Red Ruins in the Black Cinders

RED RUINS in the Black Cinder THE STORY OF WUPATKI NATIONAL MONUMENT BY DAVID J. JONES, CUSTODIAN

BLACK NIGHT HUNG over the pueblo. Most of the Indians had retired and the only light flared fitfully upward from the hatchway of the kiva in the central plaza when the old man began his story. This was the burden of his narrative: It was long, long ago even before the coming of the white man that the Black Cloud broke the peace and quiet in the pine forest near Nuva-takiaovi (Hopi word for San Francisco Peaks). Earth tremblings had startled the people; in fear they abandoned their earth lodges in the clearings, leaving fields of corn and the everlasting springs. Then came a violent shaking of the ground; yawning chasms split the surface of the earth followed by a loud roar and the Black Cloud burst forth. Day suddenly became dark as night, sand and boulders rained from the sky. Intermittently the dull roaring was broken by a loud explosion. No one knows how long it was like this, but for miles around people told of seeing the Black Cloud with the angry lightning flashes in it mushrooming out over the land.

When all was quiet again some of the people came back only to find that between the San Francisco Peaks and the Little Colorado river a black mantle covered the land, Where their fields had been stood a mountain of black cinder as perfect in shape as if an Earth Spirit had trickled sand between his fingers into a huge pile. From the top of the mountain came wisps of steam. The rim was the color of the setting sun.

Slowly the families drifted back to plant their crops, for here at the base of the mountain was the only place in this vast arid region that they had been able to raise corn and beans. However, they soon discovered that throughout the cinder-covered area corn could be raised

Where it previously had shriveled and died from lack of water. The cinder absorbed the scanty moisture from rain and snow, keeping the underlying soil damp during the long, hot summer. Thus opened a period of prosperity for the people and everyone was happy.

Within a few years immigrants appearedIndians from other tribes in the Southwest who had heard of the strange Black Cloud and the fine farming lands it produced. Small groups came in from the north and east, from the southeast, from the west, and even a few of the irrigation farmers from southern Arizona. The strangers were regarded with suspicion by the old inhabitants who withdrew to the fortified hills where they could better protect themselves.

Later people came in increasing numbers from far and wide in search of fertile lands. What strange villages! There was the babel of foreign tongues, for many differnt tribes were represented in the groups. Different customs flourished, each tribe clinging to the customs of its homeland. Some of the families built odd little stone masonry houses and probably felt much superior to those who had never known any home other than the earth lodges which were dug into the ground. The Indians from Southern Arizona had a peculiar custom of burning their dead rather than placing the body in the ground as other people did. You could not make them believe that their earth lodges were too shallow to be warm in the cold winters; they had to live through the snows to find out for themselves. Over the rubbish heaps of the villages were scattered remnants of many different kinds of pottery and tools, distinctive of the various peoples.

The country took on life as there were now many people. The former inhabitants, no longer regarding the newcomers with suspicion, moved into the villages that had sprung up near the sources of water. In addition to the small towns there were many oneand two-room homes scattered over the land wherever there were fertile fields. Sometimes these were earth lodges or brush shelters, but the masonry apartment house of red sandstone was rapidly replacing the old style houses. A few families stayed in the outlying field houses all year round, but most of them were occupied only during the growing season in the summer. In the winter the people returned to the villages to have the company of others and to attend the ceremonies. With the influx of people came traders with jewelry, beautiful cotton blankets, pottery, baskets, and an occasional object of precious copper -all the finest work of far away villages. Also came raw materials that were scarce in this vicinity, among them being turquoise, green paints and cotton. Even the parrots-Military Macaws and the Thick Bill-put in their ap-

Reconstructed drawing depicting prehistoric life in the San Francisco Mountain region, Arizona, from 900 A. D. to 1100 A. D. An exhibit in the Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff. It was a period of prosperity for Indian farmers. Farming plots dotted the landscape, not broad extensive fields but small ones here and there. In the gullies low terraces were built to conserve and spread the rivulets during storms. Green corn, beans and squash sharply contrasted with the black color of the cinder. Here with a digging stick one could raise abundant food.

Pearance, having come from many miles to the south. It seems that there were many members of the Parrot Clan among the settlers. By them the parrot was considered as a sacred bird and the feathers were needed for ceremonial purposes and to decorate the tops of the ladder poles in their homes. As the traders plied their wares far and near they told of the fertile black sand country and attracted even more migrants.

Small villages gradually gave away to the larger towns the stone masonry people. Maybe it was the need for defense, or merely a desire to be among other people, but here we find the beginning of the large pueblos like ours today. No longer did the people speak many tongues; there had been marriages and the children of the people from far distant lands had almost forgotten the ways of their fathers.

After many years had passed, at least one lifetime, the people noticed a change in the country. The high winds were sweeping away a good deal of the fine black cinder, leaving farms barren of the moisture-conserving mulch. Other fields along the base of the mesas were covered so deeply with the fine cinders that the roots of the plants could no longer reach the fertile underlying soil. Food was no longer as abundant as it had been before the pros-perity in the country waned. Again came the march of the migrants, leaving to find more fertile lands elsewhere.

People in the outlying villages moved into the larger towns when their neighbors left, for here were still enough people for protection against the enemies who attacked in search of food and plunder. Still the population dwindled. Some of the farmers tried to hold the cinder on their fields by laying up rows of stones, but there were droughts too. For long periods there was no rain the sun beat down on the housetops and hot winds stirred through the villages raising clouds of dust.

Finally even the most persistent of the people abandoned their homes and fields, leaving the black sand forever. Today remains of the homes still dot the hilltops, broken pottery and tools are strewn on the ground, but it is a land of the long ago.

Such a story might have been told at some time in the dim past when the details of this unique event were still fresh in the minds of the people for this volcano did erupt and did cause the greatest land boom that has ever taken place in northern Arizona. It occurred, however, more than 1000 years ago and in the memory of men even the most important events are lost with time. Among the Hopi Indians of northern Arizona there is a legend of a huge black cloud that might refer to the pall of cinders that hung over this region during the eruption and there are other legends which refer quite definitely to certain ruins within the cinder-covered area. The actual facts, however, were buried under debris of the ruins, and would have remained in the silent past had it not been for the incessant curiosity of the archeologists, particularly those of the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Today the vast land that supported one of the most dense populations of prehistoric times in northern Arizona is isolated, shunned by modern man because of the cinders. Occasional Navajo families, not related to the former inhabitants, eke out a living with their bands of sheep and by raising crops along the Little Colorado river. Now and then a few Hopi use the trails leading to the San Francisco Peaks where they obtain sacred plants, or the trade trail to Havasupai Canyon.

It is a region of fantasy. From the heavily forested San Francisco Peaks to Sunset Crater there is an abrupt change. At the base of the Peaks one encounters the cinders which become increasingly deep as one approaches Sunset Crater. The grass-carpeted pine forest becomes a great expanse of rolling cinder hills, intenselblack with only an occasional pine tree, twisted (Continued on Page Forty)