Is Swine Flu Really Montezuma's Revenge

One of the things I had wanted to see when we took our 30th anniversary cruise through the Southwest last month was some kind of ancient ruins, or the abandoned adobe homes of native cliff dwellers. When we were in Holbrook for a night, at the WigWam on Route 66, I was aware that a day trip north into reservation lands would give us such an experience, but it seemed a bit off the beaten path in light of our plans.

To my great surprise, while at one of those tourist information places in Sedona, I learned that Montezuma’s Castle National Monument was just a short piece down the road, proof that we can still find our way around without Mapquest and Google. Sometimes, if you want to find wonders, you just need to ask the locals.

Essentially, Montezuma’s Castle was a 20 room high-rise apartment tucked into a limestone cliff starting about a hundred feet off the ground. The Sinagua peoples lived here about a thousand years ago. The conquistadors who named it falsely assumed Montezuma, Aztec king, had somehow been associated with this region, hence the name.

President Teddy Roosevelt is credited with making this a National Monument because of its great “ethnological value and scientific interest."

The location is interesting, a very short distance from massive underground springs, an oasis in the middle of nowhere. The Sinaguans had to climb 100 foot ladders to reach their homes at night. Whether this was for security from wild animals or enemy tribes no one knows. Tourists were actually permitted to climb up into the “castle” up until 1951, at which time public access was discontinued.

No one knows why this site was abandoned before the arrival of the white man. Perhaps they were conquered by another tribe. Or perhaps they simply moved on. Archaeologists love mysteries like this and will continue to examine all the evidence they can uncover.

What we do know is that had they lived a couple more centuries they might have been wiped out by diseases for which they had no immunity brought from Europe by white men. This is how vast swaths of the native populations were washed away. It is a tragic piece of history which we often forget. A few thousand Spanish conquerors were able to overcome millions of natives not by their mighty weapons and ingenuity, but rather by the disease which swept through the Americas on first contact. Could it be that this swine flu is simply Montezuma's revenge?