Mesa Verde

Mesa Verde and the Anasazi People

In southwest Colorado, Mesa Verde National Park holds historical evidence of early Native Americans.  Mesas, flat plateaus, cover this eighty-one square mile National Park.  It is a significant place that helped shape America’s Native American history.

            Mesa Verde, Spanish for “green table,” is roughly one and a half miles above sea level.  The park collects ninety inches of snow a year and has temperatures ranging from fifteen to eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit.

The Native American tribes that lived in Mesa Verde from the sixth to twelfth century were called the Anasazi people.  The word Anasazi means “ancient enemy,” but due to the negative meaning, these Native Americans became known as the Puebloans.  They came to Mesa Verde to defend themselves from their enemies, the Cheyenne Indians in the sixth century.  The Anasazi people first built their houses on top of the mesas, but they soon built houses within the cliffs along the sides of the mountain to protect themselves from rain, snow, and falling rocks.  They built the houses out of wood and stone covered with adobe, a mixture of dirt, ashes, and water used as cement.  Their religious and family events took place in kivas, which are circular dwellings built underground.

A kiva

Ladder to climb down into the kiva

The women made baskets and pottery used for storing food and water and cooking. They cooked food in the baskets by heating a stone and placing it in the basket with the food and water.  The stone would heat the food in the basket and cook it.  They cooked food in pottery by placing pots over the fire until the food was cooked.  The men planted crops on the fertile mesas and hunted bison throughout the land.

The Anasazi people believed that the sun was their god.  It is for this reason that they built their cliff dwellings facing the East, the way the sun rises.  Another reason the Anasazi faced their dwellings toward the East was to avoid wind, which blows from the West to the East, and absorb the most heat possible.  The Native Americans climbed up the mountainside to protect them from wild animals.  They scaled the mountain by making notches in the rock to grasp as they climbed.

The Anasazi tribe did not have running water and just had one spot to relieve themselves.  This caused sickening hygiene problems, which killed people because they had no cure for the infections.  Another common health problem for the Native Americans were dental complications.  A severe drought came and forced the Anasazi people to move out once and for all around 1275.

On December eighteenth, 1888, Richard Wetherill and Charles Mason were looking for lost cattle when they stumbled along Mesa Verde.  They took mummies, arrowheads, axheads, clothing, and pottery to archaeologists to study and determine the mysteries of Mesa Verde. 

On June twenty-ninth, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Mesa Verde as a National Park. Roosevelt said he made it a National Park to “preserve the works of man”.

The people of Mesa Verde, its discovery, and its transformation into a National Park are things that both helped shape Native American history and our country’s memoir.  Preserving one of America’s National Parks is a great responsibility so the cliff dwellings can be enjoyed for generations to come.

Bibliography

Crewe, Sabrina and Anderson, Dale. The Anasazi Culture at Mesa Verde. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2003

 “Dec 18, 1888: Wetherill and Mason discover Mesa Verde,” n.d. Accessed November 27, 2012. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/wetherill-and-mason-discover-mesa-verde

“Mesa Verde National Park.” n.d. Accessed November 27, 2012.  http://www.desertusa.com/ver/du_ver_map.html

 “Stepping back in time.” 2010. Accessed November 27, 2012.

http://www.visitmesaverde.com/mesa-verde-history.aspx