University of Virginia Library

Period of Geologic and Geographic Surveys

During the 1870's several government parties were making geologic
and geographic surveys in New Mexican territory. These were
the United States Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth
Meridian, under Captain George M. Wheeler—especially expeditions
1873 to 1877;[16] the United States Geological and Geographical Survey
of the Territories Embracing Colorado and Parts of Adjacent Territories,
under Dr. F. V. Hayden;[17] and the United States Geological and
Geographical Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region, under Major
J. W. Powell.[18]

Parties from the Wheeler survey entered the Chaco area only in
1874 and 1875. Lieutenant R. Birnie and party, in September 1874,
went from the Tuni-Cha villages (on eastern border of Chuska mountains)
across to the middle Chaco and up the arroyo for some distance,
but they headed north-northeastward for the upper Nacimiento (Puerco,
near Cuba) before reaching the main Chaco Canyon ruin area.[19]

Dr. Oscar Loew, also in September of 1874, entered the upper drainage
of the Chaco from the east, but he saw only Pueblo Pintado (which he
called Pueblo Bonito).[20] In 1874, Lieutenant Ruffner, of the United
States Engineers, led a reconnaissance party from Ft. Garland in
southern Colorado, across the Continental Divide to Ft. Wingate, but
his route barely touched (if at all) the upper waters of the Chaco.[21]
Lieutenant C. C. Morrison, in the summer of 1875, visited the Chaco
ruins in connection with the survey of Topographic Sheet 69C.[22]

The Hayden survey, which concentrated on Colorado, sent parties
into northwestern New Mexico in 1875 and 1877. Only the field party
of May, 1877, led by photographer W. H. Jackson, entered the Chaco
Canyon. Jackson devoted a number of days to exploring, mapping,
sketching, photographing, and taking notes, the results of which are
incorporated in his report of 1878.[23] This report (opp. p. 451) contains
a detailed map of the Chaco Canyon ruin area, in which is included
the Pueblo Alto ruin which was discovered and named by Jackson. Since
the initial visit of 1877, Mr. Jackson has revisited the canyon in 1925
and again in 1936. Studies, made by the Hayden parties, of prehistoric
ceramics in the Southwest were incorporated in a monograph by geological
artist W. H. Holmes.[24] .

The investigations of Major J. W. Powell (first head of the Bureau
of American Ethnology) and his parties were confined mainly to Arizona,
Utah, and Colorado. However, as one of the papers authorized
by the Rocky Mountain Survey there appeared, in 1881, Morgan's monograph
on American Indian house types, which contained a section on
the Chaco ruins. This section was a compilation from the reports of
Simpson and Jackson.[25]