PARK AND 
C EMETER r. 
301 
SUN TEMPLE, ilESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK. CLOSE VIEW OF CLIFF PALACE, MESA VERDE NATIONAL 
PARK. 
in a land where trees are few) is the 
next most widely known. 
The Mesa \’erde is one of the largest 
mesas. It is fifteen miles long and eight 
miles wide. At its foot are masses of 
broken rocks rising from 300 to 500 feet 
above the bare plains. These are called 
the talus. Above the talus yellow sand- 
stone walls rise precipitously two or 
three hundred feet higher to the mesa’s 
top. 
It stands on the right bank of the 
Mancos River, down to which a number 
of small, rough canyons, once beds of 
streams, slope from the top of the mesa. 
It is in the sides of these small canyons 
where the most wonderful and best pre- 
served cliff dwellings in America, if not 
in the world, are found today. 
In prehistoric times a large human 
population lived in these cliff dwellings, 
seeking a home there for protection. 
They obtained their livelihood by agri- 
culture on the forbidding tops of the 
mesa, cultivating scanty farms, which 
yielded them a small crop of corn. 
Life must have been hard in this dry 
country, when the Mesa Verde commu- 
nities flourished in the sides of these 
sandstone cliffs. Game was scarce and 
hunting arduous. The Mancos yielded 
a few fishes. The earth contributed ber- 
ries or nuts. At that time, as at present, 
water was rare, ami found only in se- 
questered places near the heads of the 
canyons, but notwithstaiuling these difti- 
culties the inhabitants cultivated their 
farms and raised their corn, which they 
ground on flat stones callerl metates, and 
baked their bread on a llat stone griddle. 
They boiled their meat in well-made 
vessels, sonie of which were artistically 
decorated. 
Their life was hard, but so confidently 
did they believe that they were depend- 
ent upon the gods to make the rain fall 
and the corn grow that they were a re- 
ligious people who worshipped the sun 
as the father of all, and the earth as 
the mother who brought them all their 
material blessings. They possessed no 
written language, and could only record 
their thoughts by a few symbols which 
they painted on their earthenware jars 
or scratched on the sides of the cliffs ad- 
joining their habitations. 
As their sense of beauty was keen, 
their art, though primitive, was true; 
rarely realistic, generally symbolic. Their 
decoration of cotton fabrics and ceramic 
work might be called beautiful, even 
when judged by the highly developed 
taste of today. They fashioned axes, 
spear points, and rude tools of stone; 
they wove sandals and made attractive 
basketry. 
They were not content with rude liuild- 
ings, and had long outgrown caves or 
earth homes that satisfied less civilized 
Indians farther north and south of them. 
They shaped stones into regular forms, 
ornamented them with desi.gns and laid 
them one on another. 1'hcir masonry 
resisted the destructive forces of cen- 
turies of rain and snow beating upon 
them. 
The Mesa Verde trilies probably had 
.'Sl'KFCE TREE HfiFSE. .MESA VEKDIO N .\ T I < )N I , I'AKK. 
