Day Eighteen – Tuzi What?


Imagine digging at the top of a hill through what looked like rock, sand, and rubble and then coming across rocks that appeared to be held together with masonry in a straight wall! That is what happened in the Mesa Verde Valley during the late 1890’s.





Pat was curious how the settlement got covered up so much? Floods, wind, or on purpose? It is hard to believe the amount of material that had to move uphill to cover the pueblo. 



Once excavated, this location turned out to be a large pueblo style dwelling of ancestral people of the valley who settled in one place and farmed the surrounding valley in roughly the years 1,000 to 1,400 AD. 


They came to be known as the Tuzigoot, which comes from the Apache word meaning “crooked water”. The Tuzigoot are thought to be ancestors of the Hopi People, and according to Hopi legends, the Verde Valley settlements were one stop in a longer migration northwards.



The Tuzigoot National Monument outside of Clarkdale, AZ, has many of the artifacts which were found during the excavation of the settlement. Quite a few large clay pots are essentially intact. 


There are pieces of woven cotton garments that have faint color patterns still visible. Of course, there were many stone and bone tools and implements found in the settlement.



I was fascinated with the small stone mortars that were used to grind pigment to paint items. Evidently the Tuzigoot ground hematite, which has a sparkle to it, to paint their faces. The early form of glitter?
 
It was intriguing to imagine what life would have been like when those artifacts were in use.



This monument allows visitors to walk along the outer walls of the pueblo and look at the rock masonry involved in its construction. Imagine the work it would take to carry all the rocks up the hill! Many of the rooms had remnants of stone fireplaces, as well as basalt rocks that appear to have been where they ground grain into flour. 




The upper room of the pueblo was restored in a way that visitors can climb to the top of the roof to view the surrounding valley. What would it have looked like 1,500 years ago to see the crops in the surrounding valley? Would it be the dry desert of today? 

Although the Tuzigoot National Monument is a little out of the way, it was definitely an interesting place to visit. 








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