Tuff, Not Tough! – Bandelier National Monument

 Hold on to what is good, even if it is a handful of earth.

 Pueblo Blessing

Reaching a cavate in Bandelier National Monument

Rule: If there is a ladder, you are welcome to enter and visit

New Mexico is a noteworthy place in North America, reigning supreme when it comes to historic sites.  Home to the oldest, and highest, Capital City (Santa Fe), the oldest church/chapel in the continental US (San Miguel Mission, Santa Fe, otherwise Puerto Rico would lead with two older ones), the oldest government building (Palace of the Governors that today holds a library, photo archives and a research facility, Santa Fe), and the oldest continuously inhabited settlements (Taos and Acoma Pueblos). 

With so much history, New Mexico is a great place for enthusiasts of the past or people appreciating its everlasting magic.  However, with Covid-19, many of these places are just now barely reopening to the public so I have been concentrating my travels to the outdoors of magnificent New Mexico.  

Bandelier National Monument is named after Adolph Bandelier, a banker turned archeologist late in life, in his forties.  He visited 166 sites in New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico in the span of a mere eighteen months, in the 1880’s when he exclaimed: ‘I am dirty, ragged, and sunburnt, but of best cheer. My life’s work has at last begun.’  He seemed to have brought a lot of passion to his latest line of work.  

Long House built along a very tall volcanic tuff cliff
Holes are where vigas (wood beams) used to support ceilings/roofs
Here, you can count as much as three stories

Adolf Bandelier is best known for his archaeological, ethnological, and historical studies of the American Southwest. He used meticulous investigation to question stereotypes of Native American culture. Though Bandelier often wrote with the patronizing language common among some naturalists of his day, his work was still a huge step toward understanding Native American culture; for this he is considered a pioneer in Southwestern American Archaeology.

Imposing volcanic tuff wall – overshadowing this narrow valley
Canyon walls are typically 13 degrees warmer than canyon
floor due to amount of glass in volcanic tuff, great for
winter dwellings

In 1880 Jose Montoya of the Cochiti Pueblo offered to show Adolph Bandelier his people’s ancestral homelands in Frijoles Canyon.  Bandelier learned the local languages, which involved assimilating several dialects of multiple languages.  Though Bandelier’s life ended in Spain, his ashes were spread in the canyon he so loved, in 1980. 

Of Bandelier National Monument Bandelier said: ‘It is the grandest thing I ever saw.’  Today, the park includes seventy miles of trails within more than 33,000 acres of rugged, beautiful canyons and mesas in the Jemez Mountains between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  It preserves the homes and territories of the Ancestral Puebloans dating between 1150 and 1550-1600 CE.  The monument was designated in 1916 by President Woodrow Wilson and was developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930’s.

CCC building steep entrance road, 1933-1941, NPS photo

Besides completing the much-needed road, the CCC built thirty-one Pueblo revival-style (or Santa Fe style, one of the few styles born in America) buildings using the tuff rocks in one central area at the end of the road. These include the visitor center, employee housing, stables, a fire tower and the Frijoles Canyon Lodge. The hole left behind from all this quarrying is now a wonderful amphitheater in the campground area where rangers give presentations. 

The Lady of Frijoles Canyon:

Judge Judson Abbott built the first lodge in Frijoles Canyon in 1907. From Santa Fe, he became a caretaker for the Frijoles Canyon archeological sites. The lodge, called The Ranch of the 10 Elders, was located across Frijoles Creek from Tyuonyi (more on that below). 

In 1925 George and Evelyn Frey arrived with their infant son and took over the running of The Ranch of the 10 Elders. At that time, the only way into and out of Frijoles Canyon was a steep, dirt path. All of the Frey belongings had to be tied onto mules for the arduous journey down from the canyon rim. The family’s possessions included household goods, 75 fruit trees, and several hundred chickens.  

Of that move into the canyon, Mrs. Frey said: ‘We had to tie these little trees on our horses to bring them down the trail, and they bucked them off all the way down the trail. But we got our orchard all planted. The Stark Brothers had sold me everything they had, so I had plums and peaches and pears and apricots and nectarines and cherries and apples; we just had everything.’ 

Mr. Frey, on the other hand, took a small Dodge truck apart and sent it down piece by piece and reassembled it, so they had a truck in the bottom of the canyon for hunting and gathering firewood. 

By the time the new Frijoles Canyon Lodge was built, Mrs. Frey had been the park concessionaire for almost fifteen years. She was reluctant to move from the small, intimate old lodge where she could house twenty guests and make what she called ‘beautiful meals’ from her own garden, orchard, and chicken coops, but realized that economically it would be a good move. The new, larger lodge could accommodate about forty guests, but the garden and chicken coops were no longer available. 

As Mrs. Frey often said, ‘If I wanted an onion, I had to go to Santa Fe to buy it.’ Nowadays, Santa Fe is only about an hour away on paved roads. It is hard to remember that for that onion, Mrs. Frey had to make her way on dirt roads which turned to mud in rain or snow, and crossed arroyos (streams) that flooded with every thunderstorm. It could take a whole day or more, and of course, people trying to visit the park had to deal with the same impediments.

Cavates, some with orangish ‘plaster’ covered walls

No ladder, no entry

While told not to associate with locals, some personnel snuck off to meet wives who were not allowed on base.  Mrs. Frey, at the nearby Bandelier National Monument, which was used for recreation and housing by the project, called them ‘those atomic people!’  In 1945 wartime New Mexico probably had the highest per-capita presence of counter-intelligence officers of anywhere in the United States.During WWII, the government set up the secret Site Y for the Manhattan Project in nearby Los Alamos. Due to limited housing, many of the top scientists (and possibly Russian spies) and their families stayed at the lodge until homes could be built. In 1944, the lodge housed over one hundred construction workers working at Los Alamos.  

After the war, Mrs. Frey continued to greet travelers with hearty meals and guest cabins. However, by the late 1960’s, visitors stayed for shorter periods while the park administration needed more office space. In 1976, the lodge ceased operations and park administration offices filled the now empty rooms. Mrs. Frey continued to live on the site until she died in 1988 at the ripe old age of 96. 

Back in time:

A talus is a pile of rocks that accumulates at the base of a cliff or slope

Called Talus House, built at base of tuff cliff

Talus House, different view

Reconstruction thought to be incorrect as the Puebloans

built doorways on top of their homes, not on the sides

Located in the Pajarito Plateau, Bandelier features ancient dwellings of the ancestral Pueblo people who lived in the area from 1150-1550/1600.  Bandelier’s unique cave dwellings (cavates, a combination of the words cave and excavate) provide visitors with an insight into an ancient civilization that thrived throughout the southwest.  This living landscape continues to hold deep cultural and religious significance to the Pueblo people.  These places were not abandoned, just no longer-lived in.  The spirits of the Pueblo ancestors still live here.

Tuff erodes easily creating many attractive patterns

With over 11,000 years of human history, the ancestral Puebloans (Paleoindians) have been as much a factor on the Pajarito Plateau as weather and geology.  The early people migrated in and out of the area following the movement of game animals.  They did not build permanent structures and archeological finds are limited to items such as spear points.  

Over time they became more sedentary, building homes of wood and mud.  Early structures, known as pit houses, were built largely underground.  These houses have been found along the Rio Grande, just south of Bandelier.  Above-ground stone dwellings, like the ones at Bandelier, gradually replaced pit houses.

Indian Paintbrush
Red leafy bracts, not actual petals, lasting longer

Next up were the Archaic people.  They moved less than their Paleoindian predecessors, but they still migrated based on seasonal availability of food.  They settled at Bandelier due to the food supply: rabbits, deer, piñon nuts, and wild grass seeds.  The initial inhabitants didn’t plant crops.  They knew when different plants were in season and when the elk came down from the high country.  Their survival was contingent upon living in accordance with the natural world.  They didn’t make pottery.  It wasn’t practical for migratory people.  Pots weigh too much, and they break easily.  They used hand-woven yucca and willow baskets for gathering and storing plants, nuts and other wild foods.  They are lighter and can be fashioned with shoulder straps to be carried like backpacks. 

Another unique aspect of Bandelier is that it was home to two groups of Pueblo people.  These groups, the Tewa and the Keres, share many cultural commonalities, but their languages are unrelated.  Today, Tewa speakers live north of Bandelier in San Ildefonso Pueblo and Keres speakers live to the south in Cochiti Pueblo.  For four hundred years these places were filled with the sound of laughter, grief, and worship.  Just think, these communities thrived for far longer than our current Republic has existed.  

Yucca needle, thread, fashion, cleaner, paintbrush, food:  

Yucca with open seedpods

New Mexico’s state flower, the yucca, was a vital plant for the Ancestral Puebloans.  They peeled the roots and ground them to produce a sudsy pulp, mixing the pulp with water for soap and shampoo.  They collected yucca leaves and stripped the fibers, weaving them into sandals, baskets, or rope (as I also saw in Mexico, called sisal).  They twisted the twine from yucca fiber with wet turkey feathers or strips of rabbit fur to make warm blankets.  Chewing one end of a yucca leaf to expose the fibers produced paintbrushes for decorating pottery.

The sharp points at the tip of each yucca leaf could be used as needles for sewing.  (sidenote: when I was in Africa, one lady, shaking her hands dry, hit the end-point of a yucca-like-plant spiked leaf.  That tip was so sharp and strong it embedded itself all the way into her finger bone.  She eventually had to go back to Australia to have it removed as no facility in Africa succeeded in doing so).  The soft, fleshy fruit was a staple of the ancient diet; eaten raw, cooked or mixed with other available ingredients.  The early summer blooms are sweet, and they ate them raw.  Even the root is edible and nutritious when food is scarce.  However, this is the part of the plant normally used for soap and that is what it tastes like. 

Yucca against New Mexico sunset

Bandelier’s builders were likely settlers migrating from Mesa Verde or Chaco.  All three sites were occupied by Ancestral Puebloans; however, each flourished during slightly different time periods.  Mesa Verde thrived between 500-1300 CE, Chaco between 500-1300 CE, and Bandelier between 1100-1550/1600 CE.  Each reached peak population at different times, with Chaco and Mesa Verde preceding Bandelier. 

NPS photo of Tyuonyi Ruins, circa 1930’s

Tyuonyi Ruins (a modern Pueblo word for treaty or meeting place) would’ve been up to three-stories tall, consisting of 300-400 rooms for about 100 people, and surrounded by farm plots. It is located in the canyon floor. 

Ancestral Pueblo people in and around Bandelier, like Pueblo ancestors elsewhere, were farmers who grew maize (corn), beans, and squash. They supplemented their diet with native plants and by hunting. Domesticated turkeys were used for both their feathers and meat while dogs assisted in hunting and provided companionship. 

Cotton was cultivated and woven into garments. They fashioned tools, including a wide variety of axes, mauls, and knives, from animal bones, wood, and local stones such as obsidian and basalt. They acquired other items, including shells, turquoise, and parrots, through trade networks that ranged as far as central Mexico and Baja California.  People ranged far from their homes not only to seek trade advantages but because of human curiosity and the urge to explore. 

Tyuonyi Ruins today
The ancients of New Mexico mastered the first
apartment developments in North America!

The rock in the canyon wall is primarily compacted volcanic ash called ‘tuff.’ The tuff is softer than other rock in the canyon which allowed it to be dug out easily.  The small caves were initially formed by erosion and then further carved (becoming cavates) out by the Puebloan people.

Cholla cactus, tuff tent rocks, Tyuonyi Ruins

Hunting, weaving, and heavy construction were tasks performed by men.  Women cooked, made pottery, maintain living quarters, including regularly plastering the outer walls, and cared for children.  Both were actively involved in farming. 

Depiction of what Tyuonyi possibly looked like
Sign by the site

The Long House:

From NPS website – panoramic view of Long House

Building along the cliff made it easier to construct up.  This structure is 700 feet long and contained 217 rooms.  View video here to see construction, and its cavates. 

Dwellings built along the base of the canyon wall were often stacked higher than similar structures on the canyon floor, because they had the support of the canyon wall.  The number of stories can be determined by looking at the rows of viga holes.  Each floor needed the vigas to support the floor/ceiling of the next level. 

The location of the cliff dwellings would have provided the occupants with protection from the weather and enemies. The cavates face south which would have provided warmth from the winter sun. There is also evidence of fire in some of the cavates with soot-covered ceilings. The cavates would have retained the heat from any fire, providing additional warmth. During the summer, the cavates would have provided shade from the heat of the sun. The elevated cavates would have also provided the occupants with some protection against enemies and predators.  

Moving On: 

By 1550-1600, the Ancestral Pueblo people had moved from this area to pueblos along the Rio Grande. After over four hundred years the land here could no longer support the people and a severe drought added to what were already becoming difficult times. Oral traditions tell us where the people went and who their descendants are. The people of Cochiti Pueblo, located just south and east along the Rio Grande, are the most direct descendants of the Ancestral Pueblo people who built homes in Frijoles Canyon. Likewise, San Ildefonso is most closely linked to Tsankawi (previous post).

Field Locations: 

Mesatops were used for much of the farming. Small plots were probably located in the narrow canyons as well. However, steep canyon walls blocked much of the day's sunlight and the canyons worked as cold sinks making growing crops in the canyon somewhat problematic. Field locations dotted the mesatops where afternoon thunderstorms were the most likely to offer necessary moisture. 

Dry Farming: 

Water is the most important ingredient for successful agriculture in this arid climate. The Ancestral Pueblo people developed a number of farming techniques that conserve water. Pumice (a light, frothy rock that is full of gas) is a major component of the local volcanic tuff. Pumice can act as a sponge, absorbing water and releasing it slowly over time. It was used as mulch to preserve moisture in the soil. Other water-preserving practices included terracing, check dams that slowed water moving across slopes, and waffle or grid gardens. Waffle gardens are constructed by forming small depressions surrounded by a low earthen wall. Seeds are planted within the cavity. The selection of plants was also a good one. Corn is sun-tolerant and grows tall. Beans and squash are less tolerant but grow shorter and can be shaded by the corn plants which also provide support for growing. 

From the corn we learn to live, we learn the life that is ours.

By grinding the corn we learn the footsteps of life.

 Sharon Naranjo-Garcia, Santa Clara Pueblo

Today, corn remains vital to the Pueblo people both as a source of food and as a part of their traditions and ceremonies.  Special corn-grinding songs are sung, and traditional corn dances are held every year. 

Health: 

Bad teeth and arthritis were common ailments. It was not uncommon for women to die in childbirth. Evidence suggests that injured persons were nursed and supported by the community.  Many children did not survive to adulthood.  All time high population was of about five hundreds in the late 1400’s.  

Tuff Blocks: 

Homes were constructed from chunks of volcanic tuff, which is soft and relatively easy to break into blocks. In fact, natural erosional processes often create slopes of broken, often block-like pieces of rock, at the bottom of canyon walls. The Ancestral Pueblo people had sources of hard rock, basalt, just a short distance down canyon. From this more durable rock the people made axes and hammers which could be used as tools to form the tuff blocks. Axes were also used to cut down large Ponderosa pine trees whose straight, thick trunks made excellent vigas (the beams used to support the floor of the next story or a roof). 

Mortar: 

Blocks of tuff were held together with a mud mixture. This mortar is often missing when a site is excavated. In the past, the mortar was often replaced with concrete, a much harder material than the tuff. This led to problems and currently an effort is underway to replace the old concrete with a new mortar that has properties more similar to the original. 

Partial view of Tyuonyi Ruins below cavate
Average man then was 5’6”, woman 5’ tall
Lifespan was around 35 years

Cavates were also common behind the rooms built at the bottom of cliffs. Luckily, the tuff is soft and malleable. Carving these rooms using stone tools would have still been very difficult. The walls of the cavates were often plastered and the ceilings smoked to inhibit crumbling of the tuff, preventing grit and dirt from constantly raining from the ceiling. Sometimes pictographs painted on, or petroglyphs were carved into the walls.  Carving the tuff, which has a lot of glass in it, wasn’t probably the best for the health of the carvers’ lungs. 

A closer view of Tyuonyi Ruins from top of ladder

Over a thousand of these rooms are located in the walls of Frijoles Canyon.  Masonry structures were built in front of most cavates.  Most cavates are single rooms, but some are connected by interior doorways.  These rooms were used for many things including weaving, grinding corn, and storage.  Many contained carved and plastered niches, probably for storing pots and special household items.  

Connecting cavates with smoked ceilings
Floor covering added for protection from wear and tear

Falls Trail: 

El Rito de Los Frijoles (The Little River of Beans) runs along Frijoles Canyon and reaches the Rio Grande, 700 feet below.  It is a beautiful hike among tall ponderosa trees.  It is said this is a permanent stream, but it was dry when I visited.  The area of Valles de Caldera where the collapsed cone of the Jemez Volcano, the third largest of the North America’s super-volcanoes (after Yellowstone, WY and Long Valley, CA), feeds this little river.  (more on Valles Caldera in next post)

Early morning along the Falls Trail
Tall ponderosa trees against orange tuff cliff, bone dry riverbed

Upper Fall – could hear a few drops of water but could not see any

Eighty feet tall, hard basalt rock against tuff

What would’ve been nice to see but for the extra dry year

In the end: 

Perhaps the following explains why I have a harder time writing about Native American history, much more so than when I write about its Mexican historical counterpart.  I feel distanced from the Native American history while I feel more connected to the Mexican one.  Writing about ‘their’ history ends up being dry and monotonous… 

So, what if? ‘What if Henry Clay had won the election of 1844 instead of James Polk? We wouldn’t have had a Mexican War and you’d have our archaeology coming out of Mexico City rather than Boston and Philadelphia, and it would be very different,’ he said. ‘Mexico nationalized its past. Its indigenous past is part of the national identity, and that’s certainly not the case with how the United States has dealt with Native people; it’s sort of an us-and-them kind of thing.’  Stephen H. Lekson 

History is stored away in the archives of Mother Earth. 

Dr Edgar Lee Hewett 

Another noted archaeologist, Adolph Bandelier, contributed another facet to this story. He was a student of Lewis Henry Morgan, the father of American anthropology, and Bandelier was a mentor to Hewett. But because Morgan put the history of ancient Native America in anthropology, it made it a natural science rather than history, and there was this notion that there was no history, Lekson said. ‘Indians were specimens in a natural science paradigm. Morgan was a real good friend to Indians and lobbied on their behalf, but he was quite clear that the way to study them was through science and not history, and basically that they didn’t have a history, or at least any history that made any difference, and that has affected how we see the Southwest.’

Another ladder, another cavate to explore

The issue is substantially different in Mexico, where the national museum is a museum of both anthropology and history, Lekson said, adding that the Spanish and Mexican governments had a very different way of addressing the Native American past than did the American government. ‘The American government wanted to say that there was no history, so these people were disposable. But the conquistadors married into Aztec royal houses, treating them more or less as equals. Even though it was horrible and there were all kinds of problems, it was a different way of engaging the Native people. They kept the Aztec royalty and the Tarascan royalty and then the normal people, the peasants, the farmers, were put in encomiendas and treated like serfs. It was more of a feudal type of thing, but it was one civilization to another civilization, the Spanish recognizing, as they must, that the Aztecs were a civilization.’ 

Contrasting the Mexican situation to the typical U.S. description of Cahokia, a Native site in southern Illinois whose population peaked in the 1200s. ‘This was a huge city, at the same time as Chaco, and it had the biggest pyramid north of Mexico City, and we call it a ‘mound.’ Our Indians don’t have pyramids; they have mounds — just like any Indian boat is a ‘canoe.’’

Ponderosa needles and cones covering forest floor

A nation transforms the varied pasts of its history into a common national heritage by selecting pieces of that history and representing them as if they were the whole of that history.  In reconstructions of buildings, viewers tend to assume that if the details of door hinges, window sashes, paint color, and furnishings are correct then so too is the story told about the place.  But scholars find meanings for these artifacts in the present and these meanings are molded so that heritage always fits the interests of the present. 

Defining Indian people as alien placed them outside the usual rights and privileges of white society; lumping all Indian people in a single group denied them an identity except in relation to whites. 

In North America, archeology began as a colonial venture that downplayed the achievements and skills of a vanquished people to excuse the reduction and subjugation of that people.  Colonialist archaeology, wherever practiced, served to denigrate native societies and peoples by trying to demonstrate that they had been static in prehistoric times and lacked the initiative to develop on their own. (Bruce Trigger, 1984) 

The Pueblos were an anomaly for U.S. Indian policy. They looked civilized, with solid stone homes, fields, and livestock, and the treaty in which Mexico ceded the Southwest to the United States required that the United States respect their rights and extend them citizenship. The Anglos who flocked to New Mexico coveted Pueblo fields, range lands, and water. They used the myth to argue that the things that gave the Pueblo people the guise of civilization were nothing more than a thin veneer taken from the Spanish (G. Emlen Hall, 1984) 

The conservative position denied the humanity of Indian people and gave them no place in the nation. The liberal position upheld the humanity of Indian people but allowed them a place in the nation only if they gave up their Indianness. Few people saw the need to ask Indian people how they felt about their past or the whites' uses of it.

By the 1920s the Indian people of the Southwest had taken on a new role in white society: they had become a tourist attraction (McLuhan, 1985). In the late 1800’s, Wild West shows had taken the now exotic ‘Red Man’ to the East and to Europe. The Santa Fe railroad did one better; it brought tourists to see live Indian people in the exotic locale of the Southwest (McLuhan, 1985). Tourism made the primitive otherness of Indian people into a commodity that whites could sell in tours, shops, and hotels.

The Southwest is the region of the country where Indian people have most plainly not faded away. So, it is somewhat surprising that the myth of the vanishing American shows up regularly in popular books, films, and articles about the archeology of the region. 

The notion of the vanishing American affects the way we do archeology today. The image allows archeologists to glorify their object, the Indian past, and yet detach it from the descendants of this past, living Indian people. The heroes of the prehistoric tale become the archeologists that have been able to interpret this past and not the Indian people whose lives flow from it. 

Traditionalists within Indian groups have always put heritage and culture at the core of the confrontation with white society (Deloria and Lytle, 1984). Their orientation has been to their own tribe and family, and they are the ones who most tenaciously maintained the tribal culture, religion, customs, and past. They did not hold a linear view of past leading to present. Their past is manifest in the present and is known through spiritual sources, ritual, and oral tradition. It does not need to be discovered (Zimmerman, 1989). These traditionalists were by and large bypassed when tribal governments were formed under the Indian New Deal in the 1930’s, and their voices were rarely heard outside the reservations (Taylor, 1980, Haudenosaunee Grand Council of Chiefs, 1986). 

The time has come for archeologists to reunite their object of study, the Indian past, with its descendants, and to ask about the needs of Indian people and address those needs (Trigger, 1980; Sprague, 1974; Anyon, 1991). This is not just a problem of public relations or of education. It requires more than just a compromise or an accommodation between disciplinary interests and the interests of Indian people. It requires that archeologists initiate a process of dialogue with Indian peoples that will fundamentally alter the practice of archeology in the United States. This dialogue will alter our perceptions of the past, how we deal with living Native Americans, how we train students, and how we present our results to each other and the general public. 

Source:  Archeology and the First Americans, Randall H. McGuire, from: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Dec, 1992)

Called ‘walking rain’ in New Mexico
You can see through the wall of rain as it walks over the land

The land! don't you feel it?

Doesn't it make you want to go out and lift dead Indians

tenderly from their graves, to steal from them-as if it must be

clinging even to their corpses-some authenticity.

 Carlos Williams

I would love to hear tales about the Indians who lived at Bandelier like the stories Mrs. Frey shared.  The intimacy of the details, difficulties, and successes would so enhance the narrative and help me feel them in a way that, currently, feels more like a dissection than a connection.