how well do you know west texas? a test for fun......again...750 took a look at it last time...

1.      Winter storms on the Llano Estacado are called? A. howling westerlies B. blue northers C. banshees of the baldies D. scuzzy sandstorms

2.      John Bullis led which group?  A. Lipan scouts  B. Tonkawa scouts C. Seminole Negro scouts D. Texas Rangers

3.      The Indian tribe that preserved the customs of the sweat lodge is? A.  Apache B. Cherokee C. Lakota Souix D. Pawnee

4.      Dodder is a wildflower that looks like? A. a clump of yellow string B. a mass of green thorns around a waxy flower C. a yellow daisy D. a brillo pad

5.      Cotton picking is? A. picking the flowers B. removing the boll of cotton at the stem C. removing the lint from the boll D. weeding a cotton field

6.      Endemic plants are A. plants that only live in one small area of the world B. plants that carry disease C. plants with medicinal uses D. are plants used by animals

7.      The river that runs through Coke County is? A. Brazos B. Concho C. Colorado D. Pecos

8.      The camps of the Comanche Indians were usually found? A. on the west side of the Llano Estacado B. on the Pecos River C. On the San Saba River D. along the eastern side of the Llano Estacado, below the caprock

9.      The Llano Estacado became the world’s most prolific cotton producing region in? A.1937 B. 1957 C. 1947 D. 1967

10.   The Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute’s arboretum is? A. in Chihuahua Mexico B. in Alpine C. in Presidio  D. in between Fort Davis and Alpine

11.   German settlers created orderly towns throughout Texas, and the nearest to Midland is                        A. Fredericksburg B. Nazareth C. Windthorst D. New Braunfels

12.   At the Davis Mountains State Park, a person can see? A. Pinetrees and nightjars B. Cactus and cactus wrens C. Oak trees and phainopeplas D. Mesquite trees and painted buntings

13.   Which institution of higher learning “southwest collections” is producing a photographic exhibit of the Llano Estacado? A. Angelo State? B. UTPB? C. Texas Tech D. College of the Southwest in Hobbs

14.   Chihuahuan ravens are? A. the noisy black birds with long tails B. the big black birds that most commonly perch on telephone poles to the northwest of Midland C. the small black birds that whirl in flocks of 10,000 around livestock feeding areas D. the black birds that get iridescent speckles on their chest in their breeding plumages

15.   Landfarms are places where?  A. road materials are dug out of the ground B. where topsoil is produced for sale C. organic material recycling and composting facilities D. where petroleum or salt contaminated soil is remediated        

16.   The wonderful drought adapted ornamental plants Bouvardia and esparanza are found growing wild in which mountain range? A. Davis Mountains B. Guadalupe Mountains C. Delaware Mountains D. Sacramento Mountains

17.    The South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center is in? A. Midland B. Odessa C. San Angelo D. Lubbock

18.   Halophytic and gypsophilic plants grow in? A. sanddunes B. draw bottoms C. clay playa basins D. salt playa basins

19.   Killdeer and nighthawks are among the creatures that prefer the habitat of? A. the urban forest B. oil well pads C. the pocket forests of the Llano Estacado draws D. Mesquite brushland

20.   Frank Buckalew was a captive in 1866 of which Indian tribe? A. Kickapoo B. Comanche C. Tonkawa D. Lipan Apache

21.   Lubbock Lake Landmark preserves? A. the site of the Yellowhouse Canyon fight between buffalo hunters and Comanches B. Francisco Coronado’s winter camp in 1541 C. fossils of Triassic age dinosaurs D. fossils of Pleistocene animals

22.   Caprylic acid is produced by? A. stink beetles B. oak leaves C. ants D. skunks

23.   In the Monahans State Park a person can find? A. gum bumelia trees B. pinyon pine C. willow trees  D. live oaks

24.   The Texon Scar is? A. where a meteorite hit B. a practice bombing range of World War II C. where windblown sand collected during the Pleistocene D. where salt water from early oil wells ruined land

25.   Which of the following does not happen after a rainstorm in west Texas? A. red rainbugs walk on the ground B. millipedes come out of ant holes C. termites swarm by the billion D. lady bugs appear by the thousands

26.   Jane Gilmore Rushing wrote books about life near? A. Snyder B. Lubbock C. Monahans D. Pecos

27.   Ethie Eagleton started which town’s historical museum? A. Stanton B. Midland C. O’Donnell            D. McCamey

28.   The individual that serves as the sentinel in a coterie of prairie dogs is?  A. the oldest male B. the oldest female C. the female with the most babies D. a female without babies

29.   Select the one predator of the following that does not attack bird nests in trees? A. Kingsnakes B. Gray foxes C. Grackles D.  Red foxes

30.   Which is the improper translation of the following Spanish words? A. Trompillo – purple nightshade B. Popotillo – Mormon tea C. Mimbres -- mesquite D. Alamo -- cottonwood

31.   Lagunas Sabinas is the Comanchero name for which salt lake? A. Shafter Lake B. Tahoka Lake         C. Pleasure Lake D. Cedar Lake

32.   Gomez Peak at the northern end of the Davis Mountains was named for? A. the first person to dig irrigation canals along the Pecos River B. a Texas Ranger C. a Mescalero Apache chief D. the first Hispanic member of the Texas State Legislature

33.   What business establishment in Girvin, Texas was written about in Texas Monthly? A. the new post office B. the old school that is now a community center C. the power plant D. the social club

34.   Muchaque Peak is near ? A. a favorite winter camp of Quanah Parker B. on the famous black rancher 80 John Wallace’s land C. Horsehead Crossing D. Rath City – a buffalo hunter’s depot in the 1870’s

35.   The name of the railroad built by Andrew Fasken was? A. The Midland-Hobbs Railway B. Midland and Northwestern Railroad C. Texas and New Mexico Railroad D. Midland to Smackover Railroad

36.   Which of the following  is not one of the reasons Hispanic settlers came to west Texas before 1940?   A. to build railroads B. to work in cotton fields C. to work in the oilfield D. to build the brick streets of the towns of the region    

heat can make a person crazy

 I took a lower branch of the creosote bush next to me, and rolled the sprig in my fingers. I love its "smell of rain." Thinking of the smell of rain made me thirsty. I remembered an old story, from the days that Captain Jack Hays, Bigfoot Wallace, and Robert Neighbors rode through West Texas trying to get an estimate of the population of Indians in the far western reaches of the new country (Texas.)  Captain Hays was also scouting for a road to El Paso, too. They had a doctor from Boston with them, a tenderfoot, not knowledgeable about self-sufficiency or proper behavior in hot arid climes.

After filling all available containers from the springs along the Middle Concho, the group headed west for Castle Gap and Horsehead Crossing. The Doctor drank all of his water before the day was done. After a nap around sundown, the group continued the march into the night. The next morning, the Boston doctor was nowhere to be found. One of the Lipan Apache scouts rode back, but returned a few hours later with the doctor's clothes. He had found them draped over an allthorn bush, but no sign of the doctor. The dried buffalo grass, tobosa grass, and fluff grass had not revealed a trail.

Some ten months later the Boston doctor showed up in San Antonio, delivered by a group of Lipan Apaches. The doctor had no memory of what had happened to him and was a changed man. When brought back to San Antonio, he stayed in a dark room and cried. Sounds made him jump. One of the doctors of the town who had hosted him as a guest on the way west took him in after his return, and in an effort to "quiet his nerves" gave him laudanum. He did not improve, so finally arrangements were made to take him back to Boston.

I have wondered about the doctor, and have imagined different scenarios for what transpired. The source for the story indicated dehydration, exhaustion and possibly even heat stroke had destroyed the man.  Remembering the story brought the story of the lost buffalo soldiers between Tahoka Lake and Silver Lake. Four men died of dehydration in 1878, and in recent years Morton, Texas has honored their memory, inviting buffalo soldier re-enactors out during  their "Frontier Days" celebration.

I am sure there are other stories of people dying from the heat and lack of water on the Llano Estacado.  With almost no surface water and less than .0001 percent of the area having any trees (just pocket forests in the draws), the Llano Estacado was a tough place to cross in the summer before railroads and then finally roads for automobiles. 

I sniffed the creosote bush sprig I had been rolling, inhaled deeply, and waded into the heat again, headed back to the air conditioning  and a comfortable chair. People still get heatstroke, and sometimes take years to return to health, after all.  

Living with heat has changed for most of American society

Heat is an enemy, a force much stronger than humans -- heat is a heavy weight grinding a person against stone. Heat is hated. Heat can kill. A number of tropical and subtropical cultures preserve the "siesta, the afternoon nap."  Modern society can be foolish at times, and it seems that there should be laws against working outside when the air temperature is 105 in the shade, and bare ground radiates 150+ degrees.   Most native animals are underground during the heat of the day. Two feet down the temperature stays 55 degrees Fahrenheit year around. During the times of dry heat, the only chance of moisture in any form is underground.

The soapberry flowers are falling. This year's bloom brought few butterflies, despite a much more colorful spring than last year.  It seems that when they fall, a Llanero's mind feels the first oppression of summer's heat, announcing, "The heat has arrived, and there will be no relief for three more months!"

My grandfather raised cattle much of his adult life, and when the Depression sent him job hunting in the city he ended up doing jobs either early in the morning or late into the night. He believed the summer afternoon was made to be beyond quiet and somnolent.  As I have become older I think I now realize that was a time when he could meditate and to let go of tensions of everyday life.

 My father preserved the tradition the best he could. He would leave downtown and drive out to where Lee High School appeared 20 years later, bouncing down the dirt road that became Neely. His mother was living in his house, and she always had a meal of meat, potatoes, salad, and dessert waiting for him. He would go to my parents bedroom and sleep for 30 minutes, and then drive back to town.

When I worked for myself as a nurseryman, I preserved the tradition. I'd be at the job by first gray in the east, and work nonstop until after the noon hour, then head for the house, lunch and then a book, after a hot bath. Come evening, I would return, and water plants until after dark. 

My house had lots of windows, and lots of plants around it. The north side of the house was a favored shade-up place for doves.200 or more came to the pine trees. Doves make interesting noises in the hot afternoon. They gurgle, make white noise buzzes, as well as have a number of different cooing notes.

They are often social, seeming to comment to each other about a possibly scary movement in the leaf litter below, or the BRRRRRT of a roadrunner from the shade of a prickly pear in the pasture. One branch was the main view from the recliner where I read.  Sometimes the doves would do "the wave" with their little pin heads, one after the other turning to look at what approached up the walkway to the house.

We had no air conditioners, just open windows, and a ceiling fan. Enforced afternoon lassitude made the old-time Llaneros take the long view,  and made them feel that time could not be wasted in careful thought and deliberation.

I finally joined the modern world about five years ago and moved to  a house in town with central air-conditioning and a thermostat.  Previously, at the old house, we had installed window unit air conditioners in 1998, when the temperatures topped 110 for several days.  I learned to love to sleep under the cool stream of air. Air conditioning costs money and maintenance, and the wait for a maintenance man can be long.  Air conditioners changed how we live, in more ways than people may realize, I believe.

 My internal thermostat is now erratic. I used to be able to do light physical work (like pruning) without breaking a sweat in the summer morn, but now, I sweat profusely. My internal histamines respond, so I believe my body is radiating, and my skin becomes flushed.

I have heard of a town in Australia, (Coober Pedy) where the houses, stores, and offices are all underground (but I have no idea of constituted streets). I wonder if they have courtyards that serve as rainwater collectors and feed underground cisterns? It might be a more energy efficient and cheaper way to live. Last year's heat brought rolling blackouts of electricity to some here in Texas. Last year's heat overloaded the system. It will probably happen again.  Heat is implacable... as implacable as a rattlesnake poised to strike.

    

   

the gangsters of Wink

Sheriff Will Priest sat in his office in Kermit, his gut twisted up inside. It was not something he ate, no sirree! He was caught up in a whirl of overpowering forces he could not escape. "Sheriff," he thought. "What a joke, I'm a joke, I'm no sheriff. I'm just a pawn. The boomtown bullies have taken over Wink and I'm a dead man if I go against them. My hands are tied, because even if I arrest them, Mayor Ostrom will kick them loose."

Sheriff Priest knew that the only way to prevent the bullies from taking over Wink would have been to kill them when they first came to town, without the benefit of the law. And that would have been wrong, so wrong he knew he was incapable of doing it. He knew that gamblers, bootleggers, and prostitutes had taken over Hendrick Street. With hundreds of roughnecks working in the new oilfield needing to blow off steam after dangerous and exhausting work, the underworld had come to town to soak up the river of money pouring out of the ground. He had heard what had happened up at Borger and a dozen more oil boomtowns all across Texas and Oklahoma. Heavy Brackeen, now firmly established in town, had been at Borger, but somehow had escaped prosecution when the Texas Rangers finally did clean up that town.

"Dang fools, those sharecropper young'uns from the breaks, making more money than their parents ever saw, and blowing it on drinking and gambling and such. How come people want to escape the drudgery on the installment plan? What is wrong with them? If they toughed it out and saved their money, they could leave the oilfields for good. Blowing their money keeps them trapped." The sheriff sighed. He was trapped as they were, but it wasn't his doing -- it was the fault of all the strangers filling the streets of Wink. A cowtown sheriff did not belong in an oil boomtown.

"I wonder if my new deputy in Wink will get killed. He is the only law for the town. He is such a gung-ho and righteous boy. It is black and white for him, good and evil. He shut down a couple of the gambling parlors there a few hours ago, and is now at the boarding house, sleeping the sleep of the just. And I am sitting here, wondering if Heavy will blame me. I realize all I can do is break up fights and keep the rowdies from killing each other, but that boy doesn't know the power of greed."

The door suddenly swung open. Hot Shot Ash stood there, with gun in hand. "Heavy wants to talk to you," said the small and wiry right-hand man of Brackeen. As Hot Shot and the sheriff drove a half hour down the sandy county roads to the City Café in Wink, from which Brackeen ran his operation, the sheriff thought about the reasons he stayed. Was owning land and a house free and clear enough reason to stay?  He might be able to sell it. He was too old to find a new line of work, too old to go to work in the oilfields some place else, and as far as he could determine, he just did not have any options.

The City Café had a big and ornately carved mahogany bar that had been shipped out of El Paso. Bars in a boomtown were for "booze, broads, and brawls."  Fistfights were a nightly occurrence. Booze first makes a man sing like a bird, then become like a bull on the prod, and finally turn into a swine in the gutter.  Many of the fights were among friends, repeated often, and considered to be more like play, never rancorous, just sport and good exercise.

As Hot Shot and the sheriff walked in, a fight was in progress. The men stopped when they saw the badge shining in the light, but after the sheriff walked by, went back to whomping on each other. The other patrons present did not even stop their conversations. In the back room office, Heavy and several other men were sitting around, smoking cigars, sipping whiskey, and playing poker. He did not turn his double-chinned sullen face towards the sheriff until the hand was finished.

Roger and Diana Olien wrote "Oil Booms, Social Change in Five Texas Towns," the source material for this story. Although they interviewed Hot Shot many years later, the book does not report what transpired as Heavy and his men talked to Sheriff Priest for the next few hours. Their mention of the interchange does not go beyond the one phrase, "held the sheriff at gunpoint for several hours explaining the salient facts of Wink life." When I read the phrase, I put down the book, and began to imagine Sheriff Priest's history, his character, and what he felt, as he endured that evening.

This story occurred in the latter part of the 1920's. Many people now living were kids during similar dramas in a number of boomtowns of the west Texas oilfields. Law enforcement sometimes did look the other way or become part of the corruption during those days. When they confiscated a bootlegger's product, for example, they gave it to family and friends, instead of destroying the goods. Law abiding citizens, powerless to change things, endured the troubles, and when the towns were finally brought under control, did not talk about the times with their children. Sometimes it is better to "put things behind you."

Such stories should be told, however. People today, especially kids, still get trapped in situations created by bullies. The "gangsta life" immortalized by rap music, operates in the same brutal way, with drive-by shootings, murders for "turf" or illegal drug markets. Pressure politics exist in corporate life, political life, social life, and even family life. People endure such situations, with resentments building and their souls withering.  

The people of Winkler County soon learned of Brackeen's little talk with the sheriff. Sheriff Priest endured their criticism, and decided to not stand for reelection. A couple of years later, however, he became sheriff again. For most of the 1930's, until his death, he remained the sheriff, and "continued to show considerable toleration of gamblers, bootleggers, and prostitutes," as the Oliens wrote.

Sheriff Priest was not a hero. He was an average man, trapped by circumstance. He must have believed that he did do some good for the folks of the county, keeping them reasonably unaffected by the squalid behavior "managed" by Brackeen and his ilk. To be reelected, the people of Winkler County must have believed he was acting in their best interests, as well. His story illustrates in bold relief the similar tragic psychological degradation that many people have to endure when bullied by others. A person enduring such pressures often suffers silently for years, as he did until his death. His story also helps us understand stories on the grand scale -- a person can see Saddam Hussein as Heavy Brackeen!  I think the next time that I am in Kermit I will try to find Sheriff Priest's grave.

   

Oaks in our gardens enriched the ecology of our Urban Forest

                                            

               A few years back some of our local birdwatchers found a mountain chickadee. Normally found in the mountains of the western United States, it was quite unexpected. I didn't rush out to see it like most of the birders, but instead it lead to some contemplating and theorizing.

               Why have Mountain and Carolina Chickadees and White-breasted Nuthatches appeared in Midland.  The first thought – this chickadee was in an oak tree.  Were the others also in oak trees?  Yes, they were first found in areas of the city where there are many live oak trees, and each of them foraged in oak trees much of the time.  In the Hill Country Carolina Chickadees live in oaks; in the mountains of West Texas, Mountain Chickadees live in oaks.  Shin oaks, the only oaks in Midland County before landscaping with oaks became popular, are usually less than five feet tall and have no chickadees.  They prefer tall oaks and if we had no big oaks, the chickadees would not stop over in their wanderings.

               That is a thought that needs to be pursued – chickadees wandering.  Why would they? Why would they leave their preferred ecological community?  They are not migratory.  Was there an ecological catastrophe?  No, no fires, no mass habitat destruction of any sort in their homelands.  Would chickadees leave because there were too many for their habitat – did every fledgling survive in a bountiful spring?  Could a droughty fall have caused the food supply to be inadequate for a bumper crop of chickadees?  Could it be that a percentage of the population of chickadees is genetically programmed to seek out and find new chickadee-friendly habitat?  Or could a few just have “worms in the brain” and behave in un-chickadee fashion?

Could it be that oaks have introduced other fauna and flora to Midland? Many of the oak trees in Midland were dug up in the wild and transplanted.  With the soil around their roots came a number of other plants.  The most common is Briar.  Usually the homeowner chops it down, but in more informal landscapes a number of the Briars have been allowed to grow.  They produce berries and birds have spread them.  Mistletoe grows on oaks and its berries are designed to be spread by birds.  Mistletoe berries are composed of a very sticky liquid.  If a bird that has been eating them cleans its bill on a branch, a seed hanging to its bill will be glued to that branch and another clump of mistletoe started. Carolina snailseed, a vine with red berries, may have arrived with oaks, as did poison ivy.

               Oak Decline, a disease of oaks, have been recorded.  The disease may have come on a wild dug tree, or in oak firewood.  Firewood has also introduced several types of fungus, lichens, moss and algae.  In old firewood and in rootballs, imported fire ants keep arriving in Midland.  So far fire ants have been found here only in disturbed and irrigated soil in town.  No fire ant mounds have yet been found in pastures where soils are harder.

              

               Many new species of gall forming insects also arrived with the oaks.  Over 800 species of gall insects live on oaks.  Most are tiny wasps but gnats, midges and flies also cause galls.  (Do chickadees eat these gall insects?  Do they break open the galls to eat the larvae?)  Aphids and scale which attack oaks have also arrived.

               What about vertebrates?  Did the Mediterranean Geckos that have proliferated the last few years come in the oak trees?  Did the Gulf Coast Toads at Hill Park arrive in an oak rootball?  How about Green Tree Frogs and the Green Anole?

               Nuthatches, creepers and kinglets, gleaners all, rejoice in bark crevices laden with insects associated with oaks.   Acorn and Red-headed Woodpeckers feast on acorns.  Forty years ago there were no Blue Jays in Midland.  Now they remain all year.  Acorns are one of their chief foods.  The winter population of Yellow-rumped Warblers has quadrupled since the 50’s and crushed acorns are favorite foods.

               Oaks have without a doubt caused an increase in the number of species of plants and animals in the towns of West Texas.  This review only skims the surface of the changes.  Keep your eyes open!

bioregional education

Human imagination defines the landscape. “Flat, brown, and ugly,” or “cactus infested armpit of an industrial wasteland” are two of the more common negative descriptions of the area around Midland. In most places, there is little education that helps us connect to the place where we live (the town, its watershed, its economy, its socioeconomic dynamics, its history or ecology.) Even here, we are often alienated from the land, as evidenced by the quotes above. We tell ourselves we are here for the money, and that same money can buy us anything, including a sense of being at home. With enough money we can buy a second home where it is pretty, and go there on long weekends and vacations, and someday retire there.

A person becomes a native by actively participating in defining and shaping how we perceive our home. Being a native, a citizen of one place, means understanding a place’s history of social behavior, and like most places today, our economy is driven by powers operating on a global scale. Being local and being global simultaneously is a challenge, but modern technology makes it easier. Having most of the world’s knowledge at our fingertips via a smartphone at any place or time is revolutionizing how we educate ourselves.

We live in what is known by the chamber of commerce appellation “Permian Basin.” An older name for the region, El Llano Estacado, is almost never used.  There is a longer history of European exploration here than in Plymouth and Jamestown, but local history is only superficially taught. Few people know the most common native organisms and their habitats of their surroundings. A good number do know the geology and hydrology, for that knowledge is useful in the local economic engine.

Since there is not an organized way of learning about our home, a person has to do it on their own. Print media and educational institutions teach more about things on a state and national scale, than a local scale. All local print, radio, and television everywhere presently publish a limited perspective, based on what “sells” – crime and scandal first and foremost. Publishers of books have always had to sell to the state and national level, as well, so over the last 60 years we have forgotten how to be local, or how to be native.

A number of educators from around the world are pondering how to shift the educational paradigm, writing books, holding conferences, and organizing. An Amazon.com search turns up 130 books with the word bioregional in the title. Over 1200 groups have joined the “Leave no child inside” coalition, which encourages people to explore their own home landscapes in a myriad ways. Educators are also learning to deal with shifting pedagogical paradigms – from “knowledge retention” to “project-driven.”

People from both sides of the political spectrum have come to the conclusion that it would be a good thing for people anywhere to know a lot more about their own home – not only from a management and planning aspect, but also as part of a social contract that binds people closer together as well as enriching their life. Some are convinced it helps unify people of different religions, races, and cultures that must live together (as happens in many towns all over the world) because of the needs of the global markets, and the tragedies of human politics.

Here, on the Llano Estacado, one of the many ways to learn about one’s home is make an effort to conserve our most limited resource –water. It is not just book learning about what needs to be done, but also learning a new way to garden, a new way to handle wastewater, and new ways of collecting water. Everyone has been learning – from various governmental agencies having to work together to develop a water pipeline to the city, to every homeowner.

 The issue of limited waters has encouraged us to think more bioregionally and more long term than we have in the past. With modern extraction techniques we have another fifty years or more of the oil industry shaping our landscape. It behooves us to know how our bioregion is important to other bioregions, and which bioregions are most important for our survival – for we are not self-sustaining.

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jornada mogollon culture

“Pottery associated with the Jornada-Mogollon culture, such as El Paso Polychrome and Chupadero black-on-white were found at the site.” This quote came from a State of New Mexcio document that outlined research problems that future archaeological research in Southeast New Mexico should examine.  It discussed an archaeological report of a site on the southern Llano Estacado on private land in Texas, and that the landowners did not allow the researchers to give the site’s location in the report.

 I was vaguely familiar with the Jornada-Mogollon culture – I knew that from 1000 A.D. to 1300 A.D they lived in pithouses and farmed corn, as well as hunted game and harvested wild plants. Archaeologists have decided that the artifacts of the people of that time that lived in the area from Chupadera Mesa in central Mexico, down to near Casa Grandes in Mexico, and from the Arizona border to the Texas-New Mexico border had enough similarities to be lumped together in what is named the Jornada-Mogollon culture.

A week or two later, while browsing in the Midland Archaeological Society’s (MAS) library, I picked up another journal with an essay by Polly Schaafsma, whose book “Indian Rock Art of the Southwest” is a comprehensive review of the artistic expressions of the prehistoric cultures of the region.

 In this essay, I found, “The site in the Hondo Valley near Roswell has two painted, horned, and feathered serpents painted on the walls of a rectangular room. Nearby were rounded pithouses. It was as if a mission of one culture was in a village of another culture.” This ignited my imagination – did one prehistorical Indian group proselytize another Indian group in the manner of the Spanish missions in historical times?   

I returned to the MAS library and found a special issue of the El Paso Archaeological Society authored by a Dr. Kay Sutherland. Within a few minutes I wondered if what I found might be “cuckoo science,” so I quickly googled her. I found that she and Schaafsma believed that the Jornada-Mogollon adopted elements of Mesoamerican (the cultures of the Toltec, Maya, Olmec) and began what is now known as the kachina religion of the Pueblo Indians in northern New Mexico. I also found that their theories were not widely accepted by academic archaeologists. They were not the first to propose the theory. Elsie Parsons first proposed the idea in the 1930’s.

Trade existed between the ancestral Pueblos and the city-states of Mexico without a doubt. Macaw feathers and copperbells from Mexico have been found in many Anasazi sites. Turquoise and obsidian from New Mexico have been found in Mesoamerican sites. 

Sutherland bases her theory on the multi-colored pictograph masks found at Hueco Tanks 30 miles east of El Paso. She believes them to be representative of Tlaloc, a Mesoamerican diety of rain. Twenty-four such masks are found there. Masks with similar design elements, but not the colors, are found throughout the Jornada-Mogollon region, and variations of the theme are found throughout the Pueblo region of  Northern New Mexico.

Both Sutherland and Schaafsma consider feathered and horned serpent images to be derived from Quetzalcoatl, another Mesoamerican diety associated with underground waters, springs, and irrigation. Rock art horned serpents are found near water throughout the region. Another image in common between the rock art of the Jornada-Mogollon and the Pueblo peoples is that of the “stepped cloud,”  which has two steps on both sides of the blocky image.

It is my understanding that both Sutherland and Schaafsma believe that as the Anasazi culture began to decline because of drought, war, and environmental degradation in the 1100’s the Chaco Canyon complex lost its role as the major trading center of the items mentioned above, and that Casa Grandes (Paquime) in northern Mexico began to flourish in that role. They believe that priest traders began traveling the region, not only bringing macaw feathers and copper bells but also better strains of corn. As they traded the items they talked of their gods and their associated rituals.

The western Jornada-Mogollon had learned irrigation techniques of the Hohokam of Arizona, who had already adopted some of the religious elements of the Mexican city-states. The Jornada-Mogollon retained their egalitarian social structure (whether this was in response to the decay of the elitist Anasazi societies or the continuation of lifestyles of the hunter-gather is unknown.) Over time the Jornada-Mogollon developed the kachina religion and when it was introduced to the Northern New Mexico Anasazi refugees  the new pueblos along the Rio Grande adopted it because they remembered the abuses of the priest-kings of the Anasazi. They also adopted the irrigation techniques of the western Jornada-Mogollon.

The pueblos there remained politically independent, and religion became part of every individual’s life. Every member of every pueblo participates in rituals throughout the year, portraying the kachinas as masked dancers, and in the dance trance enter the spirit world. The elitist priest kings were the only ones that entered the spirit world of the Anasazi (and the Mesoamerican cultures.) No pueblo became all powerful. 

It makes for a good story – it sounds logical. It probably can never be proven, and archaeologists will probably debate the theory for years. The eastern Jornada-Mogollon towns along the Pecos disappeared by 1300. The Jumanos of the 1500’s and 1600’s might be descendants of the eastern Jornada-Mogollon. Buffalo increased on the Llano Estacado during the 1300’s, and some of the farmers might have become hunters again, and traded buffalo meet to the Pueblo peoples, while others began living near Presidio del Norte, the Concho River Valley, and Gran Quivira where the Spanish found them. 

How has the landscape changed over time? Who were the people that lived and visited here? How did they comprehend the world? What were some of the issues they dealt with as interacted with other people?  Envisioning a trader from Casas Grandes wandering onto the Llano Estacado promoting a new religion makes a filled-in pithouse under a mesquite come alive!