by Samantha Tisdel

Towaoc, Colorado
 
A visit to the Ute Mountain Tribal Park is as much a lesson in Ute culture as ancestral Puebloan heritage. The park, located on the Ute reservation south of Cortez, offers guided tours to secluded Anasazi ruins. Self-tours are not permitted, Which makes a trip there all the more exceptional. Our Ute guide gently reminded us throughout the day of the sacredness of the area, often urging us to “listen to the birds, watch the clouds, call the wind.”  Before descending into Lions Canyon to explore the cliff dwellings, he blessed each of us with water, and passed around a small bag of red “paint” (actually a fine powder made of ground hematite) to mark our faces and bodies as we felt stirred. 

The cliff dwellings—we visited four groups of them spread out along a one and a half mile footpath inside the narrow, snaking Lions Canyon—are on a much more intimate scale than those at nearby Mesa Verde. There is a refreshing dearth of any interpretive signage whatsoever. The walk is fairly easy (a four-year-old boy in our group did just fine, as did several out-of-shape adults). It is necessary to climb several ladders along the way, including one that is 42 feet high, leading to the aptly named Eagle’s Nest ruins, suspended on a narrow ledge halfway up an alcove in the rim rock.

Signs of the Anasazis’ daily life are everywhere. Cliff and masonry blend gracefully. Diminutive corn cobs the size of women’s fingers lie scattered here and there. Beside the dwellings, broad, smooth wells have been worn into the sandstone underfoot, where women ground their daily corn, while chunks of fallen rim rock bear deep grooves like claw-marks where men sharpened their tools. 

A day-long tour at the Ute Mountain Tribal Park includes stops in Mancos Canyon at an unexcavated kiva and several petroglyph sites, a long drive up to the top of a pinion and juniper forested plateau, lunch at the brink of Lions Canyon in a traditional Ute summer shelter made of pinion logs and cottonwood branches, and an afternoon hike through the cliff ruins. 
Begin your guided tour at the modest Ute Tribal Park Museum, located at the junction of Highways 160 and 666, 20 miles south of Cortez. You can drive your own car into the park (it’s an 80 mile round trip and the road is dusty and corrugated), or ride in one of the tribe’s comfortable, air-conditioned vans. Bring plenty of water, a bagged lunch, sunscreen, a hat, and sturdy, comfortable walking shoes. Tours are offered daily May through October.
 

Hovenweep

by Samantha Tisdel

For a completely different, but equally moving experience of the Ancient Puebloans, travel about 40 miles west from Cortez along a paved road through McElmo Canyon and just across the Utah border to Hovenweep National Monument. 

Hovenweep is a Paiute and Ute word meaning “deserted valley.” But as deserted as this arid canyon country may now be, it was once home to a flourishing Anasazi community that built tower-like structures on the rims, slopes, and floors of small canyons, different from those found anywhere else. 
Archeologists consider the towers of Hovenweep to be the finest examples of Ancestral Puebloan masonry found anywhere. Some of them seem to grow organically out of massive blocks of fallen rimrock?the seam between rock and tower virtually indistinguishable. Most of the buildings were constructed from AD 1230 to 1275, about the same time as those at Mesa Verde.

A beautiful campground and spanking new visitor center/ranger station are the only creature comforts to be found here, so come prepared for a remote desert experience. Hike the gentle two-mile path around the rim of Little Ruin Canyon to get an excellent introduction to the area. (Watch out for rattlesnakes!) Here you will see the 14 ruins of the Square Tower group, including the breathtaking Hovenweep Castle perched on the very rim of the canyon, and Square Tower down below, which spirals out of a large sandstone boulder, guarding a precious permanent water seep that trickles out of the canyon wall. 

Get printed driving directions and interpretive brochures at the visitors’ center to outlying ruins, including the Holly, Hackberry/Horseshoe, Cutthroat, and Cajon units. (Low-clearance vehicle owners are at risk of bottoming out on back roads and should use extreme caution.) Or, for a deeper adventure, hike through the canyons from the campground all the way to Holly, Hackberry and Horseshoe.

 “At Hovenweep,” reflects the Pueblo Indian scholar Rina Swentzell, “I slide into a place and begin to know the flowing, warm sandstone under my feet, the cool preciousness of the water, the void of the canyon, and the all-covering sky. I want to be a part of the place.” 
The place does indeed seem to work a magic. Camping here makes this trip unforgettable.

Hovenweep is located approximately 20 miles north of Aneth, Utah and 25 miles west of Cortez, Colorado on the Utah border.  Take McElmo Creek road west from Cortez. Information, 970 749-0510 or San Juan County, Utah, Visitor Information, 800-574-4386. www.nps.gov/hove. 

Montezuma’s Castle
Story, photos, James Burke

A straight line drawn from the northwest corner to the southeast corner of Arizona roughly defines the upper and lower halves of the state. Most of the northeast half lies above 5000 feet. Most of the southwest half lies below 3000 feet. A central portion of this 2000 foot escarpment is known as The Mogollon Rim.

Two thousand feet below flows the Verde River, gathering its waters through tributaries of snowmelt,  cascading down from conifer forests on the rim. Snowmelt stored as groundwater supports such flow all year. The Verde Valley was hallowed land to Arizona’s earliest man. Winters there are mild compared to those within sight on the rim and summers not nearly as searing as those a short way south. Man was not unique it seems in reaching this conclusion. —Abundant fish and game too came in the attractive package. Earliest archaeological evidence is of nomadic people. Then around AD 600, the Hohokam People settled here—resourceful farmers who irrigated fields of corn and beans. Sometime around AD 1100—apparently peacefully—the Sinagua people replaced The Hohokam along yhe Verde. The Sinagua had lived on higher, dryer mesas to the north but quickly adopted the irrigation systems of The Hohokam. 

Evidence of The Sinagua exists all along The Verde, but their most spectacular structure “Montezuma’s Castle” was being built while Genghis Khan sacked Asian cities. Not completed before AD 1400, after 300 years of construction, the 20-room structure clings to a limestone alcove high above Beaver Creek, just above its confluence, with the Verde. The setting is superb, both technically and esthetically. The southward facing alcove embraces the winter sun allowing the long low rays to enter and absorb, soaking radiant energy into walls and stone surroundings—energy to emerge at midnight as a wonderful warm bath. In summer, the sun is rebuffed by the overhanging bluff. Riding high and mighty as it does, it cannot see the castle lounging in the shade of its limestone awning readymade. Below spreads the meadows of Beaver Creek. Graced by sparkling waters, shaded by stately sycamores. Beyond the Verde stands Squaw Peak.

Early palefaces finding this place assumed it to be a part of Mexico’s Aztec Empire and gave it the name of Aztec emperor Montezuma. Later enlightenments have not led to a better name.

As I stood there digesting this lesson in stone, an airplane roared across the sky—its icy white contrail slicing the blue. I spent 20 years up there—searching for answers.

I may have found them at Montezuma’s Castle. 

Navajo Reservation
In the Navajo culture, coming into puberty, especially for a young woman, is  a time of ceremony and rejoicing. Family and friends gather, often coming from great distances, to help celebrate the changing of girl to woman. 

In the white culture, the onset of a girl’s first menses is a subject seldom mentioned, a throwback, perhaps, to the Victorian days or the (in places still prevalent) Bible Belt mentality where the the subject of human reproductive cycles is taboo. But for the Navajo, this is a special time, with an elaborate ceremony to usher the girl into womanhood. 

I recently attended such a ceremony, honored to be asked by Debra Ortega, whose niece Brittany Walker was celebrating her Kinaalda. The Ortega family, Indian traders spanning several generations, have close family ties to the Navajo with whom they have done business for over 200 years.

The ceremony took place on the reservation near Lupton, Ariz. It took seven days (although I attended only for the last two) and involved a great deal of preparation, especially by Brittany’s parents Fernando and Jackie Walker of Chandler, Ariz. The hogan was prepared with blankets on the walls, photographs of the family and a blanket over the east-facing door. Nearby, a lean-to was built using thick cypress poles, tarps for a roof and corrugated roofing on the windward side of the structure—a good thing, since a fierce wind blew much of the time. Inside, tables and chairs were set out and an elaborate cooking area, with a large propane tank was placed next to the solid wall. A ballfield was set up for the kids, who all had a great time. (Blissfully, I didn’t see a single hand-held, battery-operated electronic gadget, or hear one blaring boom box—and these kids, like their elders, all exhibited impeccable manners!)

A lot of cooking goes on at a Kinaalda, as guests come and go. The men cut wood and build fires for cooking and heating water which is brought in 50-gallon drums. They also slaughter sheep and steers which are then cooked by the women, along with Indian fry bread, vegetables, turkeys, fresh fruit  and other foods. The women also help grind corn—a two or three day task—for the special cake.

The cake, a major part of the ceremony, consists of finely ground corn meal mixed with sugar, water and raisins and cooked in a large open pit lined with corn husks soaked and sewn by the women into a sort of “cake pan.” The cooking pit is heated for a day or more with an open fire. The cake batter, covered by more husks, then foil, then dirt, hot coals (earlier removed from the pit) and more open fire, cooks for 12 or more hours while a chanter sings the Beauty Way ceremony in the hogan for the girl, her family and guests. The chant takes place the last evening of the ceremony, and while this is going on, no one can leave the hogan. It makes for a long night.
The Kinaalda is a community effort. As with the cake preparation, everyone helps and takes part. Before the pit is sealed for cooking, everyone lines up to toss cornmeal from Brittany’s basket onto the top of the batter. (And, like entering the hogan or sewing the husk shell, the toss is counter clockwise, going from east to north, to west, to south.)

Brittany Walker, right, and her mother Jackie Walker (to her left), wait while the corn-husk “cake pan” 
is carried out to the pit by Debra Ortega and another lady.

Another part of the ceremony is the “run.” Brittany runs, followed by guests, three times a day. The longer she runs, the longer her life will be. The guests run behind, never in front (so they won’t outlive her), encouraging her with whoops along the way. The more that join her, the better her life will be. On the final day, after the night in the hogan, Brittany’s hair was washed with soap made from the Yucca plant and tied up into a traditional Navajo “bun” (a ponytail looped up and tied back upon itself with yarn or string.) She also wore her special dress and jewelry presented to her by her family. 

Attending a ceremony like this is like stepping across an invisible barrier into another time and place. So much of the Navajo traditions were nearly lost in the earlier part of the 1900s when the children were forced to attend faraway boarding schools and punished if they were caught using their Native language or customs. But despite these and other drawbacks, despite the “Long Walk” when Navajos were driven from their homes, their values and traditions did survive, and today are stronger than ever. The Navajo are a beautiful people, living in harmony, or “beauty,” with the land, with each other, with their values and   traditions. 

Traveling Indian Country
by Jan Brooks with 
Kathryn Retzler

Four Corners

From sublime high mountains to the windswept canyons of the Colorado Plateau, lies the land known as Indian Country. This is a special place, centered by the “Four  Corners” where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado briefly touch. 

The name is all-encompassing, suggesting it is home to Native Americans. This is true, although many now live in bustling cities, or remote rural areas. But for a growing number of Native Americans, “Indian Country,” is home in spirit as well as geography—an important point to remember when traveling there. In this part of the west, you are, essentially a guest in someone’s home.

Here can be found native traditions, foods, family, friends. And to the Indian Country visitor (or those already lucky enough to live here), a wealth of cultural, geological and spiritual diversity awaits. Here are art galleries, featuring exquisite and world-famous Native American arts and crafts, including rugs, jewelry, pottery and baskets. Here are authentic Indian Trading Posts* (so named, because the ancestors of the present-day traders dealt directly with the Native Americans trading supplies (food, meat, staples, tobacco, gunpowder and more) for those same exquisitely made arts and crafts. Here are historic and cultural sites, such as the new Canyons of the Ancient National Monument. There are numerous ancient trails to explore.

In Indian Country there are certain guidelines to follow, some overt, some unspoken. Never take a photograph without first asking permission. And don’t always expect to get it. If you do, in some instances, you may be expected to pay for the privilege. Certain tribal lands, parks and areas, such as Canyon de Chelley, are considered sacred; alcohol should not be consumed or brought in while visiting there. If in doubt, don’t drink—except water. Enjoy the rock art, but please do not touch as the oils from a hand can damage the patina. And never, never, pick at it to take away a “souvenir.” Likewise, pottery shards, arrowheads and other artifacts should be left where you found them—without first picking them up or moving them around. Follow the axiom, take only pictures, leave only footprints, and you’ll do just fine.
If you are camping or hiking on or across tribal lands, you need permission from the local tribal office to do so before you start out. Indian reservations are considered sovereign nations and laws are determined and enforced within their land. It is also important to observe designated religious ceremonies and feasts and to check with the local tribal office or community center to see if it is open to the public. Also, in certain areas, such as Ute Tribal Park or sections of Canyon de Chelley, an Indian guide must travel with visitors. This helps to make the tour more informative, and your tourism dollars also help to contribute to the economic survival of the local people.

Finally, a word of caution. A “trading post” may be no more than an import souvenir shop. Before you buy any Indian arts or crafts, ask for details regarding the piece. Look for a hallmark or signature. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called Indian traders do not buy from the Indians at all, but from importers who sell cheap imitations of Native American work that was made in China or the Mid-east. True Native American work is not cheap, but it is hand-crafted with a fine eye for detail and exhibits superior quality. Older, “pawn” pieces are more costly and should come with a written history. Take time to compare, and you will easily spot the difference.

Editor’s note: An authentic Indian Trader may be fourth or fifth generation by now, but still buys directly from Native Americans, most living on reservations. Traders exchange cash or supplies for arts and crafts items, blankets, guns, saddles, items which are then held as “pawn.” This system provides a short-term loan and these items serve as collateral that can later be redeemed when the owner is in better financial circumstances. Incidentally, less than two percent of pawn goes “dead.” So, when you see big chunks of turquoise jewelry labeled “Old Pawn” take a second look, especially if the price seems to make it a real bargain. You might very well be looking at something made in Iran, or in China. For more information on Indian Jewelry, click here.

Ancestral Puebloans

by Samantha Tisdel

The Ancestral Puebloans emerged between 200 BC and AD 450 from either a nomadic class of hunters and gatherers, or from the Mogollon culture. They were the first Southwesterners to cultivate corn, make pottery, and build pithouses in which to live. The San Juan River basin was the Ancestral Puebloans’ heartland, but they have been divided by scientists into three distinct cultural and geographic groups: the Northern San Juan, Chaco and Kayenta. Although they chose to live where it was dry and rocky, the Puebloans became master cultivators of corn, beans and squash, sometimes building check dams or even irrigation canals to sustain their crops. 

They were small in stature. Men reached full height at about 5 feet. And they were agile, chiseling toe holds out of cliff faces to reach their homes. While their life spans were brief—only 25 to 30 years—they were skilled and fanciful architects, artisans, stonemasons, artists and engineers. The Puebloans created graceful yet practical baskets and pots, which allowed them to store and cook the food they cultivated. They were spiritual and deeply connected to the earth, this symbiosis embodied in the ubiquitous Kiva, a covered, circular pit entered by a ladder, which was the heart of their ceremonial life. 

There is evidence the Ancestral Puebloans’ trade network extended far south into Mexico. The first flowering of their civilization took place in Chaco Canyon in northern New Mexico, from around AD 900 to the 1130s. Irrigation systems, an extensive road network (which may have been more spiritually symbolic than practical), and nine “great houses” were built here, with the canyon serving as a hub surrounded by a large network of outlying towns. 

The area was abandoned by the 1150s. Mesa Verde, with its astonishing cliff palaces, emerged as a new cultural hub by 1200. Then, they too, began abandoning the area, perhaps because of a  “great drought” beginning in 1276, which has often been blamed as the reason the Ancestral Puebloans deserted the entire Four Corners region 800 years ago. But the true reason they moved on is not known. Speculations range from cannibalistic enemies to overuse of the land and its resources, to subtler motives stemming from their spiritual beliefs.

In any case, the Ancestral Puebloans didn’t simply “disappear,” but rather migrated south and east to the Rio Grande, Zuni River, and west to the Hopi mesas, where their descendants still live today.