>>> Home Page
>>> Go to Navigation/Site Map
>>> Go to Most Recent Posts

Encounter with the ancients Submitted by Michael Fielding on Sat, 03/13/2010 - 9:05am.

June 15, 1997
En route to Acoma Pueblo and Mission, N.M.

I am in pain. With about 80% of my body sunburned from hiking in Chaco Culture National Historical Park, I hurt. And so does my buddy Mike. We left the park about an hour ago and are headed to Acoma, where the ancient Anasazi built a city on a mesa.

Spent the last two days sort of informally studying the Anasazi culture bu hiking around the Chaco Canyon, where dozens of 800-1,000-year-old pueblos sit undisturbed and unexcavated. Well, aside from the tourists (mostly New Mexicans), the ruins are nearly undisturbed. The Anasazi “capital” was in this canyon, from where hundreds of miles of roads ran like the spokes on a bicycle wheel. Although the Pueblo Indians may be descendants of these ancient ones, no one knows what happened to them when they simply disappeared around the 13th century. They were a culture that ruled much of the Colorado Plateau, and evidence of their existence is everywhere in the park, but since they were a prehistoric people, there is no evidence of a written language other than the pictographs and petroglyphs carved and painted on the undersides of overhanging rocks and the sides of sheer cliffs.

We made a short hike on Friday afternoon to a pueblo named Wijiji, an unexcavated site where Mike found pieces of painted pottery. I came across some tiny bones. It was eerie, thinking that they may have been 1,000-year-old human bones, just lying there only half-obscured by dirt. I know I don’t want anyone picking up and examining my bones after I’ve died, so I left them alone.

The dwelling we visited, like most others we would see on our hikes, was built close to the canyon wall. It was constructed well – thick walls made of sandstone. What made me really wonder was that these people lived at the same time as the Crusades and castles, at the same time the Cathedral of Notre Dame was being built in Paris. Yet their culture – despite its apparent efficiency and order – seems less sophisticated than that of Europe. An ignorant view? Maybe, but considering that the Spanish were already beginning to colonize Mexico and South America, I find it strange that the advancements of the European cultures were that much ahead of the Chacoan culture. Man is man. And whether he’s living in an arid, rocky locale or in a lush, populated one, he still has the capability to advance his own knowledge and culture beyond what he already knows.

We hiked five miles yesterday morning to an overlook above the largest building here – Pueblo Bonito – and a similar-sized one – Chetro Ketl, located a quarter mile away and containing more than 500 rooms and 12 kivas (large, circular rooms below ground level used for religious ceremonies). They both skirt the edge of the canyon wall and, like every other Anasazi structure, face south. The reason is not clear, although some theorize that it was for religious purposes. The buildings, which we tool a closer look at later, consist of dozens upon dozens of enclosed rooms. The Anasazi also had a sophisticated irrigation system, which collected runoff water in large, circular underground rooms and directed it to their fields when the rain season wasn’t too promising.

Pueblo Bonito actually featured balconies. And corner doorways, which were used not only to connect important rooms but also to trap and reflect the sunlight during an equinox. Some of their other structures have been made to align with the sun at both the summer and winter solstices. Apparently a very hierarchical and religious people.

* * * * * *

I’m now in Santa Fe at a hostel. We spent the evening shopping, eating and making our necessary phone calls. I didn’t want to do much except relax after yesterday.

On the way to Santa Fe we stopped for a couple hours at the “sky city,” otherwise known as the Acoma Pueblo on the Acoma Indian Reservation about 60 miles west of Albuquerque. It was $7 admission plus an additional $10 for a permit to take photos. Those Indians know how to pay us back. Anyway, tourists are only allowed on a one-hour guided tour of the pueblo, where about 14 families live more than 300 feet above the ground on a secluded mesa.

The pueblo is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the country, settled more than 750 years ago. The streets are uneven and mostly made of dirt. The houses are true adobe buildings made of straw and mulch. The streets are empty, except for the vendors, who line the guide route with their little tables displaying their pottery – mostly identical from one vendor to the next – and some offering fry bread, cookies and apple pie. The church and cemetery were interesting. There are two services per year in the church: Sept. 2, the feast of the church’s namesake, and Christmas Eve midnight Mass.

It’s a funny concept: tourists being led through the streets by an Indian guide drinking bottled water, walking past residents who have set up tables in front of their homes to display overpriced pottery on a centuries-old pueblo. But I enjoyed it, what little we were allowed to experience. Didn’t get to see inside anyone’s home, but the streets gave me a little insight into how they live – simply and without complaint. The church, with its 300-year-old paintings and Stations of the Cross, and its pink and white interior, spacious and inviting, certainly have the impression of what hundreds of similar churches were like on Indian missions across the Southwest.

The people seemed content, despite the run-down appearance of their houses and streets. The children who played in the streets and on their front porches seemed to reflect the feelings of their elders. And if there’s one way to judge a community’s vitality and promise, I think it’s in the faces of the children. You only need to look at the youth of a community to get a sense of where it is headed. Plus, if they’ve survived for almost 1,000 years at the top of that mesa, I figure they have nothing to worry about.