Then in the late 1200s less than one hundred years after they had begun building in the cliffs the people abandoned abandoned their alcove homes in Mesa Verde never to return At about the same time other groups living in the area also left their homes and moved elsewhere Some native Americans living in the Southwest today believe that the people who lived at Mesa Verde and nearby are their ancestors They call them the Anasazi a Navajo word meaning the ancient ones
THE DISCOVERY OF MESA VERDE For nearly thirteen centuries from about the year A.D. 1 to 1300 Anasazi people lived in the four corners area so named because it is where the states of Colorado Utah Arizona and New Mexico now meet Most communities were small but a few were clusters clusters of many villages One of the largest communities was at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico which at one time housed seven thousand people Although each Anasazi community community had its own character they were linked by common traditions Oak Tree House at Mesa Verde
These included a life based on the growing of corn beans and squash permanent homes similar religious customs and the production of extremely fine pottery The Anasazi tradition underwent many changes when the people moved yet many of their practices are found among native Americans today Vultures now soar above canyons once inhabited by the Anasazi
Native Americans of the Ute and Navajo tribes did not move into the four corners area until about two hundred years after the Anasazi had left The Navajo and Ute avoided going to Mesa Verde because they believed that the spirits of the ancient ones still lived there For hundreds of years after the Anasazi left Mesa Verde their cliff dwellings remained virtually untouched Roofs and walls slowly collapsed and native plants grew up in the fields the Anasazi once tilled In the 1770s Spanish explorers came near Mesa Verde on their way west and they saw the steep slopes of the high plateau plateau that rises sharply above the plain They probably gave it the name Mesa Verde which means green table in Spanish but they never went onto the mesa or ventured into its canyons In the 1880s conflict between the native Americans and the United States government had forced most native Americans to live on reservations In southwestern Colorado ranchers and miners of European descent were settling nonreservation land They discovered numerous small cliff dwellings in the area around Mesa Verde But although there were stories of more cliff dwellings on Mesa Verde that land was part of the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation and few outsiders had seen them
