Exploring Digs of a Lost Civilization
Sam Henderson lives two lives--one as a scientist in the 1990s, and the other, vicariously, as a 13th-Century cliff dweller.
He knows as much as anyone about the Sinagua (Sin-a-wa), the prehistoric Indians who occupied these cliffs from AD 1125 to 1250.
Henderson, 47, is an archeologist and superintendent of Walnut Canyon National Monument. For more than a quarter-century, he has been a student of the Sinagua and involved in archeological digs atop five pyramid-shaped, limestone promontories that rise 400 feet from this narrow river valley.
“There were several hundred Sinagua who lived in the 300 single-story rooms halfway up these steep cliffs,” said Henderson as he walked the mile leading up to 25 of the ancient cliff dwellings.
“They were real people like you and me, born and died, laughed and cried on the sheer faces of these soaring cliffs. Can you imagine what it was like?”
In his mind, Henderson turned back the clock 740 years, envisioning the lifestyle of the prehistoric people as he walked the same trail they walked. He was surrounded by the same animals and plants that sustained the cliff dwellers. He walked through their remarkably preserved homes.
The cliff dwellers hunted deer, bear, mountain lion, big horn sheep, rabbit and squirrel for food. They used the animals’ fur for clothing, their bones for tools. They gathered and ate black walnuts, prickly pear, berries, pine nuts. Their medicines came from the roots, stems and leaves of plants. From the yucca came soup, sandals, baskets, rope, nets.
“From burials, we know infant mortality was high. This wasn’t Shangri-La. From their remains we know they suffered a great deal with illness and disease. They were short-lived, the oldest 30 to 35. Most had broken bones, arthritis,” Henderson said.
He told of cliff-dwelling toddlers being injured or killed when they tumbled down mountainsides. “Mothers could keep them in cradle boards only so long,” Henderson said. “That, too, is obvious from burials. Their heads were flat in the back all their lives from being strapped to those cradle boards when they were babies.”
Why did they live halfway up a cliff? The reasons are apparent--the availability of animals, plants, water and comfortable housing, Henderson said.
They took shelter in limestone overhangs that formed the dwellings, cool in summer, warm in winter. They built thick, 18-inch outer walls, with limestone and clay mortar framing the rooms.
Still clinging to walls and ceilings is smoke residue from fires built for cooking and for warmth. Several layers of plaster cover the walls--smoke, plaster, smoke, plaster, smoke, plaster. Several layers of plaster cover the floors.
Even after more than seven centuries, 90% of the outer walls are standing in their original form, held together with the original clay mortar. Rooms are about 10 by 12 feet.
A network of paths connects the 300 rooms and leads to the stream at canyon bottom and to farms on the mesa, where cliff dwellers grew corn, beans, and squash.
Sinagua were skilled craftsmen, fashioning decorative black-and-white and sunset-red pottery and baskets. Walnut Canyon was on a main trading route. They traded pottery and baskets for turquoise from New Mexico and seashells from Baja California to make beads and jewelry.
They were artists decorating canyon rocks with petroglyphs of plumed serpents, the guardian of springs and streams, and the humpback flute player associated with fertility and abundant crops.
For some yet unexplained and mystifying reason--overpopulation, drought, illness, war or perhaps simply the urge to pick up and move--the people abandoned their pyramid-shaped promontories.
They left most of their possessions behind--clothing, tools, pottery, baskets, jewelry, beads, religious items. The artifacts sat undisturbed, forgotten for 633 years, until the Transcontinental Railroad pushed through to Flagstaff, Ariz., in 1883.
Early residents of Flagstaff, archeologists from museums nationwide and other explorers had a field day for years after the discovery of the cliff dwelling rooms.
The 12th- and 13th-Century artifacts were carted off in wholesale fashion. In 1904, the U.S. Forest Service stationed a ranger and his wife here to stem the plundering. The ranger’s wife opened the curio shop and sold mummified body parts for 65 cents, 700-year-old strings of beads for $1.
Finally, in 1915, after years of pressure from Flagstaff residents to save and protect the cliff dwellers’ culture, President Woodrow Wilson set it aside as a national monument.
“Hopi Indians have a special relationship with the Sinagua. Certain clans of the Hopi believe the cliff dwellers were their ancestors, that they moved north in 1250 and joined up with the Hopi when they left Walnut Canyon,” said monument superintendent Henderson.
In the late 1930s, archeologists uncovered a grave filled with burial offerings, including 25 elaborately decorated pots, a woven hat covered with 1,500 turquoise stones and brightly painted porcupine teeth, and 12 carved and painted wands.
“Hopis knew right away what it was, the grave of a highly respected medicine man, a magician, the ancestor of present-day members of a Hopi clan,” Henderson said. “Hopis have found clan symbols in the canyon identical to symbols they use today.”
Henderson said prayer feathers found in the cliff dwellings are also identical to those used by Hopis today.
“In the 1960s, a (university) professor and a party of archeology students discovered 17 prayer feathers in a cave.
“When they entered the cave, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. When they came out an hour later with the prayer feathers, there was a thunderstorm. The rain turned into snow, highly unusual for May. That night two of the group were sick with chest pains and fever. A lot of interesting stuff has happened around here.”
