No Spanish expedition ever reached Hidden Valley, or at least, archæologists have never found anything to indicate such a visit. And I repeat, the Spanish expeditions clung to the low valleys and kept away from the mountains. [Tyuonyi] then, is our subject. The Spanish never visited it and if they ever heard of its extensive settlement by [Pueblo] Indians direct mention was never made of it. It was a Hidden Valley in the New World occupied before recorded history began in America. And today its ruins are mellowed with age. It has yet to give up all its secrets about the cliff dweller who hewed three hundred caves from its north cliff with stone axes and knives, and built over twice as many small houses at its base. They constructed five community villages on its floor, and raised corn and beans and squash and pumpkins. And in so doing, these [prehistoric] pueblo and cave dwellers, and I might say historic, too, left in Hidden Valley so much material evidence about the way they lived that in 1916 the entire area, including some of the ancient [Keres] land to the south, was created a National Monument. Later, a detached section of ancient [Tewa] territory, a few miles to the north, was added to the area. It is known today as [Bandelier] National Monument and is comprised of some 27,000 acres.
The thousands of interested visitors, who go to [Bandelier] every year to prowl through the ruined homes located in the Valley of the Frijoles, spend an hour or so turning the clock back to [Neolithic] times when man had only bone, stone and wood tools with which to work. They relax in Hidden Valley—and in imagination try to reconstruct the story connected with these ruins which hold so closely the secrets of the past.
CHAPTER III
[Tyuonyi]
Could one be so bold as to say that the Moslem Invasion of Spain in the eighth century A.D. took place after the first occupation of the [Rio Grande] Valley by [prehistoric] Indians? Archæologists, who tell us stories based on the remains of things they have found, broken pottery mostly, say that Indians might have known the Rio Grande before this time. We believe that they have occupied it continuously since about the eleventh century A.D.
Drought seems to have always been one of the main controlling factors in the migrations of Southwestern Indians. The study of tree-rings tells us this. By matching ring patterns formed by the annual growth of certain kinds of trees, pines chiefly, archæologists are able to determine the years in which age-old timbers were cut. Those they are interested in are the ones used by [prehistoric] Indians long years ago for building roofs on their houses. So naturally, if an Indian had cut a tree down with a stone axe and laid it across the walls of his house, then the year that the tree was cut would correspond to the approximate time his house was built and occupied. Indians did not cut timbers until they were ready to use them. Felling timbers with crude stone axes was somewhat of a chore. Old beams from houses show that long periods of drought reigned in the Southwest. It is thought that these dry spells caused Indian families to leave their homes and seek new lands for settlement and cultivation.
Such a condition seems to have existed in the entire [San Juan] area of northwestern New Mexico, northeastern Arizona and southwestern Colorado. The greatest of the large centers of Indian population, which may have numbered hundreds or even thousands of people, were the towns of [Chaco] [Canyon] in northwestern New Mexico and the [Mesa Verde] cliff dwellings in southwestern Colorado. Many of these towns, it seems, were abandoned when the great drought was at its height between 1276-1299, a period of twenty-three years. And so we find shifts in population. It is believed that some of these shifts were toward the Valley of the [Rio Grande].
Before this time small individual groups or migrant bands took to wandering. Other Indians could have remained even after the time of the twenty-three year drought period, dreading to leave their homes as we would ours today. No, there was no great exodus of population. The people from the great towns in the west did not move out all at one time and completely abandon their homes and desiccated lands. They moved out in small bands, or even families. In some way, a traveler might have reported high mountain ranges, water and fertile lands to the east—the next best to the places they knew as home which they and their ancestors had occupied for hundreds of years.
It is possible that even in the 1000’s A.D., small groups pushed out over dry desert wastes, following sandy [arroyo] beds—thought of water ever paramount. They were people struggling again for existence. Some likely stopped along the way and built temporary homes. They broke pottery vessels which they had brought along. The archæologist found some of the broken pieces nine hundred years later to help tell the story. Whether these migrant bands had a goal or not is questionable but the Valley of the [Rio Grande] was finally reached and scant evidence of these early people has been found. More and more Indians moved out of the [San Juan] area and drifted in a southeasterly direction. Some clung to the valleys, others took to the mountains, but all settled in the general locality where we find most of our colorful and picturesque Indian [Pueblos] so well-known the world over—northern New Mexico.
It is evident that by constant roaming, and penetrating unknown and fascinating country, some of these primitive Indians stumbled into the deep valleys and upon the high forested [mesa] tops of the [Pajarito] Plateau, about twenty miles west of the present city of Santa Fe. The spot on which Santa Fe is located was then nothing but arid mesa land and low foothills ascending to the [Sangre de Cristo] Range of Mountains. Four things were paramount in the minds of these primitive people. They were water, food, protective shelter and clothing. These were the things the Pajarito offered. Anyone journeying through the deep [canyons] and over the high mesa tops today could easily see why [prehistoric] Indians settled here.
For centuries the wind pounded tiny sharp particles against cliff surfaces. It whipped up close to the ground and hollowed out shallow caves. Very likely, these places were not large enough for Indians to crawl in out of the weather but the cliff composition was so soft that these natural caves could easily be made larger. A crude stone of basalt with a sharp edge made a perfect hand axe. Indian men hacked out caves large enough for a little family group to enter. Rain and cold created the necessity for heat. Drills of wood were used to start fires in these crude cave dwellings. Fires made them warm—suffocatingly so. There was no way for the smoke to escape except through a wide front opening. This lack of ventilation created a very serious problem for the early cave dweller on the [Pajarito] Plateau.