Bandelier National Monument, forty-six miles west of Santa Fe, preserves
the ruins of dwellings and other structures that were erected by Indians
who lived in the area until about 1550 A.D. Almost 100,000 people visit
the Monument each year.
When many of the ancient Pueblo Indian centers were abandoned in the
late thirteenth century, the people moved to locations where the water
supply was more constant. A favorable area was the upper Rio Grande
Valley in what is now New Mexico. One of the later flowerings of Pueblo
culture occurred here. The ruins within Bandelier are representative of
this phase of Pueblo development.
In Frijoles Canyon, the Indians chose the location of their homes well.
The creek that runs through the canyon flows all year. On the canyon
floor and mesa top there was land suitable to the cultivation of crops.
And the canyon walls of soft tuff (consolidated volcanic ash) could
easily be hollowed out by the Indians with their harder stone tools in
fashioning storage rooms behind dwellings built against the cliff.
Cliff ruins, or talus villages, extend along the base of the northern
wall of the canyon for about two miles. Other ruins are located on the
floor of the canyon. The houses of stone masonry were irregularly
terraced, from one to three stories in height. Some hollowed recesses at
the base of the cliff also were used for dwelling rooms.
Like the other pueblo dwellers, the Frijoles inhabitants were farmers,
raising the usual corn, beans, and squash. They used cotton cloth, which
has been found in the ruins and which suggests that they had the loom.
Since the growing season in the high Frijoles country is short, they
probably obtained their cotton by trade with Indians who lived farther
south. They made pottery decorated with glaze paint.
For a few centuries, the Indian farmers lived in the canyons, built
villages, honeycombed the cliffs with artificial caves, and tilled the
soil. But with the passing years, drought, soil-eroding floods, soil
depletion, famine, and possibly disease—singly or in combination—forced
the canyon dwellers again to seek new homes. Descendants of these
Indians still live in nearby modern pueblos along the Rio Grande.
[Illustration: Cliff houses in Frijoles Canyon, Bandelier National
Monument]
About ninety per cent of Bandelier National Monument is, and will
remain, a wilderness. The rugged and scenic back country is accessible
by about sixty miles of maintained trails, leading to such features as
Alamo Canyon, the Stone Lions, Painted Cave, the Pueblo ruins of San
Miguel and Yapashi, and White Rock Canyon of the Rio Grande.