Here are some shots from the Mesa Verde trip mentioned in a post on Tuesday from the middle of nowhere! I would have posted them that night, but my laptop battery decided that 10 p.m. was lights out time. As with the previous shots of Wiley, you should be able to click on each image to enlarge it, if you so choose.
This is the Cliff Palace, the largest of the Ancient Puebloan (Pueblan?) cliff dwelling complexes and the only one of the ranger-guided tour ones open this time of year.
I was really surprised by how much both the general landscape and architecture reminded me of similar dwellings I've seen on Sardinia... one major difference is the number of people. I had the Sardinian sites to myself, but here, even on a weekday in mid-April, there were about two dozen people on the tour. And the ranger said it was nice to have such a small group. In summer, he said the "tsunami" arrives and 60 people go down every half-hour all day. Yikes.
I really liked our ranger, Craig, but for the first half of the tour I was trying to figure him out. He had blue eyes and red hair and a lot of sun damage, very Anglo, but he had that great cadence and enunciation that a lot of Native Americans have. As an aside, that's one of my favorite American accents, if it can be considered that (or is it its own dialect?). There's something very appealing about it. And yes, Ranger Craig is the guy who told me I looked like I knew what I was doing.
Anyway, eventually he started mentioning his "people" and his "clan" and said at the end of the tour that he was Zuni, with "some Scottish and Irish somewhere along the way." Nice guy, but after that all I could think of was how much it had to have sucked being a fair-skinned redhead growing up in the Four Corners without sunscreen. Ouch.
Sure, this is a shot of a kiva, the ceremonial underground chamber that had an ingenious ventilation system... or is it?? It's also a shot of the Mormon not-quite-fundamental family on the tour with us. They also had Gramps and Granny in tow, though Gramps stayed in the minivan for the tour. I ran into him on a trail later in the day and said hello and he just glared at me. Maybe his daughter or daughter-in-law or whatever told him I had been staring at her hair for much of the tour. It wasn't quite as lush as the Texas compound Mormon chicks, but it was close. I do believe, however, there were styling products involved.
Would Jesus Use Mousse?
In any case, I took this photo as Ranger Craig was informing us, complete with hand gestures, about how the Pueblo culture regarded the earth as mother and womb and female and the sky as male and the spring rain as consummation. I can only guess what they were thinking.
Here's a shot of the ladders and general trail getting in and out of the site. Really not that big a deal, and nothing compared to some of the stuff I've encountered hiking. Remember, the Mormon chick did it too, in a skirt, with 20 or so kids clinging to her. I was dying to see how she went up the ladder modestly in a skirt, but I wound up talking to the ranger and a bunch of old people got ahead of me, so I missed it. But I'm sure it was chastely.
Another view of the Cliff Palace, taken from the Sun Temple, giving you a little more context to the site. Craig the Ranger dismissed Sun Temple as "one of those Chaco sites," a tribe he seemed to pawn off all the nastier bits of history on. He mentioned one intriguing nearby site... there is a mountain called The Sleeping Ute, because it kinda, if you really use your imagination and don't have cable, looks like a sleeping man (Ute is one of the regional tribes, or nations... not quite sure of the correct terminology). Archeologists (or "de Arkies," as Ranger Craig called them) found a site in the "toe" of the Sleeping Ute that had human bones that had been split with axes, cut up and also "stirred in a pot." Ranger Craig swore that science had proven conclusively that the bones had been stirred in a pot, though I would love to know how they figured that one out.
Anyway, the ever-thorough Arkies went one step further and analyzed feces found in the site's fire pit and concluded it was not only human poop, but that the human poop had human proteins in it that could only have come from eating other humans.
Ranger Craig emphasized that the Toe site had nothing to do with "his people" and that it was an outlier site of Chaco culture. Of course. There's apparently a whole gory book on the site, but I don't know the name. "Toe of Death" comes to mind as an obvious choice.
I asked later at a tourist info center on the road to Four Corners how I could get to the "toe" because I'd heard there were some interesting archeological sites there, but the women behind the counter blanched and told me it was on Ute land and off-limits to outsiders.
"They found bones that had been, you know, cannibalized there!" one said breathlessly.
Yes, and stirred in a pot!
4 comments:
On dialects and accents...If there are differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, you have two different dialects. If the differences are only in pronuciation, then you have two accents. The differences don't have to be enormous; for example, Bullock says "The car needs washed" and I say "The car needs to be washed" so that's a grammatical differece. He has a cot/caught distinction, while I have a cot/caught merger -- thus a pronunciation difference. And I say dinner while he says supper -- a vocabulary difference. Thus, we speak two different dialects of American English -- his is the Northern Cities variety, and mine is the Central variety (leaving aside all the things I've picked up in the other regions I've lived -- he's always been in the Northern Cities region, though).
I'm pretty sure Native American English is a recognized American dialect, and it could even have sub-classes.
And hey, isn't the cannibalism issue really controversial? I wonder what the reliable sources have to say about it. I never trust museum/park tour guides on their history -- I've heard some doozies. Well, you have too -- recall our Isle of Man guide.
interesting... and i remember how much of a kick i got in college making you say "ferry" and "fairy" because of your then-pronounced twang. just as, i recall, you though my native Joizey pronunciation of an extra hard "g" in "hanger" was pretty amusing.
in any case, i think there may be both native american dialects and accents, because i've heard some different vocabulary and grammar among some speakers, but the most prominent thing to my ear is the cadence and an often indistinguishable "d" and "th." the vowels are different, too, tho i dunno the specific terminology. i'm guessing, generalizing here, that the vowels could be called longer than "standard" american english.
in any case, i really like the accent. it's calming. like willie nelson's voice and a good piece of fume cheese.
b really says "car needs washed"?
Yes, yes he *does* say that. Though actually, that's not a Northern Cities thing -- I should've clarified -- that's a rural Iowa thing he picked up from his parents.
Hey, if you want a layman's introduction to American dialects, google "Do you speak American" and explore the PBS web site on the subject. Somewhere in there there's a page on the Northern Cities vowel shift, and since Milwaukee is part of that region, you might get a kick out of it.
Btw, when I teach students to distinctly pronounce the -g- in all -ng formations in Middle English, I tell them they're talking like they're from New Jersey. And I'm thinking of you. :) (Though in ME, they'd say them in sing as well as singer.)
Oh and my fairy/ferry merger isn't because of my twang. ("Twang" is a laymen's term for the very high, sharp short -a- as in cat...or in "twang," for that matter.) The way I say Kansas (still, to this day) is, though. Californians also have a similar vowel mergers, plus a bunch of their own, which I developed while living there. And I'm starting to develop a Northern Cities vowel shift, too (which also has a twangy short a as in cat), which grates my own ears. I cringe every time I hear myself say "Oh my Gad."
Speaking of vowels, I have no frakin' clue what the word verification says. This may take a couple of tries!
Point of clarification -- yes, I know I had the fairy/ferry merger long before I moved to CA. And also, I still tell students about you making fun of me for it! :) But what I was trying to say is that it's not just us twangy Kansans who have vowel mergers!
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