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
Cliff Palace The Wetherills a family of ranchers living in Mancos Colorado Colorado became friendly with the Ute and obtained permission from them to graze their cattle in Mesa Verde during the winter winter months On December 18 1888 Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charles Mason were riding across the mesa
in search of lost cattle They came to the edge of a steep canyon and when they looked across for their missing animals animals they saw instead a complex of abandoned stone buildings buildings wedged under the overhanging rock of the canyon wall
