Preliminary report on a visit to the Navaho National Monument, Arizona

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

VIEW INTO LAGUNA CANYON FROM MARSH PASS

Beyond Tuba the road is rough, running over upturned strata of rocks and extending along sandy stretches of plain and hills to Red Lake, where there is an Indian trading store owned by well-known merchants of Flagstaff.[19] Here also provisions may be obtained for the trip and abundant water for stock. The road now becomes more difficult. Just after leaving Red Lake there may be noticed to the left two great pinnacles of rock called Elephant Legs, not unlike those in Monument canyon, Utah, and far to the north the cliffs are fantastically eroded. The White Mesa natural bridge, visible from Red Lake, is one of the scenic features of this locality. There are prehistoric burials in the sands near Red Lake, from which have been obtained several beautiful specimens of pottery resembling in the main those from the Navaho National Monument and from the Black Falls ruins.

The road continues from Red Lake to Bekishibito (Cow Spring),[20] where the water issues from under a low cliff, spreading in the wet season over the adjacent plain and forming a shallow lake several miles long, whose bottom is somewhat dangerous on account of quicksands. When there is water a rich mantle of grass—a boon to travelers in this dusty land—covers the plain, making an attractive camping place. This stretch of the road, not more than 20 miles in length, is fairly good and easily traversed by wagons.

After leaving Bekishibito, the road to Marsh pass, although on the whole not bad, becomes more and more obscure. The traveler now enters the region of ruins, and passes several mounds indicating former habitations, some of which still have standing walls. Several pools of water, reduced to little more than mudholes, are found along the road, but a constant supply of potable water is found at the sand hills in the Black mesa opposite the butte called by the Navaho Saunee, 30 to 40 miles distant from Cow Spring. The distance from Red Lake to this camp is a good day’s journey with a heavily loaded buckboard, noon camp being made at Bekishibito. From Saunee one can easily reach Marsh pass in another day, making in all five “sleeps” from Flagstaff to Marsh pass. The only serious difficulties on the route are encountered as one ascends the pass, but a few weeks’ work here would make the whole road from Tuba to Marsh pass as good as that from Flagstaff to Tuba, which is considered one of the best in this part of Arizona.

A large ruin with high walls is visible on a promontory of the Sethlagini plateau westward from this camp. This ruin, as well as another near the road, about halfway from the sand hills to Bekishibito, was not studied; the latter, which lies only a short distance from the road, on a low rocky hill, was visited and found to be the remains of a small pueblo, more or less dilapidated but with standing walls. The fragments of pottery in this vicinity are not unlike those found at the Black Falls ruins, and the masonry of the ruin is almost identical in character. At the time of the writer’s visit there was a pool of water, not very inviting even to horses, a few hundred feet from this ancient habitation. Numerous sheep pasturing in the neighborhood befoul this pool, so that it can not be depended on to supply the needs of either men or horses. The road (plate [2]) follows the valley west of the great Sethlagini mesa, over a hill and finally down again to a Navaho cornfield, the owner of which served as a guide to the large ruin A.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] A two-room stone house erected by the Indian Bureau for use of employes.

[17] For plates representing ruins at Black Falls, see Twenty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. Plate [3] (hitherto unpublished) of the present report represents one of the characteristic Black Falls ruins, which closely resembles several of the characteristic ruins standing on low hills near the road to Marsh pass, beyond Red Lake.

The architecture of the ruins on the Little Colorado near Black Falls resembles that of the open ruins, especially Ruin A, and those near the road from Bekishibito to Marsh pass. While great weight can not be given to this resemblance, since we find much uniformity in stone ruins everywhere in the Southwest, it is interesting to take in connection with this fact the close likeness in minor objects from the Laguna Creek ruins and the Black Falls cluster. The prevailing ware from both is the gray pottery with black geometrical ornamentation and red ware with black or brown decoration. The red ware and the yellow ware, so abundant higher up the river, are not the prevailing kinds. The pottery of the Black Falls ruins is essentially the same type as that of the San Juan and its tributaries.