Pure Geological and Historical Eye Candy – Navajo Land

You have to leave the city of your comfort

and go into the wilderness of your intuition.

What you’ll discover will be wonderful.

What you’ll discover is yourself.

Alan Alda

 

La Fajada(Banded) Butte welcomes you

Chaco Canyon

Navajo Land (Diné Bikéyah – People’s Sacred Lands) is larger than 10 of the 50 American states.  Let that sink in for a moment… Covering more than 26,000 square miles, Navajo Land is vast!  Four sacred mountains, San Francisco Peaks, Mount Blanca, Mount Taylor, and La Plata Mountain, delineate its four directions.  Getting nearly lost in its immensity of chiefly dry and windy high desert plateaus, I ultimately understood why some people say you ‘earn’ a visit to many of the magnificent sites within the People’s Sacred Lands. 

Terrible roads, many of them unmarked, and long distances without cell coverage are common.  These difficulties help keep places like Chaco Canyon from being trampled by hordes of people.  Thankfully.  I wished it were like this for many more beautiful places in the US and the world. 

Time to leave behind the sight of hogans and trade them for the sight of kivas.  Welcome to Chaco Canyon, a remarkable, historic, and mystical place.

Entrance to Chaco Culture National Historic Park

World Heritage Site

Chaco Canyon has one of the most remarkable concentrations of Ancient Puebloan dwellings with fifteen major complexes and 4,000 archeological sites.  It was used continually from 850 to 1150 CE.  Like many other ancient centers, no one knows for sure why they finally stopped using this place after 300+ years.  Climate change (cold or drought), alteration in beliefs, shift in needs, deforestation, war?  Maybe a combination of all of these.

It is also difficult for everyone to agree on the purpose of Chaco Canyon.  Major ceremonial (religious), trade (commercial), or administrative (political) center or town?  How about for storage, hospitality, astronomy, or communication?  Since no significant burial sites nor trash middens were found, was it used seasonally or year-round?  Many questions, many theories, but few answers.  

By the time the entire Chaco population abandoned the canyon, never to return, conditions were not good there.  Half of the people died before the age of 18.  For every woman, four children were needed to sustain the agricultural work to support a family.  Circumstances had deteriorated greatly. 

Chetro Ketl, largest great house by area: 3 acres

Built with 26,000 trees, 50 million sandstone blocks, and 500,000 man-hours

78% of it was built between 1030 and 1060 CE

Saw 15 stages of construction beginning circa 990 and ending circa 1075

Remodeled circa 1100

Sometimes difficult to tell where the buildings end and where the cliff starts

Chetro Ketl Great House was excavated in the 1920's.  Of the classic D-shape (half-moon shape) oriented south along an imposing cliff which is thought to have provided passive solar heat during winter.  Intentionally built 6'-12' above the surrounding land.  Comprised of 400 rooms, 10 kivas, and 2 great kivas, it is the second largest site in Chaco Canyon.  Also contained a very tall kiva which has raised many questions.  Were these larger than necessary buildings just a way of 'massing' (to build imposing structures with intent to impress onlookers) or was the extra height needed for communication, via smoke or mirrors 9or reflectors made of selenium0, with other communities?

A 1947 flood destroyed 20 rooms and 40 feet of the north wall.  During repairs, nearly 200 painted wooden carvings were found.  Many rooms were later backfilled for protection.  Due to Covid-19 the visitor center / museum was not open, so I didn't get to see any of what I just described, unfortunately.  

Evidence of irrigation has been found behind Chetro Ketl.  Large dams, ditches and water control devices are found throughout the canyon.  Chacoan People actively managed the limited 9.5” annual water resources.  It is estimated that Chaco Canyon contained 2,600-3,600 acres of arable land that could support about 4,000 people.  At its peak, the greater Chacoan community covered an area roughly the size of Portugal serving over 200 smaller villages. 

Chetro Ketl – Kiva G Complex

Architectural maze of curved and straight walls

Kivas were thought of as ceremonial places but the smaller ones

may have been ‘mealing houses’ where women ground the maize

Chetro Ketl – one of its two great kivas

Classic elements of Great Houses are planned layouts, multistoried construction,

distinctive masonry, very large rooms, plazas,

and huge subterranean ceremonial chambers called great kivas.  

Parts of Kivas

They were easy to build, relatively cool in the summer and warm

in the winter but not very defensible. 
They were for protection from the elements, not from enemies.

Great Houses were often oriented to solar, lunar, and cardinal directions, and surrounded with sophisticated astronomical markers, communication features, water control devices, formal earthen architectures, and Chacoan ‘roads’.  These roads were from 16 to 30 feet wide even though they had no beast of burden (draft animal) nor wheel to travel on them.  Were they just a sign of power, ceremonial markers, or there to make it easier for others to visit/find Chaco Canyon?

Chetro Ketl – Some of the logs still inside walls

Used to support floors, roofs, platforms, or balconies

Chetro Ketl – very thick walls

Core and veneer construction style

Core consists of rubble laid flat in mud mortar covered with

carefully selected shaped stones to make a veneer on both sides of the wall

Chetro Ketl – It has a way to blend in with its surroundings

Archeologists suggest a Mexican influence, possibly Mayan 

Chetro Ketl – beautiful lines, just like nature

Chetro Ketl – from cliff above

Hard to believe that 75-85 million years ago sharks, dinosaurs, and

fish swam in these waters while shrimp-like creatures burrowed in the sands.

The darker line you see 2/3 up the long wall is where a balcony

was thought to have been long ago

Chetro Ketl – Rendition of whole site

Twenty rooms without numbers were destroyed during flood (L)

Imagine you had to walk 50-70 miles to the mountains to get the wood needed to build this great metropolis.  Now, envision that you did not have beasts of burden (draft animals) nor wheels and that you did not drag the said logs back but carried them, so these heavy and cumbersome timbers, even when dried, didn’t get hurt.  You did that over 200,000 times with ponderosa pines or spruce trees.  Teamwork, dedication, and great planning were absolutely necessary! 

Picture too that you trekked just as far if not more for some of your food (corn, turkey, and deer), clay for your pottery, rocks for tools, and gems for your jewelry.  It is thought that porters could carry supplies for 150 miles before it became counterproductive.  All of these activities point to perseverance, enthusiasm, collaboration, a triumph of labor and organization.

Cacao jars and scarlet macaw feathers were found in abundance at some of these sites.  The scarlet macaw feathers were used as status symbol.  Due to its high demand, the bird was thought to eventually be locally bred.  Their feathers were used in rituals as well.  The macaws were thought to be ambassadors to the underworld and bringers of rain or snow, as well as the seasons, the sunshine, and the heat.

The residents of Chaco Canyon accumulated wealth on an unprecedented scale with storage bins full of turquoise (akin to modern-day diamonds), cacao (grown 1,200 miles away), seashells, copper bells, and other luxuries imported from Mexico.

There is evidence of a matrilineal dynasty lasting these 300 years but what is unknown is whether this hereditary leadership was only recognize in that community or by the Chaco Society as a whole.   

An oddity that is worth describing here: The Pueblo People of Chaco Canyon decorated their great ceremonial houses (kivas) with six-digit footprints and sandals shaped art.  In the great houses of Chaco Canyon, having an extra toe was to garner a lot of respect.  People with polydactyly had exalted status in life and death.  Mostly found on the right foot on 3.1% of the Chaco Canyon population.  In today’s Caucasians, only 0.2% of the population have it while 1.4% of African Americans do.  

Pueblo Bonito (Beautiful Town)

Partially destroyed by 97’ (30m) cliff wall called Threatening Rock

weighing 30,000 tons, that fell on Jan 22, 1941

Site with most rooms, 650, 32 kivas and 3 great kivas on two acres

Estimated to have taken 805,000 man-hours to build

Pueblo Bonito nearly destroyed: During the night of January 21, 1941, the rock settled 9" at the west end and 12" on the south.  The next day park custodian Lewis McKinney took extensive measurements and photographs.  When he ran out of film, he walked to a trading post set up near Pueblo del Arroyo for more film.  While he was inside the store there was a thunderous concussion and Threatening Rock collapsed, sending an avalanche of stone down into the back wall of Pueblo Bonito.  Some 65 rooms were destroyed.  It is evident the builders were aware of the potential disaster as they had attempted to shore up the foundation of the semi-detached fragment while building the north wall, but eventually gravity surpasses all when it comes to erosion, especially after a particularly wet season.

Called by many ‘Downtown Chaco or The Center of the Chacoan World’, Pueblo Bonito Great House is oriented south and is half-moon ‘D’ shaped just like Chetro Ketl.  Only fourteen burials/crypts were found here as was an aviary for the famous macaws, complete with a layer of guano 25 centimeters thick.  

The bones of 30 scarlet macaws were excavated from three rooms in Pueblo Bonito.  Radiocarbon data shows that Chacoans kept macaws for nearly a thousand years, right up until the collapse of their civilization.  Happy macaws make prettier feathers, that encouraged Chaocans to care for the birds which all showed tell-tale signs of organized feather harvesting.  None of the macaw specimen found were of breeding age and none were females, however.  

Endangered today, macaw feathers are valuable. The Pueblos pay as much as $60 for a single center tail feather, and other feathers sell for $1 to $50 depending upon type, color, and condition. The high prices make smuggling profitable.  Since 1982, macaw breeders and owners provide them at no cost to various tribes which still use them ceremonially. Zoos also began sending macaw feathers.  By the end of 1990, more than seven years after its inception, this program has distributed more than 800,000 macaw feathers to more than 20 Pueblos – all free of charge. The only way to stop smuggling being to flood the market with free feathers. 

Here in Pueblo Bonito were found baskets, more than 50,000 turquoise pieces, pendants, conch-shell trumpets, turquoise mosaics, sandals, baskets, arrowheads, painted flutes, ceremonial staffs, macaw feathers, digging sticks and black on white pottery.  

Pueblo Bonito is the most thoroughly investigated, visited, and celebrated cultural site in Chaco Canyon.  More archeological research has been conducted at Chaco Canyon than ANY other location in North America.  These ruins have been likened to Stonehenge and Machu Picchu with regard to their significance. 

Pueblo Bonito – Up to five stories tall in places

You can walk inside these ruins.  You get a special feel among its stones

Pueblo Bonito – more core and veneer walls

Treasure hunters/vandals smashed sidewalls instead of digging through 500-600 of

accumulated dirt to get to the archeological artefacts from above.  

Pueblo Bonito – where huge fallen rocks kiss kivas

Pueblo Bonito – Builders were aware of the danger of being so close to this cliff

Construction on the left is much older than one on the right

Pueblo Bonito – One of many kivas

Pueblo Bonito – Wall warping with time

Pueblo Bonito – corner doorway. 

Appears to function as astronomical marker

One of seven in this Great House

Pueblo Bonito – View from above.  Easy to see the half-moon ‘D’ shape

Pueblo Bonito – Rendition of whole site

Claret Cup cactus flowers

Kin Kletso – Small building without many of the great houses’ features

Overall, Chaco Canyon contains an array of structures that demonstrate extensive awareness of seasonal and astronomical cycles necessary to sustain an agricultural people.  The structures had ceremonial, religious, and public uses, and they were connected via an elaborate road system that provides evidence of advanced urban planning techniques.  Some buildings featured large storage areas that may have contributed to the region's role as a central trading post.

Additionally, it is believed that Chaco Canyon welcomed dozens of different people, who may have used the public buildings to connect and build communities that stretched far beyond the San Juan Basin.  

Door upon doors

It’s much like an ancient looted pot,

Beautiful to look at,

Yet without context,

Missing any insight.

Losing much of their real meaning.

Paul Secord

Casa Rinconada Great Kiva with T-shape doorways

Aligned North-South

Casa Rinconada Great Kiva, not part of a Great House

But alone on top of a hill for the use of many

More than 63 feet wide!

There are many more Great Houses to see

I only visited Chetro Ketl, Pueblo Bonito, Kin Kletso,

Pueblo del Arroyo, and Casa Rinconada

More for my next visit

Seen near Chetro Ketl

Abronia Fragrans – Fragrant Sand Verbena

Looks like Corona Virus – so I had to share!

Once dominated by a thriving culture, today the wind and the hawks speak more loudly than human voices.  Wonderful place to visit and where not always having the answer doesn’t take away from the experience.  Come experience this beautiful place.