University of Virginia Library

SUBSISTENCE

Pueblo Bonito was built and occupied by farmers. Their livelihood
depended upon cultivated plants, and these, in turn, were subject to
a capricious climate. If winter snows sufficed, seeds germinated and
broke the surface; if summer rains fell at the right time and in the
right place, plants grew to maturity. But summer rains in Chaco
Canyon are vagrant. They might drench one farm and leave the next
dry; they might come too late or not at all. To meet these uncertainties,
Bonitian farmers located their fields in the paths of rainwater
running off higher land, or in areas where low earth dams impounded
such transient floods and thus multiplied the result of local precipitation.
This "floodwater" method of irrigation is still widely practiced
by Southwestern tribes; it is the method profitably employed today
by Navaho families throughout the Chaco country.

We may confidently identify the Bonitians as floodwater farmers
because they had no choice. There has never been a permanent stream
in Chaco Canyon. The valley fill, made up of soil transported and
deposited by runoff during countless rainy seasons, presumably supported
a lush vegetation of native grasses and shrubs in the days of
Pueblo Bonito. Cottonwoods and willows followed a shallow, intermittent
channel down the middle of the canyon. We take for granted
that Indian gardens flourished wherever sufficient moisture could
be provided.

Today, 800 years later, an entirely different aspect presents itself.
The once prosperous village stands in ruins, surrounded by barren
fields. An arroyo 30 feet or more in depth and 100 to 300 feet wide
has gutted the valley and lowered its water table beyond reach of
indigenous vegetation. In consequence, the abundance and variety
of plant life are greatly diminished. Without a ground cover to check
runoff, storm waters quickly drain into the arroyo, deepening and
widening it in the process. As this gully system expands year after
year it is repeating the devastation caused by an earlier arroyo, in
existence when Pueblo Bonito was inhabited. By gradually washing
away their farms, that earlier arroyo may have forced the Bonitians
to vacate Chaco Canyon. Now, with another erosion cycle well advanced,

A, Willow mattress, as found, on the floor of Room 320. (Photograph by O. C. Havens,
1924.)

Plate 10

B, Part of the willow mat seen in A, stitched on muslin for preservation.

Plate 11.—Fragments of matting woven of rush leaves.

Plate 12

Tom Chischilly-begay in his cornfield.

(Photograph by O. C. Havens, 1925.)

Hopi rabbit hunter with throwing club.

(Photograph by O. C. Havens, 1924.)

Plate 13.—Chischilly-begay's floodwater farm in Kinbiniyol Valley showing (A, B)
damage by uncontrolled floods, and (C) the family preparing pumpkins and squashes for
winter use. (Photographs by O. C. Havens, 1925.)

the canyon is once again being deserted. Few Navaho
continue there today.

At the turn of the century, however, many more families lived
within a couple of hours' horseback ride, for Holsinger reports that
the Hyde Expeditions employed about 100 men in excavation of
Pueblo Bonito. Hogan sites and vestiges of former garden plots
remain today as evidence of a larger past population. We examined

a dozen or more forgotten fields, all different yet somewhat alike.
They may be 20 years old or 200. They are once-cleared areas onto
which storm waters were guided by a series of low earth ridges. The
number of such ridges, their extent and grouping, was clearly suggested
by the immediate surroundings. Our Navaho workmen employ
like means to meet like problems.

With half a dozen miniature dikes Rafael waters his principal cornfield
on the south side of the valley a mile west of Pueblo Bonito. A
handful of grass or a chunk of sandstone suffices to turn a lesser
runoff onto smaller plots higher up the slope (fig. 4). Dan Cly takes

full advantage of natural drainage on the steplike ledges of Rincon
del Camino (fig. 5).

Successful floodwater irrigation depends not only upon understanding
of the principles of runoff but also upon knowledge of soils. As

Bryan (1941, pp. 224-225) sums up his observations: "The essential
feature is the selection . . . of a place overflowed by flood water.
The overflow must be sufficient to saturate the ground and thus irrigate
the crop and yet not so violent as to wash out the plants . . .
Broad valley floors over which the flood-run-off after rain spreads
widely are favorable areas." Chaco Canyon was just such an area.
During periods of alluviation, layers of silt and sand were deposited
uniformly across the valley floor (pl. 4, lower).

The preeminent Navaho farmer in the Chaco district today lives on
the Kinbiniyol, a few miles below the ruin of that name and about
12 miles southwest of Pueblo Bonito. He is Tom Chischilly-begay
(pl. 12, left), who says he began to cultivate these particular fields
about 1918. He learned his method from Juan Etcitty, since deceased,

who created Juan's Lake 4 or 5 miles below Tom's place and
farmed there successfully until his dam burst one season causing an
arroyo that ruined everything.

By a system of check dams and embankments Chischilly-begay
utilizes the entire drainage of the Kinbiniyol (fig. 6). A low earth
dam is the initial control but it apparently washes out each year.
Originally a ditch was intended to take out from the dam but it was
abandoned before completion. Now (1925) Tom endeavors to meet
each onrush of floodwater and spread it laterally across his fields.

Throughout the rainy season he has to be especially watchful, and on
the job constantly whenever water is running. In another 5 years,
Tom says, he will be too old to work so hard and an arroyo is bound
to get started. As a matter of fact this eventuality was narrowly
averted in 1923, a year of almost unprecedented rainfall, when Tom's
corn was partially washed out and his diked areas half filled with silt.
A few weeks before our 1925 visit, floodwaters once again had cut a
wide path through his fields (pl. 13).

Tom told us other Navaho sometimes come long distances just to
see his farm. None has yet attempted his system of floodwater irrigation
because no one else "has the same kind of a valley." When he
first began to farm here he planted a broad strip of white Santo
Domingo corn right through the middle of his Navaho planting. He
has since specialized in this white variety and insists it is now pure
Navaho. An ear of it collected at the time of our visit measured
18 inches long when it reached the Department of Agriculture in
Washington, although it subsequently shrank 2 inches in drying.

As a further byproduct of that 1925 visit we were given a "multiple"
ear and several "tassel" ears. The latter, Tom said, often occur
when more than five kernels are planted in a single hill. If eight are
planted, for example, one or more stalks may produce tassel ears. I
did not learn at the time whether the Navaho have any special beliefs
concerning such abnormalities but they were "laughing ears" to our
Zuñi. "If you eat them, they will make you laugh."

Multiple, or branched, ears are saved for goat fodder because they
"increase the number of kids." Men sometimes eat kernels from such
ears, Tom informed us, but women rarely do.

A few miles above Chischilly-begay's productive acres is Kinbiniyol
ruin. It stands at the edge of a shallow, wet-weather pond which had
been enlarged in ancient times by a simple rock dam at the foot of a
low, sandstone knoll southwest of the ruin. From that dam a ditch
led downvalley, cutting through natural obstacles to irrigate the village
fields (fig. 7). We did not attempt to trace its course throughout or
to discover its ending, but Hewett (1905, p. 329) describes it as "fully
two miles long." The lower side of the portion we plotted had been
reenforced repeatedly by slabs on end, and even by masonry (pl. 14).
In one place an exposed section showed a gravel fill 42 inches in depth.

This impressive remnant is one of those named by Special Agent
S. J. Holsinger who reported to the General Land Office under date
of December 5, 1901, that "at least five artificial reservoirs are plainly
discernible, each having a system of irrigation ditches" (Holsinger,
Ms., p. 10). Hewett (1905, 1930, 1936) closely follows Holsinger.

Some of the ancient works specified have since disappeared; others
have been altered, by time or man.

Kinklizhin, the Black House, stands about 7 miles southwest of
Pueblo Bonito, on the trail to Kinbiniyol. A couple of hundred yards
north of the ruin is a dirt dam with an outlet cut through a sandstone
outcropping at the east end. Hewett, who gives more details than
Holsinger in this instance, mentions a "stone" dam and says its associated

ditch, sand-filled but traceable, conveyed the reservoir water
to fields possibly 200 acres in area (Hewett, 1905, p. 326). In 1875
Lt. C. C. Morrison visited this same dam and described it (1876,
p. 360) as "a built wall of earth, with stone revetment—10 feet across
the top, five feet high, and 15 feet across the base." Richard Wetherill
filed claim on and presumably farmed these same acres, but Dan Cly,
one of our Navaho workmen, insisted that his brother built both dam
and ditch. What we have here, therefore, probably should be regarded
as a post-1905 Navaho conversion and reutilization of a P. III
irrigation work.

At the foot of the cliff northeast of Peñasco Blanco, a few rods
above the point where Chaco Canyon turns west to meet the Escavada,
Holsinger observed another rock dam and ditch. They had been exposed,
presumably only a year or two before, by a "freshet in the
Chaco." Floodwaters dashing against the same bank year after year
eventually destroyed both dam and ditch. My old Navaho friend
Padilla fixed disintegration of the dam at about 1910; what was undoubtedly
the last vestige of the nearby ditch vanished during the
rainy season of 1920. A single slab on edge, its base about 3 feet
below the surface, was all that remained visible when I passed by on
August 11 of that year. Because the slab's significance was not
recognized at the time, no photograph was made. It was undercut
and lost with the next flood.

According to Holsinger (Ms., p. 10), the associated reservoir "was
built in a great bed of sand and was lined with slabs of stone and
clay." He says Navaho were then cultivating the ancient fields below
the reservoir but without benefit of the latter. The site, I feel confident,
is where Wello had his cornfield, a hundred yards more or less
below the old ranch buildings where he lived, on the south side at the
mouth of the Escavada. And the slab-lined ditch to which Padilla
refers (herein, chapter IX, p. 350) probably lies under the same sandcovered
field.

A reservoir and system of ditches near Una Vida that Hewett
(1905, p. 326) describes as "the best preserved works in the canyon"
somehow eluded our search. Holsinger barely mentions them, and
his fifth locality, the Chaco-type ruin near Crownpoint where "remnants
of a dam" and "a very large canal" are to be found (Holsinger,
Ms., p. 11), does not concern us at this time.

Old Hosteen Beyal professed to remember (see chapter IX, p. 345)
a ditch that began at the head of Chaco Canyon and continued along
the south side to a point beyond Pueblo Bonito. There is no trace
of such a ditch today, but opposite, on the north side, there is still to
be seen the one Richard Wetherill plowed from Wejegi to his reservoir
at the southeast corner of Pueblo Bonito. This post-1901 effort[3] to
conserve the north cliff runoff has sometimes been attributed to
the Bonitians.

Part of a sand-filled ditch is discernible on the south side of the
Escavada just east of the Bonito-Farmington road (1923). Padilla
recalled this work as being very distinct when he was a youth, and

one of our younger Navaho said it can be followed for 6 miles even
now. What Padilla referred to as a "wagon road" at the south end
of The Gap, and what others call a "canal," is, in the writer's opinion,
part of a processional path—a type of feature to be discussed
elsewhere.

If the Bonitians ever constructed in Chaco Canyon irrigation works
on a par with those named above, the remains lie buried under the
2 to 6 feet of alluvium piled upon the valley floor since Pueblo Bonito
was abandoned. The sloping banks of shallow ditches or channels
were exposed by our exploratory trenches, but all surface constructions
we saw—divertive ridges, check dams, or dikes—date from the
period of Navaho occupancy. They were clearly designed to control
and utilize runoff; they are similar in every respect to controls raised
by Navaho now living in or near the canyon. Jackson (1878, p. 433)
in 1877 observed that Navaho families east of Pueblo Pintado had
dammed the arroyo to create a small pool from which they drew water
by ditch to irrigate their cornfields. This is precisely what the Chacoans
did at Peñasco Blanco and Kinbiniyol back in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries; it is what Tom Chischilly-begay was trying to do
on the Kinbiniyol in 1925.

In 1911, when the water table at Pueblo Bonito was but 20 feet
below the surface, Ellsworth Huntington (1914, p. 81) learned of
only two local Indians "reasonably sure of a good crop of corn each
year." Both lived at the junction of the Chaco and Escavada where
water was close to the surface and where individual dams provided
for irrigation. During the previous 16 years there had been but two
good harvests generally throughout the Chaco country.

The agricultural possibilities of Chaco Canyon, past and present,
naturally interested C. S. Scofield, then in charge of the Office of
Western Irrigation Agriculture, U. S. Bureau of Plant Industry, and
a member of the National Geographic Society's 1920 Committee on
Research. It was he who first suggested testing local soils and water
in order to ascertain their mineral properties. If they contained an
excess of sodium, difficulties were indicated.

Results of the water analyses are given in the preceding chapter.
Our soil samples were taken in 1924 from Test Pit No. 3, dug two
years previously about midway between camp and the ruin. The pit
was 9 feet 2 inches deep, and samples were collected at 10-inch intervals
from bottom to top. No. 1, therefore, is lowermost; No. 11, at
the surface. Here, again, I am pleased to acknowledge our indebtedness
to Messrs. Scofield and Breazeale for their interest and
cooperation.

The following extracts from Mr. Breazeale's letter of September 27,
1924, reporting the results of his analysis, are self-explanatory:

The presence of sodium carbonate, or black alkali, uniformly
throughout our 9-foot test column introduced an unanticipated factor
into the subsistence problem at Pueblo Bonito, namely, soil productivity.
If 0.144 percent of black alkali is sufficient to render a soil
impervious to water, then black alkali, rather than a contemporary
arroyo, may be the principal cause for abandonment of Pueblo Bonito.
Mr. Breazeale sums up the situation in one sentence: "Unless we
can get water into a soil we stand little show of getting any crop
out of it."

All the Chaco water we sampled, wells and floods alike, contained
an excess of sodium over calcium. Upcanyon, east of Pueblo Bonito,
wherever seepage is apparent, there is usually to be seen a more or
less conspicuous deposit of gypsum. If annual precipitation in Pueblo
Bonito times were only slightly above that of today, as it may have
been, those seeps would have flowed more freely than now, dissolving
the gypsum and carrying it out where floodwaters could have picked
it up and transported it to Bonitian farms. That process, of course,
would have been interrupted by inception of the twelfth-century
arroyo. Only a little gypsum is required to counteract the effects of
0.144 percent sodium carbonate.

The higher calcium content in surface water from the Kinbiniyol
greatly interested Mr. Scofield, as is evidenced by the quotation from
his letter of August 24, 1925, in chapter I, page 12. He thought
the Bonitians might have had some of their farms over in that valley
where agriculture would have been more richly rewarded, as it is
today, than in Chaco Canyon. However, while speculating upon this
possibility, we must not overlook Rafael's well, a mile west of our
camp, which likewise shows a high proportion of calcium. This well
apparently taps drainage from the rincon immediately to the south
and it is my guess that the sandstone cliffs there, like those upcanyon,
contain a little gypsum. Back in the days of Pueblo Bonito, before
entrenchment of its contemporary arroyo, calcium distributed by
floodwaters would have kept local soils flocculent and productive.
Black alkali not only tightens soil against water penetration but kills
off vegetation also.

The present arroyo, which allows no possibility of successful agriculture
in Chaco Canyon, is at least the third of its kind, as stated in
the previous chapter. If geologic history repeats itself once more,
this arroyo will be completely filled during the next cycle of alluviation
and a new flood plain will be established above it. When that time
comes, resident families can again with confidence plant garden
foodstuffs such as the Bonitians planted.

Vegetables and fruits.—From household debris in Pueblo Bonito
we recovered remains of the following:[4]

• Maize (Zea mays)

• Pumpkins (Cucurbita pepo; C. moschata)

• Rocky Mountain beeplant (Cleome serrulata)

• Walnuts (Juglans major; J. rupestris)

• Grape (Vitis arizonica)

• Pricklypear (Opuntia sp.)

• Pinyon nuts (Pinus edulis)

• Wild potato (Solanum sp.)

While this list shows only those actually found during the Society's
explorations, the Bonitians unquestionably knew and used many other
plant products. From Pepper's observations (1920, p. 298) we may
add to our catalog beans and "seeds similar to those of the wild sunflower";
we might also include with confidence a number of desert
plants whose roots, young leaves, or fruits are today relished by the
Navaho and Hopi. For instance, seeds of Indian rice grass (Oryzopsis
hymenoides) were unquestionably harvested by the Bonitians, as they
still are by many western tribes, since stems of the plant were employed
repeatedly in local construction. Among other plants native
to the Chaco country and recognized for their food value by the Hopi
(Hough, 1897, pp. 37-42; Whiting, 1939) are dropseed (Sporobolus
flexuosus Thurb.), goosefoot or lambsquarters (Chenopodium cornutum
B. & H.), pricklypear (Opuntia), pigweed (Amaranthus sp.),
and Rocky Mountain beeplant (Cleome integrifolia T. & G.). Cockleburs
(Xanthium saccharatum Wallr.), such as we found in the wall
adobe of Room 47, Pueblo del Arroyo, were probably only pests to the
prehistoric farmers of Chaco Canyon.

When the Espejo Expedition in February 1583 approached the
Tigua villages above present Albuquerque, the Indians fled from
their homes. "All were deserted," writes Luxán (Hammond and
Rey, 1929, p. 81), "but contained large quantities of maize, beans,
green and sun-dried calabashes, and other vegetables . . ." Today, as
in Conquest times and previously, corn, beans, and pumpkins comprise
the principal food crops of the Pueblos.

Pueblo society being matrilineal, before American customs began
to take root, Pueblo women not only owned the fields, which the
husband and unmarried sons cultivated, but also controlled the food
supply. Since it was a common practice until a generation ago to
reserve at least one year's supply of maize against the possibility of
drought or crop failure (Bourke, 1884, p. 135; Matilda Coxe Stevenson,
1904, p. 353; Forde, 1931, p. 393), care of these stores was no
light responsibility. Weevils and mice had to be watched as well as
family appetites. In what probably was cornmeal, placed in bowls
as burial offerings with bodies interred in Room 329, Pueblo Bonito,
we noted puparia of a muscoid fly (Calliphoridae) and body parts
of ptinid and darkling beetles (Niptus sp.; Alphitobius sp.).[5]
Larvae of both beetles attack stored cereals, while those of the muscoid
fly feed primarily on dead animal matter.

One of the three bowls containing the supposed meal also held a

number of dried wild potatoes.[6] Wild potatoes still grow in Chaco
Canyon and a few plants had taken root in the East Court of Pueblo
Bonito. We protected these latter for a time but neglected to test a
statement of our Navaho workmen, namely, that the tubers are not
edible until the second year. Wild potatoes are exceedingly bitter,
and the Hopi, Zuñi, Navaho, and other Southwestern tribes who
gather them as a winter food consume with them clay containing
magnesia, to lessen the griping effect.

The 34 fragments of corncobs brought to the Museum laboratories
provide but little for study. Most are charred; all are much shrunken.
One fragment shows 8 rows of kernels; twelve show 10 rows; seventeen,
12 rows; one, 14 rows; and three, 16 rows. Only one charred
fragment has kernels attached and these are rounded, a flint variety.
Pure strains of the low-growing, drought-resistant Hopi corn produce
ears about 6 inches long with 12 rows of kernels (Forde,
1931, p. 391).

The favorite pumpkin at Pueblo Bonito appears to have been
Cucurbita pepo, although the striped cushaw type, C. moschata, is
also represented by seeds, rind, and peduncles. Squashes are not
present. Pueblo farmers currently plant with their pumpkins a few
gourds for dance rattles, bottles, and ladles. That this practice was
also followed by the Bonitians is suggested by two neck fragments of
gourd (Lagenaria leucantha) canteens, one of which has a small opening
at the stem end and a transverse hole for the carrying cord.

Mammals.—Besides the vegetal remains listed above, the rubbish
heaps of Pueblo Bonito yielded bones of the following mammals:[7]

• Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus)

• Pronghorn (Antilocapra americana)

• Elk (Cervus canadensis)

• Mountain sheep (Ovis canadensis)

• Jack rabbit (Lepus californicus)

• Cottontail (Sylvilagus auduboni)

• Grizzly bear (Ursus horribilis)

• Beaver (Castor canadensis)

• Badger (Taxidea taxus)

• Bobcat (Lynx baileyi)

• Porcupine (Erethizon epixanthum)

• Gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus)

• Red fox (Vulpes sp.)

• Coyote (Canis lestes)

• Indian dog (Canis familiaris)

While some of these were probably trapped only for their pelts, the
first six certainly were killed primarily for their flesh. Narrators of
the Conquest period repeatedly mention rabbits among Pueblo gifts
to the Spaniards. In his letter of August 3, 1540, from the Zuñi
village of Hawikuh, Coronado informs the Viceroy: "The food which
they eat in this country is corn . . . and beans and venison, which
they probably eat (although they say that they do not), because we
found many skins of deer and hares and rabbits" (Winship, 1896,
p. 559). Ninety years later, enumerating the game to be found in
New Mexico, Benavides (Ayer, 1916, p. 37) includes a mediumsized
deer of which "there are very, very many; and on these the
Indians sustain and clothe themselves."

Deer furnished not only hides for clothing but meat for the table,
sinew for bow strings, and bone for implements. Hence it is only
natural that the mule deer, which frequents upland country, should
be conspicuously represented among the mammalian remains from
Pueblo Bonito. Of seven deer, sheep, and pronghorn skulls recovered,
six had been broken for extraction of the brain. Seeing these, my
older Navaho neighbors remarked that they as young men, and their
fathers before them, had hunted pronghorns on nearby mesas—and
deer, elk, and sheep in the mountainous country north of the Rio
San Juan. Undoubtedly these neighbors of mine were among those
who formerly maintained an antelope corral "near Escavada Wash"
(Hill, 1938, p. 96).

Pepper (1920, pp. 31, 264, 298) records the finding of a mountain
lion claw, in Room 1; a "turtle carcass," in Room 78; the hair, jaw,
and two claw fragments of a cinnamon bear, in Room 92. The first
and third may well be the nucleus of a story echoed by Special Agent
S. J. Holsinger (Ms., p. 18) in his report to the General Land
Office, namely, that in a room in the north-central portion of Pueblo

Bonito "the remains of a bear were found and in another that of
two cougars or mountain lions."

The Society gathered additional evidence of mountain lions and
bears. Included in an offering secreted in the north wall of Kiva Q
were a considerable number of grizzly claws and phalanges, 10 claws
of the black bear (Euarctos americanus), and 4 mountain-lion (Felis
concolor) claws. We collected another grizzly claw in Room 330 and
still another while clearing away fallen masonry and blown sand from
an unidentified section of the ruin. The latter two, like those from
the repository, were not drilled or otherwise prepared for suspension.
According to Hill (1938, pp. 157-160), bear claws and even whole
paws are essential in certain Navaho rituals, but the flesh is eaten only
when starvation threatens. Bear meat is taboo among the modern
Pueblos, and we must suppose it was among their forefathers also.

If dogs, coyotes, and other carnivores were regularly eaten by
Southwestern tribes, historic and prehistoric, we have no positive evidence
of the fact. Parsons (1939, p. 22) says only compelling necessity
would drive the Hopi to such an extreme. But Bourke (1884,
p. 253) implies that they actually relished "a good mess of stewed
pup," and Stephen (1936, pp. 266, 939) saw two Hopi dogs killed
and dressed for leisurely consumption. Thus canid remains from the
rubbish piles of Pueblo Bonito may, or may not, indicate that hunger
had stalked the village.

Altogether, a dozen Indian dogs and perhaps 30 coyotes are represented
in our collection. Only five skeletons were articulated and
reasonably complete. Three of these came from Kiva F, Pueblo del
Arroyo—one from the floor (pl. 101) and another about 20 inches
higher, at bench level. Incomplete skeletons of two dogs, one lacking
only the skull, and a coyote were found in Kiva I, same ruin. These
and other remains are considered hereinafter (Appendix B) by the
late Glover M. Allen, former curator of mammals at the Museum of
Comparative Zoology.

In Room 334, Pueblo Bonito, half filled with debris of occupation,
we found the detached skulls of a bobcat, a gray fox, two red foxes,
a dog, and three coyotes. Present also were three bobcat leg bones
and a handful of fox and coyote bones. Why were these eight animals
slain and what became of the remainder of their skeletons? The
head skins of dogs killed for the purpose cover dog kachina masks
of the Hopi (Stephen, 1936, p. 117). Coyotes, foxes, and bobcats
are usually taken today for their pelts.

Dr. Allen raises the question whether some of our coyotes and
badgers (2 skulls and half a mandible) might have sought shelter in

the ruins and died there. This is possible, of course, but not very
probable. With a single exception all the canid bones we collected
came from beneath fallen masonry and usually from household rubbish
at a depth of 6 feet or more below the present surface. The
exception is a coyote skull and neck vertebrae (field No. 1484)
found shallowly buried in the depression that marked Kiva R. Except
for this lone skull, quite obviously post-Bonito, all our canid
remains seem to me undeniably contemporaneous with the ruins in
which they were found. Despite the fact that those remains were
recovered mostly from debris of occupation, their relative scarcity
militates against the idea that dogs and coyotes were customarily eaten.
Then, too, there is the puzzle of the headless bodies and the bodiless
heads!

The Pueblos had domesticated the dog and the turkey long before
the Spaniards arrived. This fact is established both by archeological
evidence and by the Conquistadores themselves. The anonymous
author of the Relación del Suceso states that the Zuñi kept turkeys
"more for their feathers than to eat, because they make long robes of
them" (Winship, 1896, p. 573). Coronado doubted this limitation,
as he wrote from Hawikuh in 1540, because he himself, uninhibited
by native custom, considered Zuñi turkeys "very good, and better
than those of Mexico" (ibid., p. 559). It is true, nevertheless, that
fowl of all kinds have been under a general Pueblo taboo until quite
recently.

Three hundred and fifty years after the Conquest, Mrs. Stevenson
(1904, p. 368) observed at Zuñi that "chickens are kept for the eggs,
the whites of which are used for mixing paints to be applied to wooden
objects. The whole egg is sometimes eaten by men to bring them
larger families." The four Zuñi men who accompanied me on a
reconnaissance of the Chaco region in 1920 may have been unduly
cautious, but they always declined the occasional breakfast eggs I
offered although they knew at the time that their young relatives had
learned to eat eggs at Government boarding schools.

Unworked turkey bones are conspicuous in the trash mounds at
Pueblo Bonito. We even found fragments of turkey-egg shells. With
the possible exception of deer bones, turkey bones were most frequently
utilized in the manufacture of that indispensable household
implement, the awl. Thus the ban against turkey flesh, if recognized
in prehistoric times, did not extend to the skeleton. Canid bones, on
the other hand, were rarely employed at Pueblo Bonito. We have
only five implements, for example, made from leg bones of dogs or
coyotes. All are awls. In addition, we have an arrowpoint shaped

from what appears to be the ulna of a dog (fig. 69). Fish, also, seem
to have been taboo among the ancient Pueblos. At least I find in the
archeological literature no reference to fish remains even from ruins
situated near rivers and trout streams. Coronado and his countrymen
were always glad to add fish to their limited native fare and expressed
astonishment that the Pueblos did not. "The Zuñi," observed the
unknown author of the Relación Postrera de Sívola, "do not know
what sort of a thing fish is" (Winship, 1896, p. 569). Navahos avoid
fish, so I was told in northern Arizona in 1908, because their ancestors
drove the cliffdwellers into the San Juan River where they were
transformed into fish.

At modern Isleta, according to Parsons (1932, p. 211), one informant
contradicted the statement of another and emphatically denied
that fish were eaten locally. The four Zuñi men who accompanied me
to Chaco Canyon in 1920, and who patiently watched the preparation
of a meager camp supper one rainy night, shrank back in horror when
I jestingly identified a bit of salmon skin as rattlesnake. But they
shared the contents of the can a few minutes later, albeit with lingering
suspicion, after I had pointed to the illustration of a magnificent
fish on the wrapper and helped myself to a generous portion.

In what Lummis describes as "the boniest passage in Benavides,"
Fray Alonso emphasizes the piscatorial possibilities of the Rio Grande
in 1630 (Ayer, 1916, pp. 36-37, 261-262). Among others, he names
the gar pike. Hence our interest in the identification of nine gar-pike
(Lepisosteus sp.) scales (U.S.N.M. No. 334958) from Room 44,
Pueblo del Arroyo. The gar pike is not recorded from the Rio San
Juan, 50 miles to the north, and any fish would have been as great
a curiosity in Chaco Canyon a thousand years ago as it would be today.
Although we found none in Pueblo Bonito, Pepper reports a fishbone
from Room 32.

Elderly Navaho assert that the Chaco country was a veritable
paradise before white men came, and most of us can sympathize with
their point of view. None will deny that introduction of firearms and
horses, cattle, and sheep brought significant changes. Nevertheless,
even with the superior range we postulate a hundred years ago, and
the increased herds that range would have supported, game alone
could not have fed any considerable population. The inhabitants of
Pueblo Bonito could probably have slaughtered in a single season
every animal within a day's journey, had they been of a mind to
do so. But they were farmers, not hunters. The relative infrequence
of mammal bones in their rubbish heaps is ample proof that the Bonitians
did not depend upon the chase for their subsistence. Their

appetite for maize, beans, and pumpkins—staples in Anasazi fare for
uncounted generations—was an inherited appetite. Thus their reliance
upon crops from these three cultivated plants was perfectly
natural.

Agriculture is a gamble, especially in the Pueblo country. Rains
there are unpredictable. Lacking sufficient midsummer moisture,
crops do not mature. When harvests fail, people go hungry. Tradition
and personal experience both reminded the Pueblo farmer that
years of little rain occurred repeatedly. Hence the wisdom of providing,
when crops were good, against the possibility of lean harvests.
And many Hopi and Zuñi families still follow this centuries-old custom
even now, although a village grocery store may stand a stone's
throw away.

Throughout the Pueblo country summer rains, rather than winter
snows, supply the moisture on which plants grow and ripen. But
summer rains frequently fall below normal; they may fail altogether
and for two, three, or four years in succession. Dr. Douglass's 1,200year
tree-ring record of southwestern climate, a byproduct of our
search for the age of Pueblo Bonito, reveals a surprising number of
dry years (Douglass, 1929, 1935, 1935-1936). The Great Drought of
1276-1299 had no effect upon the inhabitants of Pueblo Bonito because
they had abandoned Chaco Canyon at least a hundred years before. It
was a succession of lesser droughts in the last quarter of the eleventh
century, especially that of 1090-1101, that presumably hastened the
arroyo which forced emigration of the Bonitians. Since 1540, droughts
in the Southwest have repeatedly caused Indian groups to leave their
homes and go out seeking temporary relief from others, even from
their traditional enemies.

No one can study this testimony of the tree rings without realizing
how precarious the Pueblo subsistence problem has always been.
Hooton (1930, pp. 317-320) sees in the skeletal remains from Pecos
evidence of progressively declining health and attributes that decline
to "continual undernourishment." Dietary deficiency is accepted as
the probable cause of Osteoporosis symmetrica, a condition frequently
noted in the crania of Pecos infants and children. The same disease
was also present at Pueblo Bonito and doubtless for the same reason,
too much maize. Arthritis also left its mark at both villages. Corn,
beans, and pumpkins were subsistence staples, but they were not
enough at Pecos in 1800 or at Pueblo Bonito 700 years earlier.