There's mystery in the wind that blows up sand and dust, scattering flights of mothlike swallows and ruffling the blood-red willows that crowd the washes.

There's mystery in the dark canyons and weathered rock towers, with holes carved to allow the sun in and crevasses chinked with handmade bricks hundreds of years ago.

There's mystery in the vast emptiness here - 125,000 acres dissected by one main road and dozens of primitive trails, and pockmarked with the footprints of wild turkey and mule deer.

Adding to the mystery is the way this place is protected. It's a part of the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation, and members of that tribe are responsible for its care.

It's a duty they take seriously. The only way to get in and find your way around is with a Ute guide who knows where to find some of the park's treasures - hundreds of petroglyphs, some dating to the ancient Pueblo Indians who lived here and some more recently created by the Utes themselves; land strewn with pieces of ancient pots and tools; the remnants of kivas dug into the hard clay and gravel; and cliff dwellings built into the rock like medieval castles.

Ute Mountain Tribal Park shares a boundary with Mesa Verde National Park. They also share the same history, showcasing a culture that flourished in southwest Colorado from 600 through 1300.

Thousands of people lived here in the Mancos River Valley and throughout the canyons that wind through it, in elaborate stone villages cut into the sandstone walls. They were the ancestors of 24 tribes, including the Pueblos of New Mexico, the Hopis, the Zunis, the Utes and the Navajos.

The residents of the canyons and mesas were farmers who grew corn, beans and squash and hunted to supplement their diet. The Mancos River and occasional springs were reliable sources of water, but anthropologists believe a serious drought gripped the region by the end of the 1200s.

The residents of this vast, dry land moved south, leaving behind their dwellings and evidence of their lives.

The land was left alone for hundreds of years, until the late 1800s. In 1874, according to sources at Mesa Verde National Park, white men entered a cliff dwelling for the first time. W.H. Jackson, a noted photographer for the U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey, had heard about the ruins, and he set out to explore them.

Interest grew, but it wasn't until 1906 that Mesa Verde became a national park. Eleven years earlier, the Weeminuche Band of Utes had moved onto the neighboring Ute Mountain Ute Reservation that held ruins and artifacts mirroring those in the national park.

But Mesa Verde is closely guarded by the National Park Service; most of its cliff dwellings are seen only from afar. Its petroglyphs are viewed with groups on ranger-led hikes, and while everything is well-explained with interpretive signs, it sometimes requires a wait in line to get your turn to read them.

At the tribal park, there are no rangers, no interpretive signs, no ropes that cordon off ruins. There's not even a sign at the entrance (although the towering rock formation aptly named Chimney Rock is hard to miss). And if you happen upon a petroglyph, it's up to a Ute guide, like Marshall Deer, to point it out and interpret it.

Deer, 20, has been a guide for three years, employed by the Ute Mountain Utes. As he navigates a white reservation van over the gravel road, its back tires spinning in gooey clay, he talks about his people and the people who lived in the park, and the way their lives can be interpreted through what can be seen there.

At first, he is quiet, pointing out rock formations that held what are thought to be granaries and stopping the van so the tourists can get out to view trails strewn with pieces of broken pots and stand next to rock paintings that have survived hundreds of years.

But after a few hours, Deer opens up and begins teaching his guests about Ute legend; the history of the tribal park; how the Utes and the ancestral Puebloans were related; and why the park with its untouched artifacts is important to him and his people.

The sun was melting off the last of a recent snowstorm as Deer finished telling the legend of skin walkers, when a coyote crossed the road, ghostlike, in front of the van.

''Did you see that?'' he said.

Deer had been explaining how skin walkers were thought to walk on all fours in the daytime, but at night would stand on two legs and run like men.

''They are shape-shifters, often disguising themselves as coyotes or other animals. They aren't good,'' Deer said.

Whether canine or a spirit, the coyote's appearance fit right in during this visit, and the little bit of storytelling offered by Deer added another dimension to the trip.

The difference between a visit to Ute Mountain Tribal Park and one to Mesa Verde National Park is a difference in perspective, said Tom Carr, an archaeologist with the office of the Colorado state archaeologist.

''The tribal park offers a look at an ancient culture from a Native American perspective. Mesa Verde offers a look from an Anglo-American perspective. When you are in parts of the tribal park, you are seeing the exact same place as when you are in the national park, but through a different cultural filter.''

The tribal park and Mesa Verde are two of the most important archaeological sites in the state, along with Canyon of the Ancients National Monument, Chimney Rock Archaeological Site and Hovenweep National Monument, which spans the Colorado-Utah border, Carr said.

Virginia Wolf understands the importance of the region. An archaeoastronomer from Chico, Calif., she has been exploring Mancos Canyon and the park since it was opened by the Utes in the 1970s. In 1989 she started visiting the park to study the petroglyphs, where she specifically looks for rock art linked to the solstices.

''There are specific kinds of petroglyphs that functioned as calendars, for ceremonies and rituals, and for some practical applications, such as when to plant and when to harvest,'' she said.

With colleague Ed Wheeler, a professor of anthropology and archaeology at Butte College in California, Wolf has found evidence of solstice petroglyphs throughout the park.

''They are often spirals with at least five turns to them, but there are other images as well,'' she said. ''We found one at what we call the Turtle Site where, on the winter solstice, this arrowhead of shadow goes into the center of the hole in the center of the turtle.''

Wolf and Wheeler compiled their research at the tribal park to produce a DVD called ''Sun Calendars of the Ancient Puebloans: Archaeoastronomy in the Mancos Canyon of Colorado.''

Wolf believes a trip to the tribal park is a valuable history lesson.

''It gives you a more expansive understanding of what it was really like out there. There are at least 20,000 archaeological sites on the canyon floor, and once your eye gets tuned in to what to see, you see the evidence everywhere.''

Wolf said archaeologists believe there may have been 6,000 people in Mancos Canyon at one time, with maybe 30,000 Puebloans living in Montezuma County in the 1200s.

That kind of culture is worth studying, Wheeler said. ''I have at times simply sat in one of the little ruins and watched things happen around me. When you visit here, you come away with a greater understanding of a culture you might not have known before.''