the loss of the entire spear or dart while removing it when the fore part was buried in an animal’s body. Also, if a wounded animal ran away the shaft proper would shake loose from the imbedded foreshaft and fall out.

Polished stones are often found lashed to the under-sides of atlatls. It may be that they were designed to act as weights to give proper balance to the weapon, but another possibility, suggested by their unusual shapes and careful finish, is that they were charms or fetishes and served no utilitarian purpose.