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, and 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 water 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 to 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 map 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: