Mesa Verde Victim. Scott Graham
positioning of their villages, deep in the canyons, protected by cliff walls on three sides and stone roofs above. In a way, the Ancestral Puebloans probably became victims of their own success. They got really good at homebuilding and farming, which would have made them targets because of how successful they were. They were sedentary. That is, they lived in one place, here on the mesa. That means nomads—people who moved from place to place all the time—could attack them and try to take everything they’d worked so hard for.”
Rosie turned to Chuck in her seat as they followed the main park road down the sloped mesa top.
“At the beginning of the drought,” Chuck continued, “the Ancestral Puebloans would have been able to fight off the marauders. But the drought went on for years. The Ancestral Puebloans’ crops probably would have failed, which would have made them poorer and hungrier and less able to defend themselves. At the same time, the nomadic people would have been more desperate, too. In years of normal rain, they hunted wild game and gathered nuts and berries for food. But the drought reduced the amount of game. The same for nuts and berries. So the nomads most likely would have turned to raiding the Ancestral Puebloans and their corn-filled granaries. In response, the Ancestral Puebloans would have had to devote more people to protecting their food stores, leaving fewer of them to tend their crops and maintain the dams and irrigation ditches that were critical to their survival as the drought dragged on. Each year things would have gotten worse—less food, less water, more attacks. The Ancestral Puebloans would have been under siege and starving, unable to care for their farms, their children, themselves.”
“So they left,” Rosie said, her eyes downcast. “That’s the sad part.”
“Based on the best information we’ve been able to put together, they had no choice. Mostly, they joined other sedentary societies living to the south along the banks of the Rio Grande, which had water flowing in it year-round, even in dry years. They joined other societies just emerging in the Southwest like the Ute and Hopi people, too. The Ancestral Puebloans’ civilization here on Mesa Verde may have dispersed, but they brought their skills to the societies they joined, and helped those societies succeed in the generations that followed.” He gazed at the broad expanse of the plateau stretching away to the south, cut by canyons. “In the meantime, their villages were abandoned and falling into ruin in the bottoms of the drainages here on the mesa.”
“Until you came along to dig them up.”
“I got here pretty late in the game. Lots of other archaeologists were fascinated by Mesa Verde way before I was. There’s so much to be learned here—how to cope with extreme weather changes, and how to get along, or not get along, with one another in stressful times. To me, that’s why archaeology is so important, because there’s so much to be learned from what others went through long before we arrived on the scene.”
“I just think it would be cool to dig up all the pottery and treasures and stuff.”
“That, too. But it has to be done with total awareness of whose the stuff was—the Ancestral Puebloans’—and for their modern-day descendants.”
“The Native Americans,” Rosie said. “The indignant people. That’s what Ms. Jarvis calls them.”
“The indigenous people,” Chuck corrected her with a nod. “Sounds like Ms. Jarvis really knows her stuff. She’s definitely up to date with her terminology.”
“She says the word ‘Indian’ is old-fashioned.”
“She’s right. In the same way, the Ancestral Puebloans used to be called the Anasazis, but not anymore.”
“Why not?”
“To the Navajo people, Anasazi means ‘ancient enemy.’ But Navajos see the Ancestral Puebloans as their ancestors, not their enemies. Plenty of Native Americans don’t like the term ‘Ancestral Puebloan’ either, though, because puebloan is a Spanish word, and Spaniards showed up here in the Southwest and ruled Native Americans by force five hundred years ago.”
“That all sounds pretty confusing.”
“That’s because it is confusing. Which is part of what I love about archaeology—all the different peoples involved, and all the awareness you have to have of everybody’s different points of view and why they feel the way they do.”
“Barney loved archaeology, too, just like you, didn’t he?”
Chuck clenched his teeth as he guided the truck down the road. “That’s why we’re here.”
The main park road descended through the piñon-juniper forest from the crest of Mesa Verde to a long finger of the plateau known as Chapin Mesa. Deep canyons on either side of the thin finger of land contained the park’s principal concentration of Ancestral Puebloan villages, including Spruce Tree House, Cliff Palace, and Balcony House. Half a mile before the start of Chapin Mesa, a secondary road branched off the main road. Chuck turned onto it as instructed by Samuel. Instantly, the traffic died away. The deserted road headed west past the heads of Navajo, Wickiup, and Long Canyons on the way to Wetherill Mesa, a slice of tableland between deep gorges on the park’s remote western boundary.
The road was narrow and curvy, the driving slow and arduous. Chuck cursed to himself as he gunned the truck on the few straightaways and braked through the countless turns. He never should have left Janelle and Carmelita on their own back in town to drive all the way out here. Why in God’s name had he agreed to head for the far reaches of Mesa Verde only three hours after Barney’s murder in Durango?
5
The secondary road turned south after ten miles onto Wetherill Mesa, aiming for a handful of small Ancestral Puebloan villages known as Badger House, Long House, and Kodak House. Rather than follow the road to the villages at the southern tip of Wetherill Mesa, however, Chuck turned west yet again, still following Samuel’s instructions, leaving the pavement for a dirt road headed toward the park’s western
border.
Dust billowed into the air behind the truck as he drove a mile through the forest to a turnaround spot and graveled parking area at the end of the graded dirt track. Samuel’s black Ford pickup sat in the parking area between a pair of late-model vehicles—a silver mini SUV and a lime-green subcompact. The two vehicles were unfamiliar to Chuck, their shiny newness indicating they most likely were rental cars.
Chuck nosed his truck to a stop beside the subcompact and climbed out. A well-maintained hiking trail led south from the parking area. He helped Rosie down from the passenger seat and headed away from the trail with her into the untracked piñon-juniper forest to the west.
“Where are we going?” Rosie asked as she hiked behind Chuck through the patchwork of shade and sun created by the outstretched branches overhead.
“To a canyon.”
“But there’s only a bunch of trees.”
“Just you wait. We’re walking on Mesa Verde, which is a big, flat chunk of sandstone with just enough soil on it for trees to grow. Sandstone is one of the softest kinds of rock there is. It crumbles and washes away wherever water runs across it.” He glanced back at her as they walked. “You can probably guess what that leaves behind.”
“Canyons!” she cried.
“Exactamente.”
They emerged from the forest after ten minutes onto a sunlit bench of beige sandstone. The stone shelf ended abruptly twenty feet from the edge of the forest, falling straight down into a hundred-foot-deep canyon. The opposite wall of the canyon, a vertical cliff of matching tan stone, faced them a few hundred feet away. Here and there, boulders worn from the mesa top rested on the edges of the facing cliffs, poised to tumble to the floor of the canyon as the process of erosion gradually enlarged the gorge over geologic time.
“It’s deep!” Rosie exclaimed, striding toward the edge of the cliff.
“Not so close,” Chuck said, hurrying after her and grabbing her hand. “There’s lots of loose stuff, big boulders and little pebbles, ready to fall