Exploring the Pajarito Plateau, Garcia Canyon, 7-29-06

Exploring the Pajarito Plateau, Garcia Canyon, 7-29-06

At last, the long awaited Garcia Canyon Trip.  Seventeen of us gringos gathered in the Fuller Lodge parking lot, excruciatingly on-time.  Ann Baldwin and Mike Bremer of the USFS were there in one of the tank-like, green, Suburbans but no Jason Garcia of Santa Clara pueblo.  While waiting for Jason (Mike got on a cell phone and made a call to Rory trying to find out about Jason’s whereabouts), everyone signed in, the two archeologists talked to us a bit about the trip, decisions were made as to what vehicles were deemed road worthy for the very rough road.  Dorothy Hoard’s Honda CRV was judged as one that wouldn’t make it!  I had offers to ride with Eve and Gordon Spencer  but Tom and Brooke Davis, a nice couple who live on North Mesa, offered me a ride, saying I’d have the whole back seat to myself, an irresistible offer!  On the trip out, Brooke drove, saying she had never driven the Ford Explorer off road before but she did a bang up--oops--poor choice of words--an excellent job over some very rough spots.   We were a caravan of 6 cars, one of which was going to take their time going back--Nina Stelzer was in that one.  BTW, Jason eventually surfaced and rode with Ann and Mike.

We drove down Rendija Canyon and then to the left up the steep road that goes past the pumice mines.  Ann had flagged the route out  in the past for the Passport in Time program.  (Incidentally, I Googled that and it’s a really interesting program where volunteers work alongside archeologists.  One upcoming project is restoration of the Aqua Piedra Cabin in October.  It sounds like hard work though and involves replacing the floor--shades of Hantavirus!!)

We drove out through Chupaderos Canyon and parked near the western end of Chupaderos Mesa.  We followed an easy trail to the top of the mesa and Mike and Ann stopped and gave us a general overview of the area, of which I remember very little except for Ann’s defense of controlled burns.  That subject came up because when the Cerro Grande fire roared through the area in 2000, the portions of the Ponderosa forest that had been treated by thinning were left standing and didn’t sustain a crown fire. 

From Chupaderos Mesa, we could see north across Garcia Canyon to the meadow where the site of the oldest homestead in the area, 1887, had been.  Then, on south side, we could see across Chupaderos Canyon to a meadow that had been the site of the last homestead, in the early 1900’s, maybe 1907.  Jason Garcia, with prompting from Mike Bremer, gave us his view of homesteading.  He said that basically, the pueblos were given their reservations and then the homesteaders settled on their ancestral, aboriginal lands.  He is part of the land claims office at Santa Clara and has purchased back about 300 acres of land from private landholders.  He seemed rueful of having to purchase back land that Santa Clara had once freely roamed in.  Dorothy was going to say something about what Jason ahd said (perhaps correct what he said about homesteads being given out by the Mexican government--he probably meant land grants) but Mike asked her to talk while they walked further along the mesa to the pueblo plaza as it was already 11:30am and people had to get back early (mainly Georgia Strickfaden!).  (BTW, Jason likes the term “ancestral village” because he feels that pueblo is a Spanish term which reflects after the “occupation”.   (On the way back to the cars, I happened to be behind him and I mentioned my ancestral village in Arne, Syria and my grandfather’s name being carved in the doorway.  Although he was friendly, I wasn’t able to gauge any reaction or interest from him although he could have been interested--it was hard to tell.  I guess I purposely did it to perhaps imply how lucky he is to have his “ancestral villages” so close, even if Santa Clara doesn’t own all of them.)

Anyway, after Mike told Dorothy to walk and talk, at that point, Ann sped off over the mesas with the fastest following behind her (this after she had pointedly said, as we went up the trail to the top of the mesa, that this wasn’t a race, jibing at Mike Bremer.)  When we got to the small, unnamed “ancestral village” site, everything speeded up.  Georgia Strickfaden had mentioned in the morning that she had to be back by 1pm and it somehow morphed into all the rest of us had to be back early too but I’m sure that this wasn’t Georgia’s intention.  (In fairness, it was billed as a half day trip and if it had rained, we would have been in a world of trouble as the road crossed arroyos many, many times.)  Ann and Mike talked a little about the pueblo that we were standing on but things got interesting when we went over to the “ancestral village’s” archives, formerly known as a trash midden.  Dorothy had called it that and Mike carefully explained to us that they had learned from their pueblo friends that it actually contained the history of the pueblo and burials were even made there and the area was not looked upon as a “dump”.  That was very interesting to me.

I was a little jealous of the car that got to stay and enjoy the area at a more leisurely pace but we all headed back, now in a 5 car convoy, with Georgia in the front.

I forgot to mention that we had seen cows in Chupaderos Canyon, although there is no grazing allotment at all in the area.  Mike explained that the pueblo cows break through the fences.  They looked like extremely well fed cows!

I also forgot to mention that Ann and Mike said they hadn’t gotten permission from Santa Clara to approach the area from the north through the Garcia gate.  The forest service actually has administrative access to that gate but needs to ask the pueblo permission to use it.  I am resisting a lot of useless, futile, editorial comment on what I think of the sovereign Indian nations that surround us.  On the way home, though, I did comment to Tom and Brooke that we are so distant from the Indians culturally but so close geographically.  From Chupaderos Mesa, I could see the water tower on North Mesa and I could also see the houses clustered at the end of Los Pueblos.