Mesa Verde National Park

I worked at Mesa Verde National Park the summer after my freshman year at Reed, 1970. Things have changed a lot since then. There are a lot more facilities and there are now self-guided tours of the ruins. Since it was fall, Balcony House was closed and all the ruins on the Weatherhill mesa were closed. I'm not even sure the Weatherhill Mesa area was open in 1970. We started at Spruce Tree House with a self guided tour. We hooked up with a ranger who was giving a tour to two people and asked him a lot of questions. Spruce Tree House is actually a misnomer; it should be Douglas Fir House. From Spruce Tree House we walked out the Pictograph Trail which went along below the top of the mesa. It was beautiful and looked down into the canyon.

At the end you came to this pictograph. The National Park Service had some Hopis come in 1942 and interpret portions of the wall. It includes whipping kachinas (which should really be spelled katsinas since the Hopi language doesn't have a ch) which pushed the people on their migrations, various clan symbols indicating where clans dropped off and settled elsewhere and hand prints (similar to signatures), animals, people, etc. It's very moving to stand in front of something that was made so long ago. The trail had various interest points where the plants were explained and their uses. The trail returned along the mesa top.

We returned, grabbed our lunch, and headed out for a 2 p.m. tour of Cliff House. This is the largest structure in Mesa Verde. The same ranger gave the tour. Most of the cliff dwellings were located near seeps where water that soaked through the sand stone came in contact with shale which was impermiable. Things we learned included:

1. The people were burried in the refuse piles/middens in front of the cliff dwellings indicating their return to the earth.
2. The buildings were built haphazardly by different extended family groups.
3. The reason the Anasazi left is unknown but could have been draught, exhaustion of the soil from the farming, but not warfare. There is very little indication of defensive building or of people who died from war.
4. The women married at about 12 and had 4-5 children and were usually dead by 25. The men lived to their mid-30's.
5. The corn was ground with a sandstone "mano" on a sandstone "metate" which resulted in a lot of sand in the ground corn. Most Anasazis had no teeth left and many had evidence of severe abscesses.
6. The kivas were usually covered and the ledges were not used for sitting, but for the placement of ceremonial objects.
7. About 80-90% of the structures were in original condition.
8. One of the reasons for the cliff dwellings is that as the population increased, moving the houses off the mesa tops where they farmed increased the amount of arable land.
9. Cliff House had 23 kivas, many more than what would be built by the population of the grouping, indicating that it may have been a central location for diverse family groups.