House of Rain

by Craig Childs

  I had heard many rumors about what happens in the sacred enclosure of a Hopi kiva. It was none of my business, really, the private rites of another civilization. But I could not help staring at the kiva, imagining inside a colorfully painted jar holding a clutch of wooden flowers dating back eight hundred years, a thousand maybe. I envisioned blankets threaded with claret-colored feathers. In the past few decades, several million macaw feathers have been recorded entering various pueblos for ceremonial use, and at least twice as many turkey tail feathers, along with those of eagles, hawks, and tropical birds imported from as far away as Africa. I imagined relics brought down the ladder for the shalako ceremony, or for the winter solstice: chest pieces of falcon wings, hairpins tipped with feathers from parrots and woodpeckers. This is where an ancient civilization keeps itself, a stronghold of remembered ceremonies.

  These were someone else’s secrets, not mine. I felt awkward staring at the kiva with such eager eyes, wanting to climb down its ladder and see what was hidden inside. I sat back down in the pickup bed, not wishing to be seen gawking in this tightly knit neighborhood, even if no one was watching. I picked Jasper up and put him in my lap as the pueblo and its bands of sunlight passed around us. The settlement seemed patient this morning, as if willing to wait centuries for its residents to return from the dance. Its earthern buildings would fall to ruins, leaving a dusty hill like a beacon atop this mesa. It will happen again. It always has. The rain will depart and the people will follow, walking a spiral that goes on without end.

  TERMINOLOGY

  ABANDON Archaeologists use the term to describe a place that has been left behind, but not necessarily for good. Abandonment occurs on different scales, including departing from a room, a building, or an entire geographic province. Places might be occupied by the same culture numerous times for thousands of years, experiencing periods of abandonment between periods of occupation.

  A.D. Anno Domini, abbreviated as A.D. and Latin for “in the year of the Lord,” is commonly used as a dating reference in archaeology. It defines an epoch that begins in the year A.D. 1 upon the apparent birth of Christ in the Middle East. Occasionally, A.D. is replaced with C.E., for Common Era or Christian Era. Far less known but gaining popularity in small circles is E.V., for era vulgaris (literally, common era).

  ANASAZI A corruption of a Navajo word, Anasazi describes the early Pueblo culture that existed in the high and arid plateau country of the Southwest generally from 1000 B.C. (when corn agriculture was first established in the Four Corners) to A.D. 1300. Anasazi is not an ethnicity as much as it is a way of life—dryland farmers, hunters, and wild-plant gatherers living in complex kinship groups. It is defined by a collection of archaeological traits, such as black-on-white pottery, gray ware and red ware pottery, masonry architecture in later years, and the wide-scale importation of birds for ceremonial use, also in later years. There is much debate over whether this name is useful any longer, being too narrow to contain the ethnic complexity of this culture.

  ANCESTRAL PUEBLOAN Ancestral Puebloans are ancestors of modern Pueblo people, and the term is steadily replacing Anasazi. It better encompasses an unbroken lineage of indigenous farmers from three thousand years ago to today. Whereas Anasazi refers to an archaeologically defined group existing solely on the Colorado Plateau, Ancestral Puebloan is much more geographically expansive and nonspecific, depicting the entire Pueblo ancestry, whether from the Southwest or from southern Mexico.

  BASKETMAKER CULTURE The Basketmaker culture represents a transition on the Colorado Plateau when nomads who farmed only occasionally became residents living in sedentary communities where dependence on farming increased dramatically between the third century B.C. and the third century A.D. The period encompassing the Basketmaker culture ended in the eighth century A.D. as people added on to their pit-houses with above-ground structures and dependence on corn increased, at which point they are better known as Pueblo people.

  B.C. This abbreviation for Before Christ is sometimes replaced with B.C.E., for Before the Common Era or Christian Era. In this system of marking time, years are counted in regression starting at 1 B.C., the year before the birth of Christ.

  BLACK-ON-WHITE POTTERY Black-on-white was the most widespread decorative style seen among white ware ceramics in the Southwest prior to the fourteenth century A.D. Its black pigments came from mineral sources such as highly oxidized hematite or from boiled plant matter such as bee weed or tansy mustard.

  CANYONLANDS This is a region of massive sandstone canyons in the high, sparsely vegetated desert of southeast Utah. It is centered on an iconic, geographic V formed by the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers. Its northern third is known as Island in the Sky, where cliffs of Wingate sandstone form a series of enormous red buttes. The southwest third is a confounding region of canyons known as the Maze, which is bounded by the high Orange Cliffs. To the southeast lies the highly articulated terrain of the Needles.

  CIVILIZATION Civilization is a form of social organization in which multiple heritages or ethnic groups are bound to a single system incorpo-rating uniform architecture, communication, religion, technology, and perhaps behavior. The first Latin use of the word civis appeared in the early centuries B.C. to point out the difference between civil societies and barbarians. Archaeologists often shy away from the word when speaking of the prehistoric Southwest, not wanting to compare it directly to larger civilizations, such as those of Mesoamerica, Greece, and Rome. However, as more fine-grained archaeological data is assembled, the word civilization is beginning to appear more frequently among researchers.

  CLIFF DWELLING This is a general term for a structure of jacal, masonry, or adobe construction built within a natural, sheltering alcove. Cliff dwellings have appeared on nearly every continent, known most famously in Turkey, North Africa, and the American Southwest. Some are not, in fact, built in cliffs, but are in caves. Some are not dwellings either, but storage facilities or ceremonial sites. The term alcove structure has been used among archaeologists as a more accurate, though perhaps less captivating, alternative.

  COLORADO PLATEAU An arid uplift covering 150,000 square miles of the northern Southwest, the Colorado Plateau is centered on the Four Corners region, where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico meet. This geographic province is the second-largest plateau in the world, consisting of numerous smaller uplifts dissected into canyons, mesas, and basins. It is a geologically stable region, a slowly rising island surrounded by the fractured Basin and Range province of southwest Utah, Nevada, and western Arizona and by the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

  CORRUGATED POTTERY A highly textured ceramic style, corrugated pottery is a specific Southwest form made from clay coils pressed together, then pinched or notched to form a functional and decorative surface. Almost always used as cookware, corrugated pottery is more efficient than smooth pottery at transferring heat throughout the vessel and is less susceptible to breakage caused by frequent heating and cooling. It is a style indicative of early Pueblo people on the Colorado Plateau.

  DROUGHT There are three kinds of drought. Meteorological drought is a prolonged period with less than average precipitation. Agricultural drought is simply a lack of ample moisture in the soil, which may arise from any number of circumstances, from rainfall to soil management. Hydrologic drought occurs when reserves such as underground aquifers, rivers, or lakes drop below the statistical average due to consumption, climatic conditions, or both.

  DRYLAND FARMING In areas of little rainfall where surface water is rare, dryland farming is the customary technique. Basically, it is farming without irrigating, relying on precipitation stored in the soil. Dryland farming comes with its own suite of practices to capture whatever moisture is available, such as leaving crop stubble in the field to catch blowing snow or building low dams to hold surface runoff. It also requires specific strains of crops. Hopi blue corn, for instance, can be planted a foot deep, whereas most midwestern corn must be planted no more than two inches deep.r />
  EAST-CENTRAL ARIZONA East-central Arizona is perhaps the most diverse region of the Southwest, beginning in the north around the Painted Desert and the Little Colorado River, then running south over the forested Mogollon Rim. It ends roughly along the Nantac Rim below Point of Pines, but it could easily extend to the Gila Mountains and the course of the Gila River in southeast Arizona. In the west it is bounded by the Tonto Basin and the rugged Mazatzal Mountains, in the east by the New Mexico border between the Blue and San Francisco rivers. Much of the region is now occupied by two Apache reservations.

  FIREBOARD This is a flat piece of wood from a few inches to a foot long, often taken from an agave stalk, against which a wooden spindle is spun to create a hot ember. Upon the first curl of smoke to come off the fireboard, one would pass the hot ember into a bed of dry grass or some other flammable material. Lifting the glowing tinder to the mouth, one would blow a winnowing breath across it. A second breath would start a bright flurry of sparks. A third would produce a quick, small flame, which would be moved away from the face and settled out of the hands into a waiting cache of kindling. Having more small sticks already broken is important, so that they can be placed quickly on the rising flames. For a supple, practiced hand, this procedure should take no more than one minute. For the inexperienced, it could take days or weeks to get a fire going, if ever.

  FOUR CORNERS This region is centered on the meeting of the states of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. It is the only place in the United States where a person can stand in four states at the same time. Beyond state boundaries, the term describes a larger geographic province of arid canyons, buttes, basins, and a few scattered mountains that extend throughout the San Juan River Basin, as far north as Moab, as far south as the Chuska Mountains, as far west as Kayenta in Arizona, and as far east as the headwaters of the San Juan.

  GREAT HOUSE In its broad definition, a great house is an expansive type of household that appeared in late Victorian times in Europe and continues today in the form of family mansions. In the Southwest, however, a great house is a large masonry building with a formalized floor plan, best known from the eleventh century A.D. It is often multistory, with high-ceilinged rooms and interior kivas. Often a great kiva is included. Based on archaeological findings, these structures appear to have been mostly ceremonial, with few residents, although at different times they also acted as dwellings. Great houses outside Chaco Canyon appear to have been more domestic than those in the canyon. The oldest great houses began in the eighth century, and at the time their plans resembled those of villages near the Dolores River in Colorado.

  GREAT KIVA Examples of public ceremonial architecture, great kivas are semi-subterranean and usually circular. They range between thirty and eighty feet across and were used by large groups for ritual purposes.

  HISATSINOM A Hopi word, Hisatsinom refers to the ancestors of the Hopi, who arrived at their current location in northern Arizona after centuries of migrations, with some clans starting as far away as southern Mexico and some as nearby as Kayenta and the Four Corners. The Hopi have several words that refer to ancestors, such as motisinom and pavatsinom, each having a relatively nuanced definition.

  HOHOKAM While prehistoric groups were pursuing dryland farming on the Colorado Plateau, the Hohokam were practicing intensive irrigation agriculture along the Gila and Salt rivers in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona in the Phoenix basin, in the Tucson area, and in the desert beyond. They grew cotton, corn, agaves, and many other crops and are estimated to have built a thousand miles of irrigation canals across the desert. The Hohokam are well known for their ball courts and for handmade platform mounds on which community structures were built.

  HOPI This Native American tribe lives on a 2,450-square-mile reservation in northeast Arizona. The reservation is located inside an 18,000-square-mile reservation belonging to the Navajo, a tribe not directly related to the Hopi. Every primary Hopi settlement, or pueblo, maintains its own autonomous government. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the Hopi reservation had a population of 6,946. In addition, 5,000 off-mesa Hopi also are enrolled in the tribe.

  HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE Water on this planet moves continually between the biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere. That is, water falling as rain or snow is naturally stored in aquifers, oceans, lakes, rivers, glaciers, snowfields, or topsoil. This water eventually evaporates off the surface or is transpired by plants. The vapor is stored in the atmosphere before it returns to earth in the form of precipitation. The cyclic flow of water is known as the hydrological cycle.

  KATSINA (KACHINA) A modern Pueblo ceremonial repertoire, the katsina religion originated in the Southwest around the fourteenth century A.D., although earlier components have been noted. It is still a strong religion, mostly in the western pueblos of Laguna, Acoma, Zuni, Hano, and Hopi.

  KAYENTA This region in northeast Arizona centers on Marsh Pass and the mesas surrounding Tsegi Canyon. It finds its western and southern limits in the Grand Canyon, its eastern limit along Chinle Wash, and its northern limit around the San Juan River. Prehistoric people living in Kayenta (often called the Kayenta Anasazi) appear to have kept their distance from ninth- to twelfth-century Chaco. They were a couple of hundred years behind Chaco in accepting the advent of the pueblo and large-scale architecture. In fact, Chaco-style great houses, which spread throughout the Four Corners region, were never built within the Kayenta sphere, implying that the people here may have intentionally kept pressure from Chaco at bay.

  KIVA Kivas have been in use as ritual and community spaces among Pueblo people for the past fifteen hundred years. Ranging from the size of a small bedroom to eighty feet across, kivas are round, rectangular, or O-shaped and are generally built underground. Prehistoric kivas have formalized floor plans and orientations that suggest an architectural or religious code. Small kivas were both domestic and used for small, family-scale rituals. Great kivas were more specialized ritual structures used by larger groups.

  LUNAR STANDSTILL Rarely will one find a reference to lunar standstills in standard astronomy texts, yet the standstill cycle is the subject of important alignments at ancient megalithic sites around the world. In short, the lunar standstill is a rhythm set up by the moon’s off-centered orbit around the earth. A major lunar standstill occurs every 18.6 years. At the winter solstice during the standstill, the full moon reaches its highest possible position in the sky, and during the summer solstice it reaches its lowest possible position. Thus the moon during its standstill is not still at all but moves across most of the sky throughout the year, rising and setting at many different points on the horizon. A minor standstill fits between major standstills when the moon keeps to a very narrow path directly overhead. In other words, a major standstill is a wide pendulum swing of the moon, while a minor standstill is a more settled equilibrium. This lunar cycle of 18.6 years accurately defines long-term periods such as decades or centuries far better than the sun, which is restricted to annual and daily patterns.

  MANO A mano, from the Spanish word for hand, is a hand tool made out of stone that is used with a metate to grind food, pigments, or medicines. Some manos are the size of a potato, to be used in one hand, while others are more like rolling pins, requiring two hands. During the Basketmaker era, as agriculture first became prevalent in the Southwest, most manos were of the one-handed variety. Not until later centuries, when corn became a more crucial staple, did two-handed manos become more common.

  MASONRY Masonry, a method of building using stone and mortar, became common in the northern Southwest between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries A.D. Early homesites on the Colorado Plateau were originally made out of wood and mud. These were pit-houses with nearby farm plots. After about ten years, if not maintained regularly by permanent residents, a pit-house would have been an uninviting place to live. Insects would have infested the walls, while wood rats would have moved into the spaces between ceiling beams. Around the eleventh century, people started buil
ding houses out of stone. This new construction technique allowed buildings to stand for centuries, although most masonry unit pueblos were not occupied for that long. Masonry structures also were far easier to keep clean than pit-houses. The first masonry structures, called great houses, are thought to have been rarely lived in. Instead they were treated like shrines, decorated with garlands of turquoise and painted vessels, while people continued to occupy outlying homes made of wood and mud. From the twelfth century on, masonry was widely used (although older forms of architecture persisted where needed), and many families in the Southwest eventually had living quarters made of stone.

  MESOAMERICA Mesoamerica reaches from central Mexico into Central America. It is a cultural landscape of celebrated pre-Columbian societies such as the Olmecs, Maya, Toltecs, and Aztecs. This region existed in a quickly accelerating Neolithic state that began with domestic food production about 6,300 years ago. In the eighth century A.D., the Maya built a 230-foot-tall temple at Tikal and numerous other temples of similar stature. Metallurgy was common. Combined armies of tens of thousands of warriors clashed in epic battles. A number of written languages were in use, now understood from a variety of sources: logs of shipments of cocoa and corn; legendary stories carved into rock pillars; and inscriptions on vessels and walls telling the exact year, month, and day when kings took power. The Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, in southern Mexico, might be considered the height of Mesoamerican civilization. The city was built on a lake, so that it appeared to be floating, and was approached by long causeways set across the water. Hundreds of massive temples and pyramids stood over canals like those in Venice, and fresh water arrived through a network of aqueducts. At its height in the fourteenth century A.D., Tenochtitlán had at least 200,000 residents.