Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Cliff Palace

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

The practice of cremation among the cliff-dwellers has long been known. Nordenskiöld writes (p. 49):

That cremation, however, was sometimes practiced by the Cliff Dwellers seems probable from the fact that Richard Wetherill observed in the same ruin, when the above-mentioned burial chamber was found, bodies which had apparently been burnt, together with the pottery belonging to the dead.

The evidences of cremation found in the inclosure at the northern end of the refuse space of Cliff Palace is conclusive. The calcined bones uncovered here were also accompanied with mortuary pottery, cloth, and wooden objects.

The flexed position of the bodies of the dead occurs constantly in the earth burials, which may be explained by the almost universal belief among primitive people that when the body is returned to "mother earth" it should be placed in the posture it normally had before birth. In house burials at Spruce-tree House the bodies were sometimes extended at full length, which may be interpreted to mean that the dead were not returned to the earth mother. There was no uniformity of posture in the burials at Cliff Palace.

The work at Cliff Palace was undertaken at too late a day to recover any mummified human remains, all having been previously removed. Nordenskiöld's figures and descriptions of desiccated human bodies from other Mesa Verde cliff-dwellings would apply, in a measure, to those from Cliff Palace.

CONCLUSIONS

While the work of excavation and repair of Cliff Palace described in the preceding pages adds nothing distinctly new to existing knowledge of cliff-dweller culture, it renders a more comprehensive idea of the conditions of life in one of the largest of these interesting ancient settlements in our Southwest. Of all the questions that present themselves after a work of this kind, perhaps the most important, from a scientific point of view, is, What relation exists between the culture of Cliff Palace and that of the neighboring pueblos? Directly across the canyon, in full view of Cliff Palace, there is a typical pueblo ruin, almost identical in character with many others scattered throughout the Southwest, some of which are known to have been inhabited in historic times by ancestors of Pueblo peoples still living. The contribution here made to the knowledge of cliff-dwelling culture will, it is hoped, shed light on the question, In what way are the cliff-dwellers and the Pueblos related?

The relationship in culture of the former people of Cliff Palace to those of the large pueblo ruin on the mesa across the canyon is most instructive. How were the inhabitants of these two settlements related; and were the two sites inhabited simultaneously, or is the pueblo ruin older than Cliff Palace? So far as the culture of the inhabitants of the two is known (and knowledge of the pueblo is scant), the two settlements were synchronously inhabited, but nothing in them gives indication of the period of their occupancy. These questions can be settled only by the excavation of this pueblo or of some similar ruin on the plateau.[78] Nordenskiöld, with the data possessed by him, did not hesitate to express decided views on this point:

We are forced to conclude that they [cliff-houses] were abandoned later than the villages on the mesa. Some features, for example, the superposition of walls constructed with the greatest proficiency on others built in a more primitive fashion (see plate xiii) indicate that the cliff-dwellings have been inhabited at two different periods. They were first abandoned, and had partly fallen into ruin, but were subsequently repeopled, new walls being now erected on the ruins of the old. The best explanation hereof seems to be the following: On the plateaux and in the valleys the Pueblo tribes attained their widest distribution and their highest development. The numerous villages at no great distance from each other were strong enough to defy their hostile neighbors. But afterwards, from causes difficult of elucidation, a period of decay set in, the number and population of the villages gradually decreased, and the inhabitants were again compelled to take refuge in the remote fastnesses. Here the people of the Mesa Verde finally succumbed to their enemies. The memory of their last struggle is preserved by the numerous human bones found in many places, strewn among the ruined cliff-dwellings. These human remains occur in situations where it is impossible to assume that they have been interred.

Closely connected with the relative age and the identity of the Mesa Verde cliff-house and pueblo culture are the age and relationship of different cliff-houses of the same region, for example, Cliff Palace and Spruce-tree House. The relative number of kivas may shed light on this point.