CHAPTER V

Living in the Great Period

It would have been an utter impossibility for thousands of Indians to have lived off the corn, beans, squash and pumpkins raised in the Valley of the Frijoles. But the several hundred who did live here had to eat and in order to eat they had to work. The Indians of Tyuonyi were farmers and were largely dependent upon the products of the soil. Only a small part of their sustenance was from animals and birds. Of course, there was game of all kinds. There were deer, perhaps elk and mountain sheep, bears, turkeys, rabbits, and fish in the creek. But even though this was wild country, several hundred Indians living in the locality would soon have depleted the stock with their communal hunts. In the fall of the year there were grouse in the high mountains and ducks along the Rio Grande. But imagine how difficult it would have been to kill a grouse or a duck with a crude bow and arrow. The deer might have been the prize of the Indians at Frijoles. They ate the meat and used the hides for buckskin. They knew the rabbit and the mouse and knew that the woodrat gathered the edible piñon nuts to store away in its hiding place. The robber, since there was a large crop of the nuts only once every few years! They ate the squirrel. Skunk skins were probably used for ceremonial purposes. The raccoon, however scarce, likely formed part of the diet of the cliff dweller. And although Indians knew the birds of the forest, they probably did not digest the meat of hawks very well. As a matter of fact, most birds were too fast for the ever-seeking valley dweller with his crude weapons.

Few Indian ruins are excavated in which the remains of corn are not found. The ancient inhabitants raised corn—much corn. It was the most important item in their diet. The fields in the lower end of the Canyon were fertile. The valley was a paradise for primitive people. During corn planting time tiny kernels were sown in the rich fertile ground which had been broken with digging sticks and crude hoes. There were likely no large continuous fields in this valley but only small patches where individuals might have had separate fields. Adolph Bandelier suggested that the ancient people irrigated in the Valley of the Frijoles. How lucky they were if this were true. It is more likely that they depended on the waters from the heavens. When it was extremely dry the Indian women transported water from the little river in urns on the tops of their heads. And so heavy were the jars filled with water that they were obliged to use soft pot-rests of grass. Corn was planted in April and was likely sown under a waxing moon so that it would grow with the moon. The Tewas believed that when corn was sown under a waning moon, the seeds quit growing. With careful nursing and watering from April until September, the pigmy ears grew. In the early fall the corn was gathered by the men.

A day at Tyuonyi during “corn gathering month” about 1537 A.D. was an interesting one. The large plaza inside Puwige was swept clean, if customs of yesteryear parallel those of today, and the corn was brought therein. Corn, they believed, had life like people and would be glad to be brought in and housed and protected. It was placed in piles and everybody from the pueblo helped with the husking—men, women and children. And when they finished they might have gone to the cliffs to help their relatives with their husking. As fast as the ears were husked they were thrown on the flat mud roofs of the houses to dry. These Indians did not use all the corn at once. The old women thought of crop failures the next year and so they saved a double amount of the life-giving grains to plant the year after. After all the husking was done, the pueblo was swept clean with brooms made of grass bound with yucca fiber or corn husks. This was in preparation for a festival—a dance perhaps, to observe the gathering-in of the crop. Strange customs these Indians had! While corn was standing in the fields it was the property of the men. As soon as it was gathered, husked and stored, it belonged to the women who were the caretakers, even though they took little part in pueblo life at Frijoles which was predominantly a masculine society.

Not all the four hundred rooms at Puwige were used for dwellings. Perhaps no more than a hundred Indians lived here. The smaller rooms around the inside of the circle, more than likely, were used for storage purposes. If this were so, it was here that great stores of corn were kept—inside the circle, safe from plunderers and robbers. How important this corn was! It might have been offered to the Gods as a request for various favors and Indian women might have taken corn along when they went to look for pottery clay, for clay was a scarce item here. And some of the people might have worn little bags of corn around their necks. Even in prehistoric times a corn cake would have tasted good. Green corn was pounded into a pulp, patted into a cake and then baked on a hearth of black stone over a little fireplace. And Indian women could have greased the little cakes with the fat of a deer to make them tasty. When the corn was all dry old women knelt before their angled metates set in bins and with a hand-piece or mano of black basalt they ground. Their fingernails were worn oblique on the ends from constant rubbing in rhythmic time with a corn-grinding chant sung by the men as they beat a drum or two. And they ground on three or four metates. First, they broke the corn, then by the time it was passed on and ground on each of the metates, it was transformed into fine corn flour. And lastly, it was stored away or perhaps packed over the mountains to other villages. Some of it might have been traded for buffalo hides by traders who penetrated the buffalo region to the east, far out of the realm of the pueblos of the Rio Grande and adjacent mountains.

There were many uses for corn. Bundles of grass were bound together at the tops with twisted corn shucks and used as brooms. And even cigarettes could have been made by wrapping corn husks around the dry leaves of some tobacco plant. Only the old men smoked. Smoking could have taken place in one of the kivas at a time when a delegation arrived from another pueblo. Keres and Tewas might have held council at Tyuonyi, about Tyuonyi itself, and passed around from each to other a fire-stick with a glowing end from the fireplace as a lighter. Mats and door-flaps were made of plaited corn husks and it would not have been an uncommon sight to find these coverings over the openings of some of the houses at the base of the cliff. Corn was certainly an important item.

Archæologists have recovered beans also—pinto beans. It was a type known to the Indians before the Spaniards ever thought about the New World. During some of our excavation work I found that the people who had lived in the Ceremonial Cave, far above the concentration of the Canyon’s population, knew about beans as well as the rest of the dwellers. Beans were one of the staple foods. The people at San Ildefonso today know them as “tewatu.” It is possible that the same name was given beans at prehistoric Frijoles.

There were many uses for gourds also. Half-sections were scraped clean of their pulp and used as dippers and ladles. Whole gourds were used as rattles in ceremonial dances. Broken pieces could have been used to scrape and smooth wet pottery before it was fired.

Almost everywhere were products of the earth. And they were used to their fullest extent. These people even knew about cotton. Whether it was ever raised in Hidden Valley is questionable. Pieces of the simple over-and-under weave cloth have been found in the ruins. The growing season in the mountains might have been too short. It might be that these Indians traded with their neighbors to the south for their necessary supply of cotton. Cotton was woven into ceremonial paraphernalia and also into garments. Men wore cotton breech clouts while women wore large mantas of cotton cloth. This cloth was suspended from one shoulder downward covering one side of the breast, wrapped once around the waist and then taken up the back of the shoulder and tied in a knot. A very important item was cotton.

All of the wild plants were utilized and especially when cultivated crops gave out. There were many in the valley growing wild along the fertile banks of the Rio de Los Frijoles. There were gooseberries, currants, the berries of sumac, onions, milkweed, strawberries, blazing star, horsemint, dandelions and prickly pears from the round leaf cactus. Even the ball cactus might have been eaten. And surely many of these were stored for later use. Little did these primitive dwellers know what might befall them. Raids by hostile bands often destroyed their fields. Fire might have been set to the roofs of their homes. A period of drought could have been one of their worries even here in the Valley of the Tyuonyi.

Mother Earth gave the Indian everything. She lavishly produced juniper and piñon wood for fires, choke-cherry, juniper and oak for stout bows. And there was hard wood for the foreshafts of arrows and cane for the hind shafts to which turkey feathers were fastened as guides. She produced sticks for clubbing rabbits to death. There was rabbit brush for yellow paint. The leaves of yucca, when pounded up and dried, could be twisted into stout rope and cord. Extremely tiny cords were used in making fishnets. Strips of yucca were used in making baskets and also for making brushes used in painting and decorating pottery. Stout strips of the tough leaf were used for tying. And the Indian even knew how to extract the medicinal properties from plants. The Valley of the Frijoles produced for the primitive dweller most of the things he had to have for successful living.

While Indian men, it seems, laid the walls of the houses and repaired them, and cut the heavy roof timbers—while they planted corn and hunted, the women were not idle. The art of pottery making has long been the pride of pueblo women. They did the whole job from beginning to end. They searched the river and arroyo banks for clay and they carried it to their homes where it was kneaded and rolled out into long rod-like strands. All pottery was coiled. They began at the very bottom and brought the long strands of tempered clay round and round in the general shape they desired. And then they patted and smoothed the vessel out with wood or gourd scrapers. When it was dry, they applied a slipping or wash coat over the outside. When this was done the vessel was decorated with various crude designs. It was then put into an open fire smothered with wood, corncobs, pine needles and grasses so that the heat would be retained. This was their method of firing. When a vessel was removed from the fire and the ashes wiped off, a dirty white background with black designs appeared. There were several different types of this ware made at Frijoles. Today we call this pottery a black-on-white ware.

The most common type known to the archæologist today is Biscuit ware. It is so-called because it is exceptionally thick and porous. These Indians made flat squatty bowls, and ollas—the common wide-necked jars. These were inferior types and not nearly as good pottery as was made by other Indian women at other villages. It was tempered with soft volcanic ash. Tiny particles were worked into the soft clay to keep it from cracking and resulted in a soft powdery ware which was easily broken. It is possible that these women were not very well satisfied with their pottery made from local materials. The same thing was true at all the villages on the Pajarito. When water was put in the jars and bowls they became soft. It certainly was not a satisfactory type of ware. And the Indian women might have been very much ashamed. Pottery making was their work, their art and their pride. But the materials in this country simply did not make good hard pottery despite the ability of any individual potter.

However, the Keres women made good hard pottery. They had the clays and the tempers with which to work. They were still making the ware with the slick red finish and glaze designs on the outside which was developed in the Little Colorado district of western New Mexico and eastern Arizona. They were even making the polychromes or multi-colored wares by this time. Trading this pottery might have been the solution to the problem of the Tewas even after the Keres-speaking people had been driven from the Tyuonyi. New generations of Keres might have had a different way of looking at things. Although the red glaze ware had become coarse and heavy by this time, it surpassed the soft Biscuit wares made by these valley women. They were probably glad to accept it in trade. From about 1400 A.D. all through to the abandonment of Frijoles Canyon, the glaze wares were present. The glazes did not stop here but are found at Tewa villages far to the north. These people, too, had been making the same soft ware as did the dwellers in the Frijoles. So it does appear that some sort of a relationship could have existed between Keres and Tewa-speaking groups of people even during these late times.

The main occupation, it seems, lasted well up toward the close of the sixteenth century. Several generations of Indians had lived here either in cliff homes or pueblos on the floor of the Canyon. Any night might have witnessed hundreds of tiny smokes emerging from smoke holes in roofs. The glow from tiny fires inside the cliff rooms lighted the doorways in the front walls. A sentry, perhaps, with bow and sharp-pointed arrow was posted at the entrance to Puwige, the big community house, or on some nearby high point where he could comb the landscape with sharp eyes and would warn the pueblo dwellers that warriors were approaching. A summer day would suggest men basking in the sun or attempting to net out fish from the little river below. Women had jars on their heads. Others were gathering berries and greens. A hunter was greeted as he strolled forth triumphantly with wild game for a meal or two. A sudden summer cloudburst of rain or hail—delightful and refreshing and good for the corn too, interrupted the sameness of things. The tiny drops sent an Indian mother with baby on her back scampering for shelter. Children were running and laughing but ever alert. These are only a few of the incidents of six hundred years of living, primitive and insecure living, which went on in the Valley of the Tyuonyi.

Toward the close of the century the waters from the heavens stopped. Corn fields dried up and the waters of the little river were no more. The curse of the Southwest had hit again. The lands became drier and drier as the days passed. Cliff homes were like ovens as the hot sun beat down upon them. The same thing happened here as happened to their ancestors in the west centuries before. The Tewas, living in the big villages to the north, were experiencing the same thing. There was no water in the canyons. Water holes had gone dry. And there was no water from the heavens to be caught in great rock cisterns. Small groups began to move. Others hung on. Could it be that Hidden Valley was to go the way of all the rest? It was true. Moving was a necessity now.

It is not known how many Indians lived at this place during those last days of drought and it is possible that those who might have remained did not wish to be left in Hidden Valley close to Keres land to the south. So, slowly but surely, group after group trickled out of the Valley of the Frijoles, leaving their homes to the mercy of the elements. Within the course of a very short time the entire population had evacuated. They crossed deep canyons and high potrero tops—dry now—and helped to cut just a little deeper the very same old trails in the soft rock, which had been worn down by thousands of moccasined feet for countless generations. Before they left it seems that they must have destroyed almost everything they possessed. Fire was set to the roof of their large kiva. This was the end of the Tyuonyi. Hidden Valley had witnessed its last great occupation. It had been occupied by Indians for six centuries—Indians who had lived, raised corn and beans and squash and pumpkins, and who had fought and died. The occupation of Frijoles possibly was tottering at the time the Espejo expedition came up the Rio Grande Valley in February of the year 1583. A few stragglers could have still been here—who knows? But certainly by the close of the century Tyuonyi was a thing of the past. The roofs to the houses were falling in—timbers were rotting and cracking under the tremendous weight of poles and brush and mud. Walls fell. It was a deserted town with a background as colorful as any other pueblo in the Southwest. Hidden Valley was still here but its actors were no more.