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CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS

Now who were these people—the Old Bonitians and the Late
Bonitians? Where did they come from, and where did they go? Our
data point to certain possibilities but without conviction. The Old
Bonitians may have descended from earlier Chaco Canyon settlers,
but it is more likely they were immigrants from beyond the San Juan
River. They were the founders of Pueblo Bonito as we now know it,
although the same site had been previously occupied by Pueblo I
families. We discovered the slab-lined floor of a typical Pueblo I
pit house out in front of Old Bonito and under 12 feet of Old Bonitian
rubbish, and other pit houses probably lie at the same deep level.

Archeologists have learned that Pueblo I pit houses usually were
succeeded by above-ground structures having jacal, or post-and-mud,
walls. Although this type of construction is present in Old Bonito it
occurs infrequently. Hence I find it easier to believe the Old Bonitians
had moved in from the north as a body and employed their
newly acquired knowledge of masonry in constructing their Chaco
Canyon home.

Old Bonito, separated from later accretions, consists of a double
row of rectangular rooms, grouped crescentically and facing southeast
(fig. 2). Close within the crescent and below its foundations
were several circular, ceremonial chambers or kivas. We exposed
sections of three but did not venture more for fear of endangering the
buildings that had supplanted them. The whole assemblage—an arc
of dwellings with adjoining storerooms at the rear; sunken, ceremonial
rooms in front, and the village dump beyond—parallels Late
Basket Maker and Early Pueblo settlements north of the Rio
San Juan.

Roberts (1930), Martin (1938, 1939), Morris (1939), and Brew
(1946) have reported upon a number of these B.M. III and P. I
villages. They have shown that living quarters evolved from deep,
earth-walled pits to dwellings having floors only 6 to 18 inches below
the surface and upper walls of mud supported by posts; thereafter,
to rectangular rooms joined end to end and curving about the north
or west side of a depression. Some of these later above-ground structures
were provided with fireplaces; each was accompanied by one
or two storerooms in a second tier immediately behind the first—
precisely the arrangement we have already noted in Old Bonito.
Sandstone slabs on end as a sort of baseboard and rocks used as
fillers in post-and-mud walls are features repeatedly noted in P. I
rectangular dwellings and, as one might expect, they are to be seen
here and there in Old Bonito.

These and other outmoded constructional practices will be considered
at greater length in our study of the architecture of Pueblo
Bonito. For the present I wish merely to record my belief that such
survivals, especially the traditional grouping of dwellings, storerooms,
kivas, and trash piles, all point to southwestern Colorado as the most
likely place of origin for the culture that brought Old Bonito into
being. It is there, also, north of the San Juan, that one finds the
prototype of the "great kiva" in its earliest recognizable manifestation,
and the great kiva is undeniably one of the distinguishing elements
in what has come to be called "The Chaco culture." From southwestern
Colorado southward through Aztec and Chaco Canyon to the

Zuñi Mountains, the obvious importance of the great kiva in the
religious life of the community increases directly with distance.

Table and kitchen ware may be as informative as architecture, or
more so. Part of the earthenware we recovered at Pueblo Bonito had
been imported, but the bulk of it was produced locally and by the
Old Bonitians. The same shapes and ornamentation are represented
by fragments from the Old Bonitian dump under the West Court.
We named this preponderant ware "Transitional" because in 1925,
at the time our sherd analysis was made, it seemed to us a sort of
transition from what we would now call Pueblo I to Pueblo II pottery.

Every archeologist acquainted with the San Juan country is familiar
with our Transitional ware although perhaps under another name.
It is a widely distributed variety, rock- or sherd-tempered, grayish
white in color, slipped, polished, and ornamented with black mineral
paint.

The dominant pottery at Lowry Ruin, northwest of the Mesa
Verde, is called "Mancos black-on-white" by Martin (1936, p. 94).
It is to him evidence of a northward flow of Chaco culture from "the
area between Gallup and Shiprock" (ibid., p. 111). Martin's description
and illustrations show that some of his Mancos black-on-white is
indistinguishable from Old Bonito "Transitional." Brew (1946) illustrates
Mancos black-on-white designs from P. II sites on Alkali
Ridge, southeastern Utah, and Morris (1939) finds the same decorative
elements on P. II pottery from the La Plata district, southwestern
Colorado. While bowl rims were rarely, if ever, blackened at
Alkali Ridge P. II sites or at Lowry Ruin, Morris finds approximately
half of those from La Plata P. II sites so treated. At Old
Bonito the black rim line is a constant feature.

Typical Old Bonitian designs are to be seen on vessels and sherds
from Chaco Canyon small-house sites identified as P. II by University
of New Mexico archeologists (Brand et al., 1937; Dutton, 1938;
Kluckhohn et al., 1939), but other fragments from the same ruins I
should call P. I or P. III. During the 1925 season we made a partial
survey of small-house remains in the Chaco district and are confident
some of them were built before, some after, Pueblo Bonito.

Fragments of two charred poles from a Pueblo I pit house that we
examined in 1922 were subsequently dated A.D. 777 and 777±10
(Douglass, 1935, p. 51). Gladwin (1945, p. 43) lists several other
P. I structures the tree-ring dates of which range from 785 to 867.
He includes Morris's Site 33, in southwestern Colorado, with its great
kiva dated A.D. 831±. Pottery, rather than architecture, bridges the
half century between our Chaco pit house and Site 33.

Morris (1939, p. 85) places the principal occupancy of Site 33 in
Pueblo I times but recognizes the possibility of initial settlement
during the preceding period. Buildings I, II, and III were aggregations
of post-and-mud rooms arranged crescentically with dwellings
in front, storerooms at the rear. Roberts (1930, 1939), Martin
(1939), and Brew (1946) describe similar structures, similarly
grouped. The arrangement, but not the construction, is what we have
noted in the old, original part of Pueblo Bonito.

The builders of Old Bonito had advanced beyond the post-and-mud
stage of P. I civilization. They built almost exclusively with masonry.
Their dwellings were rectangular, standing end to end in a wide
crescent, storerooms behind. Their kivas were deep, with flaring
walls, an encircling bench, and low pilasters. From the architectural
point of view, we can only recognize the Old Bonitians as a P. II
people.

The stonework of Old Bonito is one of its distinctive features.
There is nothing like it elsewhere in the Chaco country, so far as I
could ascertain, except in a number of ground-floor rooms at Peñasco
Blanco. One must go north of the San Juan to find its counterpart.

Morris's (1939, p. 34) description of Pueblo II masonry on the
La Plata, wherein the individual blocks of stone were reduced to size
by "spalling back the edges much as a flint blade would be chipped
to shape," accurately mirrors Old Bonitian stonework. If anything
is lacking it is the external mosaic of sandstone chips employed at
Old Bonito as protection against wind and rain. Here, too, the outside
walls customarily sloped to a floor-level thickness twice that at
ceiling height—a constructional practice that possibly reflects the
batter of P. I house walls. Thus Old Bonitian architecture seems to
be a blend of La Plata P. I and P. II, with certain features retained
even from B.M. III times.

Late Bonitian masonry likewise appears to be of northern inspiration.
It is dominant in both quality and quantity and completely
overshadows that of the Old Bonitians. It includes three successive
varieties, each characterized by a core of mud and broken rock faced
with carefully chosen and prepared building stones. Late Bonitian
dwellings are noteworthy not only for the quality of their masonry
but also for an almost measured regularity, neatly squared corners,
and ceiling timbers selected with discrimination, cut, and peeled while
green. The Late Bonitians unhesitatingly razed living rooms to provide
space for kivas within the house mass.

All these features are to be seen in ruins of southeastern Utah and
southwestern Colorado. Even though allowance be made for the

superior workability of Chaco Canyon sandstone, a Chaco-like quality
is apparent at many sites throughout that area. This assertion is based
partly upon personal recollections gained during an apprenticeship
there in 1907 and 1908 and, in larger measure, upon the more seasoned
opinions of other investigators.

Jeancon (1922, p. 31) noted resemblances to Chaco masonry and
room arrangement while excavating a large pueblo on the Piedra
Parada, or Chimney Rock Mesa, near Pagosa Springs, Colo., in 1921.
A year later Roberts (1922) not only confirmed Jeacon's observation
but also remarked a striking similarity between Chimney Rock pottery
and that from Chaco ruins. He added: "The Piedra Parada ware
appears to be of an earlier development, however," the first recorded
suggestion, so far as the present writer knows, that the beginnings
of Chaco culture might lie north of the San Juan. Kidder (1924,
p. 68) likewise remarked the apparent relationship between pottery
from certain ruins north of the San Juan and that from small-house
sites in Chaco Canyon.

At Lowry Ruin, where he obtained tree-ring dates between A.D.
1086 and 1106, Martin (1936, p. 204) recognized both Chaco masonry
and Chaco pottery. Building I, at Site 39 on the La Plata, is described
by Morris (1939, p. 53) as a compact, Chaco-type structure
erected upon the remains of a P. II house. Among debris of occupation
in Building I, Morris noted pottery fragments comparable to
Chaco-like sherds he had recovered from lower levels in the West
Pueblo at Aztec. Other examples could be cited but these few will
serve to indicate the existence of a strong cultural bond between some
of the Early Pueblo III communities north of the San Juan and their
contemporaries to the south. Another tie is the "great kiva."

As illustrated at Aztec Ruin, Pueblo Bonito, Chettro Kettle, Casa
Rinconada, and elsewhere, the great kiva is an important diagnostic
of Chaco culture at its height. Its beginnings, however, lie in the
humble surroundings of B.M. III and P. I villages whose inhabitants
dwelt in pits or, at best, in post-and-adobe surface structures. The
two at Martin's Site 1 in the Ackmen-Lowry area, southwestern
Colorado (Martin, 1939), that at Morris's P. I Site 33 on the La
Plata (Morris, 1939), and the one at Roberts's B.M. III village,
Shabik'eshchee, in Chaco Canyon (Roberts, 1929), are indubitably
precursors of the P. III examples mentioned above. Although that
at Shabik'eshchee lacks the wall and bench masonry of Martin's two,
it is so similar in other respects there can be no question that it
served a like purpose. The great kiva so conspicuous at Pueblo
Bonito was of late construction, since we found Mesa Verde and
Little Colorado River potsherds beneath its floor.

Thus the great kiva, both early and late, and its associated domestic
architecture and ceramics, seem to me to be products of
Anasazi cultures evolved among the canyons and mesas along the
lower Utah-Colorado border and carried thence south and east by
migrant groups. In their search for more fertile fields, or greater
security, some of these groups obviously traveled farther than others;
some bypassed Chaco Canyon altogether. The evidence before us
does not suggest a common point of departure for all these migrant
peoples or simultaneous emigration. Pueblo I-III remains, differing
in no appreciable degree from their kind in Chaco Canyon, are to
be seen many miles to the south.

In the autumn of 1921 Pete Havens and I had visited a number
of lesser ruins in the vicinity of Gallup, source of many fine examples
of Chaco-like pottery in local collections. Both early and late vessels
were represented. We also observed Chaco-like masonry at several
sites, including three in a nameless canyon extending southeast from
Manuelito. Here, occupying a south promontory, was a conspicuous
ruin with two rows of second-story loopholes commanding the landward
approach. Near another late P. III ruin, similarly situated, we
found a great kiva noteworthy both for its size and the quality of its
stonework. Although we never returned for a second, unhurried
examination, it is still my impression those ruins evidence a late,
perhaps even a post-Bonito, shift of clans from the Chaco country.
On the trash pile of another ruin a few miles farther south and east
I gathered an assortment of potsherds that includes both San Juan
and Tularosa black-on-white, Little Colorado polychrome, and ancestral
Zuñi (U.S.N.M. No. 317192).[7]

It was in this same general area, between the Rio Puerco of the
West and headwaters of the Zuñi River, that Roberts carried to completion
three brilliant studies in sequential Pueblo history. Through
architecture and ceramics he traced the degree of civilization represented
at Kiatuthlanna (1931), at the Village of the Great Kivas
(1932), and in the Whitewater district (1939, 1940) back to earlier
stages of development in the Chaco and beyond. His conclusions are
thus diametrically opposed to those of Gladwin (1945) and Martin
(1936, 1939), who see the Chaco culture spreading in the opposite
direction, from south to north.

Beginning with what he calls "the White Mound Phase," approximately
A.D. 750 to 800, Gladwin (1945) pursues Chaco-like elements
through his Kiatuthlanna, Red Mesa, Wingate, and Hosta Butte

Phases to Chaco Canyon itself. He describes the Hosta Butte Phase
as a period of small P. III settlements, each of from 20 to 30 rooms,
constructed and occupied between A.D. 1010 and 1080. The "Bonito
Phase" followed. He groups in the Hosta Butte Phase half a hundred
small-house sites along the south side of Chaco Canyon, several of
which we identified in 1925, on the basis of surface sherd collections,
as either earlier than Pueblo Bonito, or later. Black-on-white vessels
classed as Red Mesa and Wingate have their counterparts in our
Transitional ware. But more of these controversial subjects, pottery
and architecture, in the several reports to follow!

Gladwin believes the Chaco culture died out in Chaco Canyon. He
knows of no Classic Chaco site later than 1130, which is our latest
Pueblo Bonito date, and neither do I. Apparently the unity of purpose
that built the Chaco towns and perfected the way of life practiced
therein was not transferable. It did not take root with equal vigor
elsewhere. But the evidence available at this writing suggests to me
a dissociation and dispersal rather than stagnation and decay. Our
data indicate that the two peoples who dwelt in Pueblo Bonito, having
surpassed their contemporaries in communal achievement, had
abruptly terminated their compact and separated. The Old Bonitians
were content to remain in their ancestral home but the Late Bonitians
moved on, presumably seeking fields where erosion was not a problem.

Chaco-like qualities in ruins north of the San Juan suggest to me
a common heritage rather than influence from Chaco Canyon. Toward
the south, however, the opposite is true. A Chaco influence
that predominated from Pueblo I to Pueblo III times is undeniable
at the scene of Roberts's Whitewater study; late contacts from the
same source are evident also at his Village of the Great Kivas
(Roberts, 1932). Reports have it that there is a small Classic Chaco
ruin on the Navaho reservation about 7 miles west of San Mateo and
others farther north, along the Continental Divide.

Constructional features in the two circular pre-Zuñi kivas that
Hodge (1923, p. 34) excavated near Hawikuh are unquestionably of
late Chaco origin. Superior masonry underlying Ketchipauan, one
of Coronado's Seven Cities of Cibola, is thought to represent the same
period as the two kivas. The older portion of Zuñi has always
seemed to me, in some indefinable way, a reflection of Pueblo Bonito,
and if I were to seek the lost trail of the Late Bonitians I should turn
first of all to the Zuñi Mountains and their surroundings.

Our seven summers of field work in Chaco Canyon left many questions
unanswered and many riddles unsolved. If descendants of the
Late Bonitians survive in present-day pueblos, the fact has not been

made known. We found no Pueblo myths that lead positively and
exclusively to Chaco Canyon. Roberts (1931, p. 8) relates a Zuñi
myth in which the Winter People, in their search for The Middle,
traveled north to Chaco Canyon and Aztec, thence east to the Chama
River, down the Rio Grande, and finally reached their goal in Zuñi
Valley—a myth at variance with archeological fact. So-called traditions
of the Navaho that purport to prove contact with the Bonitians
are, I am almost convinced, chiefly tales told by old men around winter
fires. I heard several such, no two alike, but hesitate to denounce
them all as without foundation. Whenever I am tempted to do so I
recall the fragments of pointed-bottom cook pots we found in Late
Bonitian rubbish—pots that, in all probability, were made in the
Gallina country, ancestral home of the Navaho.

Analysis of our data shows that Pueblo Bonito is the product of
two distinct peoples. These I have called the "Old Bonitians" and
the "Late Bonitians" because the names by which they knew each
other have been lost. The Old Bonitians were the real founders of
the community; the Late Bonitians, eleventh-century immigrants.
The two peoples were co-occupants for a hundred years or more, and
yet the houses they built and lived in, the tools they made and used,
differ so much that physical, linguistic, and mental differences between
the two may be presumed. The Late Bonitians were aggressive;
they usurped leadership of the village immediately upon arrival. In
contrast, the Old Bonitians were ultraconservative; they clung tenaciously
to their old ways, their old habits and customs. The Late
Bonitians created the Classic Chaco culture, most advanced in all the
Southwest. The Old Bonitians, dwelling next door, lagged a century
behind. They were intellectually dormant. They were a Pueblo II
people living in Pueblo III times!

PARTIAL LIST OF TRAIT COMPARISONS
(Based solely on findings of the National Geographic Society)

           

Item	Old Bonitian	Late Bonitian
Masonry	Spalled slabs, wall width	Veneered rubble
Ceilings	Cottonwood and pinyon beams, chico brush and adobe	Pine beams and poles, willows or juniper shakes, cedarbark and adobe
Doors	Somewhat oval; rounded jambs and corners; high sill	Rectangular; secondary jambs and lintels frequent; low sill
T-shaped doors	2	30
Clothes racks	None	7

Plate 6

Upper: Cylindrical vases and pitchers piled in middle of Room 28 and, above them, west wall
of Room 28B. In foreground, rounded top of partition between Rooms 28 and 28a. At lower left,
door with steps to court level; at right, open door to Room 51a.

Lower: Debris of reconstruction under Room 55 buried the pottery piled in Room 28. At
right, above left edge of post, the right jamb of blocked door to Room 32.

(Hyde Expedition photographs by George H. Pepper, courtesy of B. T. B. Hyde.)

Plate 7

Upper: Late Bonitian vessels on drifted sand, southeast corner of Room 28. (Hyde Expedition
photograph by George H. Pepper, courtesy of American Museum of Natural History.)

Lower: With its blocking removed, the door connecting Rooms 28 and 32 reveals the later
north wall of Room 28 (foreground) built against the original Old Bonitian masonry; beyond,
two Mesa Verde mugs in Room 32. (Hyde Expedition photograph by George H. Pepper,
courtesy of B. T. B. Hyde.)

Plate 8

Upper: A Zuñi looks through the south door of Room 299B, whose secondary jambs and
lintel once supported a sandstone door slab. (Photograph by Neil M. Judd, 1923.)

Lower: An elevated doorway in the Hopi pueblo of Mishongnovi. (Photograph by O. C.
Havens, 1924.)

Plate 9.—A, Turquoise necklace and ear bobs in situ, Room 320. (Photograph by O. C.
Havens, 1924.) B, Remains of a presumed cradle. (Photograph by Neil M. Judd, 1921.)
C, A "ring-bottomed" vessel from Room 249. (Photograph by B. Anthony Stewart.)

PARTIAL LIST OF TRAIT COMPARISONS—concluded

                                                                             

Item	Old Bonitian	Late Bonitian
Pole shelves	4	12
Wall pegs	2	16
Wall pockets or cupboards	12	103
Fixed work slabs	None	6
Storage pits and bins	13	20
Beads: olivella	Spire removed	One or both ends removed
"saucer-shaped"	None	Few
stone	About 90 percent	About 10 percent
figure-8	Few	About 90 percent
Chama, etc.	Few	Common
Tubular bone "beads"	6	37
Bone "pins"	None	32
Copper bells and fragments	2	17
Red claystone	10 lots	31 lots
Galena	3 lots	4 lots
Mica	None	7 lots
Hematite	4 lots	5 lots
Selenite and calcite	5 lots	30 lots
Azurite and malachite	13 lots	18 lots
Metates, troughed with open end	Thin, tabular, wide border; no metate bin	Thick, massive, rarely shaped; single or multiple bin
Sandstone saws	1	6
Deer humeri scrapers	5	15
Deer phalanx scrapers	1 (?)	12
Bone chisels	None	6
Cylindrical baskets	16	3
Tumplines	Twisted or braided yucca fiber, oval end loops	Woven band, triangular eyelets
Pottery: cook pots	Plain body, banded or coiled neck, direct rim; later, "exuberant" neck decoration	Over-all corrugated coil, flaring rim; geometric pinched decoration frequent
bowls	Hemispherical; direct, tapering rim; own designs	Same as Old Bonitian but own designs; later, some rim flattening
pitchers	Full body, rounded bottom, sloping shoulders; over-all or 2-zone decoration	Small body, often concave base, tall cylindrical neck; 2-zone decoration
ladles	Half-gourd shape	Bowl-and-handle
storage jars	Tall, egg-shaped; high shoulders with occasional bulge; low neck	Squat to globular; higher neck; inset or down-raking handles
cylindrical vases	16, all with L.B. decoration in 4 burial rooms	1
Arrowheads: A type	25 percent	75 percent
B type	76 percent	24 percent
Earthenware pipes and fragments	1	9
Elliptical basket trays	4	None
Bifurcated baskets and fragments	5 in 2 burial rooms	None
Earthenware models of bifurcated baskets	2	3