The story of the Mesa Verde really had its beginning many thousands of years ago in a distant land. It began when the first ancient Asiatic stepped across from Siberia and became the First American. Who he was and exactly when it happened we shall never know, but it was the important first step in a long chain of events which led to the occupation of the Mesa Verde by Pueblo Indians.

There seems to be little doubt that the early inhabitants of North and South America came from Asia by that northern route. It is the only route by which men, traveling without artificial means of transportation, could have reached these western continents. Not a single insurmountable barrier, not a single impossibility lay in the path of those ancient men as they drifted with the line of least resistance. From the northwest, America was discovered and populated.

Men first came into being somewhere in the Old World. From this point of beginning they spread slowly over the face of the earth. In all directions the ancient men traveled, always on foot, always without a goal. After a time Europe, Africa and Asia were populated, but the Americas remained without men. Surrounded by vast areas of water, except at one point, the Americas were the last great land bodies to be discovered.

Finally, the day of discovery arrived. For countless centuries groups of men had been drifting over the great continent of Asia. Farther and farther they traveled until at last a group, perhaps forced on by stronger groups behind, stood on the utmost tip of northeastern Asia, the tip of Siberia now known as the East Cape.

Standing on the ocean shore those men shaded their eyes and looked out across the water. There, only fifty-six miles away, lay another land. Curiosity, or perhaps the force of “enemy pressure”, urged them on. A means of crossing those fifty-six tantalizing miles was found. At last the first human foot touched American soil.
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At first glance it may seem that the crossing would be impossible for men who were without boats. Such was not the case. In winter the Bering Sea often freezes over completely. Present-day Eskimos cross on the ice and only a few years ago a white man made the crossing with a dog team. Thus, primitive man needed only the winter ice in order to satisfy his curiosity about the land across the water. The journey was made even less hazardous by two islands, the Diomedes, that raised their heads in the center of the Bering Sea, cutting the crossing into two shorter jumps.

It is even possible that when those men reached that tip of Asia no water separated them from America. A strip of land may have connected the two continents. It is known very definitely that at some not far distant date the two continents were connected by land, for some of our well-known animals have crossed from one to the other. The horse and the camel developed in America and walked off to Asia. The mammoth and the bison reversed the direction and crossed from Asia to America. In order for those beasts to make the crossing, a land bridge was necessary.

When the land bridge disappeared is not known. When the first men came is not known. Certain it is, however, that if the land bridge was in existence when the first men came to America, it afforded them an easy approach. If, on the other hand, it had disappeared beneath the waves of the Bering Sea, the men must have crossed on the ice. No one can as yet be positive as to the exact manner of the crossing. The important point is that the crossing was made and America was discovered and populated. Primitive man, after hundreds of thousands of years of wandering over the Old World, had at last found the one point at which he could enter a new land.

That this new land was superior to the old soon became apparent to the newcomers. Summers were longer: winters were less severe. Hunting and fishing were excellent and in the summer edible plants were common. Truly, here was a better land.

The first crossing from Asia to America was made many thousands of years ago. From the evidence now at hand, fifteen or twenty thousand years seems to be not too great an antiquity for those first Americans. Even at that early date, however, man was well-developed mentally and physically and had all the 143 capabilities of modern man. The first American was no primitive brute. He was Homo sapiens, little different from the fifteenth century foreigners who rediscovered America thousands of years later and gradually edged it away from its first settlers.

Primitive human remains, such as those which have been found in the Old World, have never been found in America. Man went through his developmental stages in the Old World and came to America at a late date, a fully developed human being. Pithecanthropus erectus, Sinanthropus, Homo neanderthalensis—America has never known those tongue-twisting lowbrows!

After the first discovery of the new land there were innumerable rediscoveries. One group of men after another came to America and those migrations continued for thousands of years. The latest migrants came to America very recently. Thus, America was populated by many successive waves of migration over a long period of time.

It seems, almost, that after the first group came, word may have spread from one small tribe to another that off to the east lay a better land. People were disappearing over the eastern horizon. What lay in that direction? Curiosity urged them on!

It is altogether possible that actual word of the new land in the east went back to the Asiatic continent. Perhaps there were small counter migrations or perhaps some small traveling group, feeling a bond with some other group in the old country, sent runners back to beckon them on.

Certain it is that there was not just a single migration. Numerous groups of men filtered into America over a period of thousands of years. Slowly, aimlessly, they wandered. One group pushed another and was in turn pushed by an oncoming tribe. After a time, North and South America were covered with hundreds of small tribes of Indians.

The members of these various tribes were not all alike. They differed greatly in appearance, in language, in religion and in mode of living. The answer is apparent. The various groups came from different parts of Asia. They came at different times. They settled in different parts of the New World and developed in different ways according to the natural resources in each region. As a result there came into being the many tribes of 144 American Indians which were in America when Columbus came on his journey of rediscovery from the east.

The early part of the story of the Americas is still hazy. In spite of many years of search by dozens of top-flight archeologists there are many unanswered questions. Each year expeditions sift through the dust of the ages on the trail of those early Americans. More often than not the trail leads to a blank wall. The ancient past of the Indian is clouded with uncertainty but the lure of the unknown still beckons to those who are endeavoring to trail him back to his Asiatic birthplace.

The great trouble is that for thousands of years the Indians lived a hunting life. They wandered from day to day, living on the natural foods they found in each day’s journey. There was no permanent home, no settled life. The hunter was ever on the trail of his next meal.

Consider the life of the primitive hunter. Each morning he is awakened by the pangs of hunger in his empty, flapping paunch and he views with dismay his breakfast which is disappearing over the horizon on four strong, swift legs. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes he starts out in pursuit of his breakfast. Failing to catch up with it, he starts after his lunch. If it eludes him, he begins to work on the next meal—and the next and the next. Always he is one jump behind his food supply. When he makes a kill he gorges and smoothes the wrinkles out of his belly. When he fails, he goes hungry.

Being forced to follow the game he is ever on the move. He can have no permanent home, no pottery, nothing that cannot easily be transported on the trail. One night he sleeps under a tree and leaves behind a broken stone knife. The next night he sleeps in a cave ten miles away and discards a worn-out sandal. The third night he builds his campfire beside a lake across the mountain. On and on through the days he moves and finally, when the end comes, the animals of the wild clean and scatter his bones and they return to the dust from whence they came.

The archeologist may find the stone knife and the discarded sandal. He may even find the long-cold ashes of the campfire. But there is nothing to indicate that all three belonged to the same man. There is not a single bit of evidence that ties them together.
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Thus it is with the hunter. His trail is cold: the clews are few. He is the will-o-the-wisp of the human race. He has put many gray hairs in the head of the archeologist.

All of the early inhabitants of North and South America lived a wandering, hunting life. For thousands of years they lived on the chance products, animal and plant, that nature offered. They seldom stayed long in one place: they never built a permanent thing. To date the story of the first ten or fifteen thousand years is far from complete. It can be summed up in a few words.

The men themselves have, for the most part, eluded us. The fact that they lived a wandering life and seldom, if ever, buried the dead, has made it difficult to find the bones of the men themselves. However, the tools and weapons made and used by those men have been found in great numbers. And best of all, they have been found in situations which clearly indicate the antiquity of man in America.

A few thousand years ago there were elephants in America. The mammoth was here as well as his terrifying near-relative, the mastodon. There were horses in various parts of the country and a strange, lumbering animal, the ground sloth, was common. Tremendous bison with long sweeping horns wallowed in the bogs and camels roamed the plains.

Modern man has never seen those animals in America. They were gone long before he came. They had been extinct thousands of years before the first Europeans poked their tardy noses into the New World.

In spite of this we know that the early Indians did see them. They hunted them and lived on their flesh. They may have been a contributing factor in the extinction of some of those ancient species. Changing weather conditions thinned out the great herds and man, not yet conservation conscious, may have helped to wipe out the survivors.

How do we know?

In a number of places the implements of those early men have been found in direct association with the bones of the extinct animals. The inference is unquestionable. Dart points, knives, scrapers and other implements have been found so definitely associated with the bones of animals that there can be no doubt that man and the animals existed at the same time. If those 146 animals have been extinct for thousands of years it dates the earliest men fairly well.

One of the most important finds was made in northeastern New Mexico, near the little town of Folsom. This find was important because it was here for the first time that modern scientists were forced to admit that man had been in America a long, long time. It is also important because it has given a name to some of the ancient men. Folsom Man, the most elusive American we have yet been unable to find.

The discovery of the earliest evidences of Folsom Man is one of the strangest stories in American archeology. The events in the story covered a period of twenty-five years and it was only by chance that the important archeological evidence came to the attention of the scientific world.

Back about 1900, a negro cowboy known as Nigger George, was riding the range on the Crowfoot Ranc............