About the time of Christ, in some parts perhaps even earlier, small
bands of Indians entered the Four Corners country. It is possible that a
few small groups of wandering hunters and gatherers who had survived the
Altithermal were already living there, but the archeological evidence
for their presence is very scanty. Under the impetus of new ideas, such
as agriculture, these people may have been slowly settling down to
become farmers.
Or possibly under the pressure of expanding populations elsewhere,
groups seeking new lands suitable for agriculture moved into the area
and either amalgamated with, or drove out, any local groups. If so, we
do not know exactly where these people came from. Perhaps they came from
the south, around the Mogollon Rim country of New Mexico where there is
evidence that even earlier an agriculturally-based sedentary population
had developed. 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. 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. They dumped the seed in the ground and went on about their
business; when it ripened they returned to harvest the crop, much as
they went each year to harvest the pinyon crop when it was ripe.
But as they became more dependent upon corn and added the cultivation of
squash, these people discovered that two things are necessary for a
group dependent upon agriculture: one, that most of the group has to
remain nearby while the crop is planted, matured, and harvested (to
protect it from rodents, deer, birds, and, probably, marauding tribes);
second, that there must be a secure storage place for the surplus food
and the seeds for next year’s crop. This latter requirement forced them
to build storage pits lined with stone slabs, bark, and adobe which
could be securely covered so that rodents and insects would not eat the
surplus harvest.
Archeologists have long called these early inhabitants of the area
“Basketmakers” because of the variety of beautiful baskets and sandals
which they wove from fibrous plant materials. In the earlier part of
this period, they did not know how to make or use pottery, and baskets
were important as storage containers or as vessels in which to cook by
stone boiling. Although their descendants also made and used baskets,
they never achieved the fine quality and artistry of the early
Basketmakers.
Archeologists divide this Basketmaker phase into an early period of
about 400 years and a later period (sometimes referred to as “Modified
Basketmaker”) of about 350 years. The Modified Basketmakers had several
important traits which the earlier ones lacked: namely, the bow and
arrow, which replaced the atlatl (throwing stick); beans, which added
important protein to the diet; and a knowledge of how to make pottery,
which permitted much easier cooking and better storage of perishables.
The necessity for an assured food supply was of increasing importance,
for there was a slowly but steadily growing population. 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.
Kivas—developed from the idea of the older pithouse—first appear in this
period. These provided a place for the performance of religious
ceremonies and other nonsecular functions. The men evidently had the
time to meet in council and debate communal problems. While the family
unit was still important, the clan and even the entire community took on
new important aspects of “togetherness.”
We do know what these people looked like, since quite a few
well-preserved “mummies” have been found buried in dry caves. They were
short, averaging 5 feet 3 or 4 inches for the men and about 5 feet for
the women. Their general build was medium slender to stocky; their faces
moderately long and narrow; skin color was light to dark brown; and
their eyes were brown to black, as was their hair.
The Basketmakers used clothing of a sort; that is, they may have worn a
loincloth or apron and probably had shoulder robes of untailored tanned
hide for protection against cold. Woven bands or loincloths have been
found in several sites. Most burials had no type of clothes but
sometimes were wrapped in mantles or dried skins. Probably clothing was
never worn very much. Certain “aprons” attached to waist cords and made
of strings of cedar or yucca bast were evidently used as menstrual pads.
Finely woven aprons may have been worn by the women on special
“dress-up” occasions, but the scarcity of such items would indicate they
were not for everyday wear.
They wore sandals made of woven yucca strips or cleaned fibers, or
sometimes of very fine cross-woven cord, with fringed toes and colored
ornamentation. Human hair was used in making rope in considerable
quantities; either it was cut off after death and utilized for this
purpose, or was hacked short from time to time during life. Some
burials, especially among the males, indicate rather fancy hair styles,
and it may, therefore, have been the women who had their hair cropped to
supply the material for ropes and belts.
Both men and women wore ornaments—bracelets, necklaces, and pendants
fashioned of stone, bone, or even various dried berries. Beads were also
made of _olivella_, _conus_, and abalone shell which probably were
imported from the Pacific Coast by trading with intervening tribes. Fur
blankets were fashioned by wrapping yucca-fiber strings with long narrow
strips of rabbit fur and tying these fur-covered strings together in
close parallel rows.
The Basketmakers were especially known for the fine types of woven
containers they produced. Flexible seamless sacks, beautifully decorated
in black, red-brown, and gray are sometimes found. Large, wide-mouthed
ovoid baskets, carried on the back with the aid of a tumpline across the
forehead, were used for bringing home seeds and other crops. Basket
trays and bowls, with both close coiling and spaced coiling, were often
highly ornamented, always in a symmetrical pattern. Designs usually
consist of red figures outlined with black, alternating with black
figures outlined in red.
The women ground corn on metates—flat slabs of rock in which eventually
a deep groove was worn—with manos, or small hand stones. Stone of
various sorts was used in making spear and dart points (and in the later
part of the period, arrow points), knives, drills, gravers, pipes, and
atlatl weights. Animal bone was carefully fashioned into awls, fleshers,
scrapers, whistles, jewelry, and even gaming pieces. Wood was used for
the atlatl and the dart, and later for bows and arrows, for digging
sticks (for planting crops), scoops, feather boxes, and hair ornaments.
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. Here, in an open talus site, he found the
first evidence that the early Basketmakers had actual house structures.
He gives a graphic description of a typical one:
A site for the dwelling was secured by digging a drift into the steep
hillside and piling the excavated earth and stone out in front until a
terrace large enough to accommodate the projected house had been
provided. The floor area was scooped out to shallow saucer shape—in
this case 9 m. in diameter—and coated with mud. At the margins, the
mud curved upward to end against the half-buried foot logs which were
the basal course of the wall. The walls were composed of horizontal
wood and mud masonry. They rose with an inward slant to a little
better than head height, then were cribbed for a distance to reduce
the diameter of the flat portion of the roof, which was of clay
supported by parallel poles. The arc of stones was a retaining device
placed to hold back the ever-growing accumulation of refuse that was
dumped at the brink of the terrace.
Interior furnishings generally consisted of a heating-pit, slab-lined
storage cists, some with above-floor mud domes, and usually grinding
stones and metates. How such a structure was entered is not known;
possibly it was through a smoke hole in the roof, as in the later and
deeper pithouses, or perhaps it was through a lateral doorway with a
high sill, traces of which no longer remain.
By A.D. 700, the Four Corners country was evidently well populated. In
this later part of the Basketmaker period, the houses in open sites were
usually more subterranean. These later houses, often with slab-lined and
adobe-plastered walls, had a smaller second room or antechamber added on
the front through which entrance was made. A few such ruined dwelling
sites are known along the Animas River south of Durango. Morris felt
that an adequate archeological survey would reveal a great many more,
but extensive plowing of the area in recent historic times has long
since removed the evidence. In the latter part of this period, the early
Basketmakers evidently moved downstream where there was better land for
cultivation and the growing season was slightly longer.
That they had a firm belief in a life in the hereafter is shown by the
care with which they buried their dead and by the offerings placed with
them. It is with these burials in dry caves that most of the perishable
material relating to this period has been found. Frequently the bodies
were wrapped in mantles of fur or feather string, and sometimes wrapped
again in the tanned skins of deer or mountain sheep. Often the bodies
have sandals on the feet (and occasionally an extra pair for replacement
if the first wore out) and are accompanied by hair ornaments, necklaces,
beads, pendants, baskets of corn and pinyon nuts, pipes and smoking
material, gaming sets, flutes, and implements of warfare and the chase.
The bodies were usually buried in the flexed position, that is, with the
knees drawn up tightly and the hands folded across the chest. In the
earlier part of the period, cave storage pits were used as burial
places. 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 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. There was a high mortality rate among the infants and children,
but despite this they lavished great care on each small burial. Children
might be buried in baskets or in large skin bags, but babies were
carefully buried in their cradles. These cradles were made by bending a
long slender stick into an oval shape, on which a framework of rods was
tied to the outer oval in a crisscross pattern. The interior was padded
with juniper bark and covered with fur-cloth blankets, which were often
made from the soft, white stomach skins of rabbits. The cradle could be
carried on the mother’s back, hung from a convenient peg in the home or
on a tree branch when out of doors, or laid carefully on the ground in
the shade, all without upsetting the baby. Diapers were made of soft
shredded juniper bark, and juniper bark pads wrapped in soft skins were
tied on the infants to prevent umbilical hernia.
Archeologists have dug up some unusual burials from this period. One was
a male who, presumably after death, had been cut in two at the waist and
then sewed together again. Why this was done, nobody knows. He was also
wearing a pair of leather moccasins, an item not often found among the
Basketmakers. Another burial, from the Canyon del Muerto in northeastern
Arizona, consisted of only a pair of forearms and hands, lying palms up,
side by side on a bed of grass. Wrapped around the wrists were three
necklaces with abalone shell pendants. Ironically enough, included in
the grave offerings were two pairs of the finest sandals ever found.
Over the whole lay a large basket about 2 feet in diameter. Conjectures
as to the “whys” and “whats” of this burial have been numerous, but
probably the true reason will never be known.