Blackwater Draw in Portales NM
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I wrote about the Llano
Estacado, the Bosque Redondo, and the Pecos areas in two of my novels (The
Apprenticeship of Nigel Blackthorn & A Message to Santa Fe). In a recent
visit to the area, I found Ft. Sumner (what there was of it) closed and the
Billy the Kid museum a disappointment. The unexpected highlight of my 2-day visit
to Portales was the Blackwater Draw National Historic Landmark and, a few miles
north of Portales, the Blackwater Draw Museum.
The
area near here approaching the Llano Estacado’s western edge lacks the
traditional cap-rock walls. The Llano’s edge has shifted and crumbled, leaving several
cap-rock mesas along the plateau’s edge. (Pic above.) Driving east toward
Clovis, NM, along US-60, there is little noticeable change in elevation until
Melrose, where it becomes clear you crossed a ridge onto the Llano. Clovis, NM,
the nearby “big city” had its name applied to the discovery of a Paleo-Indian
hunting ground from 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
The Clovis People
The importance of the
Clovis people is their campsites’ left archaeological evidence of Paleo-Indian
communities long before “conventional wisdom” believed ancestral people existed
in the Western Hemisphere. The Clovis People were small, 5-feet-5 or less, weighing as
much as 150 pounds, based on skeletal remains. A distinctive feature of the
Clovis People was a 5- to 8-inch chert, or flint, spear-point used for hunting
the extinct Columbian Mammoth, Giant Buffalo, and Giant Sloths.
An ancient riverbed, Blackwater
Draw contains the fossils of thousand of extinct animals from the Paleo-age
buried with various designs of Clovis points used to kill these giant species. The
Clovis People were nomads and hunter-gathers. Archaeological evidence showed
similar Paleo-Indian communities existed across North and Central America. All
these communities adopted the Clovis spear-point design to hunt the giant
animals of their period.
The Clovis Point.
The Clovis Point design
is unique to the western hemisphere. All the points at the Museum are copyright
protected, so I offer a drawing representative of an 8-inch Clovis Spear Point.
They made a spear-point by knapping flint, or chert, to the desired shape. The
top edges are serrated to improve it cutting or piercing ability. The butt-end
is fluted to allow it to fit on a wood shaft. The edges around the butt are not
serrated to prevent cutting the leather-thongs used to tie the two together.
The Museum collection showed points ranging from 4-inches to over 10-inches. The Museum, several miles north of Portales on US 70, is well-worth the visit.
The Columbian Mammoth’s 13-foot
height compares today’s African elephant. The Mammoth had shorter legs and a
heavier body, weighing 10 tons compared to the African’s weight of 5-7 tons. The
Museum shows drawings of a gang of hunters standing close to jab spears in the
underbelly of the taller mammoth. The Historic Landmark area teaches visitors
how to use an atlatl to throw a spear. None of the fiber products (spear shafts
or throwing devices) survived the thousands of centuries since the Clovis
People used them. Only the stone tools of the Clovis People survived. There is
no way to know their hunting methods.
The Clovis people were
nomads. They roamed freely, but in the search of food, not sightseeing. They
traded with other communities, because we have evidence about where the flint,
or chert, came from. The evidence shows they traded flint and knapping skills
between communities.
Over a period of 50-100
years, the use of Clovis points spread across North America. Trade and sharing
among the communities explains the wide spread use of the Clovis design.
DNA
DNA material collected
from a burial site indicates 80% of native people in the Western Hemisphere are
direct descendants of Clovis People -- that is today's Native Americans. The DNA indicates the Clovis People were
descendants of people indigenous to Northwest Asia. Some believe this
indicates they crossed the “land bridge” between the Alaskan-Russian straits to
populate the Western Hemisphere. The confounded element is historians didn’t
believe the “land bridge” existed in those days—so much for experts. ;-)
Archaeologists debated
for years if the Clovis people were the “first” people in the Western
Hemisphere, but Carbon Dating evidence from South America indicates
Paleo-Indian communities in the south may be 2,000+ years older than in the
north. Which raises the Question:
How did they arrive in
South America? By canoe from the Pacific Islands?
Ah, the topic for
another Post.
You may ask what does
this story of the “First People” have to do with “the Old West”?
This post answers
Custer’s Question: Where did all those
Indians come from?
Thanks for reading my
Blog, Traveling the West.
Frank Kelso
PS: If you like reading
Traveling the West, you can log on at: http://bit.ly/ThePosseWEB
I’ll give you a copy of my latest book
if you join.
