Besh Ba Gowah

 

Being a limited walker has given me excuse to go to places that I would have otherwise missed. Besh Ba Gowah was suggested to me by a Tuscon friend. And I am glad I went out of my way to visit.

The Besh Ba Gowah park and museum are fully wheelchair accessible. Lots of places to sit. The entire site can be walked in an hour, but it can be savored for days.

The town of Globe, Arizona is a small desert town. A center for mining and agriculture in the surrounding area. And it is the home of this 200-room, prehistoric Salado masonry pueblo. There are so many levels to enjoy this site. Archaeology, 20^th century history, architecture, and the native plants in their garden.

We do not know what the original name was. It is known today as Besh Ba Gowah. The term was originally given by the Apaches to the early settlement of Globe in the late 1800s. Roughly translated, the term means “place of metal” referring to the huge copper mine.

This archaeological site was at times curated by archaeologist that knew their stuff. Other times it was left open to the depredations of time and ignorance. Much of the finds here have been preserved and saved for us to experience.

Every novel you have read about archeologists in the Southwest could have been written here. Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier did the first mapping in 1883. In the 1930s Irene Vickrey started archaeological excavation under the auspices of the WPA. She was the moving force behind preservation of the site until her untimely death in 1941. The site was again left to time, vandals, and other destructive forces until 1980 Louie Aguirre when used his place on the city council to rescue and preserve the site as we see it now. A section of undisturbed area has been left for future research.

The notations around the place range from scholarly to fanciful ideas on what the inhabitants may have been. This reflects how archeology developed as a science. The first archeologists were treasure hunters, looking for things to bring  home. In the 30's we began to study how and why they did things. But there was a tendency to anthropomorphize, to attribute the things they found to reflect contemporary ideas and lifestyles.

At Besh Ba Gowah we start to see  signs about “Mystery” or “We don’t know.” Because there are some things we don’t understand. At other sites I wince when I see a sign that says “Discovered by” or “First seen by.” I am willing to bet that everyone that already lived in the area knew about them. I would prefer the wording “The first European to see these.”

There is a video at https://www.discovergilacounty.com/post/besh-ba-gowah-history-in-historic-globe-az I find this video a bit tiresome as the costuming on the individuals filmed are full of anachronisms, modern materials, clothing styles from other peoples. But it does have some good points.

The phrase “restoration and stabilization” is an important one. It means that the structure has been partially rebuilt, using the materials to reproduce a bit of what was here. They do not claim to be perfect, but it is as close to the original as they could do it.

If you use your imagination to build up the walls here, to make the space entirely enclosed, you will get a bit of the feel of what life here felt like. Feel yourself on your knees on a roof top grinding corn. Feel yourself standing on the open desert, a long way to anywhere.

The entryway was a long, straight, completely covered walk. The first section was rebuilt, but this walk you see in front of you was covered all the way down to the end. Was it for security, or did it serve as a time to reenter the village spiritually as well as physically? Or did it evolve as each succeeding generation added a bit to the structure? Perhaps it was one way to keep the animals (like snakes) out of the living space.

The rooms were for the most part small. Entry was from doorways that would have been short even for the people that lived in that time. 

 Some entries were crawl spaces. These spaces are declared as living space for a single family.

There are a few large rooms, designated by the “experts” as ceremonial. I wonder if these experts ever lived in a house full with kids and elders. Any large room is where folk were going to hang out. Occasionally mom or the mayor will order everyone out for some big ceremony or party, but then it goes back to where the kids hang, the elders sit around, and everyone else comes in when they can.

Of note however, is that because of good archaeology, they were able to find that certain rooms, and certain areas were used for specific crafts. Scraps of fabric, chips of turquoise or shell, broken pots and dried slip each told of a certain craft done especially in that spot. Compare this with the idea that the other rooms were for individual families. That makes a great of presumption that these people lived with a standard nuclear family structure.

The museum here is small, but the collection is amazing. This site contained some of the finest example of the craft of the Salado people. There are outstanding examples of polychrome pottery. But for me the fact that there are shreds of cotton and yucca weaving is just short of miraculous.

Walk among the ruins. Feel the security provided by thick walls,

and the cool shelter from the unrelenting sun, or a copper bell from the Aztec. Here was a center of trading. You could hold shells of an ocean that you would never see. 

What does it mean to be a village in the desert? Here is a place where water is nearby. There are fields of food growing here. Game roamed. There were people. To eat meals with, to play games with. Religion and education to guide your thoughts. Elders for stories, and children for future.

Sometime around 1400 everything changed. There is strong thought that a decades long drought changed everything. Friends were now competitors for scare water. Did this underlie what appeared to be a growing discord between the peoples living in this area? Or did this settlement become unfashionable, degrading into the bad neighborhood nobody wanted to live in?