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VOICE OF AMERICA VOA Home Special English Home Transcript Archive Subscribe to E-mail Select Language About VOA
What Is Special Featur
English Two Special Places in New Mexico Connect Indepe
How to Use Our With Native History and a F
Web Site Seen a
A visit to Bandelier National Monument and Taos Pueblo. Transcript of
Our Word Book Weapo
radio broadcast: Corrup
Radio Programs 22 October 2006
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MP3 Welcome to This is America in VOA Special English. I’
m Steve Childre
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Ember.
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Help From P
And I’m Barbara Klein. This week we visit two special places in the Pumpk
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Weekly TV Feed state of New Mexico. They are important in the history of the Seaso
Services Pueblo Indians of the Southwest United States. Two S
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VOICE ONE: Grame
English Learning Proves
Words and Are W
Their Stories In eighteen eighty, a scientist was traveling in the Southwest
Wordmaster United States. Adolph Bandelier was researching the history and Richar
social organization of the American Indians who had lived there for 1902-
Games With
Words centuries. a Thou
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When he was in northern New Mexico, men from the Cochiti Pueblo Immig
took him to a place where their ancestors had lived in Frijoles Put US
400 M
Canyon. Mister Bandelier saw the ruins of the ancient pueblo or
village and said, “
This is the grandest thing I ever saw.” 'Nine P
Desire
VOICE TWO: Brings
of Iraq
Today, many visitors to what is now known as Bandelier National Making
Monument feel the same way. They lift their eyes to the tall rock Trade
walls that rise hundreds of meters up from the floor of the valley.
They climb ladders to enter some of the caves that were homes
centuries ago. They walk along the Frijoles stream lined with green
trees that once was the only water supply for the valley. They
wonder at the beauty of the area and imagine what it felt like to
live there hundreds of years ago.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:
Bandelier National Monument is near the
city of Los Alamos and not far from Santa
Fe, the capital of New Mexico. It is on the
Pajarito Plateau. This was formed by two
explosions of the Jemez volcano more
than one million years ago. Ash up to
three hundred meters thick covered more
than six hundred square kilometers
around the volcano. Slowly the area
became what visitors see today –a dry Bandelier National
land of high flat mesa tops and deep Monument
canyons formed through thousands of
years by flowing rivers.

People moved into the American Southwest more than ten

thousand years ago as the last ice age was ending. These early
people hunted large animals for food. They did not build
permanent structures to live in because they followed the
movement of the animals.

Archeologists have found evidence of these early people in the

Bandelier area. The hunters left spear points shaped out of stone
that they used as weapons.

VOICE TWO:

The climate of the Southwest became drier and warmer. By seven

thousand years ago, many large animals no longer existed.
Instead, people hunted smaller animals and gathered wild plants
for food.

About two thousand five hundred years ago the first houses
appeared on the flat tops of mesas in what is now northern New
Mexico. They were pit houses dug partly underground. Soon after
that more permanent houses were built above ground. These early
homes were made of a mixture of wet dirt, wood and rocks. Small
family groups lived in these homes. They grew crops of corn,
beans and squash.

VOICE ONE:

More people moved into the Pajarito Plateau area about eight
hundred years ago. They began living together in larger groups.
Many people moved from the mesa tops to the bottom of Frijoles
Canyon. They built pueblos or villages, some of them large. They
had a good water supply in Frijoles Creek and fertile land for
growing crops.

The traditional stories of American Indians who now live in the

pueblos near Bandelier tell of links to the people who lived in
Frijoles Canyon long ago. Yet no written record of the area exists
until after the Spanish arrived in fifteen forty.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Now you are at the visitor center at Bandelier National Monument.

A long path follows along the floor of Frijoles Canyon through an
area of wildflowers and trees. From a distance you can see the tall
wall of the canyon ahead.

The path leads to the ruins of a large village, named Tyuonyi. It

had about four hundred small rooms built around a central open
plaza. About one hundred people lived in the pueblo. It is one of
several large pueblos whose ruins have been found in Bandelier
National Monument.

The people who lived here were ancestors of some of today’ s

Pueblo Indians. Archeologists think they spent much of their time
outside. They used the rooms for sleeping and keeping food.
Both men and women grew crops. The women ground corn for
bread, cooked and made pottery. The men built new rooms,
hunted animals for food, and wove cloth. Children played games
and took care of small animals.

VOICE ONE:

The path continues past the ruins of the old pueblo up toward the
reddish brown wall of Frijoles Canyon. There are many openings in
the rock wall. The canyon walls are made of a soft rock called
tuff. Tuff is made of ash from the explosions of the Jemez
volcano. After thousands of years the ash became a soft
rock. Through the years rain and wind made cracks and openings
in it. The ancestral Pueblo people used stone tools to widen the
small natural openings in the face of the canyon walls.

Visitors can climb up wood ladders to see the inside of several of

the cave homes. The ceilings are black from smoke. From a cave
room you can see far up and down the canyon and imagine what
life was like there seven hundred years ago. Farther up the path
are more cave homes with ruins of small stone rooms next to the
wall of the canyon. Along the walls and in the caves are designs or
symbols carved into the rock or painted on it.

VOICE TWO:

You can see many other ruins by following the more than one
hundred kilometers of trails in Bandelier. Archeologists know that
the ancestors of today’ s Pueblo Indians lived in the Frijoles Canyon
for more than four hundred years. They also know that by the
middle fifteen hundreds people left their villages and cave homes
and moved south and east toward the Rio Grande River. No one
is sure why. Modern Pueblo Indians say they feel a strong link to
the spirit of their ancestors in Bandelier National Monument.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Taos Pueblo is near the city of Taos. It is the farthest north of the
nineteen present-day Pueblos in New Mexico. It is very high up --
about two thousand two hundred meters.

Taos Pueblo is considered to be the oldest community in the

United States that has always had people living in it. The Tiwa
language spoken by the Taos Indians has never been written.
However, their spoken history tells of their ancestors living in the
area for about one thousand years.

VOICE TWO:
 The present Taos Pueblo buildings are made
of adobe, a mixture of wet dirt and straw.
They were finished almost six hundred years
ago. They have many rooms built on top of
each other. Centuries ago hundreds of
people lived there. Today only about one
hundred fifty people live in them all the
time. These Taos Indians live in the ancient
adobe rooms as their ancestors did
Taos Pueblo centuries ago -- without any running water
or electric power for lights.

Almost two thousand Taos Indians live nearby on land the tribe
owns. They live in modern houses with electricity and running
water. During the year they return to the Pueblo to take part in
the many ceremonies and dances that are held in the ancient
plazas.

VOICE ONE:

The Taos Pueblo you see today looks almost as it did to the
Spanish when they arrived almost five centuries ago. Many first
time visitors recognize it because artists have been painting the
beauty of Taos Pueblo for years.

Tall green mountains rise behind the Pueblo. Two large brown
adobe buildings containing many rooms are on the north and
south side of a stream. The water in the stream flows down from
Blue Mountain Lake, a sacred place for the Taos Indians. It
provides water for drinking and cooking for the people who live in
Taos Pueblo today, just as it has for centuries.

VOICE TWO:

Much of Taos Pueblo is not open to visitors. Taos Indians keep

their history and ceremonies secret. They expect people to honor
their privacy and their traditions. But visitors are welcome in small
stores that are around the large open plaza areas. You can buy
bread baked outside in traditional circular ovens. And you can buy
jewelry, drums made of leather, and wood carvings made by
members of the tribe.

The United Nations has named Taos Pueblo a World Heritage Site,
one of the most important historical and cultural places in the
world. For the Taos Indians, it will always be the center of their
cultural and spiritual world.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Our program was written by Marilyn Christiano and produced by

Caty Weaver. You can read transcripts of our programs and
download audio at [Link]. I’m Steve Ember.

VOICE TWO:

And I’
m Barbara Klein. Join us again next week for THIS IS
AMERICA in VOA Special English.

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