Showing posts with label sipapu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sipapu. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

A Giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu Awaits Its Time at the Base of Glen Canyon Dam - 2013

 


Unwittingly, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation installed a giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu in the base of Glen Canyon Dam in 1961 - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)

A Giant Navajo/Hopi Sipapu Awaits Its Time at the Base of Glen Canyon Dam

Disappearance and Reemergence:

The historical and scientific consensus is that the last pre-Puebloan Indians (Anasazi) migrated away from the Four Corners around 1300 CE. Later, they “reemerged” as the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes. The Hopi Creation Myth centers on the “sipapu”, a hole in the earth from which all of creation arose. Every ancient ceremonial kiva in the Four Corners includes a symbolic sipapu in its floor.

The reconstructed Great Kiva of Chetro Ketl once had a post and beam roof, providing shelter for hundreds of pre-Puebloan Indians around 1250 CE - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)The great kivas provided communal warmth and shelter to the pre-Puebloan. Since an earthquake could collapse their roof beams, kivas also carried with them the risk of sudden death. After a swarm of catastrophic earthquakes around 1250 CE, the pre-Puebloan survivors reemerged from the metaphorical sipapu of their collapsed kivas, only then to leave the land that had long sustained them.

In order to escape the ongoing desertification of their homelands on the Colorado Plateau, many of the lost tribes traveled downriver from the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers. To this day, many of caches of their food and tools remain hidden in alcoves high among those canyons. As
The author Jim McGillis at the Goosenecks of the San Juan River, a tributary to the Colorado River, in 1965 - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)the climate dried, timber became scarce, crops failed and game animals retreated to well-watered places like Glen Canyon. Using the river as a pathway, they headed south toward new lands and new lives.

In the wilds of Glen Canyon, they found sustenance for their long trek. Nuts, berries and small game were abundant along the shoreline. Those who understood the weather cycle travelled south in summer or fall, often wintering-over in the lower, warmer reaches of the canyon. Still, the canyon was no place to dally. With the warmth of spring would come annual flooding along the Colorado River.

Merrick Butte near sundown in October 2012. It is a place so dry that not one stream or spring in the valley runs all year - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)If the pre-Puebloan episode of climate change was similar to our own, enormous spring floods may have swept the canyon. From wall to wall, the flood would roar, erasing sandbars and banks that had so recently provided shelter for their journey. If the people upstream waited too long, their own supplies of food might be exhausted. If they traveled the river too soon, they risked an unexpected cleansing in the mighty flood.

In its February 1961 issue, Arizona Highways Magazine devoted the inside cover to a photograph of Glen Canyon Dam, then in its early stages of construction. Many of us grew up thinking that the 710 ft. (220 m) high arch of Glen Canyon Dam had always been there. Seeing photos of dam
On the Colorado River at Moab, Utah, Navajo tribal elder Gray Boy prepares for a song, accompanied by his hand drum - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)construction in the early 1960s, reminds us how recently the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation placed a plug of concrete and steel into that enormous gap.

It was then, still several years before the filling of Lake Powell, that Edward Abbey and a few brave or foolhardy souls rafted down the Colorado River. Less than one hundred years after its discovery by the expedition of Major John Wesley Powell, Abbey and his inveterate river runners were among the last humans to see Glen Canyon as it always was. In 1869, Powell wrote, “...we have a curious ensemble of wonderful features - carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds, and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon.” For his Light reflecting off the Colorado River canyon wall shines like the light of creation through the skin of Navajo elder Gray Boy at Moab, Utahpart, Edward Abbey wrote almost one hundred years later, “In fact I saw only a part of (Glen Canyon) but enough to realize that here was an Eden, a portion of the earth’s original paradise.”

Edward Abbey and many others were incensed that the U.S. Congress funded the building of Glen Canyon Dam. In his 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey waxed rhapsodic on the possibility of toppling the dam, thus releasing the waters that covered all traces of Abbey’s “Eden in the Desert”. In 1981, Abbey and the group known as Earth First converged on the dam. While Abbey spoke to a small group gathered nearby, members of Earth First unfurled a banner designed to look like a huge crack on the face of Glen Canyon Dam. Throughout the protest, there was no violence, sabotage or destruction of property. The symbolic cracking of the dam, it seemed, was protest enough.

Glen Canyon Dam, as Lake Powell was filling for the first time, in summer 1965 - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)Even those who accept the human causes of climate change tend to see it as a recent phenomenon. Outsized events, such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 or Superstorm Sandy in 2011 are not enough to convince many that humans play a role in our own meteorological environment. In the spring of 1983, two years after the symbolic cracking of the dam, Edward Abbey and his fellow travelers almost saw their wish come true. Heavy winter snows across the Colorado Plateau, followed by drenching rains and unseasonably warm temperatures brought a flood of unexpected proportions into Lake Powell.

The Bureau of Reclamation was unprepared for the onslaught of water. By July of 1983, Lake Powell reached its highest recorded elevation. In order to increase the carrying capacity of the lake, engineers hastily erected plywood barricades atop the dam. A month earlier, dam operators had opened the left diversion tunnel, sending 10,000 cubic feet per second (280 m3/s), just 7.2% of capacity, down the tunnel into the river below. Meanwhile over 120,000 cubic feet per second (3,400 m3/s) was pouring into the upper reaches of the reservoir.

A cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde National Monument, Colorado in 1965 - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)In this lopsided scenario, something had to give. For a few weeks, it appeared that erosion in the spillway tunnels might cause catastrophic failure of the system. Cavitation-caused erosion was backtracking from the tunnel outlets. If erosion had loosened the enormous concrete plugs that held back lake water from the diversion tunnels (used during initial construction), the dam could have failed. Although the dam rumbled ominously while the spillways were in operation, luck alone saved the day. Just as options were running out, inflow from the upper Colorado River began to slow, allowing the reservoir to subside. Perhaps warm weather caused sufficient evaporation from the lake to save the dam from destruction.

While the “outlet works” received emergency repairs, the ancient power of the river had reemerged from beneath placid Lake Powell. In deference to the facts of global warming, dam operators never allowed Lake Powell to approach full capacity (3708 ft. elevation) again. Since 1983, they have kept lake levels low enough (3640 ft. max. elevation) to capture a flood at least that large. To this day, the “bathtub ring of 1983” stands as a high water mark on the walls of Glen Canyon. Had the public known that Glen Canyon Dam would never live up to its original design criteria, would the dam have received initial approval?

The Great Cliff House at Mesa Verde National Park - Click for larger image showing whimsical faces designed into the facades of many buildings (http://jamesmcgillis)Hoover Dam, built into hard granite at the Black Canyon of the Colorado River many miles downstream will probably outlast Glen Canyon Dam by centuries. Wedged as it is into the soft sandstone walls of Lower Glen Canyon, the Glen Canyon Dam may have received irreparable damage during the vibrational drubbing it took in 1983. Those who controlled the dam during the harrowing days of summer 1983 are retired now, or dead. Despite several engineering surveys intended to allay public fears about permanent damage, we must wait for time to tell.

In what we now call the Four Corner States, it is likely that a swarm of earthquakes marked the end of the pre-Puebloan era. With their kivas in ruins, the ancients could not live through the winter without communal shelter and warmth. With the last of their timber beams burned for warmth, they soon departed for warmer climes. Just as likely, it will be a series of earthquakes near Page, Arizona that will release the plugs from the diversion tunnels beneath Glen Canyon Dam. When one of those plugs pops into the Colorado River like a cork from a Champagne bottle, the scouring effects of the water will bring Glen Canyon, the “Eden in the Desert” back to the surface of the Earth, where it belongs.

The Navajo Generating Station burns coal, mined at Black Mesa, on the Navajo Reservation - Click for smoke-free view of nearby Lake Powell (http://jamesmcgillis.com)Today the Navajo Nation borders Lake Powell and the Colorado River along its northern and western reaches. Coal from Black Mesa, to the north fuels the Navajo Generating Station, which is visible from Lake Powell. Several centuries after disappearance of the pre-Puebloan culture, Indians from current day Western Canada repopulated the Colorado Plateau. Centuries later, those Dine' or Naabeeho people became known as the Navajo. In his 1975 book, “My Heart Soars”, Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada said this:

“Of all the teachings we receive,
this one is the most important:
Nothing belongs to you
of what there is,
of what you take,
you must share.”


A 1961 view of Glen Canyon, before the 710 foot tall Glen Canyon Dam filled the space delineated by the bridge with concrete. Note giant Navahopi Sipapu installed at the lower right of this image - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)In his lament for the hunting and gathering days of his youth, Chief Dan George summed up all that had been lost:

“No longer
can I give you a handful of berries as a gift,
No longer
are the roots I dig used as medicine,
No longer
Can I sing a song to please the salmon,
No longer
does the pipe I smoke make others sit with me in friendship.
No longer”


As we focus on the 1961 image of Glen Canyon, without the dam, perhaps we can decommission it before it blows its concrete plugs. Otherwise, it behooves us to prepare now for the opening of a grand sipapu there, in Glen Canyon, at a future date uncertain.

 


By James McGillis at 05:59 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link

Monday, November 25, 2019

Four Corners Region - The Colorado Plateau 2008


Square Tower House, an ancient alcove dwelling at Mesa Verde, Colorado - Click here for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)

The Magic Gate - Part 2

Four Corners Region

The Colorado Plateau

Mesa Verde
 
From Durango, we ventured west on Highway 160 to the pre-Puebloan alcove and cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park.  Mesa Verde contains the most famous of the Anasazi (or pre-Puebloan) sites in the Four Corners.  In 1965, the archeological sites appeared unchanged since their discovery in the 1870s.  With park rangers as our guides, we climbed traditional pole-ladders and peered into ancient living spaces and granaries.  On hands and knees, we squinted down into dark ceremonial chambers, known as kivas.  In contrast, today one views these ruins from behind fences, on well-marked trails.
 
Cliff Palace Ruin, Mesa Verde, Colorado - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)In the 1960s, mystery pervaded the disappearance of the ancient cultures of the Four Corners.  Today, we know that those cultures experienced a combination of drought, overpopulation and internecine warfare.  To offer some perspective on their numbers, archeologists believe that in 1200 CE, the population of Colorado’s Montezuma Valley was 30,000, a number larger than its contemporary population.
 
For reasons both known and unknown, the society broke down, leading to the complete depopulation the Four Corners.  Later, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Navajo tribe, with ancestors traceable to Asia, Alaska andDerelict, weather-beaten, bent and broken Aermotor windmill on the road to Kin Klizhin, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) British Columbia, repopulated much of the area.
 
Returning to Durango that night in 1965, we saw live television reports of riots in South Los Angeles.  Large areas of Watts and the Central City were ablaze.  Not unlike the pressures experienced by the pre-Puebloan cultures of 1250 CE, summer heat, overpopulation and competition for resources had led to violence in LA.  Unlike the pre-Puebloan, who could simply migrate south in search of water and new farmland, there was nowhere for the residents of South Los Angeles to go.  In a metaphor to the actions of the ancients, some Los Angelenos sacked and burned their own commerce and cultural centers.
 
The Disappearance
 
Masonry wall at Una Vida Ruin, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)Hundreds of archaeologists and other scientists have studied the pre-Puebloan disappearance phenomenon.  Not one of them that I know has hypothesized seismic activity as a contributing factor to the mass migrations of 1200 – 1400 CE.  Today, researchers assume that prior to their departure; the former residents burned and willfully destroyed many of their most important buildings.  The remaining destruction they attribute to the ravages of time. 
 
Rather than assuming that the pre-Puebloan tribes irrationally destroyed their own cultural landmarks, might we trace the initial cause of that destruction toThe Durango to Silverton narrow gauge train heads downstream along the Animas River, Silverton, Colorado - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) large-scale seismic activity?  Even the largest earthquakes leave few long-term traces in the natural environment.  Toppled towers and caved-in kivas might be the best indicators we have that cataclysmic seismic activity provided impetus to the complete abandonment of the Four Corners area. 
 
Today, we find potsherds at many Four Corners sites.  Intact pottery is so rare that we find it only in museums and private collections.  Were the pre-Puebloan so careless as to destroy essentially all of their useful pottery or did seismic activity play a larger role than previously assumed?
 
Derelict Ouray County Coleman snowplow dump-truck, Silverton, Colorado - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)The Reemergence
 
Today, the consensus is that the last pre-Puebloan migrated away from the Four Corners, later to “reemerge” as the Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo tribes.  The Hopi creation myth centers on the “sipapu”, a hole in the earth from which their ancestors arose.  Every ceremonial kiva in the Four Corners includes a symbolic sipapu in its floor. 
 
The great kivas provided communal warmth and shelter to the pre-Aspen trees changing to fall color, Silverton, Colorado - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)Puebloan.  Since an earthquake could collapse their roof timbers, kivas also carried the risk of unexpected and immediate death.  After a swarm of catastrophic earthquakes around 1250 CE, did the pre-Puebloan survivors reemerge from the metaphorical sipapu of their collapsed kivas, only then to leave the land that had caused them so much death and destruction?
 
Silverton
 
Spokesmodel Carrie McCoy in Downtown Silverton, Colorado - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com)Leaving Durango, we traveled north on Highway 550, also known as The Million Dollar Highway.  Whether the road derived its name from its initial construction cost or from silver-bearing ore crushed into its asphalt mixture is still a subject of conjecture.  In 1965, its new surface reflected light like a million diamonds in the afternoon sunshine.
 
After negotiating the 10,910-foot Molas Divide, we descended into Silverton, Colorado, a former mining town now famous as the northernMain Street with fall color, Silverton, Colorado - Click for larger image (http://jamesmcgillis.com) terminus of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad.  Although winter sports are now a factor, the summer tourist trade generates most of the town’s revenue.  In late May 2008, a spring snowstorm closed Highway 550 near Silverton, forcing us to make a low-elevation detour in order to reach Moab, Utah

By James McGillis at 12:10 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link