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Base Camp
The Pueblos
This study unit continues to seek the answer to the question of
"Where Did They Go?". We have seen in our previous learning projects that
there were thousands of early Southwest peoples who abandoned large city
and outlying town sites around 1200 AD. What caused these changes? Climate?
Food sources? Poverty? Cultural alliances? Warfare? Did these Ancient
Ones disappear? Or did they move to create other communities?
Hopi
Altar
Native
peoples living along the northern Rio Grande River in New Mexico, on the
arid mesas of the Hopi in eastern Arizona, and anthropologists who study
the ancient Anasazi of Mesa Verde all believe that the Ancient Ones did
not disappear but migrated to other locations in the Southwest. When conditions
made it no longer possible to support the large populations in those majestic
cities and outliers, there is an Native American oral history that tracks
their relocation to the small adobe and pueblo villages that then existed
on the Hopi mesa tops and around the vicinity of the Rio Grande River.
Scientists also believe that part of the population may also have moved
down into the Casa Grandes area as the vast city of Paquime sprang to
prominence in these years immediately following the dispersal of the more
northern Anasazi. As we track these migrations, we will discover that
the Indian Pueblos of today in Arizona and New Mexico have direct links
to these ancestral peoples.
Mesa Verde
Chaco Canyon
The Pueblos of the 13th and 14th Century
During the years between 1200 and 1400 AD there was a remarkable
change in Southwest populations. While some towns and cities were
abruptly abandoned, other small villages rapidly became cities built
of adobe and stone in a few years.
The Hopi ancestral villages on Black Mesa shifted further east to
the mesa tops they still inhabit today.
Hopi Street
The Hopi mesa towns of Awatovi and Orabi saw an influx of inhabitants
and became major cultural centers that would remain large towns
with 500-1,000 people into the 1700s. These Hopi villages remain
inhabited today, carrying on their distinctive traditions, and provide
us with a clearer picture of what life would have been like for
their ancestors over 600 years ago.
In two beautiful large sandstone caves in the Tsegi Canyon, and
in many areas of Coanyon D'Chelly (on what is now the Navajo Reservation),
the stone pueblos of Betatakin, Keit Siel, and White House were
constructed in the late 1200s.
Betatakin
Betatakin
ultimately had 135 rooms and two kivas, and Kiet Siel had 155 rooms
and 6 kivas. Using beans discovered in the ruins, and tree ring
samples, scientists have been able to date the time period of these
pueblos development and note that influxes of families required
continual growth and redesign from the mid 1200s to the end of that
century. But all three were mysteriously abandoned by 1300.
Paquime, 150 miles south of what is now the United States border,
became a central trade hub and the largest adobe city ever built
in the southwest with 2,000 rooms. Goods from deep in Mexico traveled
up to Paquime, and goods from the four Corners area and distant
coastal areas traveled down to Paquime.
Paquime
At this hub the tropical and arid environment's goods were stored
and then passed along trade routers to the north, south, east and
west. Settlement began in the 1200s and reached a peak in the 1300s,
and then the site was abandoned after a devastating fire around
1400. To learn more about Paquime, follow this link.
South of Santa Fe, the large 1200 room pueblo Arroyo Hondo was built
around 13 plazas with 24 blocks of apartments. But not all of these
changes in population were lasting. Some, like Arroyo Hondo, were
mysteriously soon abandoned and yet a few decades later repopulated,
only to be abandoned again, this time due to a pueblo-wide fire
in 1410. These fluctuations in population saw entire towns relocating
from one pueblo to another across distances as great as 2,000 or
more miles.
Migrations
Can you imagine packing up your family and along with 1,000 other
neighbors relocatingto a town over 1,000 miles away? What hardships
would you face in the journey? Where would you find food? And upon
resettlement - would the new town accept you, feed you and house
you? All emigrants who have moved from one land to another around
the world have faced these unknowns as they began their journey,
and the same must have been true for the clans and villages that
moved from one town to another, turning small pueblos into large
cities in a few years. What could have driven them to take these
risks? What was a greater danger that they were leaving behind?
Paleo-climatologists and geologists, who study weather patterns
and soil in prehistory, have been working to examine what factors
in weather, water availability, soil quality may have been factors
prompting these large migration patterns.
One
of the most influential factors of that time was most likely famine
- facing a severe and prolonged shortage of food and being unable
to support the large town and city populations. The result was fatal
starvation, deformation of bones in those who did survive, and a
very high mortality rate among children where in some pueblos barely
half reached five years of age. What caused this famine? One of
the problems was a lack of rain; another was the shortness of the
growing season in the more northern areas where they did not see
enough sun to grow large enough crops to sustain the people year
round. Still another was the lack of soil able to grow enough food
to feed these larger populations. As the populations grew, they
tried to engineer agricultural solutions - terraces, dams, and stone
enclosures around fields were intended to capture and store water
from rainfall and rivers. In arid areas like Betatakin and Kiet
Siel, their caves had springs in the back walls to provide drinking
water, but with out a river nearby, could not support large-scale
agriculture.
Another factor that must have influenced these migrations - and
choice to cluster together to build larger towns - was the threat
of warfare. There is no evidence that the great pueblo period up
to the 1200s had faced serious or prolonged threats of war. Their
towns were built with open, unprotected plazas. But in these later
years, towns began to cluster their buildings around internal plazas
often only accessible through easily defended narrow streets. Lower
stories could only be entered through ladders in the roof, and by
the time the Spanish arrived in the mid-1500s, the pueblos were
designed like forts well able to keep invaders out. Archeologists
also suggest that the fires that wiped our Paquime and Arroyo Hondo
may have been the result of intentional warfare burning. If it was
no longer safe to live in small, open communities due to bands of
warriors attacking your settlement, moving to larger towns with
greater manpower for defense would be an understandable choice.
But as we can see above, if the threat of warfare caused initial
migrations to form larger towns, then the formation of those larger
towns may have lead to the threat of famine. Then another migration
would have taken place, this time to seek adequate food. Only a
few of the pueblos - those of the Hopi, Taos, and Acoma Indians
remained continuously inhabited from prehistory into western history,
making them the longest continually inhabited settlements in North
America.
Exploring the Pueblos Today
Now, let's learn more about a few of the many Southwest pueblos
and tribal groups who are carrying on the Ancient Ones' traditions
into our modern time. Their oral history carries forwards the traditions
of their ancestors as expressed through dance, song, ceremony, costume,
carvings, pottery and paintings - and through the architecture and
agriculture that has sustained their peoples for generations.
Acoma
Paquime
Mesa Verde
The Pueblos of the 13th and 14th Century
During the years between 1200 and 1400 AD there was a remarkable
change in Southwest populations. While some towns and cities were
abruptly abandoned, other small villages rapidly became cities built
of adobe and stone in a few years.
The Hopi ancestral villages on Black Mesa shifted further east to
the mesa tops they still inhabit today.
Hopi Street
The Hopi mesa towns of Awatovi and Orabi saw an influx of inhabitants
and became major cultural centers that would remain large towns
with 500-1,000 people into the 1700s. These Hopi villages remain
inhabited today, carrying on their distinctive traditions, and provide
us with a clearer picture of what life would have been like for
their ancestors over 600 years ago.
In two beautiful large sandstone caves in the Tsegi Canyon, and
in many areas of Coanyon D'Chelly (on what is now the Navajo Reservation),
the stone pueblos of Betatakin, Keit Siel, and White House were
constructed in the late 1200s.
Betatakin
Betatakin
ultimately had 135 rooms and two kivas, and Kiet Siel had 155 rooms
and 6 kivas. Using beans discovered in the ruins, and tree ring
samples, scientists have been able to date the time period of these
pueblos development and note that influxes of families required
continual growth and redesign from the mid 1200s to the end of that
century. But all three were mysteriously abandoned by 1300.
Paquime, 150 miles south of what is now the United States border,
became a central trade hub and the largest adobe city ever built
in the southwest with 2,000 rooms. Goods from deep in Mexico traveled
up to Paquime, and goods from the four Corners area and distant
coastal areas traveled down to Paquime.
Paquime
At this hub the tropical and arid environment's goods were stored
and then passed along trade routers to the north, south, east and
west. Settlement began in the 1200s and reached a peak in the 1300s,
and then the site was abandoned after a devastating fire around
1400. To learn more about Paquime, follow this link.
South of Santa Fe, the large 1200 room pueblo Arroyo Hondo was built
around 13 plazas with 24 blocks of apartments. But not all of these
changes in population were lasting. Some, like Arroyo Hondo, were
mysteriously soon abandoned and yet a few decades later repopulated,
only to be abandoned again, this time due to a pueblo-wide fire
in 1410. These fluctuations in population saw entire towns relocating
from one pueblo to another across distances as great as 2,000 or
more miles.
Migrations
Can you imagine packing up your family and along with 1,000 other
neighbors relocatingto a town over 1,000 miles away? What hardships
would you face in the journey? Where would you find food? And upon
resettlement - would the new town accept you, feed you and house
you? All emigrants who have moved from one land to another around
the world have faced these unknowns as they began their journey,
and the same must have been true for the clans and villages that
moved from one town to another, turning small pueblos into large
cities in a few years. What could have driven them to take these
risks? What was a greater danger that they were leaving behind?
Paleo-climatologists and geologists, who study weather patterns
and soil in prehistory, have been working to examine what factors
in weather, water availability, soil quality may have been factors
prompting these large migration patterns.
One
of the most influential factors of that time was most likely famine
- facing a severe and prolonged shortage of food and being unable
to support the large town and city populations. The result was fatal
starvation, deformation of bones in those who did survive, and a
very high mortality rate among children where in some pueblos barely
half reached five years of age. What caused this famine? One of
the problems was a lack of rain; another was the shortness of the
growing season in the more northern areas where they did not see
enough sun to grow large enough crops to sustain the people year
round. Still another was the lack of soil able to grow enough food
to feed these larger populations. As the populations grew, they
tried to engineer agricultural solutions - terraces, dams, and stone
enclosures around fields were intended to capture and store water
from rainfall and rivers. In arid areas like Betatakin and Kiet
Siel, their caves had springs in the back walls to provide drinking
water, but with out a river nearby, could not support large-scale
agriculture.
Another factor that must have influenced these migrations - and
choice to cluster together to build larger towns - was the threat
of warfare. There is no evidence that the great pueblo period up
to the 1200s had faced serious or prolonged threats of war. Their
towns were built with open, unprotected plazas. But in these later
years, towns began to cluster their buildings around internal plazas
often only accessible through easily defended narrow streets. Lower
stories could only be entered through ladders in the roof, and by
the time the Spanish arrived in the mid-1500s, the pueblos were
designed like forts well able to keep invaders out. Archeologists
also suggest that the fires that wiped our Paquime and Arroyo Hondo
may have been the result of intentional warfare burning. If it was
no longer safe to live in small, open communities due to bands of
warriors attacking your settlement, moving to larger towns with
greater manpower for defense would be an understandable choice.
But as we can see above, if the threat of warfare caused initial
migrations to form larger towns, then the formation of those larger
towns may have lead to the threat of famine. Then another migration
would have taken place, this time to seek adequate food. Only a
few of the pueblos - those of the Hopi, Taos, and Acoma Indians
remained continuously inhabited from prehistory into western history,
making them the longest continually inhabited settlements in North
America.
Exploring the Pueblos Today
Now, let's learn more about a few of the many Southwest pueblos
and tribal groups who are carrying on the Ancient Ones' traditions
into our modern time. Their oral history carries forwards the traditions
of their ancestors as expressed through dance, song, ceremony, costume,
carvings, pottery and paintings - and through the architecture and
agriculture that has sustained their peoples for generations.
Acoma
Paquime