Volume 1 — ANTIQUITIES OF THE SOUTHWEST AND THEIR PRESERVATION

Those who are studying the history of civilization on the American Continent realize that the subject presents many and intricate problems which can not be solved in this generation. Accordingly, to preserve the material on which this study is based for the use of future generations, is as important as are present investigations.

The title of this paper suggests two classes of material to be considered. The historian will be concerned principally with the remains that mark the advance of the Caucasian race. The remains of the indigenous tribes interest the ethno-archæologist.

To a country so poor in archives as ours is, the possession of numerous historic monuments, landmarks and remains of structures where history has been made is especially fortunate and their preservation doubly important. For a nation to cherish its own history, live in the heroic and righteous acts of its past, is to conserve its vitality and independence.

In the majority of the States we find a moderate degree of enthusiasm for historic sites; sufficient at least to afford them adequate protection and insure their preservation. Some far-seeing societies are alive to the significance of the historic highways that penetrated the American wilderness and are marking them with permanent milestones. A notable example of this is the marking of the “Old Santa Fe Trail” by the people of Kansas—a movement in which Colorado and New Mexico might well join. The determination of Coronado’s line of march has occupied the attention of careful students for many years and we may hope at some future time to see positively determined sites on this historic way permanently marked and recorded.

The significance of our frontier has not been recognized except in social science. Fortunately its advance is well marked. The movement of the military frontier is preserved in monuments and military post buildings throughout the west. Court-house corner stones record the advance of law and order, we may say, the legal frontier—its earliest landmarks in the far west in the form of prominent trees, high bridges, 292and projecting beams, being pointed out with modest pride by the early inhabitants as memorials of Judge Lynch and the Vigilantes. The progress of education and religion is marked by record stones upon the public edifices devoted to these uses. The importance of all these records should be more generally recognized. Whenever a modern structure is to succeed an antiquated public building, the old record stone should invariably be preserved and reset in some conspicuous place. Future students of history and social sciences will see in these the ancient shore-lines of American social development.

The military-religious frontier of the Spanish-American civilization moved from south to north. Its limits are marked by the quaint old mission churches of New Mexico and California. Some of these buildings are still in the hands of the Church, in use and kept in repair. Some are on the sites of long-abandoned Pueblo Indian villages, at the mercy of the elements and the vandals. In California these splendid old landmarks are being cared for by the organized efforts of thinking people and we need give ourselves no concern as to their preservation. Not so in New Mexico. Here we have ruins of five of the oldest historic structures of which any vestiges remain on the soil of the United States, all dating from the first half of the 17th century; all abandoned yet nobly resisting the elements. These are the ruins of the mission churches at the abandoned pueblos of Pecos in western San Miguel county; Giusewa in the Jemez valley near Perea; Tabira, popularly known as “Gran Quivira” in northeastern Socorro county, and Abo and Cuaray in eastern Valencia county.

A peculiarly interesting class of ruins is that of the pueblo villages that were occupied at the time of the coming of the Spaniards and abandoned during the next century. Archæological work in such sites should yield valuable results by disclosing the first influences of the exotic civilization upon the indigenous tribes. Noteworthy sites of this character are those near Zuñi and a number of the Rio Grande Valley.

The Southwest is rich in historic sites, but in prehistoric remains its wealth is practically limitless. It is with these that we shall deal principally in this paper.

The distribution of the indigenous tribes of America was determined primarily by drainage; that is to say, the food quest was the chief concern of primitive man. First of all, he sought food and water, and we can readily see that, of these two, water was first in importance. Where 293water was, there food was likely to be. Game frequented water courses. Plant food depended upon moisture. Now in the southwest, water was scarce, consequently no other portion of the United States was so poor in game. Hunting tribes, therefore, shunned its desert wastes. Their frontiers were the Pecos valley in eastern New Mexico, practically the western limit of the buffalo, and the divide running east and west across southern Colorado and Utah, separating the San Juan, south of which lay the arid region, from the splendid hunting ranges on the north which extended from ocean to ocean except where broken by the Utah and Nevada deserts. There was thus a tract of country bounded on the east by the Pecos river, on the north by the San Juan, extending west to the Colorado and south to the Gila in which aridity was the dominant climatic condition. Being poor in game, it was not until comparatively recent times that it was much frequented by nomadic Indians. Comanches, Utes, Navajos and Apaches had no use for this region until it was occupied by some one whom they could dispossess of wealth. Primitive economic systems are not unlike those of civilized men. In both states of culture, wealth is acquired in two ways, namely, by producing it and by dispossessing others of it. Savages and civilians naturally divide into two great classes, the productive and the predatory. It is a far cry from the murderously straightforward method of the Apache to the highly specialized up-to-date commercial system, or even the comparatively direct methods of modern politics, but the difference is merely in technique. Now in the absence of game and of victims for robbery, the first settlers of that arid region were driven to produce their living by agriculture. This could only be successfully done by irrigation. Accordingly lines of migration followed water ways and springs. Moreover, this condition was conducive to a comparatively sedentary life, and this leads to permanent home building.

Now the region under consideration embraces all of New Mexico and Arizona, southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah, and is comprised within four principal drainage areas, viz: the Rio Grande, the San Juan, the Little Colorado, and the Gila, the last three being tributary to the Colorado. Over this area physiographic conditions are quite uniform and the indigenous tribes now inhabiting it likewise; not as to linguistic stock, but in general and specific culture. By indigines I mean the various sedentary tribes generally called Pueblos as distinguished from the intrusive Utes, Navajos and Apaches, which tribes cames in chiefly for predatory reasons after the indigenous tribes had acquired sufficient property 294to make them desirable prey. This indigenous culture was doubtless composite as to blood and the uniformity developed was the natural result of living for a long period of time under definite uniform environmental conditions. Its primary migration movement was from south to north, but branching in all directions, and the almost countless prehistoric ruins following the water-courses of the southwest are the remains of these early migrations.

The present sedentary Indians of the southwest, called by us Pueblos, are thus the true indigines of that arid region so far as we can judge from existing evidences. All presumption of earlier or different races is purely hypothetical, as yet unsupported by any shadow of evidence. These primitive agriculturists became builders of more or less permanent houses, dependent always upon the permanence of the water supply. The character of their habitations was usually determined by geological environment. The characteristic style of architecture evolved was the multiple-chambered stone structure that we call the pueblo. The earliest of these were comparatively small, single-storied dwellings of an indefinite number of rooms rarely exceeding fifty, scattered about over the arable areas. The ruins of these to be found in the southwest are quite uncountable. Later, as predatory neighbors multiplied and the people crowded together for mutual aid the enormous hives of hundreds of cells came into existence. These were often carried to a height of five or six stories. At the same time and for the same reason another style of habitation came into existence, namely, the cliff-dwelling. Its type was always determined by geological conditions. If ledges difficult of access and protected by overhanging cliffs could be found, dwellings were built upon them, not differing structurally from pueblos. If the cliffs presented only perpendicular faces, and were of comparatively soft material, dwellings were excavated in them, single or multiple-chambered, and thus strongly defensive homes established.

Thus we have in the southwest a most fortunate situation for the archæologist. The ruins are of such a character and so situated as to resist the action of the weather, and the climate singularly adapted to the preservation of not only the buildings, but also the more perishable remains. So completely did the indigenous culture overspread the area in question that there is not a waterway of any consequence from the Pecos to the Colorado and from the San Juan to the Gila that is without numerous ruins. They are distributed along not less than a hundred valleys in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah. In a paper and 295map prepared recently for the use of the Department of the Interior, I have indicated the distribution of the ruins over the four general drainage-areas, the Rio Grande, the San Juan, the Little Colorado, the Gila, and as a tentative scheme have shown how they may be grouped into twenty archæological districts. (This grouping has no ethnological significance.)

The districts are grouped as follows:

I. The Rio Grande Basin:

1. Pajarito Park district.

2. Pecos Pueblo district.

3. Gran Quivira district.

4. Jemez district.

5. Acoma district.

II. The San Juan Basin:

1. Aztec district.

2. Mesa Verde district.

3. Chaco Cañon district.

4. Cañon de Chelly district.

5. Bluff district.

III. The Little Colorado Basin:

1. Tusayan district.

2. Flagstaff district.

3. Holbrook district.

4. Zuñi district.

IV. The Gila Basin:

1. Rio Verde district.

2. San Carlos district.

3. Lower Gila district.

4. Middle Gila district.

5. Upper Gila district.

6. San Francisco River district.

Following is a brief memorandum showing the extent of each district:

I. RIO GRANDE BASIN.

This culture area, lying wholly in New Mexico, embraces the Rio Grande Valley with its tributaries from Ojo Caliente on the 296north to Socorro on the south and from Acoma on the west to the plains east of the Manzano Mountains.

II. SAN JUAN BASIN.

The ruins of the San Juan Basin consist of both large and small communal houses and true cliff dwellings in great numbers. They are scattered in numerous, irregular groups over the contiguous portions of New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. All the ruins of the San Juan and its tributaries have suffered much from destructive collectors.

III. LITTLE COLORADO BASIN.

This extensive region embraced in the valley of the Little Colorado and its tributaries is pre-eminently a region of pueblo ruins, though some cave dwellings are found. It is especially rich in prehistoric pottery. Because of its wealth of relics this region has suffered more than any other from the traffic in prehistoric wares. However, we are fortunate in that Dr. J. Walter Fewkes of the Bureau of American Ethnology has made the districts of the Little Colorado a subject of research for many years. His voluminous reports on this region have put us in possession of a vast amount of information on the archæology and ethnology of the Southwest. His collections from Sikyatki for the National Museum, made in 1895, with the assistance of Mr. F. W. Hodge of the Smithsonian Institution, together with the collections made from the Holbrook district by Doctors Fewkes and Hough, form, probably, the most valuable collection of prehistoric pottery in existence. Another extensive collection of pottery from this region may be seen in the Field Columbian Museum in Chicago.

IV. GILA BASIN.

This is another region that embraces practically every species of prehistoric ruins. It is of vast extent and comprises, besides the valley of the Gila proper, the large valleys of the Salt and Verde rivers. As a seat of prehistoric culture it was one of the most extensive and populous. Many ruins of these three great valleys are on irrigable lands, and, accordingly, have disappeared with the advancement of agriculture.

297It would not be possible within the limits set for this paper to describe the ruins of each of these twenty districts, but we may point out briefly the principal features of one district in each drainage area.

1. PAJARITO PARK DISTRICT.

This district lies between the Rio Grande on the east and the Jemez Mountains on the west, and extends from Ojo Caliente on the north to Cochiti on the south. In the northern part are the ruins of Homayo, Houiri (Ho-we-re), and Pose on Ojo Caliente Creek. Ten miles west, below El Rito, is the large ruin of Sepawi (Se-paw-we). Near the village of Abiquiu, on the Rio Chama, is the important ruin of Tsiwari (Tsi-wa-re). These are all pueblo ruins, and not well preserved.

The central portion of the district is the Pajarito Park proper, the region that has for some years been under withdrawal by the General Land Office and favorably reported on for a national park, for which it has many advantages, being of great scenic beauty, accessible, and one of the richest in the Southwest in well-preserved prehistoric remains. It contains innumerable cavate houses, a vast number of small pueblo ruins, and the ruins of the great communal dwellings of Puye, Otowi, Tsankiwi (Tsan-ke-we), Navakwi (Nav-a-kwe), and Pajarito or Tchrega. Vandalism has greatly diminished among these ruins since the park has been under withdrawal.

In the southern part of this district, between the Rito de los Frijoles and Cochiti, are the ruins of six pueblos, and a considerable number of cavate houses, the interesting Cueva Pintada (painted cave), and the famous shrines known as the “Stone Lions of Potrero de las Vacas and Potrero de los Idolos.”

2. MESA VERDE DISTRICT.

In this district are the finest specimens of true cliff dwellings. They are very numerous in the cañons of Mesa Verde and along the Mancos River. Cliff Palace is justly one of the most famous works of prehistoric man in existence. Numerous pueblo and cliff ruins are distributed along the McElmo, the Yellowjacket and the Hovenweep. On the whole, this is one of the most interesting of all prehistoric districts. A portion of it is under withdrawal by the General Land Office, pending the creation of the Colorado Cliff Dwellings National Park. The intelligent interest of the people of Colorado 298has done much toward the preservation of these ruins. However, the entire district has suffered much from vandalism, a majority of the burial mounds having been destroyed. A national park in this region would be of great educational value.

3. ZUÑI DISTRICT.

This region is rich in both historic and prehistoric ruins. On Zuñi Reservation are the ruins of the historic seven cities of Cibola. El Morro, or Inscription Rock, is an interesting historic monument east of Zuñi which is under temporary withdrawal by the General Land Office. The region south of Zuñi to Quemado is known to be full of ruins, and traders are securing large collections of pottery therefrom at the present time. The ruins of Zuñi have been thoroughly made known to us through the work of the Hemenway expedition, under the direction of the late Frank Hamilton Cushing, assisted by Mr. F. W Hodge. The collections of this expedition are now in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Other important researches have been made in the Zuñi district by Doctor Fewkes.

4. RIO VERDE DISTRICT.

On the northern tributaries of the Rio Verde are many cliff ruins. Of these, Honanki and Palatki are the most important. They are within the limits of the San Francisco Mountains Forest Reserve. There are numerous cliff ruins along Oak Creek and Beaver Creek and their tributaries. Near Camp Verde is the ruin known as “Montezuma Castle,” and a little farther up Beaver Creek, on the Black Mesa Forest Reserve, is the interesting Montezuma well. Mr. Mindeleff and Doctor Fewkes have made important studies and reports on the ruins of this district.

Fortunately not less than nine-tenths of the prehistoric ruins of the Southwest are on lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States; that is, they are on Forest Reserves, on unreserved public lands and on Indian Reservations.

By virtue of Section 441, U. S. Revised Statutes, the care and custody of the public lands is vested in the Secretary of the Interior, and Section 453 declares that the Commissioner of the General Land Office shall perform under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior all executive duties in anywise respecting such lands. There can be no question 299that this statute lays upon the Department of the Interior and the General Land Office the obligation to protect the archæological remains that are upon the public lands as definitely as it does the timber and other values.

In the exercise of the power thus conferred a policy has grown up in the Department of the Interior that should be more widely understood. This policy mobilizes, so to speak, the entire force of forest supervisors, rangers, special agents, Indian school superintendents and teachers, Indian agents, farmers and police, and even the Indians themselves, in the protection of these ruins as one of their regular duties, for the avowed purpose of preserving them for scientific investigation. It establishes the liberal policy that any competent scientist who desires to place the material secured in a public museum will be authorized by the Department of the Interior to examine ruins, but that no person will be permitted to excavate them for the purpose of acquiring specimens for traffic or private gain, and that wilful destruction of historic and prehistoric landmarks must cease. The most zealous archæologist must admit that this leaves little to be desired. The main thing, a system of governmental protection for archæological remains, is an accomplished fact. All the available forces of the Department are being wisely utilized. The scientific branch of the Government is lending its aid by furnishing as called upon the needed information concerning sites that are of value to science. Especially noteworthy is the emphasis habitually laid by the Commissioner of the General Land Office on “the importance of furthering in every way possible researches with a view to increasing the knowledge of such objects and aiding in the general advancement of archæological science.” This is administrative policy that every scientific man can uphold with most cordial enthusiasm.

Let us now consider the question of legislation relative to archæological remains. Three bills touching this subject will receive attention at the hands of the present Congress. Two of these are bills for the creation of national parks. One embraces the famous pueblo-like cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, Colorado; the other includes the great district of pueblo ruins and excavated cliff dwellings known as Pajarito Park near Santa Fe, New Mexico. These bills are worthy of the strongest support, not only from the standpoint of historic and scenic preservation, but because of the educational value of the opening up of these interesting districts to the traveling public. Both bills are thoughtfully prepared, provide for the preservation and care of the ruins, and that, with the permission of the 300Secretary of the Interior, excavations may be conducted by properly qualified persons in the interests of science. These are districts of magnificent scenery, embracing less than two townships each, of non-mineral, non-agricultural lands. No rights whatever will be encroached upon, not a settler disturbed. I know of no reason whatever for opposition to either of these bills. They have the support of the people of Colorado and New Mexico, and their passage is urged by the Department of the Interior, the General Land Office having officially examined and favorably recommended both districts for the purposes specified.

The other bill referred to is of much greater importance since it is a general measure touching not only the preservation of archæological remains but affecting the whole field of archæological research. Such bills should receive the most critical scrutiny of those who are engaged in archæological work and know the field. This bill was introduced at the last session of Congress as H. R. 13478 by Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa. The bill originated in the Department of the Interior. It grows out of the practical experience of the General Land Office in dealing with this subject. It is based on a knowledge of the situation and all the administrative problems involved. It is technically well drawn and exactly along the broad commendable lines of the policy of the department as above set forth. It is in fact an outgrowth of the operation of that policy, the crystalization of which into legislative enactment is now prayed for. Through repeated official declarations and acts we know in what manner the powers conferred in the bill will be administered. The reasons for desiring this enactment are set forth in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for 1904. Since it is clear that the measure has for its motive the advancement of archæological science and since it emanates from the department that has learned the necessities of the case by long experience and will be charged with its administration, it manifestly should receive the support of the scientific forces unless on examination it is found inadequate. It has been widely published and is the only bill that has been drawn for the purpose that has not met with pronounced objections. I trust that this Society^[47] will give serious consideration to the measure and, if it meets with your approval, send at the proper time a strong expression of that approval to the National Congress.

Edgar L. Hewett.

National Museum, Washington.

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