Gaspar Pérez
de Villagrá, a captain in the 1596 expedition of Juan de Oñate to colonize New
Mexico, recounts a native story told to him on their march north in his 11,891
line, surprisingly accurate epic poem about the expedition, Historia de la Nueva México: two valiant brothers, “of high and noble
Kings descended” led two large columns of people south until they encountered
an old hag with an immense iron boulder on her head. The old woman instructed one brother to pass
south and found the great Mexican altetpetl of Tenochtitlan, capital of the
Aztecs. The other brother was told to
turn about and found another city which the editors of the text identify as Paquimé,
as Casas Grandes is also known.
The Nahuatl word “Aztec” means people from
“Aztlan.” In 1789, the Jesuit priest, Francisco
Clavijero, deduced that Aztlan lay north of the Colorado River. Could the two legendary brothers have been
leading a migration from the Chacoan altepetl at what is now known as Aztec,
New Mexico? Was Chacoan culture that
spread across the Colorado Plateau in the 10th and 11th
centuries Aztlan? Was an historical event
the root of the mythical tale told to Pérez de Villagrá? Such speculations are intriguing to say the
least, and there are many more historical and ethnographic allusions which I
haven’t mentioned, (such as the Navajo tale of the Great Gambler and the Hopi
origin story). There are also suggestive
facts, for example the language of the contemporary Hopi people is Uto-Aztecan,
as Nahuatl is. There are many theories
and many vested interests in many countries.
Nevertheless, as curious and provocative as all of this is, it remains
legend, myth and possibility.
On Sunday
evening, September 27 of this year, Lynn and I joined an eclectic group
gathered in a back room of the venerable Strater Hotel in Durango, Colorado. We were there for dinner, to reprise our agenda
for the coming week and to listen to Professor Stephen Lekson, the preeminent,
sometimes controversial and always erudite southwest archaeologist give a short
précis of his most recent view of the origin and rise of Chacoan culture. To my mind, the Crow Canyon Archaeological
Center, which organized the trip, had done an amazing thing by enabling some of
us outside of the profession to travel and learn from one of southwest
archaeology’s most important scholars. I’d
wanted to hear Lekson speak since I’d first read the first edition of his book,
The Chaco Meridian, in 2003.
That evening
he began by retelling the events I’ve reprised above. He then went on to discuss some of what the
archaeology of the Colorado Plateau has to tell about the origins of
Chaco. During the Basketmaker III period
of the Pecos chronology system (500-750) nearly all settlements were very
small, consisting of a few pit houses, sometimes with a stockade. To paraphrase Lekson, if you find a site with
ten you write a book and retire. In
Chaco Canyon, there is not one but two sites with ten times that number: Shaik’eschee.
Lekson speculates there may possibly be a third: beneath Pueblo Bonito
itself given the tantalizing Basketmaker III evidence found there. Nevertheless, during the subsequent Pueblo I
period (750-900) Chaco became a bit of a backwater. Instead, directly north of one of the Shabik
sites, two new major sites evolved rapidly:
Blue Mesa and Sacred Ridge. In
the recently published revised version of The
Chaco Meridian, Lekson quotes a private correspondence with Jason Chuipka, the
excavator of Sacred Ridge:
What stands
out about Sacred Ridge are all the things that were “not supposed to be there”
according to our understanding of the early A. D. 800s in the northern
Southwest. The site was too early for
towers (there was one at Sacred Ridge); pit structures in the area averaged 5
meters in diameter (most were 50% larger than that at Sacred Ridge); no sites
were known to contain more than two or three contemporary habitations (there
were 20 at Sacred Ridge), and in a time of plenty without ecological stress and
population pressure there should be peace (instead, there was ample evidence of
violence)…
There were
more eighth century houses in the 7 miles betwixt Sacred Ridge and Blue Mesa
than at any other Pueblo I period site.
Altogether, it suggests the nascence of a precocious, inventive and assertive
culture. Chaco had never been abandoned,
but it begins its meteoric rise just as Sacred Ridge and Blue Mesa are
abandoned. Could there have been a
migration? The timing and distances
alone are suggestive. Then there are the
“royal” burials at Pueblo Bonito, the construction of which began around
850. Two men were buried with grave
goods suggesting Mesoamerican level of wealth including, in one case, a cape of
2,000 pieces of turquoise as well as macaws.
And the burials are very early. Could
they have been two valiant brothers of high and noble kings descended, possibly
from Sacred Ridge or Blue Mesa? Chaco
Canyon though beautiful is severe, with little water and significantly greater
temperature swings both in summer and winter than nearby areas. Then there are the winds. I remember hiking in a sustained 40 mph “breeze”
on our second visit some years ago. It
is not a likely place for a people to settle unless they had an historical or
cultural reason to do so.
And that’s
where we concluded our evening. The next
morning we were to set out for Chaco Canyon itself.
At
breakfast, Lynn and I were joined by the other archaeological scholar in the
group, Phillip Tuwaletstiwa, an engineer and a geodetic scientist. I later
learned that he had served as an officer in the National Oceanographic and
Atmosphere Administration and had developed the Hopi Tribe’s first
comprehensive land information system to assist in management of their cultural
and natural resources. He is also a
specialist in archaeoastronomy, particularly astronomical alignments. Mr. Tuwaletstiwa was the first member of the
Hopi tribe we’d ever met. He is
exceedingly gracious, affable and unassuming. Nevertheless, by the end of our week together I
realized he also possesses a keen and perspicacious intelligence with the very
rare advantage of being able to view history as well as the archaeological
record from multiple cultural viewpoints.
Then there
were the other members of the group. We
had an active professor of Anthropology, a marine biologist, physicians,
engineers, a successful rancher who
raised organic sheep and lambs and more as I wasn’t able to discuss everyone’s
life experience with them. Several were
or had been instrument rated pilots. I
quickly deduced it was not a group with whom to play the game of who has worked
or done research in the most interesting or dangerous place.
Traffic on
the freeway into Chaco was light.
Not. Actually, I have always
suspected that special graders were researched and built for that dirt road,
(possibly funded by a secret society of dentists). It’s only 20 miles or so but 15 mph can feel
like 5 mph over a prudent speed. The
group we were riding with made experienced comments about how good the road was
this year whilst I worried about my dental work and listened to the vehicle’s
sheet metal flexing with every solid bump.
But soon Fajada Butte (443 feet high)
stood ominously beautiful before us in the gap leading into the
canyon. In 1977 Anna Sofaer discovered
that the sun’s dagger shaped shadow on a petroglyph of two spirals high on the
butte, accurately signaled the equinoxes and possibly much more. The Chacoans also erected a 95 meter high,
230 meter long ramp on the southwestern face, an immensely ambitious civil
engineering project. You can’t look at
it without wondering if they saw the butte as something like a Mesoamerican
pyramid and used it for analogous ritual purposes. There are ruins on the upper levels of the
butte as well.
Part 2 can be found here
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