Touching Stone​​​ Gallery
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA
School House Pueblito Pastel on paper Akiko Hirano
Navajo Pueblitos
Akiko Hirano & Tim Wong
1750 AD. The decades-long conflicts between the Navajos and the Utes came to a climax. The more powerful Southern Utes drove the Navajos out of the Upper San Juan region. The Navajos retreated into the rugged canyons around the Largo Wash to the south. To defend their villages from further raids, the Navajos built defensive structures called pueblitos on strategic high grounds. Sentries were posted at the pueblitos to watch for enemies. Today, that area is a vast swath of little-visited land in northwest New Mexico, where many of those pueblitos still stand.
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Fall, 2024. The Jeep groaned climbing up the steep rutted dirt road that winded its way to the top of the mesa. It stopped at a Y-intersection. Kuro-e glanced at the rough map on her lap. No such intersection. She took the fork on the left, which turned out to be a service road for a natural gas well. She turned around and tried the right fork, looking for any sign of man-made structures. There was none. Just when she was about to give up, she spotted an overgrown two-track off the roadside, so faint it was barely visible. She pulled off the road and decided to follow it on foot. The faint track took her over a mile-long grassy plateau to the precipitous rim overlooking the Largo Wash. She followed the rim towards a rocky outcrop. There, at the tip of the promontory was a stone tower.
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The tower stood guard at a prominent headland overlooking the Largo Wash. It offered a clear view many miles to the north, where their enemy would likely come. The wide flood plain below was lush with sagebrush and green grass. Good horse country. Kuro-e imagined the canyon once dotted with hogans and bustling with activities and livestock, smokes rising from the hogans, children playing outside. It seemed like a hidden paradise.
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Kuro-e waded through the sagebrush to the tower and entered through the collapsed wall on the far side. The tower was built with irregular stone blocks and mortared with clay, some of the wooden roof-beams still in place. A small arch-top door connected the tower to a second room that had mostly collapsed. Unlike most of the Anasazi ruins in the Four Corners area, little effort was made to smooth out either the exterior or interior of the walls. The structure seemed to be built strictly for defense rather than aesthetics. The few pottery sherds on the ground also emphasized functionality over style. All were plain and rough, colored only by fire marks, testaments of a troubled time in Navajo history.
Crow Canyon petroglyphs Photo Tim Wong
The tension of the period was vividly portraited on the walls of Crow Canyon that drained into Largo Wash. The canyon was probably a ceremonial gathering place for the community. Along the mile-long sandstone cliffs were hundreds of petroglyphs attributed to both the Anasazi and the Navajo cultures. The older Anasazi petroglyphs mostly depicted humanoid and animal figures in hunting scenes. By contrast, the Navajo petroglyphs showed off fierce warriors brandishing weapons and dancers decked out in elaborate ceremonial regalia. One particularly impressive petroglyph showed a warrior sporting a pair of bison horns and holding a war shield and bow and arrows. Clearly, war and conflict were never far from the minds of the residents here.
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Following the wash up Crow Canyon, Kuro-e found more petroglyphs along the cliffs. It was like prying into the events that unfolded in this canyon centuries ago. Around a bend, she came to a large cliff face split in half by a crack. The left half was covered with symbols of water and a corn plant next to a Navajo deity figure. The images on right half were not so congenial: a horned warrior facing off with two horsemen wearing hats or helmets, possibly Spanish riders.
Citadel Pueblito
Pastel and color pencil on paper Akiko Hirano
Farther up the canyon, Kuro-e came to a junction between two canyons. She scanned the walls between the canyons with binoculars. There, perched precariously high on the steep cliffs were half-collapsed stone structures and walls, blended so well with the surroundings that they were barely discernible. These would have been the stronghold if the lower canyon was attacked. Kuro-e decided it was too late and she was too tired to climb up the cliffs for a closer look. She turned around to head back to her car.
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The next day, Kuro-e drove up the mesa to look for another pueblito in the upper reach of Crow Canyon, called the Citadel. On top of a large boulder, the Navajo had built an imposing two-story fortress comprising of two towers with a timber-covered corridor in between. The only access was via hand-and-toe holds on the back of the boulder that led up to an entrance. The opening was made into a T-shape to allow only a single person to pass through at a time. That entrance however did not enter directly into either tower. Instead, it led to the covered corridor and exited into a small courtyard, where there were separate doors entering the towers. Loopholes were built all around the walls for observing and attacking intruders. The tortuous entryway was undoubtedly for defense, an intruder entering that corridor would be stepping into a kill zone, exposed to attacks from all sides and above.
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The twin towers overlooked a shallow flat canyon lush with grass and junipers. Remnants of a stone building tucked under the large boulder, possibly a living or working quarter. Other than a few plain pottery sherds, Kuro-e found no tools or utensils. She climbed on top of the canyon rim behind the ruin to take a look at the back of the buildings. There used to be a large window on the upper floor of one of the towers. It was on the same level as the canyon rim where she stood and close enough that it could be bridged with a log. Could that be an escape route for slipping away to the mesa top if cornered, she wondered. In any case, the builders apparently had second thoughts and sealed it with stone blocks afterward, leaving only a slit to look out from. Located in the narrow confine of upper Crow Canyon with limited field of view all around, this pueblito was not intended as a lookout post. Rather, it was a formidable last defense in case the lower canyon was breached. The twin towers stood atop the giant rock like the Navajo Twin War Gods, challenging the enemy in defiance: We have run long enough and far enough; there will be no more retreat. The escape hatch is sealed; this is our last stand!