This was sent to me by Muri’s Mum of our pizza dinner before we went to the show on Friday evening...I would say she looks happy!!!
Had a good sleep again and woke up to a cool air outside...made a nice breakfast and was on the road by 8.30am heading to a site I have always wanted to visit!!
This is a long article but a fascinating read and glad I read it and saw the movie at the visitor centre before going to the dwellings!!!
By James Abarr
Journal Staff Writer
From deep within the vast Gila Wilderness, a small stream, born high in the neighboring mountains, splashes its way down a narrow, forested canyon.
More than 700 years ago, a band of migrating Indians, probably numbering fewer than 60 men, women and children, drifted into this canyon at the point where the little stream flows into the West Fork of the Gila River.
High on the northwest face of the canyon, a series of large caves in the volcanic rock beckoned. It was there, 180 feet above the stream, that the wanderers elected to build their new homes — a series of cliff dwellings of stone, mud mortar and timber.
Today, these ancient structures, built around 1280 A.D. in a pristine area of dense forests and fertile valleys 44 miles north of Silver City, are preserved in Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.
People of the cliffs
Who were they, these people of the cliffs? Where did they come from? What were they like?
Archaeologists have determined that they were a band of the Mogollon, one of three major Indian cultures that were dominant in the Southwest long before the birth of the Christian era. The others were the Anasazi of northwest New Mexico and the Four Corners area, and the Hohokam, who lived principally in Arizona.
Because the pottery they made is different from earlier Mogollon people who lived in the Gila region, it's believed the cliff dwellers may have come from the Tularosa River area near Reserve, 50 miles to the north.
As a National Park Service archaeologist said: "We don't know why they left that region for the Gila (from an Indian word meaning spider). Were they refugees from war or disease? Had they used up certain natural resources? Were they prompted to move for religious or social reasons? As usual, we have more questions than answers."
Nonetheless, years of study of the Mogollon have helped archaeologists unravel part of the mystery surrounding this band that chose the deep canyon near the Gila River for its new home.
In appearance, they were short in stature and slight in build, yet they were muscular. Women averaged about 5 feet in height; men averaged 5 feet, 5 inches. Their life spans were short — adults did not live much past age 45, and many children died very young. They had dark hair and eyes and brown skin.
Clothing was fashioned from materials at hand. Women wore skirts or aprons of yucca cord and small fiber blankets draped around the shoulders. Sandals were woven from yucca plants, leaves and bark.
Men wore loincloths, blankets over their shoulders, headbands and sandals.
They were primarily farmers, these ancient Mogollon, but they supplemented their existence by hunting and gathering. Because farming in the narrow, timbered canyon was not possible, they turned to the flat, fertile terraces along the river to plant crops of cotton, corn, beans and squash. They probably employed some form of irrigation, although no trace of any such system has been found.
In the surrounding forests, they hunted black bear and deer, which they brought down with arrows and spears. Smaller animals — wild turkeys, squirrels, rabbits, foxes and muskrats — were trapped in nets or snares.
Craftsmen created tools from available resources. Bones of large animals were turned into awls and hide-scrapers. Wood provided arrow shafts and timbers for roofs and ceiling beams in dwellings. Plant fibers were twisted into cord for bow strings, clothing, sandals and blankets. Rocks, such as obsidian, were shaped into a wide range of tools — from axes to arrow and spear points.
In addition to being skilled craftsmen and weavers, they also were talented potters, producing striking brown bowls with black interiors and black-on-white vessels.
Homes in the caves
Mogollon groups traditionally built their homes in flat, open areas, such as fields near river banks. Why this particular band chose the caves is unknown. Evidence suggests they were not a warlike people, but perhaps they felt a need for extra security, and the caves provided a superb defensive position.
In five of the seven caves, they constructed dwellings totalling 40 rooms, which were occupied by an estimated 10 to 15 families. Today, after seven centuries, one structure still stands two stories high. There also were large open work and storage areas.
Walls were of stone blocks chipped from the easily-fractured cliffs as well as rocks collected along the stream and the nearby river. Clay and mud from the stream banks provided material for mortar to lock the courses of stone in place. Timbers cut from the forests were used in roofs and doorways. Tree-ring dates from these timbers establish the antiquity of the cliff structures from 1275 A.D. to the late 1280s.
For only a brief time — probably less than 50 years — the Mogollon occupied their cliff homes. They raised their families, worshiped their gods, planted their fields with digging sticks, ground corn on flat stones, fashioned pottery and clothing and hunted game. Then, the narrow canyon, once alive with the life and sounds of this ancient society, was silent.
By the early 1300s, the cliff dwellers were gone, abruptly abandoning their homes and fields. Why they left and where they went is another unanswered part of the Gila puzzle. Some archaeologists believe the exodus was triggered by a 25-year drought that plagued the Southwest in the last decades of the 13th century. Seeking a better existence, the Mogollon probably merged with Indian groups to the north or to the east, in the Rio Grande Valley.
As they prepared to leave, some of the Mogollon might have paused along the narrow ledge outside their cave homes for a last glimpse of the canyon floor far below. They could not, of course, have imagined that some day in the distant future, visitors in another time would stand in the same place pondering the fate of the ancient inhabitants.
As a Park Service historian wrote: "It is this continuum — the past, present and future linked by our common humanity — that makes this site as alive and vital today as it was for the Mogollon so long ago."
Apaches move in
For more than a century after the departure of the Mogollon, the great forests of pine and spruce that extend for many miles around the Gila Cliff Dwellings were uninhabited.
Then, beginning in the late 1400s, bands of Apaches migrating south from Canada made the rugged Gila country their homeland for the next 400 years.
In 1853, the United States acquired the area from Mexico under terms of the Gadsden Purchase. This touched off more than 30 years of Indian warfare to block American settlement of the Gila country, led by such prominent Apache leaders as Mangus Coloradus, Victorio, Nana and Geronimo, the most feared Apache of them all.
In 1886, Geronimo, who was born near the headwaters of the Gila River about 1829, was the last Apache leader to abandon the struggle when he surrendered his small, beleagured band to the U.S. Army in Skeleton Canyon in southeast Arizona, just across the New Mexico border.
Forever wild
In November 1907, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, encompassing 535 acres in the midst of Gila National Forest, was set aside by executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1924, a campaign led primarily by Aldo Leopold of the U.S. Forest Service, culminated in establishment of the Gila Wilderness, the nation's first such region. The original wilderness, probably little changed today from the time of the Mogollon and bordering the cliff dwellings, spanned 775,000 acres carved from the national forest.
A paradise for hunters, fishermen and campers, the Gila Wilderness is unmarred by roads, cabins or development of any kind. There are only two ways to travel in this unspoiled region of mountains, tall trees and deep canyons — by foot or horseback on many miles of trails.
In 1931, the eastern section of the wilderness was split off. This area, which includes part of the historic Black Range, is now the Aldo Leopold Wildlife Area. Even though this reduced the Gila Wilderness to 558,000 acres, it remains the largest area of its kind in the Southwest.
In the Wilderness Act of 1964, Congress made permanent the preservation of the Gila and all of the nation's dedicated wilderness areas. The act defines a wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain
The drive to the park is only 44 miles but the road is very twisty and scenic and took almost 90 minutes!!
Join me walking in and around these amazing dwellings!!!
I really had a good time walking around and letting my imagination run away....just the only disappointment was that these dwellings are not on the same scale or majesty as those of Mesa Verde and it really only took ten minutes to walk through...but was awesome!!
I took a different route back and then headed to my stop for the night at a small hotel in Columbus, New Mexico...right on the border with Mexico!!
My room is really nice clean and good facilities!
I then drove to the border crossed over and had no trouble obtaining my Tourist Visa and then went and got my TIP document to import the car....then drove back across the border....hassle free!!
Relaxed tonight did my final packing and arranging...had my wonderful dinner from last night and now going to watch my show.
The plan is to cross the border in the morning and just drive...do not know where I shall spend the night and if I have Internet will check in...then Tuesday complete the drive back to SMA..I have to be back by 5pm as Gracie, Lisa and Bo and I are playing Mexican train..it is a Tuesday tradition!!
Yashi Kochi!!!
