Part 2

Basketmaker remains are found throughout the Four Corners country, the better specimens being recovered from dry caves where the more perishable materials are preserved. In open sites, only the stone and bone objects are left, along with the remains of house structures and storage pits.

In the Animas Valley, north of Durango, Colo., there was quite a concentration of early Basketmakers. Earl H. Morris, who conducted the first scientific explorations of Aztec Ruins, excavated a number of these sites in 1938 and 1939. Here, in an open talus site, he found the first evidence that the early Basketmakers had actual house structures. He gives a graphic description of a typical one:

A site for the dwelling was secured by digging a drift into the steep hillside and piling the excavated earth and stone out in front until a terrace large enough to accommodate the projected house had been provided. The floor area was scooped out to shallow saucer shape—in this case 9 m. in diameter—and coated with mud. At the margins, the mud curved upward to end against the half-buried foot logs which were the basal course of the wall. The walls were composed of horizontal wood and mud masonry. They rose with an inward slant to a little better than head height, then were cribbed for a distance to reduce the diameter of the flat portion of the roof, which was of clay supported by parallel poles. The arc of stones was a retaining device placed to hold back the ever-growing accumulation of refuse that was dumped at the brink of the terrace.

Interior furnishings generally consisted of a heating-pit, slab-lined storage cists, some with above-floor mud domes, and usually grinding stones and metates. How such a structure was entered is not known; possibly it was through a smoke hole in the roof, as in the later and deeper pithouses, or perhaps it was through a lateral doorway with a high sill, traces of which no longer remain.

By A.D. 700, the Four Corners country was evidently well populated. In this later part of the Basketmaker period, the houses in open sites were usually more subterranean. These later houses, often with slab-lined and adobe-plastered walls, had a smaller second room or antechamber added on the front through which entrance was made. A few such ruined dwelling sites are known along the Animas River south of Durango. Morris felt that an adequate archeological survey would reveal a great many more, but extensive plowing of the area in recent historic times has long since removed the evidence. In the latter part of this period, the early Basketmakers evidently moved downstream where there was better land for cultivation and the growing season was slightly longer.

That they had a firm belief in a life in the hereafter is shown by the care with which they buried their dead and by the offerings placed with them. It is with these burials in dry caves that most of the perishable material relating to this period has been found. Frequently the bodies were wrapped in mantles of fur or feather string, and sometimes wrapped again in the tanned skins of deer or mountain sheep. Often the bodies have sandals on the feet (and occasionally an extra pair for replacement if the first wore out) and are accompanied by hair ornaments, necklaces, beads, pendants, baskets of corn and pinyon nuts, pipes and smoking material, gaming sets, flutes, and implements of warfare and the chase. The bodies were usually buried in the flexed position, that is, with the knees drawn up tightly and the hands folded across the chest. In the earlier part of the period, cave storage pits were used as burial places. Some bodies were placed in crevices behind fallen rocks within the cave. Other burials were in the open or in the talus slopes below the caves. In the latter part of the period, so much of the cave was used by the living that the dead were frequently buried in the open in specially dug pits. In these cases, evidence of the perishable material has usually disappeared. In a few of the later graves, pottery is found as a grave offering. Morris reports one burial of this period that contained 11 pottery vessels.

The Basketmakers must have had warm feelings of affection for their young. There was a high mortality rate among the infants and children, but despite this they lavished great care on each small burial. Children might be buried in baskets or in large skin bags, but babies were carefully buried in their cradles. These cradles were made by bending a long slender stick into an oval shape, on which a framework of rods was tied to the outer oval in a crisscross pattern. The interior was padded with juniper bark and covered with fur-cloth blankets, which were often made from the soft, white stomach skins of rabbits. The cradle could be carried on the mother’s back, hung from a convenient peg in the home or on a tree branch when out of doors, or laid carefully on the ground in the shade, all without upsetting the baby. Diapers were made of soft shredded juniper bark, and juniper bark pads wrapped in soft skins were tied on the infants to prevent umbilical hernia.

Archeologists have dug up some unusual burials from this period. One was a male who, presumably after death, had been cut in two at the waist and then sewed together again. Why this was done, nobody knows. He was also wearing a pair of leather moccasins, an item not often found among the Basketmakers. Another burial, from the Canyon del Muerto in northeastern Arizona, consisted of only a pair of forearms and hands, lying palms up, side by side on a bed of grass. Wrapped around the wrists were three necklaces with abalone shell pendants. Ironically enough, included in the grave offerings were two pairs of the finest sandals ever found. Over the whole lay a large basket about 2 feet in diameter. Conjectures as to the “whys” and “whats” of this burial have been numerous, but probably the true reason will never be known.

THE PUEBLOS.

The second broad period in the history of the San Juan area is that in which the Indians built communal dwellings called pueblos. These were stone and adobe structures, sometimes multistoried, facing a central plaza which contained one or more kivas. Very similar structures and village plans can be seen in a number of the existing pueblos of the Rio Grande today, notably Taos, Santo Domingo, and San Ildefonso.

Over the previous centuries the inhabitants of the San Juan Basin, and especially the Animas Valley, had gradually developed a different way of life from that of the early Basketmakers. Certainly, they still grew corn, beans, and squash; still hunted and snared game; still grew old, died, and were buried. But in addition to having some of the better material things in life such as pottery and the bow and arrow, they now placed a greater emphasis upon agriculture; hunting and seed gathering were secondary sources of food. In the spring, the corn seeds were carefully planted, watched over, watered, and cared for. As the plants matured, the men and young boys spent more time in the fields. During the day it was necessary to drive off the squirrels and birds; at night the green tender plants must be protected from the deer, rabbits, and nocturnal rodents. Water in this semiarid land had to be carefully managed, whether flood irrigation or planned canal irrigation was used. If all these factors were not judiciously controlled, there would be no crop. The forces of nature seemed increasingly important; too much sun could be as disastrous as too much water. Ceremonies were devised to propitiate the spirits and the gods, who, to the Indians resided in all aspects of nature. More time was devoted to seasonal religious activities, and great care was taken to educate the young in the proper performance of the ceremonies so they, too, might continue to prosper and live in harmony with nature.

Cotton was probably introduced at about the beginning of the Pueblo period, along with loom weaving. This allowed the making of true cloth, suitable for blankets, poncho-like shirts, sashes, wrap-around skirts, and other necessary items. One other important change at this time affected physical appearance. The soft cradle of the Basketmakers was replaced by the hard cradleboard of the Pueblos. Since the infant usually was bound securely upon his back in the cradle and was unable to roll around, the pressure of the hard board, instead of the softer cradle, caused the back of its head to become flattened, thus giving the whole head a much broader and rounder appearance. This skull flattening in no way affected the mentality of the child, but it must have been obvious to the parents what was causing it. Through continued use of the cradleboard, skull flattening must quickly have become a mark of distinction and charm and, in a few generations, it must have become the traditional head shape of the Pueblo Indians.

Dogs and turkeys were still the only domesticated animals, the turkeys probably kept as much for their feathers (and thus periodically plucked) as for their food value. Burials of both dogs and turkeys occur, indicating they were evidently regarded as more than mere food. Bones from the refuse piles indicate the people hunted—or acquired by trade—bear, elk, bison, wolf, mountain sheep, deer, and rabbits.

There was no sharp break between this period and the preceding Basketmaker. The Indians themselves did not know when they left one period and embarked upon the next. Actually, such “periods” are the classification devices of the archeologists, who need names to apply to the times at which different cultural and evolutionary changes occur. In retrospect, the archeologist can see certain important changes which began to take place about A.D. 750. Liking to classify and categorize the remains they study, archeologists first divided this broad Pueblo period into five substages labeled Pueblo I, II, III, IV, and V. Later, the first two substages were grouped together as the Developmental Pueblo Period, the third was called the Great Pueblo Period, the fourth became known as the Regressive Pueblo Period, and the last as the Historic Pueblo Period. These terms are more meaningful and will be used hereafter. The last two do not concern us, for at the end of the Great Pueblo Period, seemingly at the time of the well-known drought (A.D. 1276-99), most of the pueblo-dwelling peoples left the San Juan area, never to return.

The most obvious change in the Developmental Pueblo Period, as compared to the preceding Basketmaker, was a gradual shift in the type of house construction. The single-unit mud, slab, and jacal semisubterranean house was giving way to the huge multistoried stone and adobe structures, which were to predominate in the Great Pueblo Period 250 years later. In some areas, even earlier than A.D. 750 a few people began to build single-room houses aboveground in a contiguous arrangement, often crescent-shaped, forming small villages. The construction varied from district to district. Some houses were quadrangular in form and wholly aboveground, made of adobe and mud with upright, supporting posts; others were still semisubterranean; some even showed the beginnings of true stone masonry.

At this time also, a new type of structure was coming into existence (though a few examples are known from late Basketmaker times). This new structure, the kiva, was simply a modification of, and change in, the use of the old pithouse. A kiva is a ceremonial room and clubhouse for the men, usually constructed underground (or, where aboveground, so clustered in other rooms as to appear belowground in its relation to the surrounding rooms). It is circular like the early pithouses, but normally contains a fireplace, a deflector (to prevent the draft from fanning the fire too much), and a ventilator shaft by which to bring in the fresh air. A “sipapu” (a small hole which supposedly leads to the underworld) was located in the floor on the opposite side of the fireplace from the deflector. Usually there was a bench around the inside of the kiva near the floor, which may either have been used as a place on which to store religious objects and other paraphernalia or may have served the functional purpose of strengthening the lower part of the kiva wall. Smaller kivas frequently had pilasters built upon the bench and extending upward a short distance; these supported the cribbed roof structure. Large kivas had four centrally located posts which helped support the roof. Entrance to a kiva was normally gained by means of a ladder through the central smoke hole in the roof.

It is difficult to assign the same dates to this Developmental Pueblo Period in all areas of the San Juan Basin. Culturally some sections seemed to lag behind others; some ideas, concepts, and artifacts spread and were accepted faster than others. Also, certain regions have been much better explored archeologically, and we know more about them.

Unfortunately, the Animas is one of the river valleys in the San Juan drainage which has not been particularly well surveyed or investigated archeologically. Accounts by early settlers, and passing references in some of Morris’ reports, indicate that in aboriginal times (certainly during Pueblo times), the valley was no doubt heavily populated. It should have been. Good water is readily available in the river and the climate is healthful; prehistorically, game must have abounded in the nearby foothills and mountains. Settlement and clearing of lands in more recent times have eliminated many of the prehistoric remains, but the higher banks along the river terraces still show low mounds of rubble, obviously man made, with indications of cobble and sandstone walls, which evidently were dwellings of the Pueblo Period.

Best known in this valley area are the cave and open sites that Morris excavated north of Durango and which contained the remains of early Basketmaker peoples already mentioned and the great pueblo of Aztec, near the town of the same name about 15 miles above the confluence of the Animas and San Juan Rivers. As described elsewhere, this latter structure was also excavated by Morris in 1916-21. Without doubt, parts of the valley were more or less continuously occupied from early Basketmaker times until the final abandonment of the Four Corners country about A.D. 1300. Although we have no firm data on which to base conclusions, it would be safe to assume that the Developmental Pueblo Period in the Animas Valley lasted from about A.D. 750 or 800 to 1050 or 1100, and that conditions in the living patterns of the people elsewhere were reflected in the Animas Valley.

As the Developmental Pueblo Period progressed, house arrangements became more complex. The next step seems to have been an extension of the earlier linear or crescent-shaped alinement of contiguous houses by adding on one or more wings, so that the resulting plan was L-shaped or formed a rectangular U. In these cases, the semisubterranean kiva was still retained in the courtyard as a definite religious structure. These types of planned communities are called “unit houses.” Most were single storied, though some may have had a second story added on the back tier of rooms.

Changes in pottery styles, and especially in decoration, are very marked during this period. Although plain gray ware was still made, pottery with black designs on a white background shows up in great quantities. In the western part of the San Juan area, painted pottery with a pinkish-orange background and red designs makes its first appearance; examples of this type show up as trade pieces in eastern San Juan sites. The differences between culinary and nonculinary wares become more marked. The former are usually corrugated vessels, formed by pinching or indenting the clay coils while they were still plastic and before the pot was fired. Later in the period, this type of corrugation became quite decorative in itself and some of the better cooking ware aesthetically rivals the painted wares.

There was a greater variety of vessel forms and painted designs. For example, designs were no longer confined to the interiors of the bowls, but were also painted on the exteriors and upon a great variety of vessel forms. Many of these designs still seem to be derived from those inherent in basketry, others may have been taken from textile designs, and still others originated especially for use on pottery vessels. Principal design elements seem to have been parallel lines—sometimes straight, sometimes stepped or wavy—zigzags, triangles, checkerboards, and interlocking frets. In the latter part of the period, these elements became broader and heavier and were rendered with greater assurance. A slip or wash of very fine clay was now smeared on the vessel before firing to give it a smooth finish.

Burials were generally in refuse heaps, abandoned storage pits and rooms, or beneath the floors of houses. Infants and small children were frequently buried beneath the floors of houses, as though the parents either desired to keep them around as long as possible, or believed that the soul of the dead child would return with the birth of the next one if the body were close by. Grave offerings consist mainly of pottery, but we may be sure that various perishable objects also accompanied the dead; however, conditions for preservation are so poor in these open sites that most traces of perishable materials have long since disappeared.

In a few areas there are rather puzzling features about some of the burials. For example, along the La Plata drainage there are too few burials to account for the rather large population that must have lived there. Diligent searching has failed to reveal how the La Plata people disposed of most of their dead. In other places skull burials are found—without any bodies—and sometimes bodies are found without any skulls. Perhaps some of these people practiced taking trophy heads of warriors killed in combat or ambush. Now and then burials are found with an arrow embedded in the body, or with scrape marks on the skull which indicate that a person had been scalped, or with the skull smashed in, as though by a stone ax.

While open-armed warfare, as we know it today, was unfamiliar to the Pueblo Indians, life may not have always been calm and peaceful. Raiding or ambush parties, economic strife, the strains of increasing population, arguments over land and water rights, all may have contributed to making life uncertain during this period. And difficulties of a slightly different sort are shown in skeletons from Alkali Ridge in southwestern Utah, which show marked signs of malnutrition and diseases.

This was evidently a period of growth, development, transition, and some struggle. As in other periods, it is difficult to place sharp lines of demarcation between the Pueblo Period and the earlier Basketmaker and between it and the later Great Pueblo Period. In all of the San Juan Basin, at any given moment, examples could be found of both old and new trends. Even in adjacent areas, there was no uniformity of cultural development. But by the end of this period, in one area or another, all the basic Pueblo traits were established. All that remained was for certain of these areas to become specialized along different lines, to become cultural “centers,” diffusing their ideas to neighboring groups, and in turn absorbing ideas from them. Throughout the San Juan Basin, the people were physically much alike; their language may well have been the same, or closely related, and there were probably free movements of people between towns and even between the more isolated groups and the larger centers of activity.

It is doubtful if any group was completely isolated. Intermarriage must have been common. Whole family and clan groups may have left one village and joined another, sometimes only a short distance away, sometimes far away. It would be almost impossible to trace such minor shifts in population; large-scale mass migrations might leave their imprint on the archeological record, but such evidence does not seem to exist, and it is doubtful if any mass movements of people occurred at this time.

At the close of this period, what were conditions in the lower Animas Valley, especially in the immediate vicinity of what is now the Aztec Ruins? Was there a small, early-type Developmental Pueblo Village at this particular spot? Or possibly a large “unit house” type structure? Lack of knowledge about the Animas Valley precludes a definite answer, and early excavations at Aztec Ruins were largely confined to the main ruins themselves. In most places the digging did not penetrate to what may have been the underlying and earlier remains. In a few places beneath the great ruins, where the excavations went deep enough and where the later building of the great pueblo had not eradicated them, there seem to be indications that there were kivas of an earlier type, and possibly a few scattered aboveground dwellings. An early-type Developmental Pueblo village may have stood at this same spot.

THE AZTEC PUEBLO.

At the beginning of the Great Pueblo Period in the Animas Valley there may well have been a sizeable population living in scattered unit house dwellings and small villages, built largely of river cobbles and adobe mud. The area to the south of Aztec, in and around Chaco Canyon, and that to the northwest, in and around Mesa Verde, had each developed local variations in architectural style, religious concepts, and minor arts and crafts. Cultural influences from these two areas were to have a marked effect upon the large pueblo at Aztec that was built, abandoned, and reoccupied during this period.

The Chaco Wash (today a dry streambed during much of the year) rises in the high plains north of the Chacra Mesa, extends westward for 68 miles, and then twists sharply to the north to join the San Juan just above Shiprock, N. Mex. For about 20 miles it flows westward through a beautiful yellowish-brown sandstone canyon, the cliffs of which step back in a series of gigantic sandstone ledges. In places the canyon bottom is broad and level, but today it is scarred by a deep arroyo with branches which extend up each little side canyon, so that travel on foot across or up and down the canyon is difficult. A thousand years ago this arroyo did not exist, and the Chaco Wash was a shallow, clear-flowing year-round stream, meandering through a lush green valley. Where today the sandstone ledges stand starkly denuded of all trees, there was once a dense forest of pines and junipers. Along this canyon bottom and on the mesatops to the north and south, the prehistoric Chacoans erected some of the finest sandstone masonry pueblos in North America. A number of other large Chaco-like sites were built in places outside the canyon proper, and the influence of this building style was felt for 50 miles around.

To the northwest of Aztec, between the La Plata Mountains and the Sleeping Ute, in and around the area dominated by the large tableland of Mesa Verde, a second regional culture center developed. These Indians lived along the main watercourses of the area—the McElmo and Montezuma—or dry-farmed the surrounding mesas. It was toward the end of this period that the Indians living in the Mesa Verde itself built their large imposing cliff dwellings.