New Mexico and Colorado ancient indian ruins

Chaco, in Northwestern New Mexico, is the more pristine, deliberately kept difficult to reach by the decision to leave the entrance road mostly unpaved — which also leaves it sometimes impassable after rain. (At one point we ended up in the middle of a storm-created gully and the rental car nearly got stuck. Yes, the ranger we'd called ahead had advised an SUV would be "more comfortable," but she'd also said "most of the time" the road is navigable, and with the cost of gas, well ... )

You can view most of the ruins by walking the trails off a nine-mile loop road through the canyon. In late August, we saw a few small groups of tourists but much of the time we had the place nearly to ourselves.

Mesa Verde, in Southwest Colorado, has the more dramatic setting, atop a mesa reached by a winding mountain road 15 miles from the park entrance, with spectacular views of mountains beyond and valleys below. Its archaeological sites are tucked into canyons throughout the park, with one main area, Wetherill Mesa, a steep, 45-minute drive from the visitors' center and lodge, and the other, Chapin Mesa, about 15 minutes in a different direction.

The archaeological sites: Great houses vs. cliff dwellings

Chaco's main draw is Pueblo Bonito, one of the most extensively excavated and studied sites in North America. Center of the Chacoan world and occupied from the mid-800s to 1200s, it was a four-story masonry "great house" with more than 600 rooms and 40 kivas.

Cliff Palace is Mesa Verde's largest and best-known site, and North America's largest cliff dwelling, with 150 rooms (you climb five 8-10-foot ladders and can descend into one of its kivas).

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ancient sla-hal bones identified

Sla-Hal, Bone Game, or Stick Game are three ways to call a very popular game played amongst Northwestern Indian Tribes. Indian people of all ages have enjoyed gathering and participating in this exciting and traditional game for generations. Since time immemorial, some in the Pacific Northwest tribes say. And now there's physical proof.

A set of 14,000-year-old rodshaped bones now in the Washington State Historical Society Museum is evidence that it’s not just a saying, a couple from the Snoqualmie Tribe say.

The bones, found in the late ’80s with many other artifacts in Douglas County, are a complete set of sla-hal bones — the oldest found, said Marvin Kempf of Rockport.

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The great sioux nation is divided into divisions, sub-divisions, and bands

Santee Sioux (Dakota)



The Santee people migrated north and westward from the south and east into Ohio then to Minnesota. The Santee were a woodland people who thrived on hunting, fishing and subsistence farming. Migrations of Anishinaabe/Chippewa people from the east in the 17th and 18th centuries, with muskets supplied by the French and British, pushed the Santee further into Minnesota and west and southward, giving the name "Dakota Territory" to the northern expanse west of the Mississippi and up to its headwaters.




Yankton-Yanktonai Sioux (Nakota)



The Ihanktowan-Ihanktowana, or the Yankton ("campers at the end") and Yanktonai ("lesser campers at the end") divisions consist of two bands or two of the seven council fires. According to Nasunatanka and Matononpa in 1880, the Yanktonai are divided into two sub-groups known as the Upper Yanktonai and the lower Yanktonai (Hunkpatina). The Yankton-Yanktonai moved into northern Minnesota. In the 1700s, they were recorded as living in the Mankato region of Minnesota.




Teton Sioux (Lakota)



The western Santee obtained horses, probably in the 17th century (although some historians date the arrival of horses in South Dakota to 1720), and moved further west, onto the Great Plains, becoming the Titonwan tribe, subsisting on the buffalo herds and corn-trade with their linguistic cousins, the Mandan and Hidatsa along the Missouri.



The Sioux are divided into ethnic groups, the larger of which are divided into sub-groups, and further branched into bands. The Yankton-Yanktonai, the smallest division, reside on the Yankton reservation in South Dakota and the Northern portion of Standing Rock Reservation, while the Santee live mostly in Minnesota and Nebraska, but include bands in the Sisseton-Wahpeton, Flandreau, and Crow Creek Reservations in South Dakota. The Lakota are the westernmost of the three groups, occupying lands in both North and South Dakota.

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