NATIVE AMERICAN METEOROLOGY - CLOUDS AND RAIN:

Mortendad ruin cavates,

Pajarito plateau, NM. 2003.

Back in 2003, friends Bill and Jeanne Gibson guided us into Mortandad Canyon near Los Alamos on the Pajarito plateau, in New Mexico. Our goal was a large pueblo ruin that they call Mortandad Ruin, and the considerable rock art to be found there. The Mortandad ruin is a cavate ruin with the remains of rooms that had been carved into the soft volcanic tuff cliff. Many of these rooms had been subsequently plastered with adobe mud and decorated with pictographs.

View from cliff top, Mortendad ruin,

Pajarito plateau, NM. 2003.

We had clambered up to near the top of the cliff finding and photographing petroglyphs and I had worked my way out near the point when I looked out upon a spectacularly beautiful view of the valley below with an oncoming storm approaching from across the valley. I found myself thinking that it was an ideal spot from which to view approaching weather. Turning back to retrace my steps I found myself looking directly at the cloud altar petroglyph (illustrated). The round circle next to the cloud altar appears to be a case of defacement with a steel chisel, perhaps in an attempt to remove and collect whatever image had originally been there.

Cloud petroglyph (next to vandalism),

Mortendad ruin, Pajarito plateau, NM. 2003.

I realized that I had stumbled upon a perfect weather watching station. With its view toward the prevailing weather direction and marked by the cloud petroglyph, this seems to me to make perfect sense and could be expected from a culture that subsisted on precipitation-dependant agriculture. Indeed, weather themes are common in Ancestral Puebloan rock art of the Rio Grande area. Two examples from the Galisteo Dike in the Galisteo basin south of Santa Fe are included. With little or no irrigation for most of their agricultural Ancestral Puebloan farmers depended to a great degree on precipitation for the water to raise their crops. Much of their religion and ceremonial life was devoted to encouraging the spirit world to send the water they needed.

Cloud and rain petroglyph,

Galisteo dike, NM.

Cloud and rain petroglyph,

Galisteo dike, NM.

I can easily imagine that if I depended upon precipitation to provide the food I and my family need, I would want to know of approaching rain so I could enact the rites to bring it to my fields. And if I lived in that pueblo in Mortendad canyon, I cannot imagine a better place to watch for the approaching rain than this point of land near the top of the cliff. I cannot know if that cloud petroglyph was part of those rites, or was just put there to mark the station, or just because clouds were on someone’s mind at that location. Its position there facing the valley and the prevailing weather seems significant however, and I privately am sure of the connection.