Arizona - Fort Verde and Montezumas Castle

 Fort Verde is about a half hours drive from Clarkdale, along the valley, with the Black Mountains to the south.

I had expected that as it was a Saturday of a long weekend it might be busy, but no. Just 2 other couples wandering around.

 There was a display dispelling the myths perpetuated by movie depictions. 

- In this part of the country there were no wooden walls around the forts. There were not enough trees for that and it was thought that it was not good for army morale. Rather "vigilance" was the preferred defense.

- yes horses were ridden but you could not shoot and reload the long rifles from horseback.

- swords were also pretty useless so those remained on dress uniform events.

- Apache scouts were given rifles but only when they were on a mission, they had to return them on return to the fort.

There were a few rooms of displays and information. The army had left over uniforms from the civil war and those were used even though wool was impractical in the climate. The wool uniforms were used when on parade but pretty well anything was warn when active in the field.

 

When gold and silver were found in this area miners followed. The Indians raided them, naturally. Settlers followed to establish towns for this now rich area and they wanted military protection so the forts were established.

I had wanted to come on this particular day because the website indicated there was an event celebrating the Buffalo Soldiers for Black History Month but it turned out just to be a display in the corner of one of the rooms.

 

Buffalo Soldiers were United States Army regiments composed exclusively of African American soldiers, formed during the 19th century to serve on the American frontier. On September 21, 1866, the 10th Cavalry Regiment was formed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The nickname "Buffalo Soldiers" was purportedly given to the regiments by the American Indian tribes who fought against them during the American Indian Wars, and the term eventually became synonymous with all of the African American regiments that were established in 1866, including the 9th Cavalry Regiment, 10th Cavalry Regiment, 24th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Regiment and 38th Infantry Regiment.^[1  

^{from Wikipedia.}

After watching a short video of current Native Americans telling the stories handed down to them from their ancestors who were scouts, we walked across to the row of remaining buildings. There were a group of appropriately dressed volunteers out on what would have been the parade ground. They were demonstrating the guns used during the period of occupation of the fort.

 

Rick went to look at the various weapons on display and I talked with the guys at the tent where they had cooked a typical meal. I learned that the soldiers were provided with salted meat and hard tack but when they were actually at the fort they had a herd of cattle, some pigs and a vegetable garden so didn't eat that badly.

We walked over to the building that had been the surgeons house and

there was another volunteer there talking about how an arrow or bullet would be extracted from an injured man and showing the tools used. It didn't take long and I had to leave as I was feeling nauseous, after all we had just eaten.

We walked through the buildings that had been the surgeons quarters, the bachelor officers quarters,

the married officers quarters and

the commanding officers quarters. 

I don't know why I don't have any pictures of the houses themselves. They were made of adobe bricks with very thick walls. Had wrap around covered porches. Only the commanding officer had a second story, with a mansard roof. An outhouse behind each building.

This is considered the best preserved Indian Wars period fort and was occupied from 1865 to 1891. Maximum number of personnel was 360 but usually there were less than 200 men stationed there.

 

As we drove away we realized that we were close to Montezuma's Castle National Monument which I had seen with the kids previously, but Rick had not.

Montezuma Castle is situated about 90 feet (27 m) up a sheer limestone cliff, facing the adjacent Beaver Creek, which drains into the perennial Verde River just north of Camp Verde. It is one of the best-preserved cliff dwellings in North America, in part because of its ideal placement in a natural alcove that protects it from exposure to the elements. The precariousness of the dwelling's location and its immense scale of floor space across five stories suggest that the Sinagua were daring builders and skilled engineers. Access into the structure was most likely permitted by a series of portable ladders, which made it difficult for enemy tribes to penetrate the natural defense of the vertical barrier from Wikipedia.

I had not been that impressed with the site before but in my defense it was the day after visiting the Grand Canyon so I was still stunned by that. This time I was more interested and impressed, perhaps as it is more impressive than the Tuzigoot ruins.

 Neither part of the monument's name is correct. When European-Americans first observed the ruins in the 1860s, by then long-abandoned, they named them for the famous Aztec emperor Montezuma in the mistaken belief that he had been connected to their construction (see also Montezuma mythology).^[6] Having no connections to the Aztecs, the Montezuma Castle was given that name due to the fact that the public had this image of the Aztecs creating any archaeological site.^[7] In fact, the dwelling was abandoned more than 40 years before Montezuma was born, and was not a "castle" in the traditional sense, but instead functioned more like a "prehistoric high rise apartment complex" from wikipedia

We walked the short loop to the river and back to the visitors centre, past huge Sycamore trees. Sycamore beams were still holding up the roof in the "castle" after 700 years!

Platanus occidentalis, also known as American sycamore, American planetree, western plane,^[3] occidental plane, buttonwood, and water beech,^[4] is a species of Platanus native to the eastern and central United States, the mountains of northeastern Mexico, extreme southern Ontario,^[5][6] and extreme southern Quebec. from Wikipedia

 

When I had looked it up for that quote from Wikipedia it made sense that the bark reminded me of the Plane trees I saw frequently in the Mediterranean countries.

The Mediterranean plane tree, or Platanus orientalis, is a large, deciduous tree that is native to Eurasia from Wikipedia.

On the drive home we could see that the day of rain we had received had resulted in a good dump of snow on the ski hills of Flagstaff.