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In about 900 a.d. in the southwestern section of North America
There started to come into being what we now refer to
as the Chacoan phenomenon. For awhile, archaeolgists thought
that small settlements of pit house dwellers had formed into
larger groups and started building large apartment houses. There are differing speculations about where these people actually came from, each with it's own set of archaelogical evidence to back their theory. Certainly the most interesting theory I have found is in the book The Chaco Meridian by archaeologist Stephen Lekson. His detailed examination of the shared longitudinal meridian and the time line development of the three "capital" cities of Chaco Canyon, Aztec Ruins (NOT the Aztecs of Mexico itself but a Chacoan Great House in northern New Mexico), and Casa Grande in Mexico is one I highly recommend reading. Now scientists know that the small pit house "outliers" that
surrounded these beautiful pueblos were contemporaneous.
Some of these Great Houses had over 1,000 rooms in them. They were very beautiful and very well built. All of the rooms were not used for living in, many were for food storage. Still it remains, many of them were beautifully made with bands of different color rocks. Some had what is known as tri wall construction, with the center section filled with small stones and earth. Some were elaborately painted inside and out with dyes made from local pigments. There was not a building of comparable size built in North America until the 1880's. In some cases the trees used for roof beams were carried in from 40-80 miles away. By hand.
The residents of the outlying pithouses were farmers. Their houses were smaller, their diets were more limited in both quality and quantity. The elite appear to have have lived in the Great Houses. Each Great House shared some common features. One was Kivas. Kivas are circular buildings built partially underground. There are typically many kivas of varying size in each pueblo. I have been in Kivas ranging from simple buildings 12 feet across to some that were very elaborate builings 80 feet across. The word that spings to mind when standing inside one of those larger kivas was "Temple", for me. They have many shared features such as niches spaced around the outer walls, deep pits, secret entrances from the outside, and outer wall benches. It is now believed that they were used for religious or civic ceremonies. Since most tribes are divided into clans they may have also been used for clan rituals.
The Great Houses were Chacoan religious and trade centers. There was an extensive trade network stretching south into Mexico and west all the way to the California coast. Archaeologists have found shell jewelry made from shells of the California coast. There are feathered cloaks made from parrots found in Mexico. There was cannibalism. Yes, contrary to the long held image of the Chacoans as a peaceful society, there is much evidence of violence. It could be that the people who lived in the Great Houses of Chaco were a group from the south and that the pit house dwellers were a native population (from the Mesa Verdean culture) conquered or convinced by the power, splendor and/or the religion of the Chacoans.
The early Great Houses had large open plazas where most of daily life was carried on. Women met there to grind corn into meal, to make pots, and to cook many of the meals. Jewelry and baskets were made there. There were no defensive walls in the early Great Houses. They had devised several irrigation systems to channel water run-off from the mesas and canyons into the farmed plots on the canyon floors. They had learned to grow different varieties of corn according to the location and altitudes of their farms. The people moved numerous times. Sometimes they lived in clif dwellings built into canyon walls, sometimes on canyon floors and sometimes they moved to mesa tops for self defense in periods when they were threatened by roving bands of hunter-gatherers.
Rainfall, crop failures, and warring tribes probably all played a part in what appears to be a sudden collapse of the Chacoan system. They did not die or disappear though. Traces of them remain on in the southwest and in Mexico. Some of them joined the Pueblo towns. The Pueblo in Taos is an active community to this day. It is the site of the longest continually inhabited site in North America.
Where Did They Go?
Most Great Houses were deserted suddenly in the mid 1100's. Within a few short years, they moved out and away from most of their beautiful homes. Some left so hurriedly, there was food left in bowls.
There was more going on than attacks by other bands though. There was more going on than a drought. It appears that the economic differences between those in the pueblos and the farmers who supplied their food from the outlier communities may have caused a sudden collapse of the religious powers held by the elite. A child born into the farming community had a 30% less chance of living through it's first year than a child born only a few hundred yards away in a Great House. The life span of adults in the outliers was much shorter. The bones and food remains in the middens showed a large difference in the variety and quality of the diets between the elite in the Great Houses and the farmer's pit houses. As drought and crop failures hit the farmers first, they simply moved to upland sites leaving the pueblos unable to feed themselves.
The Chacoans built large roads some 15-30 feet wide with curbs on each side. They were amazingly straight roads with a very few having "dogleg" changes of direction. Mystifyingly, some run parallel for miles. There have been 400 miles of roads mapped so far. They went, in some cases, straight up the sides of mesa walls by means of steps carved out of the rock. It is believed that they were used at first for trade purposes between neighboring Great Houses. Later on, when small droughts hit the area, it appears they may have been built simply as a WPA type project. Although most of them connected the Great Houses of the Chacoans, some stretch into the desert and stop where there is no sign of anything else ever having been built. Perhaps they held religious significance. In the end, if building them was some sort of public works project, they were not enough to save the Chacoan Society from collapse. Perhaps the lesson is that a government cannot sustain itself indefinitely on the backs of people whose children are going hungry.
Drought undoubtedly played a large part in the collapse of the Chacoan civilzation, but that was not the only cause. Any society subjected to the pressures that they were starts to show cracks. There are books being published now that indicate the end was not peaceful. The economic differences between the Great House dwellers and the nearby pit house dwellers are striking. The fact that attacks by roving bands of hunter-gatherer groups increased dramatically during that time also played a part. Like many of the answers to civilizations great questions the answers to this one are multi-sided. A combination of factors caused the collapse of the Chacoan society. Where did they go? Why did they go? They went several places, they went for several reasons.
When the Chacoan phenomenon ended, most of the people moved south. Many founded or joined smaller pueblo societies. Some went as far as Casa Grande in what is now Mexico. Although there have been people living in Casa Grande for 3,000 years, there was no evidence of cannibalism there until after the Chacoan Society collapsed and remnants of it moved there.
What the Spanish did to the pueblo societies in the 15 and 1600's would be hard to beat in terms of horror. The Spanish, as a nation, are gone from that area now. Their blood lives on in many descendants in both white and Indian societies in that area. The Anasazi, or the Ancient Ones, are not all "gone" . They live on in the blood of their descendants in Taos, and Santa Clara and on the mesas of the Hopi.
Reading list on the Chacoans:
People of Chaco by Kendrick Frazier
Anasazi America by David Stuart
The Chaco Meridian by Stephen H. Lekson
Man Corn by Turner and Turner
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