John M. Corbett

“ 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. ”

“ Once again life seemed to flourish at Aztec. This time, with all the extra pueblo units close to each other, the area must have resembled a veritable beehive. It would have taken an extensive farming area to support the population. If a shift in the river had cut the Chacoans’ canal, another shift back again may have made it possible to restore the old canal, improve it, and once again make the surrounding fields green in summer with growing corn, beans, squash, and cotton. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Most of the men and older boys were busy tending the corn, beans, and squash in the fertile fields surrounding the pueblo. This was exacting work, since each plot, clan by clan, had to receive its carefully husbanded share of water from the irrigation ditch that ran along the slope of the high terrace just to the north of the pueblo. At times during the day, hunters would straggle in happily if burdened with game, sadly and slowly if empty-handed after a fruitless chase. Occasionally a wandering group of strangers would pass by with items to trade. ”

“ The idea of agriculture must have spread slowly, for it forced a radical change in the living habits of those who practiced it, compared to their old subsistence pattern of hunting and gathering. At first, the hunting group would regard this new plant as just another seed crop—to be gathered when it was ripe. ”

“ Mesa Verde-style masonry wall.
By the end of the preceding Developmental Pueblo Period the communities in the San Juan area began to be more centralized and to be built according to preconceived plans. Such planning denotes a form of community control, or at least some kind of control over a fair-sized labor force. Today, community projects are frequently carried out in the pueblos by the majority of the people under the direction of their caciques, or leaders, after careful discussions and proper religious observances by the elders of the group. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If a few hardy souls stayed behind, or if a few weak stragglers couldn’t make the trip, there is no evidence. All we know is that by about A.D. 1125, or perhaps 1130, the pueblo was empty. For almost a hundred years the great structure stood alone, untended and uninhabited. Perhaps the local people occasionally used a loosening beam from the structure, or gathered up a few blocks from the slowly crumbling walls, or helped themselves to any readily useful articles left behind, but otherwise they and any passing wanderers seem to have left the place alone. ”

“ In fact, with the warm southern exposure of the caves which were used, the people must have done most of their living and daily chores outside, in the small plaza areas and on the roofs of the lower tiers of rooms. The rooms themselves could be small, for they were probably used only for sleeping and storage. Because the native sandstone at Mesa Verde is coarser grained and does not fracture as easily into blocks and spalls, the style of alternating large and small banded masonry found at Chaco was not adopted there. ”

“ Exactly why, after 25 or 30 years, the second group also abandoned the site we may never know. Times were hard in the Four Corners country, and by 1300 this area seems to have been virtually depopulated. Perhaps the abandonment of Aztec, sometime after 1252, was simply a local manifestation of this much larger dispersal.
No doubt the great drought of the last quarter of that century contributed substantially to this general abandonment, but there must have been other factors at work as well. The Indians regard the forces of nature in a different manner than we do. ”

“ So from the old quarry to the site of the pueblo two paths were built, side by side, each wide enough for eight men to walk abreast. For many months, men with stone mauls and hammers cracked and chopped and ground the sandstone into building blocks. Other men and the stronger boys toiled all day in straggling lines, carrying the blocks on large wooden litters or in great slings strung on poles. Long lines of workers streamed down one path, loaded with blocks, to return over the other path with their empty litters and slings. ”

“ As the glaciers disappeared and the climate became warmer, the lakes, swamps, and lagoons gradually dried up, the grasslands became desiccated, the hardwoods disappeared from the valley bottoms. Small regional differences in climate, sometimes due to altitude, left some areas more desirable than others. Large mammals disappeared entirely, and the hunting and gathering people had to turn to smaller types of game such as elk, deer, rabbit, bear, and rodents. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Digging in ruins such as at Aztec, where a dry climate has helped preserve many perishable items normally lost to archeologists and where there was always the opportunity of suddenly discovering a fairly complete and undisturbed room, must have been a stimulating experience to a man of Morris’ capabilities. ”

“ Section of wall at Aztec Ruins showing a band of green sandstone.
One unusual feature in the West Ruin consists of two very fine bands of green sandstone blocks which extend horizontally along the west outer wall of the pueblo and into a few of the interior [54] rooms of the southwest corner. There are indications in a few places that originally there may have been three such parallel bands.
The north and northwest sides of the ruin contain the most extensive building remains. The highest walls and best construction still exist there, and one can see evidence of at least three stories. ”

“ We do know that at about this time there was a considerable [32] population shift all over the Mesa Verde area. The people were dispersing from their normal habitats and moving into more protected locations or consolidating into larger, more defensible units. In the Mesa Verde itself, for example, they were abandoning their mesatop pueblos and crowding together in the caves or moving out of the area entirely. In the Hovenweep area, they retreated to the heads of the canyons and built watchtowers along the canyon sides and bottoms to protect their dwindling water supplies. ”

“ In recent years, one other major excavation has been undertaken at Aztec. This was the complete clearing and stabilization of the circular structure to the north of the ruin known as the Hubbard Mound—a massive, circular, triple-walled structure, with underlying scattered remains of earlier structures. Two heavy radial cobblestone walls now extend to the south of the main structure, and excavations revealed remnants of other heavy walls disappearing under the road to the west. This indicates that the building had originally been one corner of a group of structures. ”

“ Corn had been known in parts of the Southwest for a considerable time. (At Bat Cave in New Mexico, archeologists have uncovered a primitive type of corn which was grown at least several thousand years before the birth of Christ.)
Only with an assured food supply, part of which can be stored against bad years, can a group find time to devote its energies to the arts and to the development of greater skill in crafts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When originally inhabited, there were many more than the 352 rooms that we can count today. Generally, access from one room to another was by doorways that led from the back or side portions of the pueblo out toward the central plaza. However, several rooms also had lateral doorways, many of which had at one time been sealed up, either by the first inhabitants or by the second group. When burials were made in a room, it must have been necessary to seal all the doorways, unless the bodies were placed in subfloor pits or covered with dirt or debris. ”

“ 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 [11] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Agriculture provided such a supply and freed a part of the population from subsistence activities, giving them leisure to devote to pursuits which were not necessary for mere existence. For example, turquoise—worked and polished into ornamental jewelry—seems to have been first used at this time. Small crude pottery figurines are also found, indicating a growing interest in religion and an increasing awareness of religious ideas. ”

“ Although not all are open to the public because of their difficulty of access, there are 19 rooms in the ruin which still have their original ceilings intact. In making a ceiling, the Indians used two or more main stringers—that is, large beams of pine or juniper—which they set into the walls of the room at a height of 8 or 9 feet, traversing the shorter dimension of the room. Running at right angles to the stringers, they placed cottonwood poles or splints of juniper, and, over these, reeds, rushes, or woven matting. ”