Prickly Pear Cactus Cookies & Chaco Culture NHP (Day 10)

The journey to Day 10’s Prickly Pear Cactus Cookies and Chaco Culture National Historical Park (and Unesco World Heritage site) in rural northwestern New Mexico is definitely a bumpy one…and slightly prickly.

Chaco Canyon in Chaco Culture NHP sits in New Mexico’s northwestern corner. In 2018, we were on a massive road trip from Wyoming through the Four Corner states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. From the looks of the map, driving to Chaco Canyon seemed like a breeze. By the time we turned off US 550, 52 miles south of Farmington, New Mexico, I figured what’s another 21 miles to Chaco Canyon going to matter. We’ll just zip down there, spend a few hours, and continue on our merry way.

Let me preface this by saying…we had been wagon-training for eight days at this point in the trip, with two vehicles, two slobbery dogs and a fat rabbit in summertime 100-degree plus temperatures.

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Prior to Chaco Canyon, I’d already managed to drag the Minions and Mom to 12 NPS sites in this southwestern region, including Monument Valley. We’d visited multiple Ancestral Puebloan locations, both up close and at a distance. This crew wasn’t sure they’d see anything at Chaco Canyon that was different from the rest of the trip. But they begrudgingly agreed.

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The road to Chaco Canyon is technically only 21 miles off of US 550. For the first eight miles, it’s unmarked pavement. Smooth sailing to drive on. Then the dirt road starts. All 13 miles of it…pretty much like this:

By the time we bounced our way over the NPS boundary, the road became miraculously maintained. Paved and peaceful. This didn’t necessarily soothe the prickly spirits of my traveling crew…particularly Son A who felt his Nissan Altima just left a trail of car parts on the road behind him. (Chaco Culture NHP highly recommends inquiring about road conditions before driving there.)

Chaco Canyon and the Ancestral Puebloan ruins, however, were well-worth the jostling, cussing, and car-filled chaos. The ruins’ large scale is impressive beyond belief.

No one is exactly sure why Chaco Canyon was chosen as a cultural community center for the Ancestral Puebloans, starting around 850 A.D. Based on the architecture here, archeologists believe the great houses and kivas served many roles: ceremonial, administrative, trading, storage, communication networks, astronomical and burying honored dead. These structures served as a central hub for as many as 150 other great houses in the surrounding regions, possibly including Mesa Verde. One of these Chacoan great houses was Pueblo Bonito.

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From about 850 A.D. to 1150 A.D., this enormous ancient public building contained more than 600 rooms stacked in levels as high as four to five-stories. The D-shaped complex stretched over 3 acres. Researchers believe Pueblo Bonito’s year-round population was only between 50 and 100 people. These estimates are based on the actual living spaces with fire pits found in the ruins. Since the Chacoan people were early dry land or flooding-based farmers, researchers also base population predictions on the amount of nearby cultivable land.

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Seeing these crumbled ruins standing as tall as four or five-stories high would have been impressive. To achieve these heights, Ancestral Puebloan builders used a series of primary log beams, covered with secondary beams and mud-based mortar for roofs and floors. It’s believed about 225,000 trees were used in Chaco Canyon’s overall construction. Builders went as far away as 40 to 60 miles to bring timbers back.

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In addition to the wall and floor structures, Chacoan builders were creative with their doorway designs. Corner doorways are unique, and only seven exist at Pueblo Bonito. The southeast facing corner door below is thought to be an astronomical marker for the winter solstice. Researchers think this variety is symbolic instead of functional.

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Pueblo Bonito once held two great interior plazas. These spaces were used for ceremonies, community gatherings, meeting places for daily activities, and trading with people from as far away as current day Mexico.

Another impressive, and easy to fall into feature here are the great kivas. Four of these subterranean structures were in Pueblo Bonito’s plazas. These ancient ceremonial places could hold hundreds of people. All great kivas had similar design features. Four pits held upright wooden posts or masonry pillars to support the beams for a curved, cribbed roof. A raised fire box and light deflector provided light, in addition to an opening in the roof for smoke to vent out. Benches lined the circular walls for seating. Wall niches housed ceremonial offerings. An entryway and antechamber connected the plaza level with the kiva below. The reconstructed great kiva at Aztec Ruins is a wonderful visual of this.

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Like the great kivas in Pueblo Bonito’s plazas, Casa Rinconada sits across the valley, a half-mile away. It’s location indicates it was centrally located within the greater Chaco Valley community, home to between 2,000 and 6,000 people year-round. Casa Rinconada is the largest excavated great kiva (64-feet diameter) at Chaco Culture NHP; and is the third-largest great kiva in the whole ancient Chacoan world.

Built after Pueblo Bonito’s great kivas, Casa Rinconada was occupied by ancient peoples between 1075 and 1250 A.D. Worshippers entered in through the t-shaped doorways. These entryways were aligned on a north-south axis, within a degree of true north, and possibly another example of an astronomical solstice marker. It’s one of the total 22 great kivas in Chaco Canyon.

With the same structural elements as other great kivas, Casa Rinconada is unique for its spiraled stone slab pathway and subterranean entry. This lower level door sits below the north entryway. It’s believed this participants used this to enter and exit at various times during ceremonies.

Archeologist and researchers are unsure why the Chacoan people abandoned this region after about 1150 A.D. It could’ve been the changing climate or peoples migrating to other sustainable, cosmopolitan ancient areas. No one knows for sure why. But many modern-day Puebloan tribes, such as the Southern Ute, Pueblo of Isleta, and Navajo Nation, consider Chaco Canyon part of their cultural and spiritual history.

Choosing Chaco Culture NHP as a Christmas cookie road trip stop involves many culinary liberties. Ancient Puebloan diets didn’t include the gluten, wheat-flour filled goodies I enjoy cranking out. (Although, ground maize (corn) and grasses was a staple of their diet and used to make bread, cakes and cereals.) A regular food item for ancestral southwestern peoples, and folks today, is the Prickly Pear Cactus.

Folks have been chomping down on this cantankerous cacti for centuries. The obvious green paddles are actually modified leaves and stems. Called nopalitos (nopales is Spanish for “cactus stem“), these fleshy parts are a fiber-filled vegetable often boiled or grilled.

The other edible is the bright red or purple fruit called “tuna” or pears. The fleshy fruits are loaded with protein, Vitamin C, potassium, and calcium. And seeds. And small microscopic needles called glochids. Oh those glochids! Visitors to the desert southwest can find Prickly Pear candy, jelly, jam, and even margaritas!

Today’s cookie is the Prickly Pear Cactus Cookie. It features prickly pear fruit and its pressed juice, both of which have a slightly sweet, mostly tart taste. The flesh of this funky fruit is similar to kiwi in taste and texture. Tracking down Prickly Pear juice is pretty easy. There are many small businesses on Etsy who harvest, press and sell the purplish-colored juice. The Pricky Pear fruit can also be purchased online, but that’s not where I found mine…that’s a story in and of its own.

There’s a cool supermarket down the road from our house that features foods from Latin America, Mexico and other hispanic countries. I’ve seen fresh nopales there, and thought they’ll probably have Prickly Pear fruit. At a minimum, a canned or candied version. No problem. Nope!

With juice in hand and no fruit, I remembered there was an enormous Prickly Pear cactus on the outskirts of our neighborhood. It sat off by itself near a busy road, and not on anyone’s particular property. It’s currently loaded with purple fruits the size of Roma tomatoes, so I stopped. Like a marauding, deranged squirrel, I dashed out of my car to scrounge a couple handfuls of this exotic edible. In my pitiful, desperate attempt to pillage Prickly Pears, I managed to fill my paws full of microscopic needles. I’m still plucking them out, several days later. Oy vey! The lengths I go to bake. LOL!

By all means, please do not pillage and plunder your neighbor’s cactus bushes (unless you ask them really nice and they say yes). I am not condoning my wanton behavior at all. But if you happen to come across some purplish pears, try these funky-flavored, ancestry-inspired cookies at least once!

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To use, Prickly Pear fruit must be peeled, seeded, and diced. It will stain your hands and clothes, so plan accordingly. In addition to the chopped up cactus fruit, I add roughly-chopped dried cherries and sunflower seeds. The final cookie is moist and soft, with a cake-like texture. It’s simply sweetened, with occasional bursts of dried cherry, tart Prickly Pear chunks, and crunchy sunflower seeds. Let’s just say, I’ll reserve this cookie for extreme, very special occasions…when I’m not pulling cactus needles out of my hands with tweezers!

Our next-to-last-day of Christmas Cookies leads us north to Big Sky country and the plight of the Nee-Me-Poo people. See you there!

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References:

• Casa Rinconada Trail Guide: Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Western National Parks Association Publication (2017).
• Pueblo Bonito: Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Western National Parks Association Publication (2017).
• History & Culture–Chaco Culture National Historical Park website: https://www.nps.gov/chcu/learn/historyculture/index.htm
• Science of the American Southwest–Ancestral Puebloan website: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/swscience/ancestral-puebloan.htm