The Secret Sits

Chaco Canyon is a relatively remote Ancestral Puebloan (Ansazi) site at the end of a treacherous gravel road that seems  to have been made to purposefully destroy the shocks on your car.  Despite this obstacle that has discouraged many a tourist, my sister and I put our rental car to the test and braved the elements.

Pueblo Bonito, Chaco Canyon

As opposed to Mesa Verde or Canyon de Chelly, which also have very fine examples of the cliff dwellings, petroglyphs and pottery of the Ancestral Puebloans, Chaco Canyon is more difficult to access, is less built up to serve the comfort of tourists and maintains a sense of mystery and intrigue that sets it apart from the other Anasazi sites.

Doorway at Pueblo Bonito. Chaco Canyon

At each of the Anasazi sites I visited I listened intently to the guides in hopes of getting a clear understanding of the Ancestral Puebloans.  At Mesa Verde and Canyon De Chelly, the guides spoke about how the Anasazi grew food, built their houses and what the petroglyths might have meant.   On the whole, the Anasazi were portrayed as a peaceful, agrarian civilization  that made beautiful pottery, had spiritual ceremonies in their kivas and mysteriously disappeared one day.

Kiva at Casa Rinconada (looks bigger in the picture than it is)

At Chaco Canyon, the Anasazi became more complicated as the park ranger there shared a darker narrative with us that included the prospect of slavery, torture and cannibalism.  This was mixed in with stories about ritual, agriculture and  a profound understanding of the stars, so it wasn’t all dark, but at least it started to become more three-dimensional. 

Pueblo Bonito 

Our ranger at Chaco was G. B. Cornucopia, a truly delightful man who had come to Chaco as an amateur stargazer and is now a ranger who lives in the park.  We spent quite a long time with him for a tour of Casa Rinconada.  G.B. shared many theories about the Ancestral Puebloans and completed each of these speculations by smiling mischievously and saying “But really, we don’t know.”

Fajada Butte- considered to be of ceremonial importance to the Chacoan people.

And we don’t know.  The Ansazi didn’t leave behind many clues to help archeologist and anthropologists to uncover their civilization.  This kind of lack of information easily leads to the construction of more attractive and peaceful histories and the suppression of less attractive qualities like cannibalism.

G.B concluded his talk with a poem by Robert Frost:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

There is a part of me that tends to like to know “the truth” or some version of it, but every so often it is good for me to remind myself that truth and reality are not only derived from scientific investigations or from "experts".  That is simply how our culture comes to a consensus in this moment in time, but if there is anything that can be learned from looking at ancient cultures, it is that there are many more ways to coming to understanding, to create history and know the "facts".