The Citadel of Cedar Mesa, an incredible fortress of the natives of North America

@ElentirENG ES 1·31·2024 · 23:24 0

There is a widespread idea according to which the natives of the current territories of the United States and Canada did not make buildings with stone.

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To tell the truth, there are no buildings in those countries like those left by the Aztecs, the Incas or the Mayas, but the natives of North America made some surprising fortresses made using the mountains themselves. One of them is the Cedar Mesa Citadel, in southeastern Utah, which today is part of the Bears Ears National Monument. This area was inhabited since the Early Middle Ages by the Anasazis, ancestors of the Pueblo Indian tribe.

The Anasazis left ruins in the form of brick buildings in such surprising and fascinating places as Wupatki and Canyon de Chelly, in Arizona, or Grand Gulch, in Utah. This tribe built their houses using mountains and spectacular gorges as natural protection. The Cedar Mesa Citadel is one of the most impressive examples of this type of fortress: it is a mountain with a high natural bridge, forming like a peninsula, something that in that region of the United States is known as "Islands in the Sky".

The Citadel could only be accessed by that narrow natural bridge, defended with a wall. The Anasazis were an agricultural people who knew how to work with ceramics. It is hard to imagine what threat led them to live in such an extreme and isolated place, where it is not likely that they could grow much. A few days ago, ThePOVchannel published a video visiting this place. I will not put its location here, because the fewer people visit it, the better it will be preserved for longer:

You can see some screenshots from the video here. Here we can see the spectacular appearance of Cedar Mesa. The video was recorded in winter, so the area is full of snow.

This is the natural bridge that led to the fortress, located on that "Island in the Sky" very typical of the places chosen by the Anasazis to build their fortresses.

The brick buildings that are preserved today. The building is in an impressive location.

The interior of one of the houses of the Citadel. At the entrance to one of the homes there is a notice (you can see it in the video) asking not to enter them and not to erase the traces of the past.