This is Holy Ground

by Norm Vance

Imagine a time deep in history. The date could be 10,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand years. Imagine you are a prehistoric woman. You and your sister gather fruit and plants and your husband and brother-in-law are hunters. Your clan is composed of extended members of your mother's family. Your tribe roams a vast homeland within which other small tribes move about in patterns based on weather, food gathering and hunting factors.

Last year and the year before hunting was difficult in your traditional area. This year the decision is made by clan elders to look for new hunting grounds. As you roam away from familiar country into the unknown, a scout finds a wide valley with a strong running river. The hunting chiefs know hunting is good near water ways, so the clan turns and walks up river. The game signs are good, but days old. It is spring and the warmth has driven the game up river to higher feeding range.

Day after day you walk as the signs get better. The flat topped mountains of your old territory are familiar so there is great excitement when rugged snow capped mountains appear in view.

One afternoon you and the other women and children are gathering grain from early grass, moving a little further up river from last night’s camp. You walk around a bend in the river and suddenly you are stunned. Your breathing becomes strained as feelings of both fear and awe tingle in your body. In the distance is something completely alien to the concepts of your clan and tribe and its history. The earth is breathing clouds!

It may be an apparition - a vision!! Whatever it is - it's important! Soon the entire clan is present. There is silence and then great discussion among the elders. Soon a decision is made to go closer. A committee is formed and you are selected as a member. You step carefully and slowly eyeing the others nervously. Your feet and eyes detect the earth here is white and soft. Soon the committee is standing looking at a specter - a gleaming silver surfaced pool of boiling water with cloud like mist rising into the sky. You are the first human beings to see The Great Pagosa Hot Springs.

Certainly it is impossible to know who the first people to visit The Great Pagosa were. This is a guess based on the basic factors known. It is likely the first people were awe struck and the hot spring immediately inspired religious feelings of the highest order.

It is likely that news of the spring spread far and wide in the light population of the southwest. As centuries passed trails to it became well worn as tribe after tribe made pilgrimages.

As time passed, newer cultures developed from old and about two thousand years ago the people we know as the Anasazi lived in a huge area with Pagosa Springs on its far northeastern border. We know more about the Anasazi than earlier tribes but we can guess basic religious and cultural traits of the Anasazi began in much earlier times. For most tribes religious life was based on beliefs deeply entrenched in the nature of the environment. Concepts extended spiritual life to earth, sky and all there in. A common belief was that spiritual beings lived on spheres of existence under the earth’s surface.

By the time the Anasazi developed the concept of spiritual life existing inside the earth was wide spread. The belief was that there were several layers or spheres, one in side the other and spiritual beings existed on these various layers. The Anasazi believed their ancestors climbed four giant trees from the underworld and emerged on the surface the earth. Most kivas, the ceremonial chambers of the Anasazi, have small “sipipu” (see pah pu) holes dug into the ground to symbolize this emergence. Certainly the hot spring boiling from the ground became a holy place of the highest order.

The social and cultural order of the Anasazi also developed a high state. As with many pre Columbian Indian tribes the Anasazi were woman focused and centered. This is why the story above was from a woman’s perspective.

A female being sometimes referred to as "Com Mother" was their creator and God. All property was owned by women and family lineage was traced through the female side. The grandmothers usually had the last word in all debates and many legends had themes of the men causing problems with the Gods via gambling or other men’s activity and the women had to step in and correct the situation. We would have every reason to suppose the spring was held as a high female spiritual entity for the Anasazi.

We know The Great Pagosa was of high importance to the Taos Tribe. Some of the Taos tribe are evidently direct ancestors of the Anasazi who lived in the Pagosa and Chimney Rock area. Legends of the spring and the spires of Chimney Rock, twenty miles west of Pagosa exist in the Taos traditions. In the late 1200's a climatic catastrophe in the form of a prolonged drought caused the Anasazi to move to more southerly areas, but we know through the Taonians that the importance of the spring was upheld.

It should be noted that several hundred years after the Anasazi moved south to become the Pueblo tribe they were invaded by Spanish explorers and missionaries. These adventurers advanced up the Rio Grande in a zealous hunt for gold to plunder and souls to save. They found no gold, but thoroughly decimated the society, culture and religious beliefs of the Pueblo. The fact that the great spring was remembered in the Taos Pueblo "oral traditions" (spoken history) throughout these centuries and upheavals is testimony to the importance they held for the it. In the 1980’s a National Geographic Magazine writer traveled here with a Taos elder he was interviewing. When they walked to the spring the elder fell to his knees touched the minerals and said he “felt he had come home.”

In time the San Juan was repopulated with Apache, Navajo and Ute. These tribes also held the Great Pagosa Hot Spring in high reverence.

It was noted by early Europeans that tribes otherwise in discord would co-exist peacefully when camping near the spring. When the famous Ute - Navajo dual was fought for possession of the spring all concerned went four miles west and completely out of sight of the spring to do battle. When Welch Nossaman built the first cabin near the spring, the Utes did order him to "vamoose" and they did burn the cabin, but they did no harm to Welch

In the early days of European settlement around the spring the Utes put a curse on white man’s use of the waters. In 1989 the new owners of The Springs Resort asked for a delegation from the Ute Tribe to come to Pagosa. They held a private ceremony at the spring, chanted, used holy feathers and removed the curse. This was an affirmation of the holiness of the spring.

It would seem the spring has long been holy ground and a place of peace. How many prayers and rituals, dances and chants, languages and meanings have been spoken or acted out here? How can we count or measure the religious experience that transpired here? We can never know but for many thousands of years this was truly holy ground.