University of Virginia Library

OUTLYING WALLS

Under this heading I desire briefly to consider two walls, one adjoining
Pueblo del Arroyo and the other nearby. The first, presently
standing 4 feet high against the outer southwest corner of Room 8,
extended west an unknown distance before Jackson's "old arroyo"
destroyed all but the easternmost 15 feet of it (pl. 45, upper). Abutting
the south face of this remnant, but on a silty layer several inches

higher, is the west side of the Kiva B enclosure, likewise largely
washed away by the "old arroyo" (pl. 44, B).

Following his 1877 examination of this ruin, W. H. Jackson (1878,
p. 443) wrote: "The arroyo is undermining the soil close to the southwest
corner of the pueblo, and has already exposed some old lines of
masonry, which on the surface do not give any indications whatever
of their existence." These are the "old walls" of his plan (herein,
fig. 45), low walls buried under successive layers of valley alluvium
during or following occupation of the village. Nothing is now visible
of those walls except, possibly, a southward-extending section near
the angle at the west end.

In 1897 or 1898 the Hyde Exploring Expedition built a boardinghouse
for its employees a few yards from the southeastern corner of
the pueblo and, nearby, prepared a dugway for its freight wagons
across both the old and new watercourses. In his 1901 report to the
Commissioner of the General Land Office, Holsinger (MS., p. 52;
herein, fig. 45) "amends" Jackson's plan and approximates the locations
of both the crossing and the boardinghouse but records nothing
relative to Jackson's "old walls." Nevertheless, if these latter had
been completely destroyed in the interval, memory of them persisted
in 1911 when, following his visit to Chaco Canyon in the spring of that
year, Huntington (1914, p. 82) wrote: "Three feet under the level of
the main plain upon which stand the ruins of Pueblo del Arroyo
traces of old walls can be seen extending 100 feet beyond the present
ruins; the lowest part of these walls is 5 feet below the present surface."
Elsewhere (Bryan, 1954, p. 33; Judd, 1954, p. 13) we have
noted that 3 to 5 feet of Chaco Canyon alluvium not only buried walls
and fields but threatened inundation of small outlying settlements.

I can conceive no logical purpose for a 2-foot-high straight and
detached wall 100 feet long where Jackson placed it except as a means
of diverting contemporary floodwaters away from the village. That
may also have been the function of a now-buried wall that extends
east from Pueblo Bonito nearly 200 feet. It does not apply, however,
to a similar but still longer wall that stretches out across sand and
rock from the northeast corner of Pueblo Alto, on the cliff north of
Bonito.

The buried twelfth-century channel which Jackson saw exposed in
the bank of the arroyo in 1877 passed to the south of his "old walls"
and his "old arroyo," but north of them, in the side of a dug storage
cellar back of the boardinghouse, Bryan (1954, p. 34) noted evidence
of a lesser channel containing sherds of late types of Chaco Canyon
pottery. The twelfth-century arroyo may not have seemed a menace

Plate 28.—Canteens (a-e) and pitchers (f-k).

Plate 29.—Seed jars.

Plate 30.—Water jars.

Plate 31.—Ollas and storage jars.

Plate 32.—Small jars and Corrugated-coil culinary vessels.

Plate 33.—Corrugated-coil culinary ware from the upper fill in Room 65 (a-f)
and from Room 27 (g-i).

Plate 34.—Twelve Corrugated-coil culinary vessels stored on the floor of Room 65.

Plate 35.—Earthenware representations of bifurcated baskets.

Fig. 45.—Jackson's 1877 plan of Pueblo del Arroyo as amended by Holsinger in 1901
(in heavier line).

to the residents of Pueblo del Arroyo, but they must have been annoyed,
if not apprehensive, when layers of flood-deposited mud annually
piled up against their village.

Three Hyde Expedition photographs, generously made available
by Dr. Harry L. Shapiro, head curator of anthropology at the American
Museum of Natural History, contribute a further note to our
present subject (pl. 53, a-c). The lower shows the Chaco, in flood,
cutting across the course of Jackson's "old arroyo." At the right in
this view a conspicuous, mid-distance bank marks the border of the
old channel. In a closer view (b) a layer of rubbish, apparently
debris of reconstruction (the print identifies "pottery in the bank near
Pueblo del Arroyo"), extends in varied depth to left and right. If I
judge correctly, part of that same layer appears in the third photograph
(a), beyond the bank and nearer the ruin. Although it approximates
the position of Jackson's "old walls" it is my guess that
that deposit represents part of the village trash pile, concealed beneath
3 or more feet of silt. At the time of our studies absence of a recognizable
village dump was puzzling and led us to suppose it had
been leveled and hauled away to provide space for the Hyde Expedition's
boardinghouse. The normal place for a local village trash pile
would have been south or southeast of the settlement. No portion of
the 100-foot-long old wall was visible during the course of our
explorations.

That some leveling and clearing up occurred hereabout may be
assumed since the Hyde Expedition would naturally have been solicitous
for the comfort of its employees and, later, of its guests after
the boardinghouse had become the "hotel." Both Holsinger and Huntington
stayed here, and the former was prompted by proximity of the
ruin to do "a little prospecting with pick and shovel" (MS., p. 51).
In the course of this activity he uncovered what he described as "a
gateway" in the middle of the court-enclosing arc of one-story rooms.
Holsinger's revision of Jackson's plan was not known to us until long
after, but while searching here for room corners in preparation of our
own ground plan we observed nothing to suggest an eastern entrance.
However we did find, outside the arc of rooms, a slab-lined
fireplace and a low angular wall without meaning to us; also, between
the boardinghouse and the ruin, evidence of what may have been an
outlying kiva, wholly or partially destroyed in the excavation for a
modern cistern. The successive silt layers that had half buried the
small Pueblo III ruin on the opposite side of the channel (pl. 53, c)
continue to the south wall of Pueblo del Arroyo and around to the
west (pl. 44, A).