Like the other pueblo dwellers, the Frijoles inhabitants were farmers, raising the usual corn, beans, and squash. They used cotton cloth, which has been found in the ruins and which suggests that they had the loom. Since the growing season in the high Frijoles country is short, they probably obtained their cotton by trade with Indians who lived farther south. They made pottery decorated with glaze paint.
For a few centuries, the Indian farmers lived in the canyons, built villages, honeycombed the cliffs with artificial caves, and tilled the soil. But with the passing years, drought, soil-eroding floods, soil depletion, famine, and possibly disease—singly or in combination—forced the canyon dwellers again to seek new homes. Descendants of these Indians still live in nearby modern pueblos along the Rio Grande.
Cliff houses in Frijoles Canyon, Bandelier National Monument
About ninety per cent of Bandelier National Monument is, and will remain, a wilderness. The rugged and scenic back country is accessible by about sixty miles of maintained trails, leading to such features as Alamo Canyon, the Stone Lions, Painted Cave, the Pueblo ruins of San Miguel and Yapashi, and White Rock Canyon of the Rio Grande.
Valle Grande
Another area has been considered as an addition to the National Park System in New Mexico. A 1963 bill introduced in Congress would establish Valle Grande-Bandelier National Park, about forty-six miles west of Santa Fe. Valle Grande is part of the Valle Caldera, which is among the world’s largest and has been the site of extensive studies of calderas (the collapsed summits of volcanoes). Lessons learned there have been applied in recognizing and investigating calderas in other places. Bandelier National Monument, primarily of archeological significance, lies to the east of the canyon-cut rim of the caldera. As written, the bill would have incorporated the Monument in the proposed national park.
Part of Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument