It was more than 100 degree Fahrenheit (38C) in Walnut Canyon near Flagstaff, Arizona during the hike. I did not know what to expect except that it was a canyon, at about 7000 feet altitude where ancestors of today’s Hopi Indians once lived. Took my camera, a lot of water and a large- brim hat for that 300 meter descent into the canyon.
The vegetation is diverse and did have some surprises. In addition to the opunta, cholla and echinocereus cacti, I was delighted to see numerous ephedra shrubs. Did the Sinagua Indians use ephedra as a medicinal plant? There are walnut trees at the bottom of the canyon, hence its name. Winter snow and the monsoon summer rains filled the canyon with water allowing the Sinagua dwellers to have water and to store it for the dry months.
The two sides of the canyon are covered with remains of dwellings built by the Sinagua Indians. These are small room dwellings built into the limestone rocks. Walls were built with rocks and held together with mud as mortar. After almost a thousand years these masonry marvels seem to be mostly held together by the courtesy of time and the dry Sonoran Desert weather of Central Arizona.
First one has to look carefully to find the dwellings well hidden by the rocks and limestone caves. It is said that more than 100 such dwellings exist on both sides of the canyon, but I did see only a handful. Using my 1970s Nikkor 105mm lens here is the view from about 200 meters away:
A close-up shows the masonry work as well as the ingenuity of the Sinagua builders.
Who were these inhabitants who lived there for about 100 years then disappeared without a trace?
It seems that we do not know what these ancestors of the Hopi called themselves, but archaeologists refer to them as the Sinagua Indians. This is a descriptive adjective since in Spanish “Sin Agua” means “Without Water” hence the Sinagua were people who mastered the art of surviving with little or no water.
Their origin seems to extend from the Gulf of Mexico to Central America. The reason they came to Walnut Canyon may be a volcano that erupted in the Colorado Plateau in Northern Arizona a thousand years ago. Today it is an extinct volcanic cone called the Sunset Crater. Hopi oral tradition puts it this way:
“Long ago the ground trembled, a big black smoke came and a big fire that came out of the ground.”
The surviving Sinagua Indians then searched for a place to re-establish, and they are believed to have built dwellings in Walnut Canyon, Tuzigoot and the area today known as the Montezuma Castle near Flagstaff, Arizona.
The Walnut Canyon is most picturesque and seems uniquely challenging: the small dwellers were built midway the sides of the canyon, while beans, squash and corn were planted on the sides of the cliffs. Finally, atop the mountains, the Sinagua found abundant game for hunting. The microcosm of the canyon is also most intriguing: the south-facing slopes are sunny and many species of cacti and agave still cover their flanks. The cooler north-facing slopes are covered with tall fir and ponderosa pine forests, giving the momentary illusion of being in the Northwest of the country.
And, without much fanfare, the Sinagua Indians disappeared around 1200 AD. Why? Was there another cataclysm? Did they assimilate into other tribes and nations? Archaeologists do not have the answer, but according to the Hopi, who are the direct descendants of the Sinagua people,
“Qu’na katsina, the Bringer of Corn who dwells at the crater caused the eruption because their ancestors were engaged in koyaanisquatsi, or life that is morally imbalanced and corrupt.”
Pompeii, Sodom and Gomorrah, Mount Vesuvius and the Sunset Crater. Moral imbalance, corruption and their rumblings that caused cataclysmic tremors. It seems that social interpretations have much more similarity across time and continents than what geologists and archaeologists have yet to offer.
… But on that day late in June and with the 100F degree temperature all I could think about were a few lines from the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran about love. He wrote:
“When love beckons to you, follow it.
Though its ways are hard and steep.
And when its wings enfold you yield to it,
Though the sword hidden among its pinions may wound you.
..Even as love is for your growth so is it for your pruning.
For even as it ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall it descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.”
June 25, 2015
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment