Native Americans, Natural History, and Arizona
Zuni Astronauts
I remember being a child and watching the first men step on the moon, family and friends huddled around the television set. I watched in awe from my grandparents’ living room as the entire planet was transformed, sharing a moment of global unity, while we all watched the lunar landing together. The image of the whole earth as an important symbol for the environmental movement was born then and there. It was a perspective only available watching the entire planet, the whole earth from the vast vantage point of outer space.
As a child I had never heard of the Zuni but the Zuni were watching the moon landing along with everybody else and that summer the elders ordered ceremonial recognition of the historic moon landing. While the pueblo was conducting their summer solstice ceremonies the elders had instructed the koshares clowns to wear fishbowls atop their heads and dance atop the pueblo walls with stiff-legged gaits in imitation of the Apollo astronauts. The Zuni were proud of reaching the moon, as American citizens, as human beings.
Still, even such historic moments are ripe for satire; after all, that is the purpose of ceremonial clowns. Besides, the Zuni have lived on their sacred lands since the beginning of time and they understand how quickly cultures can rise to dizzying heights and how suddenly they can fall, collapsing into ruin and dispersal.
On a windy, sunny spring day we depart from Lacey Point in the Petrified Forest for a short hike into the backcountry to view an important petroglyph site. The Zuni travel deep into the heart of the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Monument to reenact their creation myths at a place where their ancient ancestors carved images into stone. These petroglyphs were carved into a rock on a high point above Lithodendrum Wash. How much of the authors original intent has been retained and correctly interpreted is a question which might only make the Zuni shrug. We honor the creation to show we are grateful to be living in the present and the Zuni are painfully aware that there is not necessarily a future.
The evidence is all around the Painted Desert. From the rim the ground looks flat in all directions for miles but when hiking across the terrain, deep ravines and fissures suddenly open beneath one’s feet. Even this parcel of beautiful exotic earth is proof of the temporal nature of the planet. In this dry, dry desert, the thick, soft soil is filled with polished river stones, remains from millions of years ago when this area was lush wet marshlands. These gorgeous pastel-colored hills, lumps of soil painted blue, purple, yellow and lime green are clumps of fallen ash from a distant and long ago cataclysmic volcanic eruption. This area is known as the Petrified Forest and fossilized chunks of wood litter the soil everywhere, some of these prehistoric trees are agatized into brilliant colors. One geologist claims this was not a forest at all, observing that very few of these fossilized logs have branches or signs of bark. He proposes that these petrified trees are the result of some prehistoric calamity, like the mud flows following the eruption of Mount Saint Helen’s.
Dinosaur fossils of all types and from many eras can be found across the terrain. One of the most common fossils found in this area is of a prehistoric crocodile called phytosaur, whispers of years long ago when the climate was vastly different. Another type of dinosaur common to this region is coelophysis. These graceful predators stood six to eight feet high, walked on two legs and held long tails out behind for balance. In an earlier era, before the giants of the Jurassic had arrived, the population of coelophysis dominated the species of the earth. Paleontologist Christa Sadler describes coelophysis as “This swift agile creature with lightly built hollow bones had a long head with large eyes and sharp serrated teeth.” These carnivores tended to run in packs and sometimes their gathered numbers grew so large that it might better be described as a herd. Coelophysis ate lizards, insects, and it is suspected that one of the main foods of coelophysis may have been coelophysis. In 1947, pioneer paleontologist Edwin Colbert was on his way to dig at Petrified Forest when he stopped to inspect Ghost Ranch New Mexico. What he discovered there was so amazing that he stopped. Literally thousands of complete and nearly complete coelophysis skeletons were preserved in a streambed layer of silt, victims of a natural disaster, perhaps similar to the one which flooded the forest with battered logs. The Zuni would have recognized the fossilized footprints scattered across the southwest as belonging to giant reptiles that no longer walked the earth.
Sadler in her book Life in Stone also states “Trace fossils interpreted as bee nests have been found in petrified trees at Petrified Forest National Park. If these features were indeed formed by bees, it would be the earliest evidence known of bees anywhere on the planet and the earliest evidence of social behavior in insects.” What makes this especially interesting is this would mean bees existed long before there were flowers. One has to wonder how these bees earned their living, so different than the bees we know today.
Atop a red, white, and yellow petrified log I see a brightly colored lizard of green, yellow, red and a white belly with black spots. When I show Lehi Bennally, a Navajo friend, my photograph of the collared lizard atop the petrified wood, he shakes his head and says he does not like these lizards. “They are fast,” he says. It is true, collared lizards are fast. They are predators of other lizards. Lehi says, “When me and my brothers were still little boys our father used to tell us that we must always be good runners. Good Navajo boys were fast runners. Fast enough to run away from collared lizards. Not all white boys were good runners and you could tell which ones. Collared lizards would catch those little boys and would pee on top of their heads. Later, when they grew up — those little boys would be bald.”
Among the first human beings to reach this region were the Clovis Men whose ingenious stone spear tips have recently been unearthed in the petrifed forest. These warriors of Berengia were among the first humans to reach the North American continent, unaware of their role as pioneering explorers while they followed the herds of giant game from Asia to Alaska. The Clovis were not a culture who stayed in one place for long, following the herds of mammoth over generations deep into Mexico and then back north again. It was one of the most successful migrations in human history.
People remained in the Painted Desert after the Ice Age had ended. Cultures arose as agriculture became established. As we hike across the Painted Desert it is hard to believe that any civilization was able to arise by depending on agriculture in this dry, sparse environment. Yet one of the greatest Native American empires in history arose in the region. We cross the wild pastel colors of this ancient earth, the ravines eroding more suddenly and steeper. The flat earth is adorned with rounded smooth river stones from a previous geological epoch. As we approach the petroglyph site, there are more and more pottery shards. Some of these pot pieces are as big as both your hands with fingers outspread. Many of them are decorated with intricate painted designs — curlicues and zig zags. Some are black with white paint and others are yellow with black paint. Some pot shards are corrugated and others smooth. There are dozens and dozens of brightly painted pottery shards as big your hand with fingers outspread littering the earth here.
The Zuni have stories about the rise and fall of the pottery people with their skilled artisans and extensive trade networks. The stories talk about the rise and fall of Chaco Canyon. The astronomer kings at Chaco Canyon built a large spiritual epicenter whose religious architecture was not matched on this continent for almost millennia. Pilgrimage roads stretched in every direction, thousands of miles of roads, with bonfires on top of every hill. There were cliffs where intricately painted pottery was hurled from the edge, the best their artists had to offer, hurled to its destruction in a symbolic offering we no longer understand.
The Zuni describe the rise of the empire at Chaco Canyon this way. Every year the Zuni hold a footrace — from the pueblo to Corn Mountain and back as part of the summer solstice ceremonies. It is slightly more distance than a marathon. Once upon a time just before the big race to Corn Mountain was about to be held a band of wandering sorcerers approached the Zuni elders and asked if they might be allowed enter the race. The race was held and the band of sorcerers won. The victors approached the elders with a single request which the Zuni were forced to honor. The wandering wizards asked that the Zuni might share their land. The Zuni pointed to a distant valley where the sorcerers could build their villages.
Thus the empire at Chaco Canyon was founded. These wizards practiced rituals of sword swallowing which made them stronger and stronger. The wizards grew and grew until they became as giants and their shadows stretched for many miles. Roads led to Chaco Canyon from all directions, roads crowded with pilgrims bringing the astronomer kings tribute but the giants grew arrogant. The giants grew so large that they could stand on their tiptoes and nibble on the clouds like cotton candy. The greedy giants ate all the clouds until there were no more clouds to bring the rain. Without the rain to grow the corn an empire based on trade withered into dust, their marvelous architecture abandoned, eventually the wizards wandered again.
We journey on our hike traversing Lithedendrom Wash towards the petroglyph site. The region we are hiking through is known as the Black Forest because all of the petrified wood here is jet black. The color of petrified wood has nothing to do with the color of the tree during life but has everything to do with the types of stone and minerals being absorbed during the process of petrification. Black petrified wood is scattered all across our path, littering the shallow hills. Occasional giant logs adorn the landscape.
As we get nearer and nearer the petroglyph site the amount of pottery, the size of the pottery, and intricacy of the painted designs all increase. Just where the illusion of flatness disappears from the earth, when steep slopes and sheer chasms descend in all directions there is a knob of tan sandstone where a handful of boulders are adorned with petroglyphs. One boulder in particular, facing directly into the vast wilderness, has more symbols scratched into it than the rest. Particularly notable are two images of feet with extremely long middle toes. The scene is dominated by a large block figure with knees and elbows bent at right angles, arms upraised and plenty of fingers and toes. This block figure also has a vagina — does this rock depict some sort of earth mother magic?
In 1969, the kachinas whispered secrets atop Corn Mountain, the wind carrying their words to the mudhead clowns which taught them a new dance for the summer solstice the very same summer when man first stepped on the moon. The Zuni laughed and laughed as the mudheads danced on top of the adobe pueblos using the same stiff-legged gaits as the astronauts striding across the lunar soil. The elders were not shocked that men went to the moon, man is not so different from mischievous Coyote, but they were dumbfounded that the astronauts were so arrogant as not to utter a single prayer or blessing, nor ask permission.
It was not humble.
The Zuni know about humility, know what it is like to be impressed with your own empire and its astronomical mastery and yet be brought down suddenly. It happened at Chaco.
The Zuni made an unusual request of the United States government during World War II. The Zuni elders sought a draft deferral for their sun priest so he could perform ceremonies and sing prayers at an ancient petroglyph site in the Petrified Forest. The sun priest not only had to make it rain in Zuni so the corn would grow but he was also responsible for making it rain over the entire world. Most southwestern native cultures share the belief that if the summer rains did not come, the earth would grow hotter and hotter beneath the desert sun until at last the earth would burst into flames. When the Zuni conduct their rain ceremonies they are not just praying for a good corn harvest — they are praying to save the life of every single person on the planet. It is an awesome responsibility.
I can just imagine the World War II government bureaucrat tapping his sanctioned number two pencil on the draft deferral form pondering the request of the Zuni elders. Remember, this was an America that was struggling through the Great Depression and had barely survived the black dirt storm clouds of the Dust Bowl. The government bureaucrat stamped “Approved” on the draft deferral form so the Zuni sun priest could sing and pray, bringing rain to the entire world and it must have worked because here we are.
It has always amazed me that before they dropped the first atomic bomb, some scientists were ordered to calculate the odds that once started the chain reaction of atomic explosions would not stop until the entire earth had been consumed. The scientists felt the odds of this uncontrolled global apocalypse were extremely unlikely but they had to report there was indeed a chance the entire earth would be consumed in flames if they dropped the first atomic bomb. Then they dropped the bomb anyways. So I am glad they gave the draft deferral to the Zuni Sun priest because we are still here. I hope from time to time a Zuni sun priest is still dancing and praying at a place of brightly colored earth, ancient petroglyphs and dinosaur fossils because on the horizon storm clouds are gathering and I hope they bring rain instead of lightning.
