Aztec West Audio Tour: The Seeking

The night sky has illuminated the great house for centuries.

Bettymaya Foott

The trail through the Aztec West great house is 0.5 mile in length and requires about 40 minutes to complete using the audio tour. Most of the trail is paved and accessible to wheelchairs, with some steps and low doorways. Wheelchairs are available at the visitor center to borrow upon request.

• The Seeking

  
  

  The third cultural story of the Aztec West self-guided audio tour.
  Audio Transcript

  The Seeking. The People traveled and lived in many places. In each place they recreated that Center, the Earth's Navel, from which they had first emerged. It was customary to send groups of young men from an old village to search for a new place to live. They sought a place with good sources of water, soil, and areas for hunting and gathering plants. They chose a site with combinations of qualities such as ample sunlight, mountains, lakes, rivers, valleys, or canyons. The Elders of the first people of this Place by Flowing Waters then decided that this was to be "their place." Clan leaders gathered stones representing their families and laid them in a pile at the place that would become the "navel," or the Center, of their new village. They sprinkled cornmeal over the piles of stones as they "asked for life" and lent their breath to the birth of their new community. The People gathered more stone and wood from the nearby mountains, and, with mud made from the earth of "their place," they built the walls and structures that defined the special places of this Place by Flowing Waters.