chapter 3 heritage themes and related resources DEVELOPMENT OF THE events, notes about the current HERITAGE THEMES diversity of cultures found in the watershed, and lists of activities related The seven heritage themes in this to outdoor recreation or local festivals. chapter emerged directly from public Continuing in their small groups, input. During Meeting Two of the participants reviewed all of the items series of four Working Group meetings placed on the maps and devised described in Chapter 1, participants between four and six themes that were divided into small groups and would capture all of the items. Each given large maps of the Little Colorado small group then reported its themes to watershed. They were then asked a the whole group. The whole group then series of four questions designed to worked all of themes suggested by each elicit responses that would describe the smaller group into one set of between heritage of the region. four and six themes. This process took place at five meetings in five different If you had a two-week dream locations across the watershed and vacation in the Little Colorado resulted in a total of 25 heritage themes River watershed, where would you being suggested. Many of the themes go? from a Working Group in one meeting If you had to describe this area to location were virtually the same as someone who had never been here, themes suggested by one or more what would you say? Working Groups in other meeting When friends or family come to locations, thus giving evidence that visit, where do you take them? particular themes indeed identified If “something” were to leave this prevalent, consistent, and over-arching area forever, what would you miss characteristics of the region. The most? Heritage Programs Coordinator reviewed all 25 suggestions and found Participants drew or wrote their seven common themes that united the responses on the maps. In most cases, most frequently suggested themes by the maps were completely covered the Working Groups. Those seven with sites, references to historical unifying themes became the seven Draft: 8 April 2008 Chapter 3: Heritage Themes and Related Resources Page 39 heritage themes described in this were written on large pieces of paper chapter: and participants wrote down the name of the resource (a site, event, Sacred and Enchanted Landscapes organization, business, etc.) and its Trails, Roads, and Rails of the West general location on the paper of the Native Nations particular theme the resource fit. Living from the Land Participants were asked to identify Archaeology resources that related to tourism as Expressions of Art and Life well as those that served local Outdoor Recreation communities, although often a single resource fulfilled both functions. After establishing the seven heritage Often, too, a single resource reflected themes, the next round of Working more than one theme. The related Group meetings focused on identifying resources sections that appear in each resources within the watershed that heritage theme chapter are a direct reflected, interpreted, or embodied one result of data generated during these or more themes. The seven themes Working Group meetings. Draft: 8 April 2008 Chapter 3: Heritage Themes and Related Resources [Theme 1: Sacred and Enchanted Lancscapes] Page 40 Theme 1 Sacred and Enchanted Landscapes “The valley is vast. When you look out over it, it does not occur to you that there is an end to it. You see the monoliths that stand away in space, and you imagine that you have come upon eternity. They do not appear to exist in time. You think: I see that time comes to an end on this side of the rock, and on the other side there is nothing forever.” —The Names, N. Scott Momaday SUMMARY OF THEME or carefully marked by shrines, prayer feathers, petroglyphs, corn pollen, and The Little Colorado River Valley is a story. A Hopi farmer looks toward a landscape of mesmerizing colors, particular mesa on the horizon and astounding views, deceiving distances, tracks the sun’s position through the immense quiet, and ancient, year; a Zuni man follows an old trail to remembered places. For a very long a revered place beside the river; time, people’s lives have been Apache school children take a field trip intricately linked to this land, with into the mountains and learn plants meaning attached to nearly everything along the way; a Navajo grandmother gathers fragrant sprigs of a shrub she’ll use for medicine. The 26,000-square-mile watershed of the Little Colorado extends from the Continental Divide in New Mexico, south to the Mogollon Rim and White Mountains of Arizona, west to the San Francisco Peaks, and north to Black Mesa on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. It’s big country, 16.5 million acres, with unending vistas across empty grasslands, broken badlands, undulating volcanic fields, and hidden canyons. The Little Colorado River begins its winding journey to the north- Travelers speeding by on the west after starting as a mountain spring high in the White Moun- interstate might not notice tains. The higher land on the left side of the picture is the result of lava that bubbled up from a shield volcano and spread across the much of interest. The land slowly. (Photo credit: Adriel Heisey) enchantment comes with a detour off the main road, in it and everything it produces— permitting more time for a closer look sacred mountains, springs, streams, at the subtleties. It grows with a walk rocks, plants, animals—each honored down into painted hills littered with Draft: 8 April 2008 Chapter 3: Heritage Themes and Related Resources [Theme 1: Sacred and Enchanted Lancscapes] Page 41 gleaming chips of petrified wood, on a to the Equator then, and the hike up a trail into the mountain environment was humid to subtropical. headwaters of the Little Colorado, or at a roadside pullout where a flashflood The defining formation of the Little steamrolls down a normally dry wash. Colorado Basin, known best in the Then that sense of endless time and Painted Desert and Petrified Forest silence seeps in, working magic and National Park, is the Chinle. The instilling appreciation of why this Chinle’s multicolored pastel layers— landscape is viewed as enchanted and red, purple, blue, green, gray, white— sacred. consist of clays, mudstones, and sandstones deposited by streams that flowed slowly across a low basin about DESCRIPTION OF THEME 225 million years ago, in late Triassic times. The Chinle also contains Geology significant amounts of ash blown in from surrounding volcanoes. The ash The Little Colorado Basin occupies the weathered to bentonite clay that swells southeast section of the Colorado and shrinks with wetting and drying, Plateau, a major physiographic giving the formation the common name province and geologist’s paradise. Like “badlands.” The Chinle reaches the larger plateau of which it is part, greatest expression near the border of the predominant rocks of the Little Arizona and New Mexico, where it is Colorado Basin are sedimentary and nearly 2,000 feet thick. The soft clays volcanic in origin, recording more than erode rapidly, at the rate of one to two 200 million years of geologic time. feet a century. The weathering and Underlaying most of the basin are the erosion reveal animal and plant fossils same sedimentary layers as those that that have made the Chinle famous occur in the upper portion of Grand among paleontologists for well over a Canyon. Two of those layers, the century. Kaibab Limestone and Coconino Sandstone, crop out in a few places. About 200 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic and beginning of the Mostly exposed on the surface are Jurassic, uplifted land held sand progressively younger, mostly waiting to be picked up and carried by horizontal, sedimentary layers that the wind to accumulate as the Wingate make up the Plateau’s classic Mesozoic Sandstone. To the south, the Wingate sequence: the Moenkopi, Chinle, grades into the Moenave Formation, Wingate and Moenave, Kayenta, laid down partly as windborne dunes, Navajo and Gallup sandstones, and but also in ephemeral lakes and local Dakota and Mesa Verde Formations. rivers. Atop these rest the Kayenta Formation, river-laid silts and The brick-red Moenkopi Formation is sandstones interspersed with purplish composed largely of siltstones and fine- beds of shale. The Navajo Sandstone, grained sandstones veined with one of the plateau’s outstanding rock gypsum. The sediments were deposited layers, started as dunes in a paleo- by a northwest-heading river flowing desert as large as today’s Sahara. The across a coastal plain 250 to 228 million nearly pure quartz sand grains were years ago, the early Triassic Period of compressed into rock that forms steep, the Mesozoic. This part of the sculpted cliffs and rounded domes. American Southwest was much closer Moving eastward into New Mexico, the Draft: 8 April 2008 Chapter 3: Heritage Themes and Related Resources [Theme 1: Sacred and Enchanted Lancscapes] Page 42 Zuni and Gallup Sandstones form movement along faults, and formation similar cliffs, overlain by Cretaceous- of large-scale folds such as the East Period Dakota and Mesa Verde Kaibab Monocline, shape the modern Formations. course of the Little Colorado River. Thus the fundamental geologic In the ensuing Cenozoic Era (65 million processes of deposition, uplift, and years ago-present), riotous volcanic erosion have occurred, and are still activity spewed voluminous quantities occurring, throughout the Little of lava, cinders, and ash across the Colorado Basin. Erosion is an land. Thick caps of resistant basalt especially visible, and exceedingly cover many mesas; hundreds of cinder rapid, process in rocks such as the cones and associated lava flows Chinle Formation, and accounts for the punctuate the landscape.