Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico — John Shaqi
Bandelier National Monument, New MexicoWing, Kittridge A.
History
Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico
Wing, Kittridge A.
Bandelier National Monument (N.M.)
The typical male inhabitant of Frijoles Canyon in the early 1300’s,
then, was a newcomer to the area. He was a man of Mongoloid cast of
countenance, about 5 feet 4 or 5 inches in height, with medium red-brown
skin and black hair. His wife measured 5 feet or perhaps a little less,
and was inclined to a stout build. A few children and a dog or two
completed the family circle. These newcomers had arrived in their chosen
valley with only such belongings as they could carry on their backs, and
were immediately faced with the problems of wresting a livelihood from a
somewhat grudging environment. In the pattern of all mankind before and
since, this Indian migrant’s first requirements were food, water,
shelter, and clothing for himself and his family.
FOOD. As a practicing farmer, the man’s chief reliance for food had
been the crops of corn, beans, and squash that he knew how to raise.
Perhaps the family had managed to bring some remnants of their most
recent harvests with them to Frijoles; but these remnants had to be
saved for seed, to insure crops for the coming year. What did the family
eat meanwhile? In the warm season, a diet of sorts could have been
pieced together by gathering various plants and fruit and nut crops.
Spring brought out of the ground several annuals such as the mustard and
bee plants which can be boiled for vegetable-greens while young. A bit
later the local berry crop came into fruit—currants, gooseberries,
chokecherries, and a few raspberries. The ever-present yucca offered its
bananalike pod of fruit toward August. When fall arrived, the
countryside, in good years, abounded with wild produce: pinyon-nuts and
juniper berries, the staples, with trimmings of prickly pears, acorns,
and many other seed and nut crops. The ingenuity of the modern Pueblo
Indian in coaxing sustenance out of his familiar native plants is
extraordinary; very few things that grow are not of some use to him as
food or medicine. It may surely be assumed that the Pueblo ancestor of
600 years ago was equally resourceful.
[Illustration: _Ancient sandals, made from yucca leaves._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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