The Basketmaker paintings on the south wall of the natural entrance to the Carlsbad Caverns
Yucca seems to have been the most-used plant for weaving. Mats of yucca and beargrass were woven in a variety of ways. A coarse cloth netting and cordage of yucca fiber was used for snaring rabbits and other small game, and large bags of yucca fiber cordage were made for burial purposes. These cone-shaped, twine-woven bags were sometimes quite elaborately woven of red and white cords with horizontal black and yellow bands running completely around them.
Cotton was grown to the west, and some combination of cotton and yucca fabrics was made here. Clothing or blankets of animal fur (usually rabbit) and feather (turkey) cloth was common. (This turkey cloth was probably traded from the Pueblos.) Too, plain fur, cloth, and skin robes were used for covering.
Hair was woven into rope, as were mesquite fiber and agave. Raw material apparently kept on hand as fiber bundles and rings of grass were common finds. V-shaped cradles were made of grass, and sleeping pits were lined with it.
Pottery is really incidental; and, for the most part, intrusive to southeastern New Mexico. It is questionable if the area inhabitants made pottery, but they probably did to some extent. There is found a considerable amount of plain brown ware, and it occurs from early to late times. This ware, although unnamed except for “plain Brown,” is thought to be of local manufacture. Practically all pottery found here was fired in the presence of oxygen (oxidizing atmosphere). A number of types, varying in color from a terracotta, through brown, to reddish tones, are all classed as brown ware.
The earliest pottery found in southeastern New Mexico is Mogollon in origin. Mogollon pottery is a derivative from southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The Mogollon brown and red wares found in this section are definitely pre-900 A.D., and possibly pre-700. These wares are found to have been used through 1150 A.D.
The big influx of pottery came during late Pueblo III and Pueblo IV times from 1150 to 1450 A.D. From the west came Mimbres Black on White, which dates from 1050 to 1200 A.D., Jornada Brown, El Paso Polychrome, and Brown wares. From the north, northwest, and west, because of Pueblo expansion, came Three Rivers Red on Terracotta, St. Johns Polychrome (from the Zuni area), Chupadero Black on White (from Gran Quivira), Lincoln Black on Red, and Rio Grande glaze wares. It is interesting to note that pottery changes in this area parallel those of the Mogollon to some degree.
Our Basketmakers were dependent primarily upon wild plant foods, as corn seems to be lacking; and they supplemented their diet by some hunting of game. To the south of the Park is the Black River. In this fertile valley, with its continuous water supply, it is logical to assume that corn was probably cultivated; but there is absolutely no evidence to prove this. Corn was grown about 50 miles north, near Hope, New Mexico, where Pueblo-like settlements were common from 1150 to 1300 A.D. Corn, beans, and squash may have been traded to our cave people by the Pueblos. Lack of practiced agriculture in the Guadalupe Mountain area was probably due to the scarcity of water. Water from seeps, springs, and shallow depressions in the limestone was, of course, utilized.
The roasted young bud and heart of the mescal or agave plant apparently was the paramount food, with the cabbage-like base or heart of the sotol running a close second. Yucca pulp and seeds, mesquite beans (Tornillo or screwbean), grass seeds, piñon nuts, acorns, walnuts, cactus fruits (prickly pear and cholla), wild onions, wild potatoes and other bulb or tuber-bearing plants, grapes, berries and others were utilized. Herbs from true sage brush (Artemisia), wild tobacco, and possibly soap made from the roots of the yucca radiosa were used. A favorite quick food was the young flower stalks of yucca in season.