Cliff Dwellers - Mesa Verde and Canyon De Chelly

Red Tail Hawk Soars over Canyon De Chelly

Sunday, June 8, 2013

Our time in the Southwest has flown by.  Tonight we are spending the night in Albequerque, New Mexico and headed east tomorrow.  There is so much to see, but we can't see it all this trip and now we must make our way across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia to the East Coast.  We will be on the fast track now with just a few visits along the way.

Russ and I traveled this same route in 1970 on the way to  Fort Belvoir in Virginia when he was commissioned in the Army.  I'll have more on this part of the journey in the next blog, but before I get ahead of myself, I want to post some photos of the amazing cliff dwellers of the Southwest.  The Native Americans, Puebloans and Navajos, evolved from living in pit houses, pueblos constructed out of sandstone on top of the cliffs, to  building sophisticated cities in the cliffs.

Mesa Verde Canyons

The Navajo layer of sandstone provided a porous layer for snow melt and ground water to percolate through.  Over thousands of years, when the water  reached a denser shale, it pushed outward instead of downward.  The outward erosion  created great covered ledges with chunks of sandstone rubble along the slope and falling to the canyon floor.

Canyon De Chelly - Example of Alcoves and Eroded Cliffs

When water, wind, sun, and snow proved to be difficult for the ancient Puebloans they sought better shelter.  Already having honed their masonry skills on top of the cliffs, discovering and utilizing the large sandstone ledges provided them perfectly protected places they needed to build their cities.  Thousands of cliffs in various canyons became home for these people.  As long as there was water seeping through the sandstone into their cities and watering their crops above, the population thrived.  Their dwellings were not easily accessible to their enemies either.

Photos from Balcony House, Mesa Verde

The exit out is a tight crawl space, easily defended.

Photos from Cliff House, Mesa Verde

Round buildings were Kivas - family and ceremonial rooms

Building around the Boulders and Cliffs

Grinding Stones for Corn

Native American corn, maize, was originally wild, acidic, and hard.  However, it was the mainstay of the  Puebloan peoples diet and still is today.   Young girls at puberty as a right of passage had to demonstrate their ability to grind this corn so that it could be used for food.  Unfortunately the sandstone created sand grit in all of their ground foods contributing to grinding down their teeth at an early age.  Most were toothless by their late twenties which also corresponded to their death age. The Native Americans were married usually around 12 years of age.  Women gave birth to many (15-16) children with a 50% mortality rate.  A twenty-eight year old woman was most likely a grandmother, toothless, and on her deathbed.

Puebloans and Navajos were matrilineal.  When a couple married, the husband moved to the wife's clan home. Clans were not permitted to marry within their own clan.  Marriages were monogamous.  Women made decisions about planting, building, and when it was time to move on.

Stairs and Ladders, Narrow Openings

Photos from Long House, Mesa Verde

Diorama of Long House How It May Have Looked When Inhabited

Water still seeping at he ground level

Etched seepways and water collection basins remain

When crops were good, cities were built, there was time for other endeavors such as pottery, petroglyphs, weaving.

Eventually though, drought conditions forced them to migrate to new locations leaving the remnants of their well constructed cities, art, and artifacts behind.  Many migrated from Mesa Verde to Canyon De Chelly and other areas of Arizona and New Mexico.

Canyon De Chelly - Magnficient!  Bold, Brave, Home of the Resilient Migrants and Navajos.

Canyon De Chelly (shay) does not have a resident river.  It resembles the Grand Canyon, but the seasonality of the flash floods and then no water makes it a shallower  "cozier" canyon.  The relatively broad floor of the canyon provided a good place to plant crops.  The cliff alcoves provide places once again to build cities and to defend themselves from aggressive tribal enemies, Mexicans, and American soldiers.  The Canyon is part of the Navajo Nation and there are many Navajos who live here and work the land.

Cliff and Alcove Dwellings Above the Canyon Floor

Canyon Floor for Crops and Seasonal Homes Today

Navajo Fortress.  When enemies rode their horses into the canyon they were ambused from above

Spider Rock

Cities built closer to the Canyon Floor.  

As we left Arizona and headed into New Mexico, we stopped at the center for the Navajo Nation, Window Rock.  Window Rock is considered to be very spiritual for the Navajo Nation.  There is a spring in the  window that provides water for special ceremonies.  At the base of the rock a nice park has been built commemorating Window Rock and the brave Navajos that fought in America's wars.

Window Rock in the Backround of Memorial Park

Not far from Window Rock Park, we spent an hour or so in the Navajo Museum and learned more about how the Native Americans were stripped of their lands and fought hard physically and politically to regain them.  This was a sad part of American History, but the Navajos survived and are careful guardians of their heritage and culture.

Navajo Chief Manuelito is Remembered for Regaining Navajo Lands for His People

That's it for now.

We are on the move now as we blitz through the southwest and middle of America.

All is well with the Worrall Travel R's

Escalante Petrified Forest to Four Corners

Escalante Petrified Forest - Petrified Wood

Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - The Last of Utah

After leaving Bryce Canyon we meandered through beautiful country where the layers of 160 million years were peeled away, exposing high plateaus, and cliffs so old that there were no animal fossils.

We marveled at the petrified forest where trees were fossilized and  between 80 and 100 million years old.  The fossilized minerals shone like gems in the morning light.  Every area we passed through bore the history of moving plates (at one time the land of the Escalante Petrified Forest was equatorial and moved north), covered by salt water, volcanic stones, layering of sedimentation, uplifting mountains, plateaus, carving rivers, erosion by water, wind, frost, sun, and heat.

Utah and much of the southwest is an amazing place for those of us interested in geology, earth's history, and the ancient indigenous peoples and culture of America.  We spent a morning at the Anasazi Museum on our way to Escalante.  These were the earliest of the ancients.

Capital Reef National Park

Petroglyphs in Capitol Reef

Shades of White - Pink

Greys

Millions of layers of Earth's History Revealed through Erosion

The little water left in Glen Canyon near Hite is drying up - Can you see the water vaporizing?

Crossing the Colorado River

Our next stop was Natural Bridges.  Here the water meandered aimlessly through the flat plateaus until the plateaus started to lift then the zig zag stream ran faster down the hills under cutting caves where the water powerfully flushed against the canyon's walls.  Where a peninsula was created, the water would carve from two sides and eventually the bottom would erode away leaving a bridge.

Example of erosion on two sides cutting away.

Sipapu Bridge

Kachina Bridge

Owachomo Bridge

We continued on from Natural Bridges to Hovenweep, where we walked along the cliffs of ancient Puebloeans who took up farming where they could find water and built houses of sandstone along the tops of the cliffs.

The built square towers

They incorporated large fallen boulders

They built multi story apartment buildings

Using rocks as their foundation they built dwellings with natural round curves

We finally reached the bottom of Utah where the border meets New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado.  This is the only place in the United States where four states meet.  It was really exciting to shed the the saying "I can't be in two places at once.  We were in four places at once.

Fanny, Feet, and Each Hand in A Different State

I think Russ's Nose is flying over New Mexico

Of course we had to buy a few crafts from the Native American shops.  Goodbye Utah...Onward to Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

All is well with the Worrall Travel R's