  Bandelier National Monument is divided into two parcels of land: the Otowi section of about 9 square miles and the Frijoles section of nearly 33 square miles. Within these two areas are contained great concentrations of ruins, including several of the largest on the plateau. A number of the Bandelier ruins have been excavated, so there is quite a detailed knowledge of the culture which once flourished on the monument lands. Tyuonyi Ruin, with the Big Kiva at left rear, and the trees of the campground at top of the picture. The most frequently visited part of the monument is the canyon of the Rito de los Frijoles, wherein is located the monument headquarters. In this well-watered and wooded canyon are to be found ruins of the three types described above, which had well over 1,000 rooms in their prime some 500 years ago. Here also is the excavated remnant of the largest kiva found anywhere in the Pajarito country—a chamber which perhaps was the community center of religious practice for the entire canyon. TYUONYI.On the floor of Frijoles Canyon, a little upstream from the headquarters museum, is Tyuonyi, the chief building of the area, and one of the most impressive pueblo ruins in the Rio Grande drainage. Situated on a level bench of open ground, perhaps 100 feet from the Rito and 15 feet above the water, Tyuonyi at one time contained over 400 rooms, to a height of 3 stories in part. Its modern aspect is greatly reduced in height; although excavated, no walls have been restored, so that only the ground floor is still evident, with outer and inner walls standing to a height of 4 or 5 feet throughout. The ruins trail; the south rim of Frijoles Canyon shows in the background. To appreciate the size and lay-out of Tyuonyi, you should climb the nearby slope until a bird’s-eye view reveals the entire ground plan of the huge circle. From above, more than 250 rooms can be counted, placed in concentric rows around a central plaza. The most massive part of the circle is 8 rooms across, narrowing to 4 rooms in breadth at the brook side. The 2- and 3-story parts of the building, as computed from the height of the original rubble, were at the massive eastern side. One of the most striking features of Tyuonyi is the entrance passage through the eastern part of the circle. This passage was apparently the only access to the central plaza, other than by ladders across the rooftops. An arrangement of this sort, of course, suggests a concern for defensive strength on the part of Tyuonyi’s builders; certainly the circle of windowless, doorless walls would have presented a problem to attackers, once the ladders were drawn up and the single passageway blocked. It is believed that a good part of the first-floor rooms of Tyuonyi were storage chambers of the type previously discussed. This belief is borne out by the fact that during excavation many of these rooms were found to be without fireplaces, a condition which would have made such rooms unlivable in cold weather. The problem of smoke clearance was very serious in the larger pueblos, since the builders had no knowledge of modern fireplaces with chimney flues; hence the building of fires on the lower floors of multistory buildings worked a hardship on upstairs occupants and must have been avoided whenever possible. The age of the Tyuonyi construction has been fairly well established by the tree-ring method of dating, so widely and successfully used by archeologists in the Southwest. Ceiling-beam fragments recovered from various rooms give dates between A. D. 1383 and 1466. This general period seems to have been a time of much building in Frijoles Canyon; a score of tree-ring dates from Rainbow House ruin, which is down the canyon a half mile, fall in the early and middle 1400’s. Perhaps the last construction anywhere in Frijoles Canyon occurred close to A. D. 1500, with a peak of population reached near that time or shortly thereafter. TALUS HOUSE.On the talus directly above Tyuonyi to the north, at the foot of the prominent cliff, there once stood a cluster of houses. The group here had as its nucleus 12 or 15 cave rooms which were supplemented by at least as many masonry rooms at the front. Excavation A restored talus house. LONG HOUSE.About one-fourth of a mile up the canyon from Tyuonyi, also against the northern and sun-warmed cliff, is the ruin of one of the largest combination cave-and-masonry dwellings to be found anywhere on the plateau. This great ruin is known as Long House for an obvious reason—it stretches almost 800 feet in a continuous block of rooms. For all of this distance, the masonry walls are backed by a sheer and largely smooth wall of tuff some 150 feet high. Into this cliff are dug many cave rooms, several kivas, and a variety of storage niches, all of which were incorporated into a single dwelling of over 300 rooms, rising 3 stories high. At Long House the rows of viga (roof-beam) holes in the cliff are particularly conspicuous, defining the onetime roof levels for hundreds of feet at a stretch. The site of Long House is KIVAS.Associated with the numerous ruins in Frijoles Canyon are various kivas, both in the canyon floor and in the cliffs. The large kiva previously mentioned is a short distance east of Tyuonyi, very nearly in the center of the widest part of the canyon floor. The rock-walled circular pit is 42 feet across and 8 feet deep, with a ventilation shaft at the east side and a narrow entranceway opposite. When the roof was intact above the chamber, there must have been little evidence of the existence of the subterranean room; perhaps a ladder protruding from a center hole in the roof was the only conspicuous indication of the kiva below. In its present and partially restored state, this kiva shows the butt ends of six roof columns similar to those which once bore the load of the roof, as well as the stub ends of roof stringers. The restoration work in this kiva was accomplished by the Civilian Conservation Corps, which was responsible for much valuable work in the monument during the late 1930’s. Of particular interest in Frijoles Canyon are the unique kivas in the cliffs. Of the thousands of kivas found throughout the ancient land of the pueblos, there are no others of this cave style. The largest of the cave kivas in the monument is a few hundred feet north of Tyuonyi, at the base of a fantastically eroded block of tuff. The oval chamber, nearly 20 feet across its long dimension, has been restored by the replacement of rock work around its doorway and ventilation openings. The interior effect now presented, with soot-blackened ceiling, mud-plastered lower walls, and looms set in their ancient positions, must closely approximate the appearance of the kiva in the days when it was used. Many such kivas were decorated with painted or incised designs on the plaster of the walls. Although this particular kiva does not show evidence of mural paintings, it does still contain scratched designs in the plaster, unidentifiable because covered in part by later replastering. CEREMONIAL CAVE.A restored kiva of very different type may be found up the canyon nearly a mile. By climbing a series of ladders to a ledge 150 feet above the stream, the great rock overhang known as Ceremonial Cave can be reached. Under the shelter of this arch a number of masonry dwellings and a kiva were once built; the subterranean kiva, excavated and reroofed, is very small but would have served the needs of the few families who lived on this impregnable balcony. Entrance to Cave Kiva. STONE LIONS.Other noteworthy remains of the monument area lie outside Frijoles Canyon, accessible only by foot or horse trail across the mesas to the south. Perhaps the most frequently visited of these antiquities is the shrine of the Stone Lions, 10 miles from monument headquarters. Here on the mesa-top near an extensive ruin are two life-size crouching mountain lion effigies carved side by side out of the soft bedrock. This work of sculpture must have been accomplished many centuries ago, for long weathering and erosion have left small semblance of a true likeness. The shrine here is known to modern Indians, being visited occasionally by hunters who leave prayer offerings for success in their hunt. A second pair of stone lions was carved on a mesa-top several miles to the south, outside the monument boundary. These two pairs of life-size stone effigies are unique in the Southwest. The restored kiva in Ceremonial Cave. The ranger and party are standing on the roof of the circular chamber. PAINTED CAVE.A final feature of particular interest in the back country of the monument is the Painted Cave. This art gallery in the cliffs decorates a canyon wall some 12 miles from headquarters. Once a large population inhabited this canyon of Capulin Creek, but most of the evidences of habitation have vanished except for the extensive pictographs on the weatherproof back wall of the Painted Cave. The The shrine of the Stone Lions: Twin effigies of mountain lions in a walled enclosure. Painted Cave. Trail worn into the rock, near Tsankawi Ruin. OTOWI.The smaller section of Bandelier National Monument, lying some 15 miles from the headquarters area, takes its name from the Otowi ruin, the largest pueblo on the monument. Although not so impressive as the Tyuonyi ruin at first glance, the great spread and complexity of the rubble mounds surely dwarf all other ruined dwellings of the vicinity. Probably 450 ground-floor rooms were here, with an indeterminate number of upper-floor rooms—perhaps 600 rooms altogether is a reasonable estimate. The Otowi rooms have not been excavated to any great extent, but two burial mounds south of the building group have been investigated with spectacular results—over 150 interments were found in a space about 80 by 100 feet. With these burials was found a great variety of offerings to the dead, ranging from food bowls to bone awls and ceremonial pipes. Specimens of these handicrafts may be seen at the National Park Service museum at monument headquarters and at the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe. TSANKAWI.The Otowi house-group occupies a site atop a low ridge walled in by the cliffsides of steep Pueblo Canyon. Its nearest neighbor, Tsankawi, is sited on a very different terrain: Tsankawi is very near to being a “sky-city” in the style of the modern Acoma in western New Mexico. Not as large as Otowi, this ruin has equal majesty by reason of its commanding position on top of a cliff-ringed island mesa overlooking a vast north-south sweep of the Rio Grande and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains beyond. The location and the ground plan suggest defense as a first consideration. Of masonry construction in a rough hollow square, Tsankawi would have presented a serious problem to enemy besiegers. On the other hand, a siege would have cut off the defenders from their water supply, far in the canyon below. There is, however, some evidence of a rain-catchment basin close outside the eastern walls, and excavation may in future confirm the existence of an ingenious water-storage system. The most memorable sight at Tsankawi lies along the trail that climbs from the end of the access road to the mesa-top. Here for 100 yards the path, crossing a bald slope of soft gray tuff, is worn down for almost 18 inches by the climbing and descending feet of thousands of Indian passersby. Granted that the rock is extremely porous and soft, it is nonetheless almost beyond the scope of imagination to conceive the vast traffic required to so entrench the path. Today, when you climb this trail, you cannot but visualize a procession of Indian farmers over several generations traveling to and from their fields, their sandaled feet scuffing each year a fractional inch deeper into the calendar of the rock. |
|
