Content warning for discussion of genocide.

Hey, Hi, Hello, this is the History Wizard and welcome back for Day 7 of Have a Day w/ The History Wizard. Thank you to everyone who tuned in for Day 6 last week, and especially thank you to everyone who rated and/or reviewed the podcast. I hope you all learned something last week and I hope the same for this week. This week we;re going to be looking at one of the many genocides that have been perpetrated against indigenous Americans. This, however, will not be the genocide you’re expecting. That will be a later episode. The Genocide at Sacred Ridge took place long before the arrival of European colonizers. Unfortunately, much like history’s oldest war in Jebel Sahaba, we don’t have a historical record of the events so much as a purely archaeological one. But, we’ll get to that shortly, first…

Let’s start things right off with the second installment of the Alchemist's Table. I hope you enjoyed last week’s potion. This week we’ve got another delightful brew called A Taste of Fall. Start with 2 oz of bourbon or rye whiskey, follow up with an ounce of maple syrup (make sure you’re using actual maple syrup, not pancake syrup) then finish with 4 oz of soft Apple Cider, shake well and strain into a wineglass.

With that out of the way let’s talk about the Puebloans. Puebloans is the modern taxonomy for many indigenous peoples who lived and live in and around southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. Now when looking at old cultures without a writing system, or at least without a surviving written record peoples tend to be classified into distinct categories based on the things they left behind. The artifacts we are able to find from archeological sites, how they built their homes, and any kind of art they left behind. There are a number of beautiful petroglyphs at sites like Mesa Verde, which is now a national park.

So, who are the Puebloan people and where did they come from? Well the Jargon tells us that They are believed to have developed, at least in part, from the Oshara tradition, which developed from the Picosa culture. But to understand what that means we have to know WHAT the OSHARA tradition is and what the Picosa culture is. The simple answer is that we define these cultures by the technology they used and divide them up somewhat arbitrarily in order to have distinct THINGS to talk about. Historical and archeological classification is all made up. None of it is REAL in any objective sense. It’s just that we as humans need some way to put things into little boxes so that we can study and understand it.

Puebloan prehistory was divided up into 8 periods at an archeological conference in Pecos , New Mexico in 1927. It’s called, you might be shocked to discover, the Pecos Classification. The Pecos classification didn’t include any dates, it just split up these prehistoric civilizations based on changes in architecture, art, pottery, and cultural remains. 

So what defined the Puebloan people? Well, most notably it was the emergence of housing structures known as pueblos, the switch from woven baskets into pottery for storage, and the advent of farming. Once people began to develop these technologies and cultural markers they were considered to have transitioned from the Basketmaker III Era into the Pueblo I Era. This is also why no real dates were attached to these periods, because not all groups would enter them at the same time.

Hell, even more distinct historic eras, like the Middle Ages are arbitrary and were determined after the fact, as my old history professor Dr. Brian Regal used to say “no one just woke up on January 1st, 1500 and said “Welp, I guess the Middle Ages are done now!”

Now, Puebloan is the modern taxonomy for the people who lived and live in the Four Corners region. That being the area on a map of the modern United States where the corners of Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico all meet. However, that’s not the only name those people were known as. The Navajo referred to these peoples as the Anasazi, a term which means ancient enemy, although some say that the term actually translates as “those who do things differently. The Hopi use the term Hisatsinom for these people. Those most modern Puebloan people prefer the term Ancestral Puebloan.

The population of Puebloan people in the Four Corners region grew rapidly between the years 700 and 1130 CE due to an increased amount of rain making farming much more effective in the region allowing for greater food stocks. Though, it is interesting to note (a phrase I just realized I use a lot as a tangent transition) that study of skeletal remains from the region show increased fertility, NOT decreased mortality. SImply put, people still died at the same average rate, but more were born than were dying. Though, the order of magnitude increase of the local population was also influenced by migration from the surrounding areas.

Hopi myths, and similar stories from the Zuni and Acoma peoples hold that Puebloan people emerged into the mortal world from the underworld by climbing up through a sipapu, which was a firepit at the base of a religious building called a kiva. It is said that these peoples were lizard-like in form until they emerged into the sun, whereupon they came to look like humans.

These Ancestral Puebloan peoples lived in times of relative prosperity, although, while the area they lived had good, consistent rainfall that allowed for farming without the need for irrigation techniques, not everything with their circumstances would be well and good. 

War and conflict is, generally, always fought over economic reasons when you drill down into it. Control over resources in an environment where they are scarce will always lead to fighting. 

This brings us to the archeological site Sacred Ridge. Sacred Ridge is an archaeological site about 8 miles southwest of Durango, Colorado. It covered about 11.6 acres and contained some 22 homes which were built in a style known as pit structures. Meaning that while they had walls and a roof emerging above the ground, the primary structure of the house was dug into the ground in the form of a pit.

What follows will be, somewhat, graphic description of the state of a few dozen sets of skeletal remains that were found in some of the pit houses, so: content warning for discussion of tortured and mutilated remains.

Two of the pit houses contained 14,882 identified human body fragments, belonging to about 35 people, about half the estimated population of the village. The victims show signs of extreme torture and mutilation, including beating on the feet, scalping, and eye gouging. Because of biological and dietary differences between the residents of the village and other villages in the same area, some scientists believe that this provides evidence of ethnic cleansing.

Archaeologists speculate that the village at Sacred Ridge had some form of authority over other settlements in the Ridges Basin area, and that the massacre is part of an uprising following a time of severe food shortages due, in part, to a drier climate. The graphic torture and dismemberment may have been part of a demonstration used to intimidate other elements of the population.

This is one of those mysteries we will never be able to solve fully. History is full of them. Short of a time machine the only thing we will ever have regarding the fates of the people of Sacred Ridge are theories. The truly tragic thing about Sacred Ridge is that it didn’t even remain a site of human habitation. The entire ridge was abandoned by local peoples within about 15 years of the incident, based on tree ring dating from the area.

There is much dispute over whether the events at Sacred Ridge constitute a genocide, that being actions taken with the intent to wipe out a particular national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part, or it was merely a massacre directed at a people who were prosperous while others suffered. 

Anthropologist Debra Martin has even suggested that the attack at Sacred Ridge may have been in reprisal for dark and malevolent magics that were being practiced by some of the people in the region.Witch accusations and killings have long occurred in societies throughout the world, Martin says. Hopi, Zuni and other Pueblo groups have for centuries killed people regarded as malevolent sorcerers controlled by unseen, wicked forces. Children are viewed as particularly easy prey for evil spirits seeking bodies and souls to commandeer for nefarious purposes. Procedures for destroying witches include mutilating, cutting up and burning bodies so evil spirits have no human vessels to inhabit.

Much as with the war that was alleged to have taken place based on evidence left on skeletal remains at the grave site at Jebel Sahaba, we will never know the why of Sacred Ridge. Is it a genocide? Was it an attack on evil witches? Was it merely a massacre to get at food that starving people greatly needed?

I don’t know and that, quite frankly, is my very favorite sentence to say.

That’s it for this week folks. No new reviews, so let’s get right into the outro. Have a Day! w/ The History Wizard is brought to you by me, The History Wizard. If you want to see/hear more of me you can find me on Tiktok @thehistorywizard or on Instagram @the_history_wizard. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Have a Day! On your pod catcher of choice. The more you do, the more people will be able to listen and learn along with you. Thank you  for sticking around until the end and, as always, Have a Day.