Pueblo people | The USA: Landscapes and Urban Spaces

Mesa Verde National Park gave us the opportunity to engage with some delightfully verdant scenery and highly distinctive first people ruins, thereby providing a contrast with what had dominated the last few days, remarkably arid canyon and mountain scenery in which traces of human existence were relatively few in number. We called at the national park visitor and research centre, then ascended the scenically rewarding few miles to Mancos Valley Overlook. A tunnel took the road through a mountain and we stopped at Montezuma Valley Overlook. We also stopped at Park Point Overlook, Geologic Overlook, Far View Area, Far View Sites, Cedar Tree Tower, Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, Spruce Tree House, Mesa Top Loop Cliff Palace and Balcony House.

Some of the remarkable ruins of the ancestral Pueblo people had to be viewed from afar, but most we could examine close up, not least along the Mesa Top Loop where we encountered 600 years of Puebloan architectural development (the Pueblo people moved to Mesa Verde about the year 550). First came the pit houses. Houses were built above ground using poles and mud, or adobe, from about 750. A few pit houses were retained and developed into kivas, which seem to have been used for different religious, social and utilitarian purposes. By 1000, construction skills had advanced so much that houses were built with stone. Walls of thick double-coursed stone often rose two or three storeys and were joined as units of 50 or more rooms. For a reason or reasons not yet understood, about the year 1225, people began to build their stone villages in the cliff alcoves that probably sheltered their ancestors when they first arrived in Mesa Verde about the year 550. It was the cliff dwellings that made the national park most famous. Most were built from the late 1190s to the 1270s. However, Mesa Verde was deserted by about 1300. Whether because of drought, soils drained of their nutrients or the lack of wild animals to hunt, the Pueblo people left for New Mexico and Arizona where the Hopi Indians and the people of Zuni, Laguna, Acoma and the pueblos along the Rio Grande trace their ancestry to the Pueblo people of Mesa Verde.

In the museum and the visitor and research centre, we acquired an insight into the flora and fauna of the area, and into the tools, weapons, basketry and pottery for which the Pueblo people were rightly famous. We also learned that trade took place with people far to the west and south (seashells have been found in the area that originate from the Pacific Ocean).

Mesa Verde, Colorado

It was mid-afternoon and an ideal time to visit Hovenweep National Monument. We drove from Bluff along the very pretty valley of the San Juan River to Montezuma Creek where we took a wrong turn, thereby adding about 15 miles to our journey (nonetheless, the scenery was very attractive).

The canyon and mesa country north of the San Juan River possessed many archaeological sites where ancestors of today’s Pueblo people once lived. Round, square and D-shaped towers grouped at canyon heads confirmed the existence of once-thriving communities. No one had lived in the communities for over 700 years, but their construction and location still inspired awe.

Many dwellings stood on the canyon rim and some were built on isolated or irregular boulders, which were not the best sites for safety or quick and convenient access. Most dwellings were associated with springs and seeps near canyon heads. Such locations suggest that the ancestral Pueblo people were protecting something, if not themselves, then perhaps the water itself, an extremely valuable resource for desert-dwelling agriculturalists. By 1200, the population had grown considerably and pollen studies reveal that most of the tree cover had been removed. Perhaps drought and depleted resources explain why the ancestral Pueblo people suddenly departed from the area in the late 1200s.

Someone called W. D. Huntington first reported these structures after leading an 1854 Mormon expedition into south-east Utah. In 1874, the photographer W. H. Jackson first used the name “Hovenweep” to describe the area, which is Ute and Paiute for “deserted valley”. It was in 1923 that the area, straddling the border between Utah and Colorado, became a national monument. Today, quiet and primitive trails led past tall towers, outlines of multi-room pueblos, piles of stone blocks, small cliff dwellings, pottery shards and rock art. We were left in no doubt that this ruggedly beautiful high desert setting was home to a substantial population and that the stonemasons had developed enviable skills as builders. We noted the finely hewn stone blocks, the clearly defined corners and the smooth curves of Hovenweep’s architecture. The stonemasons’ skills were almost as good as the skills of the stonemasons responsible for the ruins in Mesa Verde.