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Monument to Ancient Past
Earliest explorers
Fertile river
National monument
venue travel
December 21, 1997
By James Abarr
"Few things seem as totally forlorn as a house emptied of its one-time occupants and left to fall apart, the human sounds within its walls forever quieted, its hearths turned cold."
— Robert and Florence Lister, "Aztec Ruins on the Animas"
Of the Journal
When the first Anglo settlers entered northwest New Mexico from Colorado in 1876 and built their small settlement in the valley of El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas (The River of Lost Souls), they were intrigued and mystified by the nearby stone ruins that thrust up through wind-blown mounds of soil and the tangled overgrowth of centuries.
It was a time when William H. Prescott's "The Conquest of Mexico," a widely acclaimed history of Hernando Cortez and Spain's domination of the great Aztec Empire of central Mexico, had fired romanticism and a spirit of adventure in America's popular imagination.
Thus it followed that the newcomers along the river — whose name they swiftly shortened to Animas — believed that the dark and brooding ruins atop the sandy terrace across the river from their settlement could only have been the work of that renowned Indian civilization.
So it was that they named their fledgling town Aztec.
It would remain for future generations of archaeologists and years of excavation and evaluation to show that the Aztecs of Mexico had nothing to do with the ruins of the ancient city on the Animas. Rather, they were the product of a then little-known Southwest Pueblo Indian society of skilled builders, craftsmen and traders that had flourished centuries before the flowering of the Aztecs.
Today, descendants of those ancient builders live in the pueblos along the Rio Grande, at Zuni in west-central New Mexico, and in the Hopi villages of eastern Arizona. The imposing city of sandstone, which they know as a "Place by Flowing Waters," is now preserved as Aztec Ruins National Monument.
An abiding curiosity of the Anglo settlers and a favorite place for picnics and other outings, Aztec Ruins remained largely a mystery until one Saturday morning in 1881, when a schoolteacher and a group of students decided to undertake some serious exploring.
At the northwest corner of the pueblo ruin where the massive masonry walls stood the highest, they chopped through thick weeds and brush to a lower wall, dug an opening and crawled into the musty blackness of a small room which had been sealed for centuries.
At first, the candles used to light their way would barely burn in the oxygen-depleted enclosure. Then, fresh air filtering in through the opening they had carved fanned the candles brighter, giving the group a better look at the surroundings.
In the soft light and flickering shadows, they saw a room choked with mounds of ancient trash and debris. There also were scores of artifacts — pottery, sandals, cotton cloth, shells, beads and stone tools. More startling, however, was the skeleton, seated in a corner, that stared at them.
As archaeologists Robert and Florence Lister wrote in recounting the group's endeavor:
"The flesh had long ago disintegrated, but the undisturbed bones remained articulated by dried ligaments, creating a gruesome spectacle."
Some of the students were terrified and turned to flee, but their teacher held them back and encouraged them to explore furthur. They continued on, and almost immediately the teacher stumbled over another skeleton.
As the Listers reported: "This one had been laid out on the floor with its knees flexed up against the chest and then tied up in a strip of fiber mating. Although deposited without the formality of a grave, the deceased had been honored with an offering of several pottery vessels."
When the boys and their teacher returned to town and recounted what they had found, their story touched off a raft of exploring and souvenir-hunting. On weekends, the fathers of the students and other townspeople penetrated deeper into the ruins.
Tunneling through a number of room walls and piles of compacted trash, they collected great numbers of artifacts. In one room, described by the Listers as "a communal tomb," the searchers found 13 bodies laid out with an assortment of baskets, sandals, cotton cloth, pottery, stone implements and shell and stone ornaments.
Soon, however, the explosion of sovenir-hunting faded, and it would be another 35 years before the first major scientific expedition would began to piece together the story of the "Place by Flowing Waters."
In 1916, archaeologist Earl H. Morris, who was born and reared in the area, led the first organized excavation and scientific study of the ruins. Under sponsorship of the prestigious American Museum of Natural History, Morris and his crew of workers spent five years, until the fall of 1921, in an intensive project that would make his name forever synonymous with Aztec Ruins.
It's the narrow, swift-flowing Animas River that makes this region of northwest New Mexico fertile. Fed by the 14,000-foot-high San Juan Mountains, which dominate the horizon to the north in Colorado, the river provides plentiful water throughout the year, and its bottomlands have long produced bountiful crops of corn, fruit and vegetables.
Near Aztec, just before it joins the larger San Juan River, the Animas flows through a narrow valley lined with lush cottonwoods and willows, and into this land, centuries ago, came nomadic bands of Anasazi, the Ancient Ones. In the long course of their social development, they became skilled craftsmen and builders of massive communal dwellings and the architects of a remarkable Indian society.
Although the stone towns of the Anasazi had flourished throughout the Colorado Plateau and San Juan Basin for the previous 200 years, it wasn't until the early 12th century that they began construction of the terraced, three-story pueblo on the Animas.
Tree-ring dating indicates that the Aztec "Great House," which archaeologists today call the West Ruin, was begun in A.D. 1106. However, major construction of this massive, E-shaped dwelling, with its 400 rooms and 24 kivas, or ceremonial chambers, took place from 1111 to 1115.
Morris and other archaeologists believe the builders came from the great Anasazi community center of Chaco Canyon, 65 miles to the south. Supporting evidence centers on Aztec's masonry work, which is similar to the "banded" style employed in the dozen major pueblos built in Chaco, starting in about A.D. 950.
This technique, a hallmark of the Chaco builders, alternates courses of large rectangular sandstone blocks with "bands" of smaller stones in an eye-catching pattern.
In addition, Aztec's multi-storied rectangular rooms, high ceilings, carefully aligned doorways, large central plaza and numerous kivas all are indications that the builders were well-versed in Chaco architectural styles.
In fact, Aztec probably was an outlying Chaco colony.
As the Listers note: "The question arises as to why such a large edifice was built away from the focal point of Chaco activity.
"The answer must be that the riparian woodland environment found along the Animas, its relatively more predictable rainfall, permanent waters, fertile soils and its position near to timbered elevations with abundant game reserves made it a valuable breadbasket adjunct to the Chaco sphere."
For roughly 75 years, the people of Aztec prospered, and then, like their neighbors in Chaco Canyon, they abandoned their stone city. Why they left, no one knows for certain, but by about A.D. 1200, Aztec lay deserted.
Archaeologists theorize the people fled to greener pastures on the Rio Grande or in western New Mexico, probably because of extended drought, failed crops and depletion of natural resources. There is no evidence that they were driven away by an enemy.
However, the "Place by Flowing Waters" would soon acquire a new life, for Aztec marked an overlapping of two cultures — the artisans of Chaco Canyon and the pueblo and cliff-dwellers of Mesa Verde, 40 miles to the north in Colorado.
About A.D. 1225, the Mesa Verde people moved into Aztec. They remodeled sections of the old "Great House" (the West Ruin) and added new dwellings, including what is now called the East Ruin, which remains largely unexcavated.
They added unique T-shaped doorways and new kiva styles. They fashioned their pottery, beadwork and textiles and developed a flourishing trade over a wide area.
Then, beginning in about 1275, the Mesa Verdeans also began to drift away as their arts and societal structure declined in what Morris called "a time of cultural senility or disease."
By the late 13th century, the Mesa Verdeans, like their Chaco predecessors, were gone, and the great pueblo on the Animas was left to crumble into ruin.
In 1923, Aztec Ruins was declared a national monument and came under the protection of the National Park Service.
Today, visitors can experience a a close encounter with the remains of a remarkable civilization that flourished long before Columbus ever saw the New World.
Self-guiding trails lead into the lower story of the extensive West Ruin through a doorway built at the spot where the teacher and his students tunneled through the outer wall in 1881.
Inside, the route passes through perfectly aligned doorways and a number of windowless rooms in which the original ceilings of pine and juniper logs, held together with yucca lashings, are as solid as they were 800 years ago.
In three rooms in the east wing of the E-shaped dwelling are three doorways placed in room corners. These corner doorways are rare in Southwestern pueblo ruins.
As the Listers noted: "The use of such a critical juncture (the corner of a room) showed either daring or considerable engineering skill, and the fact that many never collapsed underscores the latter."
Two dozen small kivas, probably used by individual village clans, dot the ruins at Aztec, but the star of the show is the Great Kiva, 43 feet in diameter and a marvel of Anasazi building techniques, which dominates the central courtyard.
In 1934, archaeologist Morris, then on loan to the National Park Service from the staff of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, began a painstaking two-year project to fully restore the kiva. Today, it appears much as it did when it was used for major Anasazi ceremonies in the 12th century.
Visitors can inspect the 14 peripheral, surface-level rooms and antechambers. On the floor of the 8-foot-deep central chamber, surrounded by double circular stone benches, are the altar, fire pits, fire screens and 8-foot-long rectangular floor vaults. Archaeologists debate the purpose of these mysterious vaults. Some believe they might have been foot drums; others surmise they were special storage areas or perhaps additional fire chambers.
Four massive columns support the massive roof of wooden beams, logs and earth weighing an estimated 90 tons.
In the dim light of the central chamber, it is easy to imagine an ancient ceremony heralded by the chants of Indian priests, dancers moving to the throb of drums and a host of worshippers silhouetted in the light of piñon and juniper fires.
Among New Mexico's many monuments saluting its ancient past, Aztec offers an uncommon opportunity to experience the overlapping of two remarkable Indian cultures, and its restored Great Kiva, the only one of its kind in the Southwest, provides a way to briefly touch a small part of that past.
