People

This Hell Gap-type projectile point, likely used to tip a hunting spear, dates back between 12,300 and 10,900 years ago, making it the oldest object found at Mesa Verde.

NPS

As Many Stories as People

All places protected by the National Park Service involve a history of the people who have lived there, but when Mesa Verde National Park was created in 1906, it was the first to be established for that purpose.

Human history at Mesa Verde goes back approximately 12,000 years, to a time when people were hunting mammoths, ground sloths, and giant bison by spearpoints. As times changed, so did the people. Agriculture became the primary way of life, stonework villages were built, renovated, and were left behind as people migrated to new homes, and still other people chose to call Mesa Verde a home.

The histories of ancient peoples are preserved in art, objects, buildings, as well as oral traditions and written records. They represent many cultures, communities, and time periods, with each important to the fabric of humanity that carries on in the modern day, continued by the 27 associated Pueblos, Tribes, and Nations for whom Mesa Verde is a special and sacred place.

 

An illustration of what Ancestral Pueblo life may have looked like during the 1200s, when the majority of the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde were built.

NPS/Roy Andersen

The Ancestral Pueblo People

When people think of Mesa Verde National Park, they most often think of beautiful, well-built villages of stone, earth, plaster, and timber built in cliffside alcoves. These were just a few of the homes of Ancestral Pueblo people, whose lives were based on farming, who made beautiful art, communicated and traded far beyond their homes, and who not only survived, but thrived while they lived at Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde was just one part of a much wider area that the Ancestral Pueblo people called home. Between 500 CE and 1300 CE, the Four Corners region of modern-day Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah was home to tens of thousands of Ancestral Pueblo people. They lived at a different time, and had their own practices and way of seeing the world, but were fundamentally human beings that are not different from any other person, regardless of time or place.

 

Experimental corn fields planted with Hopi corn varieties and grown using traditional techniques show how Mesa Verde was a relatively good place to farm

NPS

People of the Corn

Farming was central to the livelihoods of every Ancestral Pueblo person. Between the 500s and the 1200s, people chose to transition from a life where farming, hunting, and gathering held equal weight, to one where the crops of corn, beans, and squash made up 90% of people's diet. Farming fields were supported by infrastructure like dams, terraces, and reservoirs. Most of a building's indoor space was dedicated to food storage for the long winter. Animals such as dogs and turkeys assisted with work and provided valuable resources as well as companionship.

 

People took the time to cover everyday items like mugs with beautiful geometric designs, typical of the black-on-white pottery of Mesa Verde.

NPS

Everyday Art

Life on the mesas could be difficult, but people made time to weave and find enjoyment in everyday work. Houses were painted with murals reflecting surrounding landscapes, people, and animals. Imported goods such as ocean shells, macaw feathers, and gemstones were used to enhance woven clothing. Some of the most famous pieces of art from Mesa Verde are beautiful pieces of pottery made for cooking, eating, and storage by everyday people. Designs were passed down from generation to generation, and could signify the community where they were made.

 

The Mesa Verde Region (in brown, with Mesa Verde National Park in green) depopulated in the 1200s, and people dispersed to the areas where the modern-day pueblos still stand.

Crow Canyon Archaeological Center

A Time to Leave

Migration and movement of people were common at Mesa Verde, just as people today move from house to house, state to state, and country to country. People frequently moved between communities for better opportunities, to be closer to family, and to escape drought. Even with this ebb and flow of population, life in the Mesa Verde area continued until the mid 1200s, when people started to move south.

Over the course of several decades, the Ancestral Pueblo people left Mesa Verde entirely. The reasons for moving likely varied from individual to individual. Evidence shows that the 1200s were a period of persistent drought, limited resources, and social change. For Pueblo people, migration is an important cultural activity, and people may have decided it was simply time to move on and continue their people's journey.

 

Visting ancestral sites is an important way for tribal members to connect with their heritage and link their traditions to those of their past.

NPS

We Are Still Here

When people left Mesa Verde, that was not the end of the story, either of the place or the people. People continued their way of life elsewhere, moving to join other communities. Ute, Navajo, and Apache also call this place home. Together, they form the 27 associated Pueblos and Tribes of Mesa Verde. In the present day, Mesa Verde National Park is a place that collaborates and consults with these communities, where tribal members work as a part of park staff, and a place where descendants can visit and pay respects to their ancestors.

The Pueblo and Hopi People

The Pueblo and Hopi people are the direct descendants of those who built and lived in the communities at Mesa Verde and surrounding sites. When their ancestors left Mesa Verde, they created new villages or joined pre-existing ones along the Rio Grande River Valley, Little Colorado River drainages, and the Hopi Mesas. When they arrived in their new homes, they brought both physical reminders of their past, such as architecture, artistic motifs, and farming practices, but also traditions like ways of looking at the world, religion, and oral histories. All of these connect them to their ancestors, and Mesa Verde remains an important pilgrimmage site for Pueblo and Hopi people to learn and pay their respects to their past.

The Pueblo and Hopi people are diverse, with 21 traditional communities speaking six different languages spread across New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. Historically bound by trade, travel, and common lifeways, some gained the name 'Pueblo' after contact with the Spanish, due to each community living year-round in farming villages and towns. Today, Pueblo people operate museums and cultural centers that allow visitors to learn about their culture in an engaging and respectful way at institutions such as the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and the Hopi Cultural Center.

 

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe manages a Tribal Park which protects both Ancestral Pueblo and Ute history, where guides such as Ricky Hayes (pictured) can bring visitors to learn about the area.

NPS/ Brady Richards

The Ute People

The Ute (Nuuchiu) people are a people who have lived across modern-day Utah and Colorado. Ute people often define themselves as 'mountain people', as the mountains of their traditional homelands were the centers of their way of life. Traditionally nomadic, Ute bands would move between high elevations in the summer and low elevations in the winter, following the movement of animals and growth of plants. Mesa Verde was one such hunting and gathering ground.

Today, the Ute people are organized into three tribes: the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute of Colorado and the Ute Indian Tribe of Utah. Much of the Mesa Verde area remains a part of Ute Mountain Ute tribal lands, protected as a part of the Ute Mountain Tribal Park, which offers tours of Ancestral Pueblo sites on a limited basis. The Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum run by the Southern Ute Tribe and the Ute Indian Museum managed by History Colorado are ways for visitors to learn more about Ute history and culture.

 

Gene Trujillo, Willie Begay, Kee Charley John, and Raymond Begay (pictured here alongside fellow worker Kathy Fiero) were all highly skilled Dine members of the Stabilization Crew within the Cultural Resources Department at Mesa Verde, who worked to protect the structures of the park.

Navajo (Diné)

The Navajo Nation is the largest tribe in the United States by both population and reservation size, which stretches across northeast Arizona, northwest New Mexico, and southeast Utah. Historically, Dine people have lived by a semi-nomadic mixture of hunting, gathering, farming, and herding. Mesa Verde, an area featured in many Dine stories and songs, sits just southwest of their sacred mountain of the north, Dibe Ntsaa, marking the northern boundary of the traditional Navajo homeland.

Dine people from Shiprock, New Mexico have been of the primary builders of the park's roads and buildings at Mesa Verde, and some of the most skilled members of the Stabilization and Archeological team. The Navajo Nation maintains several museums within the reservation for visitors to learn more about Navajo culture in Tuba City and the capitol, Window Rock.

 

Cultural demonstrators, such as the Mundo Dancers of the Jicarilla Apache (pictured), offer their knowledge and skills to help people learn about their people's cultural practices.

NPS/Patrick Myers

Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache

The Apache are a large culture of traditionally nomadic people who lived across the lowlands and plains of what is now the Southwestern United States, Southern Great Plains, and Northern Mexico. Apache bands made their livelihoods by following the movements of game herds and the growth of wild plants. Today, they are organized in nine different tribes across Arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, two of which - the Jicarilla Apache in northern New Mexico and the Mescalero Apache in central New Mexico - have traditionally utilized Mesa Verde as part of their hunting and gathering lands.

Apache peoples often traded with others, exchanging hunting goods such as hides, meat, horns, arrowheads, and woven baskets. The tribes operate the Jicarilla Arts and Crafts Museum and Mescalero Apache Cultural Center for those interested in learning more about their history.

 

Places Reflecting America's Diverse Cultures

The National Park Service preserves historic places and stories of America's diverse cultural heritage. Explore and learn about more Places Reflecting America's Diverse Cultures.