Weirdness, romance, and mystery dominate the Mesa Verde National Park.
Towering high and dry above the surrounding country, carrying in
places squatty, scattered growths of piñon pines and cedars, it stands
silently up in the sunlight. Combined with these things, the deserted
prehistoric cliff dwellings give to the Mesa a strangeness and
peculiar appeal. These monuments of a departed race tell but little of
the story of their builders. They are the ruins of an ancient
civilization that stood its day and vanished; that--
"Like snow upon the desert's dusty face,
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone."
Who were the cliff dwellers? It is probable that they were Indians. No
one knows where they came from, how long they remained on the Mesa,
nor why they left; how long since they went away, where they went to,
nor what has become of them. Several hundred ruins of the structures
they reared still remain. These are mysterious and thought-compelling,
but they tell little more than is told by the Sphinx.
The Mesa Verde National Park covers seventy-seven square miles in
southwest Colorado, near the corners of four States. It is in the
"Land of Little Rain." The table-like summit of this steep-walled Mesa
is eight thousand feet above the sea, and nearly two thousand feet
above the surrounding country. Looking from the summit, one sees
strange "Ship Rock" far away in New Mexico. This appears to be an
enormous ship in full sail upon the sea. It adds to the unreal and
mysterious air of the region.
Numerous cañons are countersunk deeply into this sunny sky plain. Many
of the cañons are corniced with a heavy overhanging stratum of rock.
Beneath this, in cavelike hollows in the cañon walls, the cliff
houses are found. Here ages ago the cliff dwellers lived in large
communities and probably under organized government--the oldest and
most fully realized civic-center scheme in America. Long before their
mesa country was invaded by the men of recorded history, these people
of the Southwest vanished, leaving buildings, tools, clothing, and
pottery to tell of their odd and interesting Indian civilization.
When the name Indian is mentioned, the average individual usually
thinks of a savage. But at the time Columbus discovered America, there
were millions of civilized Indians in the Western world, living under
organized government. It is true that their civilization was different
from ours of to-day, and happily different from the European
civilization of that time.
These early civilized Indians lived chiefly in well-built houses. Many
of them traveled good roads. They possessed a keen sense of right and
wrong, and in ethics they may have averaged higher than the European.
Among the tribes that were civilized were the Mayas, the Aztecs, and
the Incas.
The cliff dwellers were an agricultural people, and they cultivated
corn, beans, cotton, and squash. They appear to have grown crops by
means of irrigation. They wove cloth of cotton and of the
century-plant fibers. Probably they domesticated the turkey.
The finger-prints in their adobe mortar indicate that women built the
stone walls. Among the Indian tribes of the Southwest, it was common
for the men to quarry, dress, and carry the stones, while the women
built them into walls. Women, too, appear to have made the pottery.
The men probably were the weavers. The women ground the corn and most
likely carried the water in jars from the springs. Were there more
springs in the days of these people than now? Perhaps. Apparently they
had numerous reservoirs.
These people did not possess a written language, and their ways of
recording their thoughts or preserving their experiences were poor.
They made pictographs on stone walls and placed symbols on their
pottery and in their weaving. Much of their pottery is attractive in
form and of ornamental pattern. There are food-bowls, water-jars,
cooking-utensils, and numerous jugs and mugs.
They appreciated the beautiful. Their art, though mostly primitive,
was art. It was generally symbolical. Although many of their pottery
decorations were of geometric design, others represented objects of
beauty in which flowing lines were required. Their basketry showed
good taste. Their architecture was good. Although their buildings
followed varied types, a number of them displayed lines of beauty and
constructive skill.
Well-preserved mural paintings on many of the walls of their
structures indicate that they had a good knowledge of dye-stuffs as
well as a primitive skill in picturing. Remains of figures of men,
animals, cacti, and rain-clouds form a kind of frieze visible on three
sides of the so-called painted room in one of these houses. These
paintings are believed to indicate that this room was used for a
ceremony akin to the New Fire ceremony of the Hopi.
Although nearly everything which they fashioned showed many elements
of skill and beauty, they did not have many tools. Stone axes and
hammers, scrapers, knives, and awls of bone were the common implements
of use.
It may be that at one time the Mesa had a population of many
thousands. It is possible that the Sun Temple was built jointly by the
inhabitants of the Spruce Tree House, the Cliff Palace, and other
houses of the region.
[Illustration: SPRUCE TREE HOUSE, MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK]
But few things which they left enable one to judge of their
characteristics. They appear to have had the typical qualities of
human beings. They had their superstitions, their weaknesses, and
their strong points. But they are gone.
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."
It is true that we know but little of the people who formerly
inhabited these buildings. Surely we can learn more through study.
Thus far there has been almost no systematic study, and but little
careful excavation or attempt to preserve the various objects found in
the ruins. A school of archæology might well be established in this
Park for the purpose of securing information about the cliff dwellers
and giving it to the world.
In his report on his recent excavation and repair of the Sun Temple,
Dr. Jesse Walter Fewkes, of the Smithsonian Institution, says:--
The Mesa Verde is unique in its educational importance. It is
destined ultimately to be a Mecca for all students of the
prehistoric of the Southwest and an object lesson to all visitors
who wish to see the best preserved buildings of pre-Columbian
times in our country. It is self-evident that the excavation and
repair of all the ruins in this park cannot be accomplished in a
few years, even were it desirable to attempt it; the work means
many years of arduous devotion, intelligently directed, and a
large sum of money. It is desirable to open up these precious
remains of antiquity carefully, following a definite plan,
availing ourselves of methods acquired by experience. The work
should be done with care, and it will be an additional attraction
if visitors can see how the work is done. Work on the group will
reveal important architectural features, and add much to our
scientific information.
Prehistoric ruins abound throughout the Southwest. Many show
considerable skill in construction and also suggest that the buildings
were the work of a people who had organized government.
Mrs. Gilbert McClurg, who visited the Mesa Verde ruins years ago,
appears to have been the first to conceive the idea of saving these
prehistoric places for the public--of preserving them in a National
Park. After a campaign of a few years, led chiefly by Mrs. McClurg,
supplemented by the work of organizations and individuals, the Park
was established in 1906.
In what is now this Park, a Spanish exploring party discovered cliff
houses in 1541. At that time the buildings had been abandoned for
generations. No one knows how many centuries or millenniums had then
elapsed since the Mesa was deserted. The age of these cliff houses has
been estimated from five hundred to five thousand years. Modern
discovery of the region appears to have been made by a government
geological party in 1874.
A few years later Baron Nordenskjöld, a Swedish explorer, spent many
weeks with these ruins, and later wrote a volume concerning them. He
carried away from them several carloads of pottery and other products.
The first white discoverers were either religious fanatics or people
of the pot-hunter type who were looking for plunder. They were not
interested in the preservation of any of the ruins discovered, nor of
any of the equipment that had no commercial value. For years some of
the early settlers and adventurers made it a business to search for
prehistoric buildings in order to obtain the pottery and other
treasures which they sometimes contained. Often these pot-hunting
treasure-seekers utterly wrecked the buildings which they found. In
all probability many objects of interest or information concerning the
Mesa Verde cliff dwellers have been lost.
In the autumn of 1904 I visited the ruins for the purpose of taking
photographs and found a party of three pottery-hunters camped near the
Balcony House. A part of their firewood that evening consisted of
precious beams from this ancient house.
For many years the visitors to the Mesa Verde noticed a huge
tree-grown mound on the rim of the cañon-wall, directly opposite the
Cliff Palace. A few dressed stones, apparently the corner of a wall,
thrust above the surface of this mound. Probably there was a building
beneath it. Behind and enveloping it lay a forest of low-growing and
limby piñon pines and cedars. Over all was the ever-present and
brooding mystery of the deserted Mesa Verde.
In July, 1915, Dr. Fewkes put a crew of men to work excavating the
mound. As a result of their labors, a prehistoric stone building now
stands in the sunshine. It is the shape of the capital letter D. Its
straight front, which faces southward, measures one hundred and
thirty-two feet; its semicircular back, two hundred and forty-five
feet.
Plainly, it was built to a preconceived plan. There was no patchwork,
no inharmonious combination. Precisely midway in the south wall was a
recess. In another recess near the southwest corner was a fossil palm
leaf. This strikingly resembles the rays of the sun, and together with
a figure of the sun in the floor, suggests that the building was a Sun
Temple. There is nothing to indicate that it was used or intended to
be used as a dwelling-place.
The masonry is the best thus far found on the Mesa. It was laid with
mortar of tough, enduring clay. The stones of the walls and partitions
were small and were cut, many polished, and a few decorated. The
figures on a number of these decorated stones consist of triangles,
and one is the outline of a typical cliff-house doorway. The outer
walls are double. None have outside openings. Perhaps the entrances to
the building were either through the roof or by means of subterranean
passageways from the face of the cliff just in front and beneath.
In the mound upon the ruins of this building was found a living tree
that was more than three hundred and sixty years old. A long period,
perhaps several hundred years, must have been required for the earthen
mound to accumulate upon the ruins, and then three hundred and sixty
years for the tree to grow. Apparently the Sun Temple must have been
abandoned several hundred years ago, perhaps about the year 1300. It
appears never to have been occupied, and probably was in process of
being completed when it was abandoned.
The so-called Cliff Palace in Cliff Cañon is centrally located in the
Mesa Verde National Park. This was a stone structure more than three
hundred feet long and with more than two hundred rooms. It appears to
have been built in sections or installments, not to any consecutive
plan. As a result, in this one building there are a number of types of
architecture. In one section there is a huge square tower four stories
high; in an adjoining section, a large well-built round tower. This
building probably was a home for scores of people. There were mill
rooms in which corn was ground, storerooms, ceremonial rooms, probably
rooms used in religious worship, and other rooms called "kivas," which
appear to have been used much of the time by the men as
lounging-places. Fireplaces were scattered throughout the building.
Many of the walls were of cut stone, and some were plastered and
adorned with paintings. Paint still shows on a number of walls.
This park contains other large stone structures and hundreds of
smaller cliff ruins. Among the buildings, besides the Cliff Palace,
are the Spruce Tree House, the Balcony House, the Tunnel House, and
numerous buildings upon the surface. Near Mummy Lake are a number of
large, tree-grown mounds, similar to the recently excavated one that
covered the Sun Temple. Beneath each of these is a buried stone
structure. Here, apparently, is a buried city.