University of Virginia Library

ABORIGINAL OCCUPANCY OF CHACO CANYON

Evidences of Navaho occupation abound throughout the Chaco
country, but one cannot always fix their age. The site of a hogan,
for example, may be 50 years old or twice that. Neglected drainage
ditches look timeless. Here and there along the canyon rim are
"watchtowers" of sandstone blocks loosely piled 2 or 3 feet high. I
believe these structures to be of Navaho origin, despite the possible
presence of Pueblo potsherds, because they are more or less circular
and invariably have a sill-less opening to the eastward. They could
be relics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when guards were
posted to warn of approaching troops, sent to retaliate for Navaho
raids on Spanish and Pueblo settlements to the east and south.[3]

Notwithstanding its present-day barrenness and desolation, Chaco
Canyon formerly possessed some now-missing quality that attracted
Indian settlers. The ruins of one-time habitations, some older than

others, are to be seen on every hand. A Late Basket Maker village
9 miles east of Pueblo Bonito was tested in connection with our
studies in 1926 and excavated the following year for the Bureau of
American Ethnology by Roberts (1929). During our 1920 reconnaissance,
to keep three Zuñi occupied while I visited Pueblo Pintado
and the upper Chaco, a P. I pit house on the south side of the canyon,
opposite Pueblo Bonito, was partly excavated. Two years later we
cleared what remained of another, in midvalley and a mile to the east.
From this second dwelling, its roof level buried under six feet of
alluvium, we removed two charred logs subsequently dated A.D.
777±10 (Judd, 1924; Douglass, 1935).

Scores of small Pueblo II and III structures are to be found along
the south side of the valley and in the open country beyond. In contrast,
most of the great P. III towns are situated close under the
canyon's north wall. Here, too, a few natural cavities had been converted
into granaries or one-family shelters; terraced houses were
piled against the cliff behind Pueblo Bonito and Chettro Kettle. Upcanyon,
on jutting crags beyond Wejegi, are the ruins of at least two
houses built between 1680 and 1700 by refugee families from Rio
Grande pueblos. In few places can the pageant of Pueblo history be
seen so clearly as in Chaco Canyon!

In this and following reports on our investigations I shall continue
to designate culture sequences by the terminology of the Pecos Classification
(Kidder, 1927), with occasional resort to Roberts's 1936 proposals
by way of variation, despite the fact that increase of knowledge
since these studies were begun has shown that material and physical
differences between the so-called Basket Makers and the Pueblos are
less real than was formerly supposed.

Like the Basket Makers, the Early Pueblos (P. I) dwelt in pits
before they learned to build houses that could stand alone. Walls
made of posts and mud eventually were replaced by those of masonry;
detached, one-family dwellings were brought into juxtaposition, their
storage bins at the rear; one-clan structures developed into vast,
terraced buildings housing several hundred persons. Pueblo Bonito
and others of its kind illustrate this latter stage, the third (P. III)
and highest advance of Pueblo civilization. It was followed by a
period of retrogression, commonly designated Pueblo IV, and then
by the further disruption of the Spanish Conquest (P. V). Some
30-odd Pueblo villages in New Mexico and Arizona still cling, more
or less tenaciously, to the traditional way of life and the old religion.
At least two of them, Acoma and old Oraibi, still occupy the very
sites they occupied in 1540.

When our Pueblo Bonito investigations were inaugurated, in the
spring of 1921, most archeologists working in the Southwest depended
upon fragments of pottery to suggest the degree of development
at any one site. Pueblo I pottery had a certain sameness, no
matter where found; it could never be mistaken for P. III pottery.
Therefore potsherds served as evidence both of material progress and
passing time. Stratigraphy was the means by which that evidence
was acquired.

Hence our first desire, as soon as camp had been organized, was a
good look at the Bonito dump. Two conspicuous rubbish piles stand
just south of the ruin. Because floor sweepings at the bottom of those
piles would be older than sweepings on top, a cross section should
reveal every major change in the material culture of the villagers
during the period that trash was accumulating.

Previous experience in Utah and Arizona had taught me that
certain types of earthenware were associated with early dwellings;
other types, with later. But our trench into the larger of the two
Bonito rubbish heaps disclosed an intermixture of early and late types
from top to bottom. We cut a second stratigraphic section and then
a third. Each revealed the same puzzling fact: early sherds were
with and above late fragments.

The story of how this mystery finally was solved has been reserved
for my chapter on pottery. But the solution, I must add, also provided
convincing evidence that a settlement had existed here a long,
long while before its population was doubled by an immigrant people.
Still later, more foreigners arrived.

Thanks to the late Dr. Clark Wissler, then curator of anthropology,
American Museum of Natural History, partial page proof of Pepper's
"Pueblo Bonito" was received late in May 1921, shortly after we
had turned our attention from the rubbish piles of Pueblo Bonito to
the ruin itself. This text, and a number of prints from Pepper negatives
purchased through courtesy of B. T. B. Hyde, enabled us at the
outset to identify the rooms Pepper had excavated and thus avoid
any possible duplication of effort.

Discussing the nature and extent of the Hyde Expeditions' work
in his foreword to Pepper's volume, Dr. Wissler says: "Something
less than half the rooms in the pueblo were excavated, 198 in all."
The total given is apparently a typographical error, for Pepper's text
and ground plan include only 189, plus the sunken shrine in the East
Court, No. 190. The ground plan, it is explained, was prepared by
B. T. B. Hyde from Pepper's field notes and a sketch made in 1916
by N. C. Nelson. That such a composite should contain a few discrepancies

was perhaps inevitable and was anticipated by Mr. Nelson
(in Pepper, 1920, p. 387). Wherever disclosed during the course of
our own explorations, these errors have been corrected. On the plan
appearing herein, figure 2, rooms numbered 1-190 are those excavated
by the Hyde Expeditions; with a few exceptions those examined
by the National Geographic Society are numbered 200-351
and the kivas are lettered. In our text the letters B, C, and D indicate,
respectively, the second, third, and fourth stories. Five rooms (210,

Fig. 2.—A crescent of Old Bonitian houses formed the nucleus of Pueblo Bonito and influenced
each successive addition to the village. (Drawn from the original survey by Oscar B. Walsh.)

227, 295, 299, 300) and two kivas (Y, Z) were cleared by unknown
persons between 1900 and 1920. In addition to those left unnumbered,
Rooms 205-208, 297, 301-303 were purposely not excavated; and
Kivas O, P, S, and 2-C were merely tested. These, I hoped, might
be reserved for examination some years hence.

It was my desire, and one in which the Society's Committee on
Research unanimously concurred, to save Pueblo Bonito for what it
actually is, a ruined prehistoric town, and let its empty rooms tell
their own story. Toward this end we did a great deal each season to
strengthen standing walls in order that they might be preserved as
we found them. A repair crew was kept constantly at work as
excavations progressed, patching broken masonry, replacing missing

door lintels, and taking other reasonable precautions to check further
disintegration.

To provide drainage in rooms that we opened in the eastern part
of the ruin, a hole often was dug in the middle floor, filled with rocks,
and covered with sand. To protect the ruder stonework of the western
half, our rooms were wholly or partially refilled, the refill being cupped
in the middle. For like reasons we carted away the excess dirt and
rock the Hyde Expeditions had thrown out of their excavations.
Hewett (1936, p. 32) was well aware of this when he sought to belittle
our program by stating that the Society had reexcavated the
Pepper rooms.

Pueblo Bonito well merits preservation. It is at once the largest
and oldest of the major Chaco Canyon towns. It is a complex, the
union of several distinct parts. It is the work of two similar but
unlike peoples. Despite joint occupancy of the village for 100 years
or more, these peoples were culturally two or three generations apart,
as we shall see presently.