Ponsipa'akeri Field Trip

On Saturday we took a field trip through the Santa Fe Community College to Ponsipa'akeri - a Native village that was near present day Ojo Callente. It was occupied when the Spanish arrived in this part of the world.

We started the trip off with a stop at Ohkay Owingeh (San Juan) to visit a living pueblo and see the churches and plazas.

From there we traveled north. Below the small mounds are all that is left of the village that was probably left by its inhabitants in the 1400s.



I have heard about places in New Mexico where you can walk and every step you take you see potshards - but I thought they were either 1. mythical places or 2. had all been picked over and destroyed. But this place is really special (an monitored by unobtrusive cameras - so stealing these treasures is hopefully lessened). Here are some pictures of potshards we picked up.





A lot of the potshards looked like this - white with black. Almost all of the pieces had paint on both sides. This piece was pretty big - and it was the rim of a pot.



In these two pictures you can kind of get a feel for what the ground looks like. You just look down and the pieces of pottery are everywhere.



This is looking south from Ponsipa into the river valley. Ponsipe has not been fully excavated. There were several digs done in the 1970s, but the findings were recovered - so the only evidence that there is an ancient village - is the mounds of dirt.



Below - for part of the field trip, the entire class had to roll under this barbed wire fence. The fences were put up on the BLM land to protect the site from people and cows. There are no signs anywhere showing where the site is located.


It is believed that the people who lived in this village were part of the families who now live at Ohkay Owingeh.

Some great things we learned:

Pueblos traditionally have 4 plazas.

The idea of "home" is broad. Home is where you are, but it is where your ancestors have lived in the past.

The idea of homes having a kind of spirit was also explained (and I think is beautiful). Homes (even in modern pueblos) are allowed to melt into the ground (adobe) because they gave to the people/family that lived there, and there are thing that that home can still provide to the community as it returns to the earth. This also adds a different perspective to the "ruins" we go to visit. If the dwellings are still providing something (energy) to the current living community - they still have a life.

Pawn and Trading Posts

No pictures will do justice to what I learned last week when I went to Gallup for the NM Library Association mini conference.

Part of the conference options allowed us to take a "jewelry tour." The tour really turned into a life changing experience. We toured a "store" in Gallup called Tanner's. The location is a store - because you can buy items at Tanners, but really - it is a private collection of the most amazing silver and turquoise jewels you have ever seen. The family has been working in the store for 4 generations. We had a tour of their collection and could have spent 1-2 days learning about artistry and turquoise from the owners. They were so generous to open their collection and share what they know.

From there we went to Richardson's - which I have known is a Gallup "must see." I have been in the store before, but this tour was like nothing else. The man who gave us the tour took us back into the vaults where Navajo blankets, saddles, and hundreds of thousands - realistically - millions and millions of dollars of Navajo jewelry was "on pawn."

I have always felt bad about pawned items - but for the first time ever - this guide explained that pawn shops that work with the Navajo - work similar as banks do in more traditional American society. He explained that items are "pawned" as a way to store valuable items during seasons in which they are not in use. For example, Pendelton blankets are pawned during the summer and retrieved in the winter, similar to a safe deposit box.

At Richardson's we learned that legally pawn shops take pawned items and must hold them for 6 months before the store can sell them. But at Richardson's items stay on pawn for 12 months before they are sold by the store.

So while the pawn business doesn't come with its sad issues - I have a whole new understanding of how the legitimate pawn shops operate in Gallup.

Our guide at Richardson's also spent an enormous amount of time talking to us and showing us examples of fine wool rug artistry. It was just an amazing learning experience.

Images from the Gila Cliff Dwellings

Below are some petroglyphs.



This is the little electric truck the rangers and the volunteers use to go between the visitor's center and the Cliff Dwellings.


Corn found in the storage rooms - 1500 year old corn.

The Cliff Dwellings were occupied by relatively modern people. Artifacts have been found in the area that predate the Cliff Dwellings by thousands of years. The Dwellings are believed to be occupied by the Mogollon people who are thought to have come from the Grants, NM area.

Paso Por Aqui

These are pictures from the short hike to the inscriptions at El Morro. The first image is a pool of water that forms from water running off the mesa above the pool. This pool has drawn travelers for hundreds of years. It is one of the few places to get water when traveling from Mexico northward.




The first inscriptions on the rock were made by Native Americans. The petroglyphs are really stunning. They look new - like they were made just yesterday.


Spanish explorers were the next set of people who made their mark. Below are some of the more beautiful inscriptions. Many of the writings say "paso por aqui" - meaning I passed by here.



This side of the rock had a lot of inscriptions by men exploring a route for a railroad (the railroad was not built on this route). There are also inscriptions from travelers passing by during the California Gold Rush.

El Morro Mesa Top

On Saturday morning we hiked to the top of the mesa at El Morro. On top of the mesa, 18 rooms from the ancient pueblo of Atsinna have been excavated. The unique thing about these ruins is that they have found both a square and a round kiva. Atsinna is believed to have been occupied by the ancestors of the current Zuni pueblo.

We had some rain on the trail, but mostly we encountered rain while the sun was out.



There had been so much rain in the time during and before our visit, that you could see the pooling water in the sandstone at the top of the mesa. This would have been where the pueblo people would have collected their drinking water.






Below is the round kiva found on the mesa top. Much of the pueblo of Atsinna remains unexcivated.

El Morro

These are some scenes from our most recent camping trip to El Morro, NM. We were lucky enough to get one of the 9 camping spots in the national park. The two images below without the car are taken from our camping spot.

We had a lot of rain this weekend, but we had nice breaks in the rain for all the things we wanted to do. We stayed in our tent and kept pretty dry.

Below is the storm on Saturday night.


Below is El Morrow at sunset on Saturday night.


The below picture was taken Sunday morning - our car with El Morro in the background.

Chaco Canyon

We took a continuing education class through the Santa Fe Community College - the class was a guided tour of Chaco Canyon. I can't imagine visiting Chaco in any other way. There is so much to learn and discover. On our day-long trip we were only able to go to the Pueblo Bonito, Chettro Kettle, and Casa Rinconada sites. We learned some stunning and exciting things about the new research that is being done at Chaco. I feel like nearly everything I learned in 7th grade New Mexico History is now untrue. There are so many new exciting things historians and archaeologists now believe. I don't want to ruin the surprises for you, in case you go - but here are our pictures.


The below image is of a roof that has been excavated. These pieces of wood supporting the roof are nearly 1000 years old. It is really hard to believe!



The below image is a corner window in some of the original walls at Pueblo Bonito.



There are many kivas at Chaco Canyon. Based on the stories we were told this weekend, I think Chaco was probably a religious center - maybe a place where many pueblos gathered for special religious events (not necessarily a place where lots of people lived full time). The current belief is that many of the rooms seem to be a kind of ancient "hotel" room - where people stayed but didn't live. The are able to determine this by fire pits, and new dating technology they have for dating the start of fire pits (dating the moment the clay around the fire pit melted for the first time).


The wall designs at Chaco are stunning. This is just one design of about 12 wall designs used during the time Chaco was constructed.



The current belief is that the wall below is a stairway that lead to a road that connected several Cettro Kettle with Pueblo Alto and the Aztec great houses. After traveling by foot for many miles this would have been the "grand entrance" into the Chaco area.



Below is the grand Kiva at Casa Rinconada. Visitors could once go down into the kiva, but it is now closed to visitors. We were told that a lot of new age people felt spiritually connected to this kiva and had their ashes scattered in the bottom of the kiva. This method of "burial" or dealing with the dead is in direct contradiction to many native beliefs.



Below is Fahada Butte. On top of this butte there is a series of spirals that match up with the sun during solstice. There was a PBS film several years ago about the many lines and connections with the buildings at Chaco. Fahada Butte played a big role in that film. Current researchers have found much of the information in that film to be fabricated or based on unscientific methods of research. On the far right you can see the very beginings of a ramp that the Chaco people started building up to Fahada Butte. The ramp was never completed.

Mesa Verde Camping Spot

This was a great spot at Mesa Verde. A little small, but well protected from rain, wind, and some of the harsh evening sun. We were using the tent Joel got when he was young - he doesn't remember when, but he said he got it before he could drive. It is a great tent - water tight and easy to set up.

Fire

Almost every where we drove in Mesa Verde was destroyed by fire. To see the fire history of the area, follow this link. It is stunning. Thistle is coming up in many of the recently burned areas.

One of the rangers talked a bit about current theories about fire control. Most parks do controlled burns, but he said Mesa Verde has so many cultural sites (known and unknown) that doing controlled burns will damage artifacts - so they haven't done them. The current belief about the fires is that with global warming, the climate has changed to a dryer climate and lightening strikes on the mesa cause more extensive fires than in the past.



This is a road on the west side of Chapin Mesa.


The next two images are from the 2000 fire on Whitherall Mesa. Our tram driver in this area of the park told us he was part of the crew that drove fire fighters out to the mesa during the fires. He said they made many firebreaks to protect the sites, but the fire jumped over every break. Apparently there were some cultural sites damaged in this 2000 fire.





The image below is taken on a hike up to a fire tower. This was probably a fire from the late 1980s. The scrub oak has come back, but the tops still show the burned bushes.