Look, but don't take
Lessons in pottery theft – and remorse – from SW Colorado

At Ute Mountain Tribal Park, visitors show up promptly at 9 a.m. to join a tour with Ute guides who’ve led visitors through the home of Ancestral Puebloan Indians who lived there between the years of 500-1340.

Once in a while, someone will leave, surreptitiously, with a shard of pottery – and then something might happen to them, or they’ll feel compelled to return it, guides say. 

At nearby Mesa Verde National Park, where Ancestral Puebloans lived during roughly the same time period, the same thing has happened. A visitor comes across a shard of pottery, which ends up leaving the park with them. Later, they’ll feel guilty and give it back – an occurrence that’s the subject of a small display in the visitor’s center, complete with a note of apology.

Taking pottery shards (also known as “sherds”) from where they were found is universally considered a no-no. Doing so disconnects the fragment from its context and history, which causes it to lose its value, archeologists, pottery experts and scholars say. In fact, there is a 1979 federal law prohibiting it. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of lore indicating it has happened in spite of the law, leading, some say, to consequences that could be physical, emotional or legal.

Ute Mountain Tribal Park

To take a tour at Ute Mountain Tribal Park, all you have to do is call, make a reservation, then show up at the intersection of two rural roads in Towaoc. Tour guides take over from there. Rick Hayes has been leading tours there for 30 years – giving day-long tours to ancient cliff dwellings that have withstood the test of time. 

Guests can drive themselves while following a guide, or ride in the guide’s truck. Throughout, guides point out horses, petroglyphs and pottery shards that date back centuries. 

In a recent telephone interview, Hayes said there has been buzz around the office about the story of a guest coming into the office with a few pieces of pottery to return. The donor said they were found in the closet of a beloved granddaughter, who had recently died. 

Dressed for a tour one day in a flannel and jeans, Hayes spoke reverently of the pottery shards and their importance at the tribal park, a scrappy little tourist attraction without the notoriety of the larger Mesa Verde. “It’s disrespectful to the ancestors. Those shards are a reminder that our ancestors prayed for us,” he said.

At destinations throughout the tour, guides pull over and call attention to shards of pottery likely used for cooking, storing and serving food. Some are covered with pieces of wood to protect them from view until the guide decides to reveal them. Many are white and black with intricate carvings, ranging in size from pieces less than an inch to 8-inch fragments with handles still attached to fully intact bowls. 

The expectation is that people would not take them, according to long-time guide, Beverly Lehi-Yazzie. “They are all connected,” she said, meaning the shards of pottery are connected to the land where they are found. Plus, she offered this warning. Walking up an embankment with a sun visor and walking stick, she looked over her shoulder and said to a half-dozen guests: “You don’t want to take ‘em, or else bad stuff could happen.”

She recalled a day when she went to the administrative office from where tour-takers check in, and before she could step through the door, she found a shard sitting on top of a note. 

“They said ‘Sorry,’” she said with a laugh. She said she also has heard the lore at the Tribal Park that someone took a tour, pocketed a shard, then promptly fell ill. She didn’t know the details, but said it’s a story that has circulated, like Hayes’ about the return of the shards from the closet of the granddaughter who’d died.

Such stories are to be taken seriously by all visitors, because the spirits of the ancestors will know, said Lehi-Yazzie, who is Ute and commutes from Utah to give tours during warmer months. “Sometimes, out there, you can feel like someone is watching,” she said, adding that she often feels the presence of ancestors while she treks through the area. 

Mesa Verde

In contrast to the smaller operation of the Tribal Park, Mesa Verde National Park – with a staff of about 100 – gets half a million visitors a year. The park includes more than 4,700 structures including pithouses, towers, kivas and cliff dwellings while they inhabited the area. Starting in the 1270s, the ancestral people left Mesa Verde to migrate to lands that have become New Mexico, Arizona and other states in the southwest. Now, about two dozen pueblo communities in those states claim descent from the original people of  Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde also features a museum and visitor’s center that shows a 17-minute film, rangers walking around in hats and khaki uniforms, and tour options ranging from a tame one guests can listen to while driving in their car to a much more adventurous one involving a 30-foot ladder climb to see cliff dwellings otherwise inaccessible. 

Regardless of the difference in size and amenities, the pilfering of pottery shards, although not common, has happened at Mesa Verde, too. Enough so that the National Park has created a small display in the visitor’s center to call attention to the illegal act.  In a glass case, there are a few fragments – all pottery shards that went on an off-park adventure and then got brought or mailed back. Alongside the shards is a note dated Oct. 3, 1997, written by an anonymous returner expressing regret over the taking.

Ranger Dalton K. Dorrell, a spokesman for the park, said he isn’t sure who created the exhibit. “It's something I look at every time I pass … I love that exhibit, too.”

The Law

Although some people’s conscience nudge them to return shards, others may need a nudge from the long arm of the law. The Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 made it a crime to, among other things, remove shards of pottery from national parks where Native Americans once lived.

But not all visitors have paid attention. In 2020, Lonnie Shadrick Winbourn, a Cortez man, was sentenced a year and a day in federal prison for stealing Ancestral Puebloan artifacts in 2017. The artifacts included pottery and jewelry from the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument near Cortez. 

According to news reports, Winbourn discovered a ceremonial site with a large dance plaza, subterranean kiva and multiple human burials, from which he pilfered 64 items. When he was pulled over and arrested on an unrelated warrant on June 4, 2017, officers found pottery shards in his pocket and Puebloan artifacts in his backpack. He also stole jewelry, an ax head and other tools, according to prosecutors.

Dorrell said the exhibit in Mesa Verde is, like the law, meant to be an instructive deterrent. “It's a tool that we've used, I would say (for) decades in national parks … because it is so moving, and it shows that people learn; people grow.”

This story was edited for length. To read it in its entirety, go to www.cpr.org.