Ditch Cottonwood

Weather: Some afternoon warmer than usual, some mornings much cooler, some afternoons windier; last precipitation 2/15/12; 11:12 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming: Biological crust, moss, mushroom.

Tansy mustard and black mustard are coming up, with the one appearing in dryer locations than the other. A few plants are blooming in front of a south facing dark lava stone wall near the village.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens; stems on young chamisa; leaves on grape hyacinth, sweet pea, alfilerillo, gypsum phacelia, snakeweed, chrysanthemum, strap leaf aster; cheat grass.

Stems of hybrid roses getting greener as are leaves on native yuccas and Japanese honeysuckle.

What’s red: Cholla; branches on Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, apples, apricots, spirea, wild roses and raspberry; leaves on coral bells, pinks, soapworts.

What’s blue or gray: Piñon; leaves on four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, stickleaf, beardtongues, golden hairy and purple asters.

What’s yellow-green/yellow-brown: Arborvitae; weeping and globe willows.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geranium, bud on pomegranate.

Animal sightings: Small birds.


Weekly update: In Zia Summer, Rudolfo Anaya’s Albuquerque North Valley detective, Sonny Baca, wakes to the sound of a cottonwood being cut down, one that was more than a hundred year’s old and ten foot in diameter. It had simply died of old age.

“‘Trees get cancer, just like people,’ don Elisero said.”

That tree is the nostalgic image most have of the time before. Most assume that means the time before man when cottonwoods grew dense in the bosques along the Rio Grande


and acquired great girth.


By the time I moved here, the rivers were the wards of the Army Corps of Engineers. The trees growing by the Rio Grande were respectable, good sized trees that had come back from various water management projects, but not the behemoths described by Anaya.


To find those, I have to go to the village. There they grow above the beds of old or buried irrigation ditches. In the village itself, an open ditch stops or is buried before it reaches the church.


On the other side there’s a line of large cottonwoods.


On the orchard road, an open ditch that comes from our local acequia is still used, though it’s currently filled with the remains of late summer áñil de muerto, sunflowers and grass. It disappears when it reaches a crossroad, but you know the water hasn’t all been used, that the surplus has to find it’s way to the Rio Grande.


Toward the river, there’s a line of large cottonwoods.


The pattern repeats itself on the farm road behind the village. There, the ditch today is buried on the west side of the road, but you can tell it exists from the manicured field with the banked, burned edges and flattened bottom of irrigated land.


Here there’s a bit of an anomaly. The line of cottonwoods is on the upside of the road. However, behind those trees is one of the older houses in the area, and behind that our local acequia madre. I’m guessing, sometime in the past, there was a ditch there that’s since been filled when the land was subdivided and sold for small houses.


I rather suspect trees like the one Anaya eulogizes for shading “don Eliseo’s family for many generations” are more the product of the rural life that dug and maintained the ditches, than the turbulent rivers and restless bosques. Like Anaya’s, the ones around the village grew fat and old when they abandoned the chancy life of flood plains for the sure water of village ditches.

Unfortunately, like many old folks, the young regard them as nuisances. The utilities are constantly hacking their limbs. Drivers grow frustrated when they can’t see or have to take turns passing through a road they’ve narrowed. Some cut them down, but others with the spirit of Anaya find ways to accommodate them.


Notes: Anaya, Rudolfo. Zia Summer, 1995.

Photographs:
1. Cottonwood on farm road, 18 January 2012.

2. Cottonwood that fell in the spring of 2008; it took up a great deal of territory, but didn’t leave a very big hole in the ground; 3 May 2008.

3. San Juan bosque, 13 February 2012; the lower level of the woods is filled with shrubs including some sandbar willow.

4. Close up of central tree in above picture, 13 February 2012.

5. Bosque near Española, 23 February 2012; the trees are younger than San Juan and only grass and a few junipers are growing under the canopy.

6. Village road ditch bank lined with Siberian elms and trees of heaven, 19 January 2012.

7. Line of cottonwood downstream from the above ditch, 19 January 2012.


8. Orchard road ditch is the dark area near the fence filled with last year’s grasses, 23 February 2012.

9. Line of cottonwood downstream from the above ditch, 19 January 2012; Siberian elms have taken over the other side; this alley is so narrow, two pick-up trucks cannot pass and various protective posts and warning signs have been installed.

10. Irrigated field on farm road, 13 February 2012.

11. Line of cottonwoods up stream from the above ditch, 18 January 2012; the fallen tree was part of this line.

12. Fence on farm road built around a cottonwood, 17 January 2012.

13. Wall on farm road built around a cottonwood, 11 September 2010.

River Willow

Weather: Dustings of night time snow early in the week, ending with thunder and lightening Tuesday; 11:12 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming: Black mustard, biological crust, moss.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens; stems on hybrid roses and young chamisa; leaves on grape hyacinth, sweet pea, alfilerillo, gypsum phacelia, snakeweed, chrysanthemum, anthemis, strap leaf aster; cheat grass.

What’s red: Cholla; branches on Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, apples, apricots, spirea, wild roses and raspberry; leaves on coral bells, pinks, soapworts.

What’s blue or gray: Piñon; leaves on four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, stickleaf, beardtongues, golden hairy and purple asters; tansy mustard germinating.

What’s yellow-green/yellow-brown: Arborvitae; weeping and globe willows.

What’s blooming inside: Zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Light slate blue bird in new sand in drive, usual small birds.

Weekly update: Even nice dogs spread madness. After their owners led me to the local acequia, my interest in sandbar willow and its cottonwood cousin was subsumed by my desire to find the source of the ditch.

First I found where the Santa Cruz river flowed through Española. While there are places where large cottonwoods still grow, desolation is more common.


In some places the destruction was probably deliberate, part of the effort to drain the malaria producing swamps in the 1930's. In other areas, it was probably the consequence of damming the river in the late 1920's, an act which reduced the cottonwood habitat and led to its clearance by people fearful of fire.


Still, closer to the river, willow and cottonwood have grown back, with the one closer to the water than the other.


The relationship between sandbar willow and cottonwood became clearer when I drove to a place upstream where the ditch was still following the badlands before it could cross the highway to get to the point where the dogs had led me.

Downhill from the highway, I found willow growing outside a section of concrete walled ditch that trapped draining water.


Although the rest of that section of ditch was generally bare of trees, there were scattered cottonwoods and a few junipers.


When I looked across the flat lands below this section of ditch I could see the course of the Santa Cruz river picked out by red willow. Behind it, on both sides, were the light grey forms of cottonwoods. Behind them, were the occasional junipers.


From there I went looking for the point where the ditch left the Santa Cruz river and came upon a control point on the river that tempers the flow during monsoon storms into Española and the Rio Grande. The ditch diverges just a bit downstream.


Last summer, water, trapped behind the concrete, washed away any vegetation. In January, there were remains of goldenrod, cockleburs and the usual pigweed.


Most important, there were willow saplings, bent but not broken. It would seem willow must be near water to survive, but cottonwood can grow a bit back so long as water is seeping into the soil. As a result, willows must be able to withstand the turbulence of a wild river, but cottonwoods can enjoy the luxury of settled banks.


Photographs: 1. Santa Cruz river in Española near the route 84/285 bridge, 20 January 2012.

2. Santa Cruz bosque behind businesses along route 84/285 in Española, 20 January 2012; the line of red sandbar willow marks the location of the river.

3. Farther back from the above businesses where cottonwoods and willow grow near the river, and Russian thistles and shrubs have colonized the cleared land, 20 January 2012.

4. Willow growing on the banks of the Santa Cruz river behind the businesses, 20 January 2012.

5. Willow growing along the ditch downhill from route 84/185, 3 February 2012.

6. Cottonwood growing along the same section of ditch, 3 February 2012.

7. Bosque from the ditch bank, 3 February 2012. The red willow marks the river, with cottonwoods and junipers behind. The white trailers in the far distance are in the village of Santa Cruz.

8. Willow growing at a control point on the Santa Cruz river near route 106, 27 January 2012.

9. Willow growing in the flood plain of the control point, 27 January 2012.

10. Cottonwood growing along the more tranquil section of the Santa Cruz above the control point, 27 January 2012.

Ditch Willow

Weather: Light snow Monday night, wind yesterday; 10:27 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming: Black mustard, biological crust, moss.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens; stems on hybrid roses and young chamisa; leaves on grape hyacinth, sweet pea, alfilerillo growing, gypsum phacelia, snakeweed, chrysanthemum, anthemis, strap leaf aster; cheat grass.

Large Russian thistles have either been cleared and burned or broken away. If they haven’t been destroyed, they’re caught against fences, salt bushes and other obstructions. Smaller plants, especially those ankle high, are still in place.

Many large pigweeds are still in place, along with a great many ankle high plants.

What’s red: Cholla; branches on Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, apples, apricots, spirea, wild roses and raspberry; leaves on coral bells, pinks, soapworts.

What’s blue or gray: Piñon; leaves on four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, stickleaf, beardtongues, golden hairy and purple asters; tansy mustard germinating.

What’s yellow-green/yellow-brown: Arborvitae; weeping and globe willows.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

When I was taking pictures of the cholla, someone watching came over to see if I’d gotten a good picture of the red-tailed hawk on the utility pole behind the cacti, for that’s why he assumed I was standing on an eroding bank by the side of the road clinging to barbed wire for support.


Weekly update: You can blame it on the dogs. If it weren’t for them, I never would have begun tracking sandbar willows.

It began when I followed a man walking his dog back to a place I could park safely to explore the Rio Grande where it joins the Santa Cruz river. Then I saw some women park their car near some willow growing closer to my house. I followed them and their dogs, and all semblance of sanity was lost.

The willow was growing on the banks of the main irrigation ditch that supports the hay farmers between my house and the village. Suddenly I wanted the answer to a question that’s been nagging me for years, where was that ditch.


At the point I began, the acequia was wide, with dirt banks. Clumps of willow were dense, with occasional cottonwood and sections of brown bunch grass. When I started to follow ditch downstream, the willow clumps became more widely spaced, the cottonwoods more common. Here and there a one-seeded juniper grew, and in one place some Ponderosa pine.


Farther downstream, the ditch was encased in concrete. No more willow. The cottonwoods were more sporadic; four-winged saltbushes lined the ditch instead. Some cholla appeared, as did other species of trees, probably Siberian elms.


In the general area where the ditch changed from dirt to concrete, the ditch was moving back toward the Tertiary badlands. Prior to that point the badlands had been bunch grasses and juniper.


After that point, salt bushes appeared with the juniper and grasses.


The apron between the ditch and the road also changed. In one area that looks like someone once flattened the land with irrigation, there was a large patch of prickly pear cacti.


In another level area at the far end under the concrete ditch, there was that colony of cholla cacti shown above.

The open field was crossed by lines of cottonwoods. I’d already learned when I was looking for safe places to pull over, they were often headed by very large trees growing in open ditches just before the feeding ditches crossed under the road.


I’d noticed the trees were often opposite the oldest houses in that stretch of road. From the concrete ditch, I could see the mechanisms that distributed the waters. In most places, the actual ditches are buried.

The acequia travels in three guises: open dirt banks that seep water when the ditch is running, concrete lined banks that cab collect water on their uphill sides when it rains, and buried pipes that hold water above themselves. The differences in water to the surrounding soil may seem minuscule, but they are differences cottonwoods and willows and other plants detect and respond to.

Photographs:
1. Sandbar willow growing along the dirt banks of the local acequia, 15 January 2012.

2. Cholla growing down water from the concrete lined ditch whose location is marked by the trees and low golden brown plants, 7 February 2012; the red tailed hawk is on the top, right end of the utility pole; juniper and bunch grass are on the badlands behind.

3. Upstream from the above, grasses mix with willow, 20 January 2012.

4. Downstream, along the dirt banks, sandbar willow, cottonwood, and other herbaceous plants, 15 January 2012; ditch on left, wide area is bank.

5. Farther downstream, along the concrete lined banks, cottonwood and four-winged saltbushes dominate, 15 January 2012.


6. The badlands along the dirt section of the ditch with bunch grasses and one-seeded juniper, 15 January 2012.

7. The badlands along the concrete section of the ditch with salt bush, cholla and juniper, 15 January 2012.

8. Prickly pear growing downslope from the dirt section of the ditch, last fall when Russian thistle was finally growing after the drought was broken, 3 September 2011.

9. Row of cottonwoods marking the path of a distribution ditch from the main ditch at the left, 15 January 2011.

10. Distribution point in concrete lined ditch, 15 January 2012.

Basket Dance Spruce

Weather: Snow Friday morning disappeared by late afternoon; snow Friday night gone in the morning; 10:15 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming: Black mustard, biological crust, moss.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens; stems on hybrid roses and young chamisa; leaves on grape hyacinth, sweet pea, alfilerillo, gypsum phacelia, snakeweed, chrysanthemum, anthemis, strap leaf aster; cheat grass.

Leaf buds emerging or elongating on Bradford pear, Lapins cherry, peach, Siberian pea, forsythia. Unchanged on snowball and lilacs.

What’s red: Cholla; branches on Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, apples, apricots, spirea, wild roses and raspberry; leaves on coral bells, pinks, soapworts.

What’s blue or gray: Piñon; leaves on four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, stickleaf, beardtongues, golden hairy and purple asters.

What’s yellow-green/yellow-brown: Arborvitae; branches on weeping willow more intensely yellow.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Small birds.


Weekly update: The Basket Dance is a part of local change of season rituals that has constant symbolic elements despite variations between Tewa speaking pueblos. Santa Clara performed it between summer and winter in October of 1912, San Ildefonso between winter and summer in March in the 1920's, and San Juan the first of January as part of the transfer of responsibility from the winter people to the summer ones.

Alfonso Ortiz suggests that because it’s associated with a change in seasons it’s one of three dances which requires new songs every year. The others are the Cloud Dance (also called the Squash Dance and the Thunder Dance) with which it alternates from year to year, and the Turtle Dance which precedes it and initiates the transition of power at San Juan the day after Christmas.

Perhaps because the music and texts are only used one time, the dances are considered safe to reveal to outsiders. There’s no drumming, only singing and percussion from gourd rattles carried by the dancers. It’s one of the choreographic elements that’s been extracted from its ritual context and presented outside the pueblos at public performances in places like Santa Fe since the 1920's.

The Basket Dance is also one that’s highly attractive to tourists because it involves both male and female dancers. The latter wear calf length, dark manta dresses, with white maiden shawls. Their legs are wrapped in buckskin stained white by clay.

In one hand they carry baskets, in the other sprigs of Douglas spruce that conceal wooden sticks. At one point, they kneel on blankets laid by clowns and use the baskets to pantomime grinding corn. Then, using the baskets as resonators, they rub wooden sticks against ones that have been notched.

Fertility symbols infuse the drama that describes and reconciles the mythic division of the world into hot and cold, winter and summer, male and female, spirit and human, water supplying and water needing spheres in which the success of summer irrigated crops and human existence is dependent on winter snows.

The baskets are not made from ditch fed willow, but are shallow ones used to carry corn offerings to the spirits. There are times when they may have been purchased from other tribes. While importunings for rain are implied in the wooden sticks that sound like thunder, the women are more strongly associated with water thirsty corn and the Corn Maidens.

Mary Austin was told one of the San Ildefonso songs from the 1920's identified the men with “the Rain Cloud callers” and the women with the “ancient mothers of the Rain Cloud clan.” The singers were asking that

     By the full-shaped womb,
     That the lightening and the thunder and the rain
     Shall come upon the earth,

and

     That the great rain clouds shall come upon the earth
     As the lover to the maid;

so that “their wombs bear fruit” and people have corn “to complete the road of life.”


The association with rain is made through Douglas spruce boughs the male dancers wear around their necks, and, depending on pueblo, in their arm bands and from the rain sashes above their white kilts. In one hand they carry gourd rattles, which have rain power, and spruce branches in the other.

Pseudotsuga menziesii, now more commonly called Douglas fir, grows in the “mountains and deep canyons” above the pueblos where they’re often the tallest trees in the forest, the closest to the clouds. Depending on the day, some may even disappear in the mist. Some clouds, in fact, are called spruce clouds.

For the comfort of the dances, the branches tend to be pliable enough to bend easily around the body. The inch-long yellow-green or blue-green needles are smooth with points that are not piercing. The connections to the wood are only rough if rubbed the wrong way.


The men also wear turkey plumes associated with fecundity. At San Juan they’re worn behind half miter headdresses made from yucca. At Santa Clara and San Ildefonso they’re held in place with rosettes shaped like squash blossoms. Both men and women may wear downy eagle feathers in their hair associated with clouds.

The role of the spruce is more obvious when the Basket Dance is considered as the culmination of a four day rite that natives tell outsiders are spent practicing new songs.

At San Ildefonso in the 1920's, Edwin Curtis said that on the first evening the cacique made prayer plumes for the male dancers to deposit outside the village. On the fourth night, he made more plumes which two or three dancers took the next morning into the mountains where they were left as “offerings to the spirits of Douglas spruce.” They brought back spruce boughs, which the moiety chief blessed the next morning before the dancers dressed.

At Santa Clara in 1912, John Harrington said the day before the dance, the five capitanes went to the forests where they cut eight young Douglas spruce trees. After midnight, they set two up in each of the four places where the dance would be performed.

At San Juan, Antonio Garcia indicates emissaries go to the eastern mountains for trees they hole in “at each plaza with an offering of cornmeal." Before the final rehearsal, the men perform a sacred line dance, an ange’i. In the past they were expected to fast and be celibate, but fasting is no longer observed.

On the day of the Basket Dance at San Ildefonso, Curtis said, the chief of the kosa, the summer clowns, led the dancers from the kiva. After that, two of his assistants took over supervising the dancers. At San Juan, the representatives of the new order, the kosa are also the ones who appear.

The cycle of four songs, which alternate slow and fast sections, is repeated four times, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Gertrude Kurath says the dances are repeat four times in the first and last sessions, and twice in the second and third performances. During the dance segments the clowns stand at the ends of the lines and guard the boundaries of ritual space.

Between sessions the clowns keep the crowd amused, and away from private pueblo areas. In a photograph from about 1920 at Santa Clara, the clowns were shown wearing the sort of feathered headdress associated with plains Indians and worn in the Comanche Dance. A 1942 photograph taken at San Juan by Wyatt Davis showed them wrapped in geometric patterned blankets

According to Ortiz, clowns at San Juan are considered children of the sun associated with changes in weather. As such they’re allowed to dramatize reversals in gender. According to Jill Sweet, their antics were once much more licentious than now, but various forms of outside pressure have limited what they do. They can still discomfort the tourists they ridicule.

The final dance is usually completed just before sunset. It’s followed by another sacred ange’i, this time performed by both men and women. In the past, a ritual bath in the river was expected at San Juan, but indoor plumbing has transferred that function to the home.

At Santa Clara in 1912, the spruce was thrown into the creek that flows from Tsikomó to water the summer corn. At San Juan, the War Chief returns sacred objects to the supernaturals when he throws the spruce and down feathers into the river the next morning.


Notes:
Austin, Mary. “Song of the Basket Dancers,” in The American Rhythm, 1930 edition reprinted by Sunstone Press, 2007. Kurath reproduces a text from San Juan in which the dancers are called Dew Boys and Dew Girls; pleas are made to the rain god Oxua for clouds with “wheat-producing power” and “corn-producing power.”

Curtis, Edward S. The North American Indian, volume 17 on the Tewa, 1926.

Davis, Wyatt. Photographs from 1940 in the University of New Mexico magazine collection; includes one of Steven Trujillo. Photographs distributed by the Santa Fe Railroad taken at San Juan and ones by T. Harmon Parkhurst at San Ildefonso in 1935 are also reproduced on the web. Paintings of the San Ildefonso Basket Dance are available on the web, including works by Gilbert Atencio (Wah-Peen), Diane Calabeza (He Shi Flower), José Encarnacion Peña (Soqween), Alfonso Roybal (Awa Tsireh), Abel Sanchez (Oqwa Pa) and Pablita Velarde (Tse Tsan).

Garcia, Antonio. “Ritual Preludes and Postludes” in Kurath; provides more information on the dance as part of a pueblo repertoire. Rehearsals at San Juan include four nights of practice for the men, followed by four nights of practice for the women, then a joint practice the eve before.

Kurath, Gerturde Prokosch. Music and Dance of the Tewa Pueblos, 1970; contains a photograph of the Santa Clara Basket Dance at Puye Cliffs in 1961.

Ortiz, Alfonso. The Tewa World, 1969.

Paterek, Josephine. Encyclopedia of American Indian Costume, 1996; she includes a painting by Pablita Velarde of a young girl’s legs being wrapped for her first dance.

Robbins, William Wilfred, John Peabody Harrington, and Barbara Friere-Marreco. Ethnobotany of the Tewa Indians, 1916; includes comments on habitat.

Sweet, Jill D. Dances of the Tewa Pueblo Indians, second edition, 2004; includes a color closeup of a woman’s costume taken in 1974 by Roger Sweet.

Photographs:
1. Middle section of what I’m told is a Douglas fir growing where it no doubt was transplanted near the village, 3 February 2012; it’s not native to the river bottom.

2. Lower section of same tree with new springs emerging from the furrowed trunk, 3 February 2012.

3. Twigs on same tree, 3 February 2012.

4. Needles on twig from same tree, 3 February 2012.

5. Same tree in its neighborhood where it’s higher than the utility pole and shorter than the cottonwood growing in a ditch. The shape and curvature suggest it was deprived of sun when it was young. While such trees lose branches from the base in those conditions, this was probably pruned because it’s near a road. Taken 3 February 2012.

Sacred Willow

Weather: Warm afternoons continue to dry the mud; when temperatures drop at night, the moisture hovers above and keeps morning temperatures in the middle to high 20's; last precipitation 2/17/12; 10:08 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming: Black mustard coming into bloom along shoulders.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens; stems on hybrid roses and young chamisa; leaves on grape hyacinth, alfilerillo, gypsum phacelia seedlings, snakeweed, anthemis, strap leaf aster; cheat grass.

What’s red: Cholla; branches on Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, apples, apricots, spirea, wild roses and raspberry; leaves on coral bells, pinks, soapworts.

What’s blue or gray: Piñon; leaves on four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, stickleaf seedlings, beardtongues, golden hairy and purple asters.

What’s yellow-green/yellow-brown: Arborvitae; branches on weeping willow more intensely yellow.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium.

Animal sightings: Small birds.


Weekly update: The use of willow for sacred objects made to ensure a bountiful food supply goes back thousands of years, to the time when corn wasn’t yet an important part of the diet.

By then, the large mammals hunted with Clovis points around 9500 bc had come and gone with the peripheral environment of the last glaciers. The bison hunted with Folsom points around 8000 bc had moved on when the climate continued drying. The people who remained in the southwest adapted by following annual crops of seeds and berries and eating rabbits.

Then, about 2000 bc, the rains returned. Big horned sheep were in the area stretching from Grand Canyon west through the Mojave to what is now China Lake Naval Weapons Center at the base of the Sierra Nevada. A new technology, Gypsum points, developed and foragers perfected coiled basketry.

With the animals came hunting rituals whose artifacts were found at Newberry Cave southeast of Barstow on the Mojave river in the 1950's. They included quartz crystals with pigments and adhesives still attached, feathers wrapped in sinew, sheep dung wrapped in sinew and some petroglyphs.

Most important were small figures made by forming strands of willow into animal shapes then wrapping them with the same piece of willow. They found 11 in tact and fragments of another 1,000 that dated to 1500 bc.

Such figurines have been found in at least 15 sites in the lower Colorado basin and have occasionally been made with skunk bush or cottonwood. The earliest were found at Stanton’s Cave in the Grand Canyon from 2000 bc where they were associated with deer. They persisted in the Canyon Lands at the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers where they evolved into social totems.


The petroglyph tradition persisted for another two thousand years in the nearby Coso Mountains. There drawings etched in volcanic rock show big horn sheep and animal-man figures. David Whitley argues the ones made a thousand years ago were done by Shoshoni shamans who traveled miles to seek contact with spirits of big horn who controlled rain. The details of the drawings came from their trances.

Alan Garfinkle suggests the ones made three thousand years ago, those contemporary with the willow figures, often show leaping or running sheep without hunters or depict long lines of animals emerging from crevices in the rocks. He believes they were done in communal spring rituals by people who believed animal spirits reemerged annually from the underworld. The glyphs were attempts to ensure a large population of edible animals.

Garfinkle notes many were more practically located near ambush sites, suggesting a more direct link to hunting magic. There are something like 35,000 glyphs scattered over 90 square miles.

Hunting techniques from 3000 years ago are difficult to understand when only stone points survive and petroglyphs show only the most symbolic interactions between man and animal. In more recent times, men in Wyoming first drove sheep into traps. There’s evidence they also used juniper bark nets to snare animals who could then be killed.

If such techniques were used earlier, wrapping an animal figure in the willow from which it would be formed would be more than a representation of a fixed moment. It’s creation would be a symbolic dramatization of the hunt itself.

Unlike the Coso petroglyphs which exist in open areas, the split twig figurines tend to be found in caves, many inaccessible today. Their location in a pluvial period may have been different, but there’s little indication Newberry was entered for any reason other than rituals. There’s little evidence of stratigraphy and no signs of occupation.

The use of willow may have been pragmatic: it was available, it was used for nets, it was pliable enough to form the figures. If the association of sheep with rain predates the cultural complex described by Whitley, the use of willow to capture the spirit of the sheep may have been meant more in a society more dependent on plants than animals for food.


Notes: All dates are general approximations.

Coulam, Nancy J. and Alan R. Schroedl. “Late Archaic Totemism in the Greater American Southwest,” American Antiquity 69:41-62:2004.

Crockett, Stephanie. “The Prehistoric Peoples of Jackson Hole,” in John Daugherty, A Place Called Jackson Hole, 1999.

Davis, C. Alan, RE Taylor, Gerald A. Smith. “New Radiocarbon Determinations from Newberry Cave,” Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 3:144-147:1981.

Garfinkel, Alan P. “Paradigm Shifts, Rock Art Theory, and the Coso Sheep Cult of Eastern California,” North American Archaeologist 27:203-244:2006.

Whitley, David S. A Guide to Rock Art Sites: Southern California and Southern Nevada, 1996.

Wulbrecht, Sally. “The Mountain Shoshones: Sheep Eaters,” Wind River Historical Center website.

Photographs:
1. Sandbar willow on ditch banks near Española, 13 January 2012.

2. Sandbar willow on banks of Santa Cruz river just before it merges with the Rio Grande, 29 December 2011.

3. Globe willow, 30 January 2012, just acquiring its winter color.

4. Weeping willow growing down the road, 27 January 2012, with winter yellow branches.

Willow Prayer Sticks

Weather: Some rain Tuesday, more muddy afternoons; 10:08 hours of daylight today.

What’s blooming: Black mustard coming into bloom along shoulders.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens; stems on hybrid roses and young chamisa; leaves on grape hyacinth, alfilerillo, gypsum phacelia seedlings, snakeweed, anthemis, strap leaf aster; cheat grass.

Men have been pruning their apples this week.

What’s red: Cholla; branches on Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, apples, apricots, spirea, wild roses and raspberry; leaves on coral bells, pinks, soapworts.

What’s blue or gray: Piñon; leaves on four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, stickleaf seedlings, beardtongues, golden hairy and purple asters.

What’s yellow-green/yellow-brown: Arborvitae, branches on weeping willow.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, zonal geranium, Christmas cactus. A twig of sandbar willow I stuck in water has put out some roots and a leaf is beginning to open.

Animal sightings: Small birds.

Weekly update: Rain this week washed away what snow remained, but judging from my muddy drive, the water hasn’t gone far.

What a difference a year makes. The monsoons of 2010 left little water. We got some snow the usual time, just before the solstice, but it soon disappeared, to be replaced by zero temperatures last January with no cover to insulate plants.

Some flurries fell the first week of February, followed by below zero temperatures and a gas outage that left us with no heat for a week. Then nothing until May when more snow fell that killed what apple blossoms had managed to survive. The cherries and apricots hadn’t much tried to bloom.

By June we knew we were in serious drought. In past years, the pueblos would have been sending messengers to the rain spirits at Tsikomó mountain four days after the summer solstice. But last year, the Pacheco Fire that began June 18 had put restrictions on forest use. Then the Las Conchas fire broke out June 26 and crossed the headwaters of Santa Clara Creek (P’opii Khanu) on its way past what the Forest Service called Mount Chicoma on June 29.


In a normal year at San Juan, Alfonso Ortiz says the agricultural cycle begins on January 20, a month after the solstice, when the chief of the Winter moiety initiates To Lessen the Cold. This ends when, on the fourth day, he formally asks the chief of the Summer people to “seek life for all.”

On February 20, the Summer chief initiates Bringing the Buds to Life. March 20 marks Bringing the Leaves to Life and April 20 begins Bringing the Blossoms to Life. This work is so important, it must be postponed for four days if someone dies while it’s in progress. As Ortiz notes, since people do die, the work often is not completed until the beginning of June.

If no rain has come by the end of the retreat for Bringing the Blossoms to Life, “all of the Made People go on a ‘rain retreat’ to the mountain and hill shrines west of the village.” He doesn’t detail what occurs, but only says the purpose is “to pray, meditate, and make offerings to the spirits of the shrines and earth navels.” While there, they also “gather plant medicines for use in other rituals.”

After the Las Conchas fire burned through the headwaters of the creek, the Santa Clara governor, Walter Dasheno, called a press conference to express his dismay. But, when he had to explain why the fire was so serious, he would only say it destroyed “cultural sites, forest resources, plants and animals that the people of Santa Clara depend upon for their livelihood and culture” and that “he and other pueblo members were continuing to pray.”

William Boone Douglass grew impatient with the silence of local people regarding Tsikomó, and entered the sacred space in 1911. As he climbed the 11,400' mountain he moved beyond the timber line. The sacred spring was about 50' below the crust, which was bare, except for a group of four piñon.

When Ortiz climbed the mountain with two others from San Juan in 1964, they noticed the number of trees killed by lightening and the greater level of precipitation. He took that and the constant presence of rain clouds as signs the spirits were unusually active there. The lower part of the mountain is the source for both Santa Clara Creek and Rio Oso.

At the top, Douglass found a stone mound in the center of the crest. To the south was a stone enclosure (Kwan-po) with seven exits on the east side. These are the openings for the rain roads (awu-mu-wa-ya) used by the Taos, San Juan, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Jemez, Cochiti and Navajo.

In the center was a saucer like depression. To its west was a polished blackware vase which had held water and corn meal offerings. Behind the vase were rows of prayer sticks planted in the earth.

Prayer stick is a confusing term, because while the sacred objects to which it refers are similar in form - a stick or pair of sticks, with feathers and plant matter attached by cotton cording - they are used in most of the pueblos for overlapping and sometimes differing purposes.

Ruth Bunzel found among the Zuñi, their most important associations were with the two solstices, and that winter solstice activity was related to the kachinas. At Isleta, Elsie Clews Parsons says prayer sticks were used during the summer solstice only, and that the Tewa speaking pueblos only used them in times of drought. She notes there they were made by all the chiefs and taken to the top of Tsikomó.

Douglass identified 14 different types of prayer sticks in the space shared by three Tewa speaking pueblos, a Tiwa speaking, a Towa speaking, and Keres speaking one, along with an Athabascan group. Most were made from willow, but other materials were used. Parsons says willow was used for rain or water spirits and oak or pine for the war cult.

The most important reason willow is used is that it only grows near water. Frank Cushing went so far as to suggest the Zuñi believed willow brought forth water. The Hopi call their prayer sticks paho, meaning water wood.

In a binary world sharply divided between two moieties where harmony and community are valued, the prayer sticks may also have acted as symbolic bridges between two discrete worlds. Sometimes, two sticks are bound together, representing male and female or, Douglass was told, older and younger brothers.

Among the Zuñi, the fact willow has separate male and female flowers seems important. Bunzel heard a poem used for offering prayer sticks at the winter solstice that included the lines:

    From all the wooded places
    Breaking off the young straight shoots
    Of the male willow, female willow

Another used at a monthly offering of prayer sticks was

    Male willow,
    Female willow,
    Four times cutting the straight young shoots

And, during the chief’s summer retreat to bring rain, she heard

    Male willow, female willow.
    Four times breaking off the straight young shoots.

The other important characteristic of willow is color.

Most prayer sticks found at Tsikomó were made from wood with “smooth reddish bark” and painted green or yellow. The attached plants were either ones with yellow flowers (goldenrod and snakeweed) or green sedges. Ortiz says the colors associated with the Summer people are black, yellow and green, while the one associated with the Winter is red.


The willow is almost always described as red, but Parsons says in one pueblo “one moiety uses red willow, the other yellow willow.” Often, the wood is painted with green or black paint, the one color representing life, the other the underworld.

What isn’t mentioned, but must be observed, is the colors of willow embody elements of both summer and winter in a single branch. In one season, it’s clothed in green leaves. In January, its bare stems are not dormant, but every day become a more vivid red.

Notes:
Baca, Joe. “Las Conchas Fire Burns More Than 6,000 acres of Santa Clara Pueblo Land – 6/30,” Santa Clara press release, 30 June 2011; words with potentially coded meanings are bolded.

Bunzel, Ruth L. Introduction to Zuñi Ceremonialism, 1932.

_____. Zuñi Ritual Poetry, 1932.

Cushing, Frank Hamilton. Zuni Breadstuff, 1920.

Douglass, William Boone. “Notes on the Shrines of the Tewa and Other Pueblo Indians of New Mexico,” International Congress of Americanists Proceedings 19:344-378:1915.

Los Alamos Monitor. “Santa Clara Pueblo Declares State of Emergency,” 30 June 2011; words with potentially coded meanings are bolded.

Ortiz, Alfonso. The Tewa World, 1969.

Parsons, Elise Clews. Pueblo Indian Religion, vol 1, 1939.


Photographs:1. Red willow near a public path that someone cut, 1/15/12.

2. Las Conchas fire from my back porch about 12 miles away, 7/4/11. I believe this is one of the canyons south of Tsikomó.

3. Goldenrod growing on a ditch bank, the water now frozen, 1/20/12. The local Solidago species doesn't bloom at the time of summer solstice, but everywhere I’ve seen it here it’s been growing near water.

4. Snakeweed in my drive, 1/21/12. Douglass identified the plant he found used as Gutierrezia eathania. I haven’t found any other reference to that name. The species that’s common here, Gutierrezia sarothrae, doesn't bloom at the time of summer solstice, but it retains some green leaves all winter.

Modern Willow Baskets

Weather: Afternoon thawing continues, but morning temperatures have dropped again; last snow 12/22/11; 9:59 hours of daylight today.

What’s still green: Juniper and other evergreens; stems on roses and young chamisa; leaves on sea pink, coral beardtongue, gypsum phacelia seedlings, snakeweed, strap leaf aster; cheat grass; crust active.

What’s red: Cholla; branches on Russian olive, tamarix, sandbar willow, apples, apricots, spirea and raspberry; leaves on coral bells, pinks, small-leaved soapwort.

What’s blue or gray: Piñon; leaves on four-winged saltbush, snow-in-summer, stickleaf seedlings, golden hairy and purple asters.

What’s yellow-green/yellow-brown: Arborvitae, branches on weeping willow.

What’s blooming inside: Aptenia, asparagus fern, zonal geranium, Christmas cactus peaked.

Animal sightings: Small birds.


Weekly update: Genuine tradition isn’t frozen into a single set of rules. There are general patterns which anthropologists use to define cultural periods, but within those groupings there’s room for individual variation and innovation.

At Chevlon along the Little Colorado in the 1300's, basket makers covered some of their wares with thick coats of paint. In the early twentieth century, Mary Lois Kissell says the Papago and Pima were still decorating their baskets with red and blue mineral paints.

However, the craftsmen at Chevlon also dyed some materials to weave in patterns. When aniline dyes became available in the late nineteenth century, Hopi women were quick to experiment with them. Many returned to vegetable dyes, partly because collectors preferred them and partly because isolation made it difficult to purchase materials.

When Helga Teiwes was interviewing basket makers in the 1990's, she talked to Vera Pooyouma, then estimated to be 104 years old. She first learned chemical dyes, changed to vegetable ones, and had returned to chemicals because they were easier at her age. The slightly younger Eva Hoyungowa, born in 1912, learned to use vegetable dyes from her father’s sister. Dora Tawahongva, born in 1930, was using both commercial and vegetable dyes at the time, while many others used only chemicals. All lived in Oraibi, the most traditional village on the Third Mesa.

Among the plants Teiwes saw women use for red dye were Navajo Tea and Hopi Tea. The preference seemed to depend on which was more abundant, with the first used more often by coiled basket makers on the Second Mesa and the second by wicker workers in Oraibi. Otis Mason identified additional dyes made from prairie sunflower seeds for dark blue, introduced safflower for yellow, and kaolin clay for white. Myrtle Zuck Hough told him Hopi also used their cooking beans to produce a black dye.

Dye introduces a second skill into basket making and a separate material harvesting cycle. When making items for the tourist trade, where speed is more valued by the artisan than effect, color can be introduced by using different natural materials: against the natural white of dried yucca leaves, modern Papago, the Tohono O’odham, use fading but still green yucca, brownish red banana yucca roots, and black devil’s claw pods.


Similarly, local craftsmen use variations in willow to introduce color into their work. Steven Trujillo, who settled in San Juan, learned to interweave “light and darker colored reeds, the later being older and slightly discolored when he harvests them. When first done, the baskets are white and light tan, but with age, the darker reeds turn almost ebony, giving a frank contrast to the pure white reeds.”

Carol Naranjo, who learned from Joe Val Gutierrez of Santa Clara, keeps the bark on the willow she uses, but introduces designs with small strips of pealed, white branches. She makes sure all her pieces are as close to the same color as possible. Carlos Herrera of Cochiti uses willows of different ages, sometimes using the older, nearly purple ones in horizontal bands, sometimes randomly in the vertical posts.

Greater variations in design are produced in the ways they finish off their baskets. Instead of making a simple rim, contemporary willow workers, who use bands of four for their warp, fold them in great arches to tuck them back several uprights away. The overlapping bands create the illusion of an open weave.

Naranjo indicates there also are small differences in the way people gather their materials. She cuts her willow sometime between October and May when sap levels are low. The best color is found now, in January.

She lets the branches sit for a few days so more sap can drain, then uses the willow quickly, while it’s still flexible. She can finish a small basket in a day. A larger one can take two to three days and is stored under a towel in the bathtub between work sessions.

She says others weave their baskets immediately. However, she says when the wood dries, as it will, it shrinks and the weave can get a bit loose.

In the late nineteenth century, Mary Lois Kissell says the Papago cut the willow for their coiled baskets in the spring, when new growth was emerging, then removed the bark immediately. In the past they had used boiling water to loosen it first. When they made a basket, they then soaked their willow, a few splints at a time.


One thing that drives innovation within tradition is a desire to master something seen but unfamiliar. Allie Seletstewa taught herself how to bend the warp to start the sides of a deep wicker basket by “experimenting with wet sand, water, and steam.”

When Trujillo was first learning how to make baskets, he said he was “down by the river gettin’ willows. And then, a crazy thing go on. Suddenly it’s like I asleep and dreamin’. I was awake, I know that, but somehow I was asleep at the same time. And I heard this voice - real clear - says to me, “Keep goin’, son. Keep on goin’’.”

“So I go home and get right into makin’ them baskets. Pretty soon I got it real good. Them baskets turnin’ out alright now, and been makin’ lots of baskets every since.”

Notes: The current Latin name for Hopi tea is Thelesperma megapotamicum, Navajo tea is Thelesperma subnudum, prairie sunflower is Helianthus petiolaris, and safflower is Carthamus tinctorius. Banana yucca root is Yucca baccata. Devil’s claw is Proboscidea parviflora. Other plants identified in post below.

Fewkes, Jesse Walter. Two Summers' Work in Pueblo Ruins, 1904, on Chevlon.

Fleming, Tim. “The Basketmaker,” The New Mexican, 19 July 1984, on Trujillo.

Kissell, Mary Lois. Basketry of the Papago and Pima, 1916.

Mason, Otis Tufton. Indian Basketry, volume 2, 1905, on Chevlon and the Hopi.

Naranjo, Carol. Comments made 4 January 2012 at her Santa Clara home.

Teiwes, Helga. Hopi Basket Weaving, 1996.

Photographs:
Red willow wicker basket by Carol Naranjo; willow was collected near Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey in Pecos.

Yucca and bear grass coiled basket by Rachel Pablu, Tohono O’odham.