Pithouses, Pueblos and Pinion Nuts

Today’s adventures took place on and off campus.  We started in the lodge, and Katie took us to the pit house! She uncovered the doorway and led us through. We had to crouch through the doorway, but inside we could stand up straight. There was a fire pit and above the fire leaned a ladder.  The ladder led to a meter by meter hole in the ceiling. That is where the Ancestral Puebloans entered their homes. In the pithouse, we sat around the empty fire pit trying to make a fire with a bow drill. Linda and Colter created an ember, but once we picked it up, the wind from the hole in the ceiling whisked the ember away.  No fire today.

After the pithouse, we harvested Prickly Pears with Dan our other educator who is a part of the Zuni tribe. The pears tasted like a mix of kiwi and dragon fruit. Colter thought it was interesting.  Maryn thought it was amazing.

We next had Atalatal lessons next.  An Atalatal is like a dog’s Chuckit….it propels a spear toward a target. Maryn and Linda were ok at throwing it. Colter was out of this world! He hit the turkey in mid-flight! Just kidding! But he actually did hit the plastic decoy turkey on the third try. It was really cool.

Suzy is interviewing us for the Crow Canyon News Paper. 

We walked up a nearby hill to a replica little Pueblo community. It had room blocks and a tower with a little plaza in front.  This was from the Pueblo II period. Dan told us some Zuni stories and danced a traditional dance for us.

After lunch we drove to the Anasazi Cultural Center in Delores.  It was a fascinating museum. This is Maryn looking in a microscope at the museum.

 Next to the museum we hiked up a hill to Pueblo ruins called Escalante. Along the way, Dan showed us how to gather the pinion nuts. We gathered so many nuts to share with everybody.

This was the double rainbow right before the sun set at Crow Canyon.

Our evening program was with Tyson. We created stone pendants. Maryn made a seashell pendant and Linda and Colter used a stone called Jet. 

Jet is a black mineral, and we shaped it on the sandstone with water. This made little puddles. We decided to give this black paste a purpose…and you see the results in the picture below.