A People's Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living

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A readable guide to Southwestern Native American ethnobotany.......1997-02-22

Written with much respect towards both the preservation and privacy of American Indian plant lore, this book provides an intelligent and entertaining ethnobotanic history of the Southwest. The line drawings clearly key with the plants in their habitats, and Bill Dunmire's color photographs place the plants in typical environments. ...and besides, I'm her son.

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Pueblo Indian Agriculture
James A. Vlasich
Manufacturer: University of New Mexico Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0826335047

Book Description

The practice of irrigational agriculture has always set the Pueblo Indians apart from other native groups on the New Mexican frontier. For centuries, farming has been the foundation of the economy of all nineteen Pueblo Indian groups and their ancestors. It led to their theocratic system of government to control water and land use and to a complex ceremonial religion designed to ensure a bountiful harvest.

James Vlasich traces Pueblo agriculture from the Spanish entrada to the twenty-first century. Early explorers marveled at the Puebloans' sophisticated irrigation systems and crop production. Their agricultural practices represented industry, stability, prosperity, and technology. As the population of the Rio Grande Valley increased, cultures, that had admired Pueblo agricultural knowledge began to challenge the Puebloans' right to the land and water. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the American government sought to modernize the agricultural programs, a quest doomed to failure until the Great Depression, followed by World War II, allowed for change.

In spite of increased availability of other economic venues, among them casino gambling, the tenacious character of the Pueblo people has kept agriculture central to their culture.

From Pueblo Indian Agriculture

Book Description

When Ken and Ruth Wright went hiking through Mesa Verde National Park, they didn't expect to be pulled into a research project on ancient waterworks. But sucked in they were.

Using the science of paleohydrology- the study of water use and water handling by ancient peoples- Wright and his researchers were able to prove that certain sites in the park were in fact reservoirs for ancient peoples who lived in Mesa Verde.

Wright details their research and their discoveries in The Water Mysteries of Mesa Verde. This enthralling book meticulously recounts the intelligence, the ingenuity, and the forethought of our ancestors.

Customer Reviews:

Help! Editor Needed.......2007-01-17

Within these pages hides a book in desperate search of an editor.

I received this book as a gift, and I really wanted to read it because I am very interested in the subject. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a tough slog which could only be overcome by gritty determination to find the kernels of information hidden within.

The first thing one has to overcome is the author's pedantic, pompous, arrogant and self-absorbed prose. It is so far over the edge that it is laughable at times, sadly so. Worse, it constantly has the feel of a college term paper that was aggressively padded to make it longer. This resulted in writing which is indirect and obscure, by dint of trying to overly complicate statements and elliptically restate them so that 30 words would replace six. Repetition is endemic throughout the book. The many photographs suffer from what appears to be substandard reproduction that results in details being murky and not very informative, at best. This only serves to make the limitations of the original photos and their photographers even more prominent. Also, a goodly number of the photos only served to underline the whole feeling of padding and stretching that one finds throughout the prose.

You have to really want to know more about the subject to read this book.

Two Story House.......2006-10-29

Two Story House
Was W.H. Jackson Right About the Water Cistern?
By Justice Greg Hobbs

My wife, Bobbie, and I joined Ken and Ruth Wright on the weekend of May 6-7, 2006 to further examine how the ancient Puebloans of Mesa Verde obtained drinking water.
Ken and Ruth had included us in the 2003 survey team that verified the existence of the Boxelder Reservoir, the fourth reservoir they documented as having been operated within Mesa Verde National Park between 750 and 1100 A.D.
When Ken and Ruth were preparing their essay on Far View, Morefield, Sagebrush and Boxelder reservoirs for the Citizen's Guide to Colorado's Water Heritage published by the Colorado Foundation for Water Education, I sent them W.H. Jackson's essay "Ancient Ruins in Southwestern Colorado" appearing in Volume I of the Hayden Survey bulletins published in 1875.
Led by John Moss, a gold prospector who had seen Mancos Canyon ruins in 1873, Jackson sighted and climbed up to Two Story House in 1874. Jackson described an elegant two-story ancient Pubeloan structure he called a "little human eyrie" perched up "in its little crevice like a swallow's nest" 800 vertical feet above the Mancos River. Attached to it was a "large reservoir or cistern, the upper walls of which came nearly to the top of the window."
Jackson's report and photography of an ancient cliff dwelling in southwestern Colorado led to many more "discoveries." William Henry Holmes, another member of the Hayden survey, explored McElmo Canyon in 1875, reporting a number of large ruins including "a triple-walled tower." Thirteen years later, rancher Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charles Mason "found" within the recesses of what is now the park the "Cliff Palace" Jackson and Holmes had missed.

Ken hadn't seen Jackson's essay before, but knew of a reported cistern at Mug House within Mesa Verde National Park that could serve as a comparison. At the request of the Park Service, in connection with the park's 100th Anniversary, he and Ruth had agreed to present lectures at the site of the Morefield Reservoir on the mornings of May 5 and 6. They scheduled a hike to Mug House for the afternoon of the 6th and to Two Story House, on Ute Mountain Ute tribal lands, for the 7th to examine water features.

Saturday, May 6, 2006

Seen from Cortez, the land encompassing the park appears to be a continuous mountain range rising up from the Montezuma Valley and lying east-west to Sleeping Ute Mountain. Navigating the park by car from the entrance station, one rides the ridgeline of five watershed mesas stretching south towards the Mancos River like fingers of a gigantic hand laid upon the land.

Within the park, Moccasin Mesa, Park Mesa, Chapin Mesa, Long Mesa, and Wetherill Mesa are prominent islands in the sky cut by canyons: among them, Morefield Canyon, Prater Canyon, Moccasin Canyon, School Section Canyon, Soda Canyon, Spruce Canyon, Navajo Canyon, Wickiup Canyon, Long Canyon, and Rock Canyon.

Receiving runoff waters of these canyons, the Mancos River flowing from the La Plata Mountains turns in a great southwesterly bend around the eastern and southern boundaries of the park into the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park.

Morefield Reservoir and Spring
After breakfast with Ken and Ruth Saturday morning at the Holiday Inn Express in Cortez, we meet a group of scholars at the Morefield Campground within the park. Ken and Ruth arrived earlier this week to participate in an archeology conference devoted to historic and new interpretations about how the ancient Puebloans lived at Mesa Verde and why they had all departed by 1300 A.D.
Congress established Mesa Verde National Park on June 29, 1906. Alone among the national parks, Mesa Verde National Park was created to preserve archeological values. The late 19th and 20th Century scientific explorations of Mesa Verde included collection of artifacts and the unearthing, documentation, and reconstruction of ancient living sites.

Earlier this week, Hopi tribal members helped to rebury human remains and funerary objects of the Puebloans. Mesa Verde is sacred ground to the Ute Mountain Ute people whose reservation includes many ancient Puebloan sites and to the Hopi whose ancestral migrations involved passing through here.
In describing a feature of Two Story House that resembled a water vessel, keen-eyed Jackson was interested in how they had lived. For how could they have survived in this remote and semi-arid land without great ingenuity in the collection of water?
The answer is they carefully conserved springs, seeps, sandstone pot holes, check dams, cisterns, and reservoirs to marshal the water treasure. Ken and Ruth have systematically documented this in their late 20th and early 21st century work. Particularly remarkable are the reservoirs.

In 1893, the archaeologist G. Nordenskiold found what he called "conclusive evidence that the cliff-dwellers had to contend with the same dry climate and the same scarcity of water as now obtain in these regions." He described an ancient reservoir--enclosed by a circular wall, with a ditch running into it--that he found on Chapin Mesa. Nearby were the ruins of a considerable village. Referring to the ruins of ancient irrigation works found in Northern Arizona, Nordenskiold conjectured, "It is not at all improbable that irrigation by artificial means was in use even among the prehistoric inhabitants of the Mesa Verde."

Working with archeologists Jack Smith, David Breternitz, and Jim Kleidon, and other experts who have included soil scientists and hydrologists, Ken and Ruth have produced estimates of the operational life of these drinking water reservoirs (water being too scarce and precious for irrigation in Mesa Verde, as it turns out):

* Morefield Reservoir in Morefield Canyon (AD 750-1100), 4 feet deep, 50-foot diameter, 120,000 gallons
* Far View Reservoir (also known as Mummy Lake) on Chapin Mesa (AD 950-1100), 4.6 feet deep, 90-foot diameter, 80,000 gallons
* Sagebrush Reservoir on an unnamed mesa west of Chapin Mesa (AD 950-1100), 5.2 feet deep, 70-foot diameter, 90,000 gallons
* Box Elder Reservoir in Prater Canyon (AD 800-950), 20 feet deep, 220-foot diameter, 100,000 gallons.

Our morning itinerary takes us into Morefield Canyon. Scholars accompanying us include Dr. Jonathan Upchurch, transportation expert for Mesa Verde National Park, his wife, Betty Upchurch, the park's librarian, and Eric Janes, recently retired Bureau of Land Management hydrologist and ecologist.

Ken and Ruth explain how a trench across this Morefield sediment mound, cut with permission of the Park Service in 1997, revealed sediment layers that incontrovertibly proved the existence of a reservoir, not a dance platform, as park service employees had previously speculated it to be.
Though obscuring vegetation is growing back after the year 2000 Bircher Fire, amidst the grasses we discover stones that track the past of the 1400-foot diversion canal leading into the reservoir, as well as armor stones the ancient Puebloans placed to retard erosion along the canal's banks.

It's amazing that the people who operated this reservoir for 350 years had nothing more than sticks, stones, baskets, and deer antlers to scoop sediment out of it and maintain the canal.

Not far down Morefield Canyon are two great kivas that served as the community centers of a population which may have reached 500 persons. The largest of the kivas had been partially excavated in the past, documented, then reburied.

While the rest of our group inspects the perimeter of the kivas, I walk directly to the east canyon wall where a spring steadily drips water into fresh imprints of wild horse hooves. Throughout the Mesa Verde country, seeps and springs most often served as the people's water supply.

Mug House and Water Cistern
Our afternoon hike takes us off the canyon rim of Wetherill Mesa along the rimrock to Mug House. This magnificent cliff dwelling is normally closed to the public, but will open this summer for ranger-led tours on a limited basis. We are fortunate to have the Assistant Superintendent of the park, Betty Janes, lead us to Mug House and its water cistern. Pete and Nancy Foster join us for this part of the day's exploration.
The trail leads us past Adobe Cave to Mug House. Adobe Cave had consisted of three rooms and two kivas which the Puebloans apparently used as building materials for the later construction of Mug House. Three red parallel zig-zag lines adorn the rear wall, perhaps telling of migrations?
Mug House sits in an alcove 200 feet long and up to 40 feet deep. 90 feet of vertical sandstone rises above it. Excavation and stabilization of Mug House in the 1960s identified 94 rooms; 40 of these are dwelling rooms; 8 are kivas.

The kivas are larger and have more head space than the dwelling rooms. Despite thoughts that kivas were restricted to men for religious purposes, Betty Janes suggests that families may have gathered in them for warmth in the winter. With a ventilator for drawing in fresh air and a hatchway through the roof to expel smoke and stale air, kivas could have served many community functions.

We walk across open courtyards that dot Mug House, step carefully into dwelling units, peer into the kivas, and spot the round small center holes--sipapus--that represent human emergence from the spirit world. We see Richard Wetherill's name inscribed on a large sandstone slab followed by the date he also carved--1890.

We walk to the Mug House water cistern 200 yards further on. High up the cliff face, we spot a pour off notch from which water cascades into this storage vault when rain falls. The Puebloans built a ten foot high rock and rubble dam at the outer base of the rimrock to impound the water. Ken unpacks his tape measure. Pete and I assist.

The dimensions reported by Art Roan in his 1971 report on the excavation and stabilization of Mug House were 22 feet long, 10 feet wide, and about 4 feet deep, with a storage capacity of 6,000 to 7,000 gallons. Based on the measurements we took, Ken figures the present capacity at about 3000 gallons. Accumulated sediment and the park's stabilization work on the embankment may account for the difference. Constant dredging of sediment must have been necessary.

The presence of this water cistern helps to explain how Mug House became a relatively large community of 80 to 100 persons. The only additional water supply consists of two springs approximately one and a half miles away. From tree-ring specimens, dates of occupation were from 736-1277.
These people farmed the mesa tops without irrigation, growing corn, beans, and squash. They domesticated turkeys for a steady supply of meat, supplemented by rabbits, dear, woodrats, and squirrels. They gathered seeds and fruits, including prickly pear, pigweed, goosefoot, beeplant, ground cherry, miner's lettuce, and skunkbush. Few adults survived 40 years of age and, based on burials in the vicinity, half of the children died before reaching 4 years of age.

We hike back up to the top of the mesa and carefully approach the edge of the rimrock to see if we can spot from above the pour-off into the water cistern far below. We see a channel chipped into the rock and two parallel dirt berms, plus a rock wall built on the very edge of the rimrock.

These water features are shaped to collect and funnel water over the rimrock, but the Puebloans may not have constructed them. They may have been built during the park restoration of Mug House to direct water away from eroding this site. Note for further research!

Sunday, May 7, 2006

Two Story House

We head for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park headquarters located between Cortez and Tawaoc to meet our Ute guides at 8:30 a.m.
The Ute Tribal Park encompasses 125,000 acres centering along a 25-mile stretch of the Mancos River. The Ute Mountain Ute preserve it as a primitive area to protect its cultural and environmental resources. Full day and half day guided tours are available to the public.
Due to recent hip operations, Ruth and Bobbie decide not undertake the climb into Two Story House. Instead they go with a guide to four cliff dwellings that are accessible from the top of Johnson Mesa. A couple from Pennsylvania, Ren and Caroline Lackey, accompanies them. The way turns out to be challenging. Descent into these remote places is by ladder from the top of the mesa down cliff faces and back out.

Our guide for the climb to Two Story House is Rickey Hayes. Eric Janes joins Ken and me for this venture onto the rimrock where W.H. Jackson in 1874 explored the first of the cliff houses ever reported to the United States public.

Rickey is part Ute and part Cheyenne. He story-tells us up an hour and a half of switchback traverses. The Utes have always been here from the earliest times, he says. Our people are from Central America. We are related to the Aztec and Maya. We are mountain people. There were seven bands of the Utes.

This was our land all across Colorado and onto the plains. We hunted and traded with other tribes. We knew all of these places up these canyons where the people came through on their migrations. But we left them alone out of respect. The Wetherills were not looking for cattle when they came through here. They were looking for what they could take and sell.

Rickey explains how the juniper berry is brewed for medicine tea; how sprigs of this sweet smelling evergreen the creator placed here for the people are used for purification. He tells of drummers who drum through the night. Next month he will go up on Sleeping Ute Mountain for the sundance. He is a sundancer.

All along the trail, pottery sherds--red, brown, black and white designs on the outside and inside of once-whole pots, broken ladle pieces, fragments of corn-grinding stones.

Belly to the ground, a snake refuses to leave our path until Rickey thumps the ground with his walking staff. He takes many opportunities to stop, so we can rest and see how the Mancos River canyon opens up the higher we get. Willow and cottonwood bud those tender baby greens of Spring.

Rickey says the river has steadily lost flow these 13 years he has guided people here. Up in the La Platas all the glaciers have melted.
Now we come to the edge of the rimrock, thread our way carefully along its sheer-wall face. I get crazy with heights like this, so I concentrate on where I put my feet to.

High on the cliff face, an horizontal ladder bridges the top of two impossibly-placed dwellings. Into a crack the people have wedged a tree-trunk ladder to get up to them.

We continue along the rimrock, turn a bend. Perched to its niche is elegant Two Story House.

We climb into it by a series of rock toeholds. Nine rooms are compressed into a small bi-level vertical space. We enter. Through window holes the arcing noonday sun slants in.

One by one we squeeze into the tall circular back room Jackson called a reservoir. Unlike the water cistern at Mug House, which is out in the open below a pour-off spout, this structure is tucked within the alcove and directly adjoins the dwelling places.

Water falling down the cliff faces would not run into it. If it did, the water would soak into the earthen walls, undermining the foundations.
Any water stored in this room would be stored in water jars. This room would also make a fine lookout onto a good length of the canyon floor below, and for seeing the stars.

We lunch on the open apron to the entry of Two Story House. Rickey tells us the migration story.

This is the fourth world. The three before were destroyed by fire, ice, and flood. These people did not leave because of drought or warfare. After dwelling in this place on their journey, they went farther south to the mesas when it was time to. The Hopi still come back to tell us how the people were on their journey when they came through here.

They kept the story of their migrations secret for a long time, but when the atom bombs exploded they started to share their prophecies. They interpret the stone panel pictures for us.
We must protect the earth and each other and not give in to greed and the easy life.

As we descend from Two Story House, Rickey explains that the gulley to the east of us has check dams the people built into it, and a series of natural sandstone potholes that trap water. That's the water source they used.

As we drive out of Mancos Canyon, Rickey stops the tribal truck for us to see the etched-in-sandstone picture panel rock the winter solstice illuminates. It tells the song of creation and emergence.

Here is Spider Woman, companion of Taiowa and the mother of the worlds to come. Next to her, Massoua, earth-god. Then the four circles of the four worlds tucked within one another. There is rain cloud with her butterfly wings. Kokopelli on his back playing his flute. See those three people emerging from that slanting crack sculpted into the end of the panel. That is the sipapu.

We get a flat tire. The van carrying Ruth and Bobbie comes along as we fiddle with how to lower the spare tire from underneath the truck. They carry us out of the canyon. Rickey stays behind.

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Hovenweep 1974 (Archeological report)
Joseph C Winter
Manufacturer: Anthropology Dept., San Jose State University
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Southwestern Agriculture: Early Corn and R.G. Matson

The Origins of Southwestern Agriculture
R. G. Matson
Manufacturer: University of Arizona Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

Southwestern Agriculture: Early Corn and R.G. Matson.......2002-02-04

I found this book to be very well written, as one would expect from Matson. The only problem with the book, of course, is that it is slightly outdated. We now have much more information regarding occupation of the Colorado Plateau than Matson did at the time of his writing. This in no way invalidates his work, and I find the fact that he presented three models of the origins of corn agriculture an interesting concept. Of course two of the models were in place prior to his book, and his model of the Maize Development is important. I do recommend this book to all archaeologists who work with early southwestern sites, be they Late Archaic or early Basketmaker. It will also be of interest to anyone who follows Southwestern Prehistory. The book is well written, and easy to read, and I found the side bars with additional site specific information quite useful. We could only hope that Matson will update this book in the future. In the meanwhile, enjoy this work.

Farmers, fires, and forests: a green alternative to shifting cultivation for conservation of the Maya forest? [An article from: Landscape and Urban Planning]

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Farmers, fires, and forests: a green alternative to shifting cultivation for conservation of the Maya forest? [An article from: Landscape and Urban Planning]
A. Eastmond , and B. Faust
Manufacturer: Elsevier
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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ASIN: B000RR53US

Book Description

This digital document is a journal article from Landscape and Urban Planning, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
When fires blazed through Mexico's forests in 1998, the country experienced a new sense of urgency in its attempts to combat ecosystem degradation and loss of biodiversity. Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT, the federal environmental protection agency) identified the use of fire in agriculture as a major contributor to the conflagration. Traditional ''slash-and-burn'' systems are still widely practiced in the southeast of Mexico, and finding a substitute for burning, especially in and near protected areas, became imperative (SEMARNAT, 2001). Experience from different parts of Central America indicated that green manure/cover crop systems (g/cc) could increase soil fertility, reduce erosion, control weeds and raise the yield of maize; the hope was that this system could replace slash-and-burn practices with their attendant risk of forest fires. We present the case study of a project introducing a green cover crop to traditional, resource-poor, maize farmers in one community of the Yucatan peninsula and preliminary results from a similar project in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, discussing the data in the light of the on-going debates concerning both fire policy and soil erosion. We conclude that, in spite of demonstrating some advantages, adoption in the peninsula has been hindered by environmental, economic and socio-cultural factors. Mexican efforts to eliminate fire from the forests must also be assessed with reference to the scientific literature by fire experts and historical ecologists, indicating that prohibition of small fires may actually decrease total biodiversity, while increasing the probabilities of catastrophic forest fires.

Seasonal Agricultural Circulation & Residential Mobility: A Prehistoric Example from the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico (The Evolution of North)

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Seasonal Agricultural Circulation & Residential Mobility: A Prehistoric Example from the Pajarito Plateau, New Mexico (The Evolution of North)
Rob Preucel Jr.
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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1500 years of irrigation history
Odd S Halseth
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Water Supply & Land Use | Nature & Ecology | Science | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: B0007JZDSI

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