Produced by Stephen Hutcheson, Dave Morgan, Chris Curnow
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net






[Illustration: ]

                UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
                     Stewart L. Udall, _Secretary_

                         NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                      Conrad L. Wirth, _Director_

[Illustration: ]

                _HISTORICAL HANDBOOK NUMBER THIRTY-SIX_

This publication is one of a series of handbooks describing the
historical and archeological areas in the National Park System
administered by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the
Interior. It is printed by the Government Printing Office and may be
purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington 25, D.C.
Price 30 cents




                              AZTEC RUINS
                    NATIONAL MONUMENT · _New Mexico_


                                                      by John M. Corbett

[Illustration: ]

        NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HISTORICAL HANDBOOK SERIES NO. 36
                         Washington, D.C., 1962




_The National Park System, of which Aztec Ruins National Monument is a
unit, is dedicated to conserving the scenic, scientific, and historic
heritage of the United States for the benefit and enjoyment of its
people._

[Illustration: ]




                               _Contents_


                                                                   _Page_
  MAN IN THE SAN JUAN VALLEY                                            1
      Early Hunters and Gatherers                                       3
      The Basketmakers                                                  7
      The Pueblos                                                      11
      The Aztec Pueblo                                                 18
  EXPLORATIONS AND EXCAVATIONS                                         35
  THE AZTEC RUINS TODAY                                                51
  THE NATURAL SCENE                                                    61
  ESTABLISHMENT AND ADMINISTRATION                                     64
  RELATED AREAS                                                        66
  SUGGESTED READINGS                                                   66

  [Illustration: Frontispiece. A hunting scene of 10,000 years ago.]

  [Illustration: ]




                      _Man in the San Juan Valley_


The San Juan River and its tributaries drain the region known as the
Four Corners country—the area surrounding the point where New Mexico,
Colorado, Utah, and Arizona meet in a common boundary at right angles.
Rising high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the San Juan flows
southwestward to dip down into the northwestern corner of New Mexico;
then it courses northwestward into Utah almost at the point of juncture
of the four states. With many twists and curves, roaring through deep
canyons and gulches, it proceeds generally westward to empty into the
mighty Colorado River in the southeastern part of Utah.

The San Juan Basin is the major drainage basin of the Four Corners
country. As such, its lower reaches formed a formidable barrier to
travel by migrant primitive groups and to early white settlers as well.
Its upper portions, however, especially its tributaries, were easier of
access and supplied that most important element of all for life in the
desert: water—water for drinking, water for irrigation.

The land between the tributaries is highly diversified; much is arid or
semiarid with small streams running intermittently or with scattered
springs that may be dry during parts of the year. Other areas are
mountainous with swift-flowing streams. In places there are mesas, or
large tablelands, which frequently are covered with forests of pine,
juniper, and pinyon. It is a land of warm, often hot, summers and cool,
sometimes very cold, winters; a land of sharp contrasts; a land that
seems perpetual, yet never appears exactly the same on any two
successive days.

Into this area many hundreds of years ago, possibly even thousands, came
small bands of wandering hunters. Gradually some of them learned how to
adapt to the rigors of the land. Eventually two centers arose in which
the local inhabitants successfully adjusted to their environment: one
along the Chaco Wash in northwestern New Mexico, and the second in
southwestern Colorado in many places on the La Plata, Mancos, and McElmo
drainages. Chaco, the first of these cultural manifestations, takes its
name from the best known and finest examples of such ruins in Chaco
Canyon National Monument. The other is best known at, and named for, the
area incorporated in Mesa Verde National Park.

[Illustration: ]

On the northern side of the San Juan, most of its tributaries are
perennially flowing streams and rivers, with broad, fertile valleys and
bountiful plant and animal resources nearby. On one of these streams,
the Animas, there existed a series of prehistoric towns and villages
which exemplify the successful blending of cultural influences from both
the major centers of Chaco and Mesa Verde. This is the general story of
the San Juan River area, of the people who lived there long ago, and in
particular the story of the great ruined pueblo on the Animas River near
the present-day town of Aztec, N. Mex.


                      EARLY HUNTERS AND GATHERERS.

Ten thousand years ago, a small band of weary, footsore, hungry hunters
cautiously approached a few bison which they had managed to stampede
away from the main herd. Ten in number, the bison had finally paused to
drink at a small spring in a rincon of the canyon wall and to graze upon
the thick, tall grass. For a day and a half, the hunters had carefully
followed the large, hairy mammals, hoping the beasts would lose their
sense of danger and allow themselves to be boxed into a place where the
hunters could approach close enough to kill them.

At last the moment was at hand! Warily, two hunters crawled along the
slope of the canyon wall from opposite sides, seeking places from which
they could throw large rocks upon the animals or hurl their spears with
devastating force. Patiently five more hunters waited below, concealed
by the tall grass or behind convenient boulders. When the first two were
in place, the leader gave the signal. Rocks came crashing down on the
startled bison; spears whistled through the air and thudded into soft
flesh; one or two missed, but most found their targets. Shouts and cries
filled the air. The bison, caught by surprise, whirled and milled around
the waterhole for a moment, then several broke for the open country. One
was wounded, the spear in its flank bobbing like a wave-tossed spindle.
On this animal the hunters concentrated; three more spears found their
target, and the great beast went down thrashing wildly. Two other
animals lay maimed at the waterhole; one young calf, hobbling painfully,
tried to get away to the open country but was quickly dispatched. The
remaining six bison disappeared through the thickets and tall grass to
the west.

The animals which were down but not dead were swiftly killed with spear
thrusts through the eyes. Then the assembled hunters fell to the most
important task of all. With quick strokes of their razor-sharp stone
knives, they carefully peeled away the hide from one of the carcasses.
The soft inner parts—the heart, kidneys, and liver—they immediately cut
into pieces and ate raw on the spot, for they had not tasted meat for
many days. In fact, for the last several days on the hunt, they had
subsisted entirely on the few edible plants and roots they could easily
find while tracking the bison. Now great chunks of meat were cut from
the flanks and likewise consumed raw, until each hunter could eat no
more. Then the men gathered up their weapons—long wooden spears with
carefully made chipped flint or obsidian points. Some of the points were
so deeply buried in the bodies that they broke loose from the shafts
when the men tried to pry them free. Other shafts had broken, leaving
the points embedded when the bison thrashed about trying to escape the
sudden devastation. This was of minor concern—new shafts could be made,
new points fashioned. It was more important that once again there was
meat enough to go around for the hunters, their mates, and their
children.

[Illustration: Spear point and foreshaft. Length 8″.]

Now surfeited, the hunters dozed quietly in the shade out of the noonday
sun. But not for long, for they must bring the rest of the band to
participate in the feast. One hunter started back to the last camp where
the women and children waited, existing on the remnants of the last kill
and whatever edible plants, roots, nuts, and berries they might be able
to find nearby. The other hunters proceeded with the skinning of the
animals. To build a fire, one man found a dry log, in which he made a
small hole with his stone knife. He sharpened another dry but tougher
stick. Thrusting this into the hole, he twirled it rapidly between his
hands until he built up sufficient friction to make a few small sparks
in the log. These he deftly transferred to a little dry tinder, the
flame of which he carefully nursed until twigs and branches could be
added to make a real blaze. The fire would be welcome in the evening,
for the days were getting shorter and the nights colder. When the women
and children arrived, they would make crude lean-to or windbreak
structures to help break the cold night winds from the north. They would
scrape, clean, and dry the bison skins so that as the band headed
southward, they would have the warm skins to wrap themselves in at
night. During the day, while hunting or working around the camp, they
needed little in the way of clothing—just simple loincloths. On damp,
rainy days—and there seemed too many of these—brush shelters, fires, and
the warm skins of the animals they had killed were sufficient.

By now the vultures were circling overhead, but it would be several days
before these carrion birds could feast on what little might remain of
the kill. The hunters and the rest of the band would stay at this spot
until all the meat was exhausted, rancid as it might become. Then once
again they would take up their spears and start after more game. This
time they would head toward the south, for with the shortening days
winter was coming, and the game was going south. But they would worry
about the next hunt later. In the meantime all was well. It was a time
for relaxation and rejoicing—they had food for many days; they had
water; soon they would have shelter; and this was without doubt the best
of all possible worlds in which to live.

Of course, such a scene is imaginary, but it could have taken place
about 10,000 years ago, almost anywhere among the valley and canyon
bottoms of what is now known as the Four Corners country of the
Southwest. The great continental ice sheets never got this far south,
and 10,000 years ago they were already retreating northward from their
farthest expansion. Yet smaller glaciers in some of the surrounding
mountains were also shrinking, and the general climate of the area must
have been far different than it is today. No doubt it was colder and
damper, with more rain and many swamps, lagoons, and lakes abounding in
game animals and birds of all varieties. With a colder climate, the
scenery too did not resemble that of today. High grasslands, extensive
hardwood forests, and full-flowing streams and rivers characterized the
region. The general land formations, however—the mountains, canyons,
mesas, and plateaus—had been formed long millenia before, and as short a
time as 10,000 years ago they would have been very much as they are
today.

Geologists believe that after the last of the four great continental
glaciations (i.e. the Wisconsin) there were three broad climatic periods
over most of the western United States. These are called the Anathermal,
which was cool and moist, becoming gradually warmer; the Altithermal,
which was exceptionally dry; and the Medithermal, a relatively cool,
moist period which is still in progress. Our imaginary tale about the
hunters, if it had taken place, would have occurred during the
Anathermal period.

These variations in climate have been determined by studying old stream
terraces (streams cut deeper when there is more water, and they can
carry a greater load of abrasive sands and gravels); old beach levels
around ancient lakes (such as are prominent today around the Great Salt
Lake in Utah); and ancient annual lake deposits of fine silts which form
thin bands, or varves. Studies of animal life, both vertebrate and
invertebrate, and plant life are important, for some life forms can
exist only under certain limited climatic conditions. Bones and shells
found in various deposits may help to indicate the type of climate
existing when they were laid down. Plant fragments, pollen grains, and
diatoms (microscopic plants with siliceous skeletons), are clues in
telling the story of prehistoric times.

What the early hunters may have looked like no one really knows, for
archeologists so far have not found a single undisputed trace of their
physical remains. Skeletal fragments of what might be early man in this
country have turned up in several places, but usually geologists,
archeologists, and others cannot agree as to just how ancient these
remains might be. One of the most likely candidates for the distinction
of “earliest man” yet found in America was discovered in 1953 near
Midland, Tex. Actually, these remains, which consist of parts of a skull
and fragments of other bones, were those of a female. They were found
under geologic conditions that might indicate considerable age and in
indirect association with types of artifacts which are dated, by other
means, as being of Folsom age or slightly more recent. Unfortunately,
since radiocarbon dates on some of this material vary widely and the
local geology is so complicated, it is not positive that “Midland Man”
is the oldest known American.

Many anthropologists, however, believe that even the earliest
inhabitants of this country were of Asiatic descent and thus might well
have resembled some of the modern American Indians.

We do not even know if they used animal skins as clothing. With a rather
cool, damp climate, it can be assumed they had some sort of shelter and
some types of body covering, even if nothing more than generous
swabbings of bear grease. Today, near the tip of South America, a tribe
of Indians—the Ona—exist in a very damp, cold climate. Eating mostly
fish and sea mammals, they live in crude brush shelters and wear little
if any clothing most of the time. In Africa certain primitive Pygmy
tribes hunt game as large as giraffes with small bows and arrows. They
wound their quarry first and then follow it, often for days, until they
can bring down the weary animal at close range with their spears.

Perhaps that is how the early hunters in America survived. We cannot be
positive, but we do know that scattered around the Four Corners country
are a few sites where spear points, scrapers, and other implements have
been found under conditions indicating great antiquity. In other cases
throughout the greater Southwest, points have been found embedded in the
remains of slaughtered animals of now extinct species. Often these
remains are found in ancient swamps and waterholes, where it had been
possible to trap or mire the animals and finally kill them; the mucky
swampland has helped preserve the bones so that today the archeologist
can tell the story of how they were slaughtered.

As the glaciers disappeared and the climate became warmer, the lakes,
swamps, and lagoons gradually dried up, the grasslands became
desiccated, the hardwoods disappeared from the valley bottoms. Small
regional differences in climate, sometimes due to altitude, left some
areas more desirable than others. Large mammals disappeared entirely,
and the hunting and gathering people had to turn to smaller types of
game such as elk, deer, rabbit, bear, and rodents. No doubt wild edible
plants, berries, fruits, nuts, and even roots were gathered and eaten.
In the Four Corners country, however, evidence for occupation by man
during the Altithermal (or second post-glacial period) is almost
entirely lacking. This was an exceptionally dry period, and few if any
people could live there. It wasn’t until the climate became wetter and
cooler again, more like it is today, that man once again inhabited the
Four Corners area in any great numbers.


                           THE BASKETMAKERS.

About the time of Christ, in some parts perhaps even earlier, small
bands of Indians entered the Four Corners country. It is possible that a
few small groups of wandering hunters and gatherers who had survived the
Altithermal were already living there, but the archeological evidence
for their presence is very scanty. Under the impetus of new ideas, such
as agriculture, these people may have been slowly settling down to
become farmers.

Or possibly under the pressure of expanding populations elsewhere,
groups seeking new lands suitable for agriculture moved into the area
and either amalgamated with, or drove out, any local groups. If so, we
do not know exactly where these people came from. Perhaps they came from
the south, around the Mogollon Rim country of New Mexico where there is
evidence that even earlier an agriculturally-based sedentary population
had developed. Corn had been known in parts of the Southwest for a
considerable time. (At Bat Cave in New Mexico, archeologists have
uncovered a primitive type of corn which was grown at least several
thousand years before the birth of Christ.)

Only with an assured food supply, part of which can be stored against
bad years, can a group find time to devote its energies to the arts and
to the development of greater skill in crafts. The idea of agriculture
must have spread slowly, for it forced a radical change in the living
habits of those who practiced it, compared to their old subsistence
pattern of hunting and gathering. At first, the hunting group would
regard this new plant as just another seed crop—to be gathered when it
was ripe. They dumped the seed in the ground and went on about their
business; when it ripened they returned to harvest the crop, much as
they went each year to harvest the pinyon crop when it was ripe.

But as they became more dependent upon corn and added the cultivation of
squash, these people discovered that two things are necessary for a
group dependent upon agriculture: one, that most of the group has to
remain nearby while the crop is planted, matured, and harvested (to
protect it from rodents, deer, birds, and, probably, marauding tribes);
second, that there must be a secure storage place for the surplus food
and the seeds for next year’s crop. This latter requirement forced them
to build storage pits lined with stone slabs, bark, and adobe which
could be securely covered so that rodents and insects would not eat the
surplus harvest.

Archeologists have long called these early inhabitants of the area
“Basketmakers” because of the variety of beautiful baskets and sandals
which they wove from fibrous plant materials. In the earlier part of
this period, they did not know how to make or use pottery, and baskets
were important as storage containers or as vessels in which to cook by
stone boiling. Although their descendants also made and used baskets,
they never achieved the fine quality and artistry of the early
Basketmakers.

Archeologists divide this Basketmaker phase into an early period of
about 400 years and a later period (sometimes referred to as “Modified
Basketmaker”) of about 350 years. The Modified Basketmakers had several
important traits which the earlier ones lacked: namely, the bow and
arrow, which replaced the atlatl (throwing stick); beans, which added
important protein to the diet; and a knowledge of how to make pottery,
which permitted much easier cooking and better storage of perishables.

The necessity for an assured food supply was of increasing importance,
for there was a slowly but steadily growing population. Agriculture
provided such a supply and freed a part of the population from
subsistence activities, giving them leisure to devote to pursuits which
were not necessary for mere existence. For example, turquoise—worked and
polished into ornamental jewelry—seems to have been first used at this
time. Small crude pottery figurines are also found, indicating a growing
interest in religion and an increasing awareness of religious ideas.
Kivas—developed from the idea of the older pithouse—first appear in this
period. These provided a place for the performance of religious
ceremonies and other nonsecular functions. The men evidently had the
time to meet in council and debate communal problems. While the family
unit was still important, the clan and even the entire community took on
new important aspects of “togetherness.”

We do know what these people looked like, since quite a few
well-preserved “mummies” have been found buried in dry caves. They were
short, averaging 5 feet 3 or 4 inches for the men and about 5 feet for
the women. Their general build was medium slender to stocky; their faces
moderately long and narrow; skin color was light to dark brown; and
their eyes were brown to black, as was their hair.

The Basketmakers used clothing of a sort; that is, they may have worn a
loincloth or apron and probably had shoulder robes of untailored tanned
hide for protection against cold. Woven bands or loincloths have been
found in several sites. Most burials had no type of clothes but
sometimes were wrapped in mantles or dried skins. Probably clothing was
never worn very much. Certain “aprons” attached to waist cords and made
of strings of cedar or yucca bast were evidently used as menstrual pads.
Finely woven aprons may have been worn by the women on special
“dress-up” occasions, but the scarcity of such items would indicate they
were not for everyday wear.

They wore sandals made of woven yucca strips or cleaned fibers, or
sometimes of very fine cross-woven cord, with fringed toes and colored
ornamentation. Human hair was used in making rope in considerable
quantities; either it was cut off after death and utilized for this
purpose, or was hacked short from time to time during life. Some
burials, especially among the males, indicate rather fancy hair styles,
and it may, therefore, have been the women who had their hair cropped to
supply the material for ropes and belts.

Both men and women wore ornaments—bracelets, necklaces, and pendants
fashioned of stone, bone, or even various dried berries. Beads were also
made of _olivella_, _conus_, and abalone shell which probably were
imported from the Pacific Coast by trading with intervening tribes. Fur
blankets were fashioned by wrapping yucca-fiber strings with long narrow
strips of rabbit fur and tying these fur-covered strings together in
close parallel rows.

The Basketmakers were especially known for the fine types of woven
containers they produced. Flexible seamless sacks, beautifully decorated
in black, red-brown, and gray are sometimes found. Large, wide-mouthed
ovoid baskets, carried on the back with the aid of a tumpline across the
forehead, were used for bringing home seeds and other crops. Basket
trays and bowls, with both close coiling and spaced coiling, were often
highly ornamented, always in a symmetrical pattern. Designs usually
consist of red figures outlined with black, alternating with black
figures outlined in red.

The women ground corn on metates—flat slabs of rock in which eventually
a deep groove was worn—with manos, or small hand stones. Stone of
various sorts was used in making spear and dart points (and in the later
part of the period, arrow points), knives, drills, gravers, pipes, and
atlatl weights. Animal bone was carefully fashioned into awls, fleshers,
scrapers, whistles, jewelry, and even gaming pieces. Wood was used for
the atlatl and the dart, and later for bows and arrows, for digging
sticks (for planting crops), scoops, feather boxes, and hair ornaments.

Basketmaker remains are found throughout the Four Corners country, the
better specimens being recovered from dry caves where the more
perishable materials are preserved. In open sites, only the stone and
bone objects are left, along with the remains of house structures and
storage pits.

In the Animas Valley, north of Durango, Colo., there was quite a
concentration of early Basketmakers. Earl H. Morris, who conducted the
first scientific explorations of Aztec Ruins, excavated a number of
these sites in 1938 and 1939. Here, in an open talus site, he found the
first evidence that the early Basketmakers had actual house structures.
He gives a graphic description of a typical one:

  A site for the dwelling was secured by digging a drift into the steep
  hillside and piling the excavated earth and stone out in front until a
  terrace large enough to accommodate the projected house had been
  provided. The floor area was scooped out to shallow saucer shape—in
  this case 9 m. in diameter—and coated with mud. At the margins, the
  mud curved upward to end against the half-buried foot logs which were
  the basal course of the wall. The walls were composed of horizontal
  wood and mud masonry. They rose with an inward slant to a little
  better than head height, then were cribbed for a distance to reduce
  the diameter of the flat portion of the roof, which was of clay
  supported by parallel poles. The arc of stones was a retaining device
  placed to hold back the ever-growing accumulation of refuse that was
  dumped at the brink of the terrace.

Interior furnishings generally consisted of a heating-pit, slab-lined
storage cists, some with above-floor mud domes, and usually grinding
stones and metates. How such a structure was entered is not known;
possibly it was through a smoke hole in the roof, as in the later and
deeper pithouses, or perhaps it was through a lateral doorway with a
high sill, traces of which no longer remain.

By A.D. 700, the Four Corners country was evidently well populated. In
this later part of the Basketmaker period, the houses in open sites were
usually more subterranean. These later houses, often with slab-lined and
adobe-plastered walls, had a smaller second room or antechamber added on
the front through which entrance was made. A few such ruined dwelling
sites are known along the Animas River south of Durango. Morris felt
that an adequate archeological survey would reveal a great many more,
but extensive plowing of the area in recent historic times has long
since removed the evidence. In the latter part of this period, the early
Basketmakers evidently moved downstream where there was better land for
cultivation and the growing season was slightly longer.

That they had a firm belief in a life in the hereafter is shown by the
care with which they buried their dead and by the offerings placed with
them. It is with these burials in dry caves that most of the perishable
material relating to this period has been found. Frequently the bodies
were wrapped in mantles of fur or feather string, and sometimes wrapped
again in the tanned skins of deer or mountain sheep. Often the bodies
have sandals on the feet (and occasionally an extra pair for replacement
if the first wore out) and are accompanied by hair ornaments, necklaces,
beads, pendants, baskets of corn and pinyon nuts, pipes and smoking
material, gaming sets, flutes, and implements of warfare and the chase.
The bodies were usually buried in the flexed position, that is, with the
knees drawn up tightly and the hands folded across the chest. In the
earlier part of the period, cave storage pits were used as burial
places. Some bodies were placed in crevices behind fallen rocks within
the cave. Other burials were in the open or in the talus slopes below
the caves. In the latter part of the period, so much of the cave was
used by the living that the dead were frequently buried in the open in
specially dug pits. In these cases, evidence of the perishable material
has usually disappeared. In a few of the later graves, pottery is found
as a grave offering. Morris reports one burial of this period that
contained 11 pottery vessels.

The Basketmakers must have had warm feelings of affection for their
young. There was a high mortality rate among the infants and children,
but despite this they lavished great care on each small burial. Children
might be buried in baskets or in large skin bags, but babies were
carefully buried in their cradles. These cradles were made by bending a
long slender stick into an oval shape, on which a framework of rods was
tied to the outer oval in a crisscross pattern. The interior was padded
with juniper bark and covered with fur-cloth blankets, which were often
made from the soft, white stomach skins of rabbits. The cradle could be
carried on the mother’s back, hung from a convenient peg in the home or
on a tree branch when out of doors, or laid carefully on the ground in
the shade, all without upsetting the baby. Diapers were made of soft
shredded juniper bark, and juniper bark pads wrapped in soft skins were
tied on the infants to prevent umbilical hernia.

Archeologists have dug up some unusual burials from this period. One was
a male who, presumably after death, had been cut in two at the waist and
then sewed together again. Why this was done, nobody knows. He was also
wearing a pair of leather moccasins, an item not often found among the
Basketmakers. Another burial, from the Canyon del Muerto in northeastern
Arizona, consisted of only a pair of forearms and hands, lying palms up,
side by side on a bed of grass. Wrapped around the wrists were three
necklaces with abalone shell pendants. Ironically enough, included in
the grave offerings were two pairs of the finest sandals ever found.
Over the whole lay a large basket about 2 feet in diameter. Conjectures
as to the “whys” and “whats” of this burial have been numerous, but
probably the true reason will never be known.


                              THE PUEBLOS.

The second broad period in the history of the San Juan area is that in
which the Indians built communal dwellings called pueblos. These were
stone and adobe structures, sometimes multistoried, facing a central
plaza which contained one or more kivas. Very similar structures and
village plans can be seen in a number of the existing pueblos of the Rio
Grande today, notably Taos, Santo Domingo, and San Ildefonso.

Over the previous centuries the inhabitants of the San Juan Basin, and
especially the Animas Valley, had gradually developed a different way of
life from that of the early Basketmakers. Certainly, they still grew
corn, beans, and squash; still hunted and snared game; still grew old,
died, and were buried. But in addition to having some of the better
material things in life such as pottery and the bow and arrow, they now
placed a greater emphasis upon agriculture; hunting and seed gathering
were secondary sources of food. In the spring, the corn seeds were
carefully planted, watched over, watered, and cared for. As the plants
matured, the men and young boys spent more time in the fields. During
the day it was necessary to drive off the squirrels and birds; at night
the green tender plants must be protected from the deer, rabbits, and
nocturnal rodents. Water in this semiarid land had to be carefully
managed, whether flood irrigation or planned canal irrigation was used.
If all these factors were not judiciously controlled, there would be no
crop. The forces of nature seemed increasingly important; too much sun
could be as disastrous as too much water. Ceremonies were devised to
propitiate the spirits and the gods, who, to the Indians resided in all
aspects of nature. More time was devoted to seasonal religious
activities, and great care was taken to educate the young in the proper
performance of the ceremonies so they, too, might continue to prosper
and live in harmony with nature.

Cotton was probably introduced at about the beginning of the Pueblo
period, along with loom weaving. This allowed the making of true cloth,
suitable for blankets, poncho-like shirts, sashes, wrap-around skirts,
and other necessary items. One other important change at this time
affected physical appearance. The soft cradle of the Basketmakers was
replaced by the hard cradleboard of the Pueblos. Since the infant
usually was bound securely upon his back in the cradle and was unable to
roll around, the pressure of the hard board, instead of the softer
cradle, caused the back of its head to become flattened, thus giving the
whole head a much broader and rounder appearance. This skull flattening
in no way affected the mentality of the child, but it must have been
obvious to the parents what was causing it. Through continued use of the
cradleboard, skull flattening must quickly have become a mark of
distinction and charm and, in a few generations, it must have become the
traditional head shape of the Pueblo Indians.

Dogs and turkeys were still the only domesticated animals, the turkeys
probably kept as much for their feathers (and thus periodically plucked)
as for their food value. Burials of both dogs and turkeys occur,
indicating they were evidently regarded as more than mere food. Bones
from the refuse piles indicate the people hunted—or acquired by
trade—bear, elk, bison, wolf, mountain sheep, deer, and rabbits.

There was no sharp break between this period and the preceding
Basketmaker. The Indians themselves did not know when they left one
period and embarked upon the next. Actually, such “periods” are the
classification devices of the archeologists, who need names to apply to
the times at which different cultural and evolutionary changes occur. In
retrospect, the archeologist can see certain important changes which
began to take place about A.D. 750. Liking to classify and categorize
the remains they study, archeologists first divided this broad Pueblo
period into five substages labeled Pueblo I, II, III, IV, and V. Later,
the first two substages were grouped together as the Developmental
Pueblo Period, the third was called the Great Pueblo Period, the fourth
became known as the Regressive Pueblo Period, and the last as the
Historic Pueblo Period. These terms are more meaningful and will be used
hereafter. The last two do not concern us, for at the end of the Great
Pueblo Period, seemingly at the time of the well-known drought (A.D.
1276-99), most of the pueblo-dwelling peoples left the San Juan area,
never to return.

The most obvious change in the Developmental Pueblo Period, as compared
to the preceding Basketmaker, was a gradual shift in the type of house
construction. The single-unit mud, slab, and jacal semisubterranean
house was giving way to the huge multistoried stone and adobe
structures, which were to predominate in the Great Pueblo Period 250
years later. In some areas, even earlier than A.D. 750 a few people
began to build single-room houses aboveground in a contiguous
arrangement, often crescent-shaped, forming small villages. The
construction varied from district to district. Some houses were
quadrangular in form and wholly aboveground, made of adobe and mud with
upright, supporting posts; others were still semisubterranean; some even
showed the beginnings of true stone masonry.

At this time also, a new type of structure was coming into existence
(though a few examples are known from late Basketmaker times). This new
structure, the kiva, was simply a modification of, and change in, the
use of the old pithouse. A kiva is a ceremonial room and clubhouse for
the men, usually constructed underground (or, where aboveground, so
clustered in other rooms as to appear belowground in its relation to the
surrounding rooms). It is circular like the early pithouses, but
normally contains a fireplace, a deflector (to prevent the draft from
fanning the fire too much), and a ventilator shaft by which to bring in
the fresh air. A “sipapu” (a small hole which supposedly leads to the
underworld) was located in the floor on the opposite side of the
fireplace from the deflector. Usually there was a bench around the
inside of the kiva near the floor, which may either have been used as a
place on which to store religious objects and other paraphernalia or may
have served the functional purpose of strengthening the lower part of
the kiva wall. Smaller kivas frequently had pilasters built upon the
bench and extending upward a short distance; these supported the cribbed
roof structure. Large kivas had four centrally located posts which
helped support the roof. Entrance to a kiva was normally gained by means
of a ladder through the central smoke hole in the roof.

[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF A TYPICAL KIVA]

[Illustration: CROSS SECTION OF A TYPICAL KIVA 1. SIPAPU 2. FIREPIT 3.
DEFLECTOR 4. AIR SHAFT (VENTILATOR) 5. PILASTER (ROOF SUPPORT)]

It is difficult to assign the same dates to this Developmental Pueblo
Period in all areas of the San Juan Basin. Culturally some sections
seemed to lag behind others; some ideas, concepts, and artifacts spread
and were accepted faster than others. Also, certain regions have been
much better explored archeologically, and we know more about them.

Unfortunately, the Animas is one of the river valleys in the San Juan
drainage which has not been particularly well surveyed or investigated
archeologically. Accounts by early settlers, and passing references in
some of Morris’ reports, indicate that in aboriginal times (certainly
during Pueblo times), the valley was no doubt heavily populated. It
should have been. Good water is readily available in the river and the
climate is healthful; prehistorically, game must have abounded in the
nearby foothills and mountains. Settlement and clearing of lands in more
recent times have eliminated many of the prehistoric remains, but the
higher banks along the river terraces still show low mounds of rubble,
obviously man made, with indications of cobble and sandstone walls,
which evidently were dwellings of the Pueblo Period.

Best known in this valley area are the cave and open sites that Morris
excavated north of Durango and which contained the remains of early
Basketmaker peoples already mentioned and the great pueblo of Aztec,
near the town of the same name about 15 miles above the confluence of
the Animas and San Juan Rivers. As described elsewhere, this latter
structure was also excavated by Morris in 1916-21. Without doubt, parts
of the valley were more or less continuously occupied from early
Basketmaker times until the final abandonment of the Four Corners
country about A.D. 1300. Although we have no firm data on which to base
conclusions, it would be safe to assume that the Developmental Pueblo
Period in the Animas Valley lasted from about A.D. 750 or 800 to 1050 or
1100, and that conditions in the living patterns of the people elsewhere
were reflected in the Animas Valley.

As the Developmental Pueblo Period progressed, house arrangements became
more complex. The next step seems to have been an extension of the
earlier linear or crescent-shaped alinement of contiguous houses by
adding on one or more wings, so that the resulting plan was L-shaped or
formed a rectangular U. In these cases, the semisubterranean kiva was
still retained in the courtyard as a definite religious structure. These
types of planned communities are called “unit houses.” Most were single
storied, though some may have had a second story added on the back tier
of rooms.

Changes in pottery styles, and especially in decoration, are very marked
during this period. Although plain gray ware was still made, pottery
with black designs on a white background shows up in great quantities.
In the western part of the San Juan area, painted pottery with a
pinkish-orange background and red designs makes its first appearance;
examples of this type show up as trade pieces in eastern San Juan sites.
The differences between culinary and nonculinary wares become more
marked. The former are usually corrugated vessels, formed by pinching or
indenting the clay coils while they were still plastic and before the
pot was fired. Later in the period, this type of corrugation became
quite decorative in itself and some of the better cooking ware
aesthetically rivals the painted wares.

[Illustration: Corrugated cooking pot. Diameter at mouth, 11½″; Maximum
diameter, 16⅓″; Height, 16″.]

There was a greater variety of vessel forms and painted designs. For
example, designs were no longer confined to the interiors of the bowls,
but were also painted on the exteriors and upon a great variety of
vessel forms. Many of these designs still seem to be derived from those
inherent in basketry, others may have been taken from textile designs,
and still others originated especially for use on pottery vessels.
Principal design elements seem to have been parallel lines—sometimes
straight, sometimes stepped or wavy—zigzags, triangles, checkerboards,
and interlocking frets. In the latter part of the period, these elements
became broader and heavier and were rendered with greater assurance. A
slip or wash of very fine clay was now smeared on the vessel before
firing to give it a smooth finish.

Burials were generally in refuse heaps, abandoned storage pits and
rooms, or beneath the floors of houses. Infants and small children were
frequently buried beneath the floors of houses, as though the parents
either desired to keep them around as long as possible, or believed that
the soul of the dead child would return with the birth of the next one
if the body were close by. Grave offerings consist mainly of pottery,
but we may be sure that various perishable objects also accompanied the
dead; however, conditions for preservation are so poor in these open
sites that most traces of perishable materials have long since
disappeared.

In a few areas there are rather puzzling features about some of the
burials. For example, along the La Plata drainage there are too few
burials to account for the rather large population that must have lived
there. Diligent searching has failed to reveal how the La Plata people
disposed of most of their dead. In other places skull burials are
found—without any bodies—and sometimes bodies are found without any
skulls. Perhaps some of these people practiced taking trophy heads of
warriors killed in combat or ambush. Now and then burials are found with
an arrow embedded in the body, or with scrape marks on the skull which
indicate that a person had been scalped, or with the skull smashed in,
as though by a stone ax.

While open-armed warfare, as we know it today, was unfamiliar to the
Pueblo Indians, life may not have always been calm and peaceful. Raiding
or ambush parties, economic strife, the strains of increasing
population, arguments over land and water rights, all may have
contributed to making life uncertain during this period. And
difficulties of a slightly different sort are shown in skeletons from
Alkali Ridge in southwestern Utah, which show marked signs of
malnutrition and diseases.

This was evidently a period of growth, development, transition, and some
struggle. As in other periods, it is difficult to place sharp lines of
demarcation between the Pueblo Period and the earlier Basketmaker and
between it and the later Great Pueblo Period. In all of the San Juan
Basin, at any given moment, examples could be found of both old and new
trends. Even in adjacent areas, there was no uniformity of cultural
development. But by the end of this period, in one area or another, all
the basic Pueblo traits were established. All that remained was for
certain of these areas to become specialized along different lines, to
become cultural “centers,” diffusing their ideas to neighboring groups,
and in turn absorbing ideas from them. Throughout the San Juan Basin,
the people were physically much alike; their language may well have been
the same, or closely related, and there were probably free movements of
people between towns and even between the more isolated groups and the
larger centers of activity.

It is doubtful if any group was completely isolated. Intermarriage must
have been common. Whole family and clan groups may have left one village
and joined another, sometimes only a short distance away, sometimes far
away. It would be almost impossible to trace such minor shifts in
population; large-scale mass migrations might leave their imprint on the
archeological record, but such evidence does not seem to exist, and it
is doubtful if any mass movements of people occurred at this time.

At the close of this period, what were conditions in the lower Animas
Valley, especially in the immediate vicinity of what is now the Aztec
Ruins? Was there a small, early-type Developmental Pueblo Village at
this particular spot? Or possibly a large “unit house” type structure?
Lack of knowledge about the Animas Valley precludes a definite answer,
and early excavations at Aztec Ruins were largely confined to the main
ruins themselves. In most places the digging did not penetrate to what
may have been the underlying and earlier remains. In a few places
beneath the great ruins, where the excavations went deep enough and
where the later building of the great pueblo had not eradicated them,
there seem to be indications that there were kivas of an earlier type,
and possibly a few scattered aboveground dwellings. An early-type
Developmental Pueblo village may have stood at this same spot.


                           THE AZTEC PUEBLO.

At the beginning of the Great Pueblo Period in the Animas Valley there
may well have been a sizeable population living in scattered unit house
dwellings and small villages, built largely of river cobbles and adobe
mud. The area to the south of Aztec, in and around Chaco Canyon, and
that to the northwest, in and around Mesa Verde, had each developed
local variations in architectural style, religious concepts, and minor
arts and crafts. Cultural influences from these two areas were to have a
marked effect upon the large pueblo at Aztec that was built, abandoned,
and reoccupied during this period.

[Illustration: Chaco-style masonry wall.]

The Chaco Wash (today a dry streambed during much of the year) rises in
the high plains north of the Chacra Mesa, extends westward for 68 miles,
and then twists sharply to the north to join the San Juan just above
Shiprock, N. Mex. For about 20 miles it flows westward through a
beautiful yellowish-brown sandstone canyon, the cliffs of which step
back in a series of gigantic sandstone ledges. In places the canyon
bottom is broad and level, but today it is scarred by a deep arroyo with
branches which extend up each little side canyon, so that travel on foot
across or up and down the canyon is difficult. A thousand years ago this
arroyo did not exist, and the Chaco Wash was a shallow, clear-flowing
year-round stream, meandering through a lush green valley. Where today
the sandstone ledges stand starkly denuded of all trees, there was once
a dense forest of pines and junipers. Along this canyon bottom and on
the mesatops to the north and south, the prehistoric Chacoans erected
some of the finest sandstone masonry pueblos in North America. A number
of other large Chaco-like sites were built in places outside the canyon
proper, and the influence of this building style was felt for 50 miles
around.

To the northwest of Aztec, between the La Plata Mountains and the
Sleeping Ute, in and around the area dominated by the large tableland of
Mesa Verde, a second regional culture center developed. These Indians
lived along the main watercourses of the area—the McElmo and
Montezuma—or dry-farmed the surrounding mesas. It was toward the end of
this period that the Indians living in the Mesa Verde itself built their
large imposing cliff dwellings.

[Illustration: Mesa Verde-style masonry wall.]

By the end of the preceding Developmental Pueblo Period the communities
in the San Juan area began to be more centralized and to be built
according to preconceived plans. Such planning denotes a form of
community control, or at least some kind of control over a fair-sized
labor force. Today, community projects are frequently carried out in the
pueblos by the majority of the people under the direction of their
caciques, or leaders, after careful discussions and proper religious
observances by the elders of the group. A similar form of
self-government must have existed in the prehistoric pueblos. It was
probably based on a time-honored tradition given sanction by religious
beliefs which extended back as far as the late Basketmaker period where
there were beginnings of large community kivas and centralized religious
group activities.

With large groups of people living together, greater cooperation was
mandatory, and through such cooperation the necessary tasks were
accomplished more quickly. Thus there was greater leisure for many
people which could be devoted to the more interesting arts and crafts.
Sometimes societies limit this greater freedom and leisure to a ruling
class, but such does not seem to have been the case among the Pueblos.
There are some indications, however, that especially in this period
there may have been developing the concept of a priestly hierarchy that
also exercised civil controls.

The Great Pueblo Period was a period of continued specialization, not
only in architecture but also in ceramics and in the minor arts and
crafts. North of the San Juan, most of the pottery seems to have been
decorated with a carbon paint, that is, a paint made from vegetal dye.
South of the San Juan, in the Chaco area, they generally seem to have
used mineral paints. The pottery designs of this period were often
hachured patterns, with the thin filling lines surrounded by heavier
boundary lines. Band designs of steps, frets, and triangles were also
used. Bowls, pitchers, ollas, and ladles were the common shapes; and
some cylindrical vessels and effigy pots are known.

An equally popular ware, which was not painted, was the cooking, or
“corrugated” ware mentioned earlier. In this period the coils of the
vessel wall were still sometimes pressed together to form decorative
designs, or sometimes were smoothed over so that an almost-plain vessel
resulted.

[Illustration: Chaco-style pottery pitcher. Diameter at mouth, 2½″;
Maximum diameter, 4″; Height, 6¼″.]

In the field of minor arts and ornaments, the people of this period
reached a high degree of achievement. _Olivella_ shell beads were still
widely used as well as stone beads and stone and shell pendants carved
in the forms of birds and animals. Turquoise, which first seems to have
been used in late Basketmaker times, was used extensively for some of
the finest ornaments, not only for beads and pendants but also in
beautiful mosaics.

[Illustration: Chaco-style pottery bowl. Maximum diameter, 9″; Height,
4¼″.]

However, it is the large multistoried pueblos of the Chaco Canyon and
the great cliff dwellings of the Mesa Verde that attract the most
attention. The native sandstone at Chaco Canyon made an excellent
building material—it was easily obtainable, it fractured along natural
cleavage planes into thin slabs, and it could be ground and pecked into
large rectangular blocks. Both the availability of sandstone and the
relative ease with which it could be worked were important factors in
developing the Chaco style of architecture.

Some of these pueblos may have been as high as five stories; most were
at least three or four stories. All show signs of constant alteration in
individual rooms and in their general layout, as though some feverish
urge was forcing the people to keep shifting the arrangement of their
dwellings. Not all the rooms in any of the large pueblos were occupied
simultaneously; usually the rooms toward the rear were used for storage
or, in many cases, as dumps for refuse and garbage. Occasionally,
burials are found in them.

All the great Chaco pueblos form self-contained units—that is, they were
built around central plazas or courtyards, as in the case of Pueblo
Bonito, with a low row of single-storied rooms closing off the formerly
open side of the plaza, or they were roughly rectangular with closely
knit contiguous rooms and internal kivas as in Yellow House. This
closure, plus the fact that the doors and windows which formerly had
opened outward at the rear or sides are now sealed up, has led many
people to believe the later parts of this period were marked by trouble
and strife and that this self-containment was a defensive measure.

At Chaco Canyon, many parts of the pueblo walls were finely made.
Different styles of decoration were produced by using sandstone blocks
of various sizes. An unusual effect was achieved by alternating bands of
large rectangular blocks with a series of bands of much smaller, finely
laminated standstone blocks. The interior of the walls consisted of
crude rubble in adobe mud, and, where some form of banding technique was
not used in the outer or veneer wall, the chinks between the larger
stones were filled with adobe mud and spalls or very small chink stones.
When carefully done, this technique also produced an attractive
appearance. Since both the interiors and exteriors of walls were usually
plastered with numerous thin layers of adobe, it is something of a
mystery why the Indians took the trouble to produce such pleasing
effects in their stone work and then to cover it up with plain plaster.
It may be that what we regard as decoratively charming was to them
simply a structural and engineering feature. They may have considered
carefully spalled and banded masonry to be structurally sounder than
simple rock, rubble, and plaster walls. Usually the walls of the upper
stories are successively thinner, and a similar idea was used in the
beams which form the room ceilings (and thus the floors of rooms
above)—the heaviest beams were in the lower rooms, and those in the
upper stories were correspondingly lighter and smaller.

In the Chaco-type great pueblo of this period, the majority of the rooms
were large by pueblo standards. They were rectangular in shape (except
for the kivas, which are circular) and often 8 to more than 12 feet long
and 6 to 8 feet wide. Ceilings were 8 or 10 feet high, and doorways,
usually with a raised sill, were 3 to 4 feet high and 2 to 3 feet wide.
In comparison with the typical rooms in the Mesa Verde area, those in
Chaco were very spacious.

In the Mesa Verde region the people were also learning to build in
sandstone, but the available standstone was coarser than that in Chaco
and did not have the clean fracture planes, and the masonry was of a
thicker and seemingly cruder sort. Walls were made of rectangular blocks
of tan sandstone which quite often were carefully shaped and ground to
give a pleasing effect.

On the sloping green tabletop mountain, known as the Mesa Verde (from
which the surrounding area gets its name), in the early part of this
period (A.D. 1050-1200), the people built large unit-type pueblos upon
the long finger-like mesatops which extend southward from an abruptly
rising escarpment on the north. Most of these units were multistoried,
and although they centered around a central plaza, they were much
smaller, more tightly contained units than their Chaco Canyon
counterparts of the same period. Frequently they contained at least one
towerlike structure connected by an underground passage to a nearby
kiva. One or more other kivas might be located in, or front on, the
small central plaza.

Although the rooms are smaller than the ones in the great communal
houses of Chaco, they are solidly built of double course standstone
blocks. Because in most cases the mesas are sloping southward, many of
these unit houses were built upon one or more terraced flats. Frequently
the only entrance into the pueblo was by staired entranceway leading
from the south into the small interior court or plaza.

At Mesa Verde, in the latter part of this period (about A.D. 1200-1225),
the people who had been living on the mesatops in the unit house type of
dwelling seem suddenly to have abandoned these dwellings and taken up
residence in the nearby caves. Here they built great pueblo-type
structures, often of several hundred rooms with numerous associated
kivas. Since they were limited by the ceiling of the caves to two and
three-story structures, and not so exposed to the elements, it was not
necessary to use such thick, strong walls, roofs, and ceilings. The
general construction at Mesa Verde was therefore thinner than at Chaco,
and the rooms and doorways are considerably smaller. In fact, with the
warm southern exposure of the caves which were used, the people must
have done most of their living and daily chores outside, in the small
plaza areas and on the roofs of the lower tiers of rooms. The rooms
themselves could be small, for they were probably used only for sleeping
and storage. Because the native sandstone at Mesa Verde is coarser
grained and does not fracture as easily into blocks and spalls, the
style of alternating large and small banded masonry found at Chaco was
not adopted there. But much of the stonework at Mesa Verde is
nonetheless excellent; perhaps some builders had greater artistry than
others, for some of the rooms, especially the circular towers, contain
blocks which have been carefully pecked, ground, polished, and fitted
into exact position with loving care.

In this period, also, a structure known as a Great Kiva comes into
prominence. It usually has an entrance on the north side (instead of
through the smoke hole), often with a stairway. It has a large raised
firebox in the center of the south side, and occasionally another
entrance there. In addition, on the east and west sides of the floor are
large, rectangular stone-lined pits, built up above the floor. Their
exact use is still a mystery, and perhaps they served more than one
purpose. It has been suggested that when covered with boards, they would
make excellent foot drums for the dances, or good places for the
medicine men to conceal themselves while performing certain magical
rites during initiation ceremonies. Finally, four large posts set into
the floor of the kiva supported the roof. Great Kivas are fairly common
in the Chaco area, but in the Mesa Verde vicinity they seem to be very
rare.

In each of the two areas mentioned above—Chaco Canyon and Mesa
Verde—archeological work has revealed a continuous occupation of the
sites and the immediate vicinity. At the great Aztec ruin, however,
there is still some doubt as to what really happened. In two different
time periods there seem to be strong architectural relations to both the
Chaco and Mesa Verde centers, as well as close ties in ceramics and
other items of material culture. Part of the intriguing mystery at Aztec
is whether these similarities represent actual migrations from those
centers on a fairly large scale, or an exchange of ideas, or small
groups of migrants who strongly influenced the local population.

In the midst of the populous Animas Valley, along the edge of an old
river terrace, early in the 1100’s a large multistoried stone pueblo was
built in an architectural style reminiscent of that in Chaco Canyon. Did
a large migrant group from the Chaco area—or some other area where
Chaco-like people were living—move into the Animas Valley and erect this
structure? Or did some of the local citizenry decide to join in a
community effort and copy the building techniques of their neighbors to
the south? If so, what was the impetus which launched the local people
upon this ambitious project? Perhaps a small group of highly skilled
technicians, under the leadership of a few “priests” or medicine men,
came from the Chaco area into the Animas Valley. Once established there,
by persuasion, teachings, or by religious magic and psychological
control, they may have prevailed upon some of the local population to
join them and to build their homes and kivas of sandstone blocks, in the
traditional Chaco style.

We may never know the exact answer to these questions, but wherever the
people came from, whoever they may have been, whatever the guiding
impetus, Aztec pueblo, like Rome, was not built in a day. Dates from
tree rings—as described later—indicate that the pueblo was built between
A.D. 1110-1124, with the major construction periods in 1111 and 1115.
Probably a small group, or just a clan, moved into the site about 1110,
and finding it suitable for habitation erected the first small part of
the pueblo. The next year a much larger group, perhaps several clans or
more, joined the earlier settlers and more than 50 percent of the pueblo
was finished. Then, in 1114 or 1115, a third wave of migrants arrived
and essentially completed the pueblo, except for the one-story row of
rooms which closed off the south side. It is possible that some of the
indigenous Animas population joined these newcomers and moved in with
them. From 1115 until about 1124 or 1125, occasional rooms were added as
new quarters were necessary for newly married couples and as old rooms
were used as refuse dumps.

To the northwest of the ruins, less than 2 miles away, the Indians found
an outcropping of sandstone which could be broken into shape and then
ground into rectangular blocks. These were hauled to the proposed
building site, where the women took over the construction. Holes were
dug in the clay soil nearby, water poured into them, and then stirred to
produce a thick adobe mud. This was used, along with crude unshaped
sandstone blocks, as filler for the walls. On the outside, the women
laid up the well-shaped blocks in regular courses, chinking them with
small spalls or potsherds.

The rooms were laid out in rows adjoining one another; as one row was
finished, another was added alongside of it. When several rows had been
completed, second and possibly even third stories were added. The first
group to arrive probably completed the major part of one wing; later
groups added to this and erected the other wings and associated kivas
until the entire pueblo had the traditional planned aspect of a typical
plaza-enclosed Chaco pueblo. In the central plaza area several kivas
were dug and roofed over at ground level. The fourth side consisted of a
single row of one-storied rooms. Finally, even a fourth story may have
been added in places. Sometimes a large square space was temporarily
left open, later to be filled by a circular kiva.

Out in the plaza, during the latter part of this first occupation, work
started on the Great Kiva, for this was the center of the ceremonial
life of the entire pueblo. Here would be performed the ceremonies which
would insure the inhabitants that theirs would be a long and happy life
and that everything would prosper for the new community.

For roofing the rooms, main stringers of pine or juniper were used, and
over these were laid splits of juniper or long poles of cottonwood. Next
came a layer of rush or reed mattings and then a layer of dirt and adobe
which formed the top of the roof, or the floor of the room above if
there was more than one story.

The pine logs used for the main stringers are good-sized, many being 1
foot to 1½ feet in diameter and up to 10 or 12 feet long. Although
juniper is still fairly abundant in the nearby country, good stands of
pine today are many miles away. At the time the first parts of this
pueblo were constructed, the pine forest may have been much closer.
Perhaps extensive cutting hastened soil erosion and thus caused the
forest growth to retreat.

Prehistorically it still was a long haul to bring in such big logs. Many
people have assumed that the logs were floated down the Animas River.
This would have been the easy way of doing it, but the logs found _in
situ_ in the ruins were obviously fresh cut, peeled while green, and
show no scars. They must therefore have been carried overland from their
source, no matter how far away, for it would have been impossible to
float them downstream without being scarred and bruised in transit.

Through the growth of tree rings on pine logs, it is possible to date
the time at which they were cut. If a tree is cut today, the outermost
ring constitutes its growth for the year in which it is cut. Counting
toward the center of the tree ring by ring, you will arrive at the date
at which the tree was a young sapling. Climatic factors, dry and wet
spells, are reflected in the width of the rings. Dry years usually show
small, odd-shaped or stunted rings; normal years show regular
well-shaped rings, and extremely wet years may result in excessively
large rings. These various rings, which are arranged into patterns, can
be matched with similar tree-ring patterns from still older trees, and a
chart of patterns can be prepared which will extend as far back in time
as you can find specimens with overlapping patterns. Against this master
chart the ring pattern of any particular tree can be compared and the
specimen dated. Today archeologists have such a tree-ring master chart
which extends back to the time of Christ for the San Juan area.

At Aztec, samples of tree rings were secured from some of the beams that
still existed at the time this dating process was discovered. Such
samples fall into two groups of dates. One group (with numerous samples)
was placed between A.D. 1110 and 1124; the second group (with only six
samples) between 1225 and 1252. The tree-ring dates indicate that the
great pueblo at Aztec had undergone at least two major periods of
construction. Since a large number of dates range from 1111 and 1115,
this would appear to have been the first peak of building activity.

It is possible that earlier samples have rotted away or have been
destroyed by later Indians or by the early white settlers. Moreover, all
building activity probably did not suddenly cease in A.D. 1124; it may
well have continued for another 10 years, but the beams representative
of this later period have since been destroyed. We can safely say that
the first construction period at Aztec pueblo occurred sometime between
1110 and 1130, with most of the development occurring around 1111 and
1115. Likewise, a second major construction period at Aztec occurred
sometime between 1220 and 1260, with major development in the 25-year
span between 1225 and 1250.

The two construction periods at Aztec, as indicated by the tree-ring
dates, are corroborated nicely by other evidence found by Morris that
Aztec actually was built by one group of people, abandoned, and then
reoccupied at a later date by a slightly different group of people.
Throughout all the rooms he dug, he found sterile layers of windblown
sand and ruined debris from falling walls and ceilings. In this debris
and under the sand he found Chaco-like pottery and artifacts. In
addition there were surprisingly few burials. The last point might seem
strange, except for the fact that even today, 40 years after Morris’
work and despite endless searching, archeologists have located few
Chaco-type burials in Chaco Canyon itself. Whatever the burial customs
of the Chaco people may have been, they have eluded archeologists for
many years. The absence of burials of this period at Aztec is a clue
that probably a group of Chaco-like people, bearing the distinctive
Chaco culture, may actually have moved into the Aztec area.

Morris wrote that he found many rooms built in typical Chaco-style
architecture. Granting that the local sandstone was not quite as easily
worked as that at Chaco, the large-size rooms, the high ceilings, the
banded-veneer masonry walls, the large doorways, and other techniques
used were very similar to the architectural techniques of the Chaco
area.

Overlying the Chaco debris and sterile sand layers, Morris found
pottery, household utensils, and burials characteristic of the classic
Mesa Verde Period—a period which occurred later than the great Chaco
Period. In addition, there were obvious architectural signs of
rebuilding and remodeling within the pueblo. Large Chaco-type rooms had
been made smaller by wattle-and-daub partition walls, while doorways had
been shortened and narrowed more like the ones at Mesa Verde.

Thus there were two definite periods of occupation at Aztec, one by a
Chaco-like people and one by a Mesa Verde-type people. The two major
construction periods, as indicated by the tree rings, agree with Morris’
evidence of two occupation periods and, so far as we know, closely date
those periods during which the pueblo was actively inhabited.

Aztec, at the height of the Chacoan occupation, must have been a
fascinating sight. On a sunny summer day, the plaza and rooftops would
have been a busy swarm of activity—mothers nursing and tending their
young, grinding corn for tortillas, preparing meat for the stew pot,
making baskets, and molding clay pots for later firing. Old men basked
in the sun or instructed the young boys. Most of the men and older boys
were busy tending the corn, beans, and squash in the fertile fields
surrounding the pueblo. This was exacting work, since each plot, clan by
clan, had to receive its carefully husbanded share of water from the
irrigation ditch that ran along the slope of the high terrace just to
the north of the pueblo. At times during the day, hunters would straggle
in happily if burdened with game, sadly and slowly if empty-handed after
a fruitless chase. Occasionally a wandering group of strangers would
pass by with items to trade. They were made welcome and fed, and the
whole plaza took on a festive air.

At night the pueblo must have presented a vastly different appearance:
dark, mysterious, and quiet. Here and there a small dying fire cast a
flickering glow upon a brown adobe wall. In one or two of the kivas, a
faint light through the hatchway in the roof indicated preparations
under way for a ceremony, or perhaps a special highly secret meeting of
one of the clan societies. If you looked closely you might make out one
of the sentinels, silhouetted briefly against the night sky as he
shifted position. But the pueblo was silent—a silence only broken by an
occasional dog’s bark or baby’s wail—until, shortly after the morning
star appeared, the hunters crept quietly out of the pueblo, and as the
star faded, the broadening morning light heralded the approach of
another day in the life of Aztec pueblo.

But something happened. For no reason we can ascertain today, the pueblo
was abandoned by its first occupants. Presumably, this was a fairly fast
exodus, but one in which the people had time to take most of their
treasured possessions with them. There is no evidence that they were
driven away by invaders, or by any other major catastrophe such as fire,
flood, or pestilence. We do not know if they left en masse or perhaps
more gradually, as they arrived, in clans and groups. If a few hardy
souls stayed behind, or if a few weak stragglers couldn’t make the trip,
there is no evidence. All we know is that by about A.D. 1125, or perhaps
1130, the pueblo was empty. For almost a hundred years the great
structure stood alone, untended and uninhabited. Perhaps the local
people occasionally used a loosening beam from the structure, or
gathered up a few blocks from the slowly crumbling walls, or helped
themselves to any readily useful articles left behind, but otherwise
they and any passing wanderers seem to have left the place alone.

For years the wind blew the sand into the open doorways, through the
widening cracks in the walls, past the sealed doorways, down through the
floors, until even the deepest and most inaccessible rooms had a layer
of 4, 6, or 8 inches of fine sand deposited over them and whatever
secrets they held. Rats and other rodents infested the place and little
disturbed the brooding silence except for their piping squeals.
Occasionally weakened beams gave way or a wall here and there crashed
down as its plaster and rubble fill were washed out by rains and melting
snows. Bit by bit the old pueblo slowly crumbled.

Why and how the first great pueblo was built by a Chaco-like people and
then suddenly and for no apparent reason abandoned is a real mystery.
Strangely, this abandonment seems to agree roughly with the time at
which the Chaco area itself was being depopulated. In Chaco Canyon, an
arroyo, much like the one which exists today, was cutting its way
backward up the canyon, and this arroyo-cutting would have made it
impossible for many of the inhabitants to continue to flood-irrigate
their fields. It may have been the basic factor involved in the general
abandonment of the great communal dwellings of the Chaco Canyon around
A.D. 1150, no doubt coupled with a certain amount of strife and
considerable periods of drought.

But this would not have been true at Aztec. The Animas River is a
perennial stream, and there is no apparent cause for the abandonment of
the pueblo by the Chaco-like people, unless for some reason they decided
to leave Aztec because the last of their kinfolk in Chaco were leaving
that area.

In fact, it could better be proposed that some of the first groups,
which had to leave Chaco Canyon about 1100 because of the incipient
arroyo and its accompanying loss of irrigation water and generally
lowering water table, might actually have moved to the Animas and
established Aztec. Perhaps a rather coincidental event may have occurred
at Aztec which caused its abandonment just as Chaco Canyon was almost
depopulated. The early settlers in the Animas recall evidence of a
prehistoric canal flowing along the lower slopes of the terrace to the
north of Aztec Ruins, somewhat lower than the modern one. This canal
took off on the right bank of the river, several miles upstream from the
pueblo. A major shifting of the river, a swing of the main stream
against this old river terrace on the right bank, would have effectively
cut the canal at a point below which the people could not take off water
to irrigate their fields and in a manner they could not repair. Such a
disaster would have forced them to move to other cultivable fields; if
none were available nearby (and they may have all been taken up by other
local groups), they would have had to go far away. They couldn’t return
to Chaco Canyon or other areas near there, for these places too were
being depopulated. So perhaps they followed some of their Chaco kinfolk
who were intermittently migrating in groups to the Rio Grande, or to the
Hopi country. In these new areas, mixing with the local population, they
lost their distinct cultural identity. We can look at the modern Pueblo
Indians of today and wonder if perhaps some of their long ago ancestors
may not have actually lived at Aztec or in Chaco Canyon.

[Illustration: A pottery “kiva” jar. Mesa Verde style. Diameter at
mouth, 4½″; Maximum diameter, 13⅓″; Height, 9½″.]

But there is a double mystery at Aztec: as indicated earlier, overlying
the evidences of a Chaco-phase occupation, Morris found evidence of
rebuilding and rehabitation of many rooms. Large-sized Chaco rooms had
been shortened, reduced, or cut off by interior walls and lowered
ceilings. Older doorways had been blocked up, or had been partially
filled and reduced in size. In some cases entire small rooms, complete
with ceilings, had been built within larger rooms. New floors had been
laid down upon the debris and windblown sand which partially filled some
of the older rooms. Older beams had been pulled out of rooms and reused
elsewhere, or new walls in a different style had been built in place of
those that had collapsed.

A newer style of pottery, reminiscent of the Mesa Verde-type pottery,
was prevalent. The majority of burials found within the ruins, 149 out
of a total of 186, seemed to belong to a different period as shown by
the type of artifacts associated with them. T-shaped doorways, an
architectural trait characteristic of Mesa Verde times, was prevalent in
the later parts of the pueblo. Keyhole-shaped kivas, another Mesa Verde
trait, were inserted into and between rooms of the earlier period. And
finally, the Great Kiva in the central plaza, which had fallen into
disuse, was rehabilitated—in a much poorer style of construction,
surely, but nonetheless obviously repaired and temporarily put back into
use.

These factors inclined Morris to feel that some time after A.D. 1124 the
pueblo at Aztec was abandoned by the Chacoan builders. Then about 1225,
a new group arrived, bringing with them the general styles and culture
of the area we know as Mesa Verde.

As with the earlier occupation at Aztec, we do not know exactly who
these second people were or exactly where they came from, although it is
obvious that they had a close affiliation with the people of the Mesa
Verde area. Nor do we know if they were a large group, representing a
mass migration, or whether once again some of the local population may
have decided to attempt building a large community. Perhaps for a second
time a few people, possessing special abilities or representing a
religious organization, prevailed upon either the local population of
the Animas Valley or wandering migrant groups to assist them in erecting
large community structures.

We do know that at about this time there was a considerable population
shift all over the Mesa Verde area. The people were dispersing from
their normal habitats and moving into more protected locations or
consolidating into larger, more defensible units. In the Mesa Verde
itself, for example, they were abandoning their mesatop pueblos and
crowding together in the caves or moving out of the area entirely. In
the Hovenweep area, they retreated to the heads of the canyons and built
watchtowers along the canyon sides and bottoms to protect their
dwindling water supplies. It was evidently a period of considerable
strife and turmoil. There were short periods of recurrent drought, and
possibly many of these groups had begun to fight among themselves over
land and water rights and other necessities of life.

[Illustration: Cobblestone walls at Aztec Ruins.]

The second occupation at Aztec was more intensive and one in which parts
of the local population participated actively. The construction style of
this period shows a considerable use of local cobblestones set in adobe
mortar, as in many of the small ruins throughout the Animas. Sometimes
cobblestone walls are overlaid or underlaid by, or even intermingled
with, sandstone walls. It was at this time also, as far as we know, that
the other pueblo units—now all ruins—within the monument boundary were
constructed, as well as several other major Mesa Verde-phase structures
elsewhere in the Animas Valley.

In addition, large quantities of new material had to be secured fairly
rapidly to keep pace with the feverish building activities at Aztec.
While some of the rooms of the large Chaco-style pueblo were
rehabilitated by these new inhabitants, others were dismantled and their
materials, in addition to those from fallen walls, were used elsewhere.
But even this great pueblo could not supply all the stone needed. So
from the old quarry to the site of the pueblo two paths were built, side
by side, each wide enough for eight men to walk abreast. For many
months, men with stone mauls and hammers cracked and chopped and ground
the sandstone into building blocks. Other men and the stronger boys
toiled all day in straggling lines, carrying the blocks on large wooden
litters or in great slings strung on poles. Long lines of workers
streamed down one path, loaded with blocks, to return over the other
path with their empty litters and slings.

Although the Great Kiva was repaired, with rather sloppy workmanship in
many places, it was probably only used for a brief period. The focal
point of the community’s religious life seems to have centered around
the peculiar and somewhat puzzling tri-wall structures, two of which
exist at Aztec. One is the excavated Hubbard Mound site just to the
northwest of the main ruin; the other is Mound F, which is also to the
northwest of the other major but largely unexcavated ruin—the East Ruin.
If there was such a thing at this time as the beginning of a priestly
hierarchy among the Pueblo peoples, these tri-wall structures with their
centralized kivas may have been the domiciles and religious quarters of
this hierarchy.

Once again life seemed to flourish at Aztec. This time, with all the
extra pueblo units close to each other, the area must have resembled a
veritable beehive. It would have taken an extensive farming area to
support the population. If a shift in the river had cut the Chacoans’
canal, another shift back again may have made it possible to restore the
old canal, improve it, and once again make the surrounding fields green
in summer with growing corn, beans, squash, and cotton.

In contrast to the Chacoan occupation, Morris found a large number of
burials (149) from this period, mostly in the rooms. Many were buried
with great care and had numerous and varied grave offerings. For a
while, evidently, the Pueblos prospered and traded far and wide for
luxury items. But once again bad times set in, possibly accompanied by
almost constant armed harassment by less fortunate groups. Although
Morris did not find any direct evidence that the people at Aztec were
actually killed off or driven out by armed conflict, the later burials
were all hastily made and usually unaccompanied by grave offerings. In
addition, almost the entire east wing had been destroyed by fire. This
could have been accidental and such a disaster might have proven the
final straw for an already beleaguered group; or they may have fired the
pueblo before leaving, or some marauding group might have been
responsible.

[Illustration: An Aztec Ruins burial with pottery mug in situ.]

Exactly why, after 25 or 30 years, the second group also abandoned the
site we may never know. Times were hard in the Four Corners country, and
by 1300 this area seems to have been virtually depopulated. Perhaps the
abandonment of Aztec, sometime after 1252, was simply a local
manifestation of this much larger dispersal.

No doubt the great drought of the last quarter of that century
contributed substantially to this general abandonment, but there must
have been other factors at work as well. The Indians regard the forces
of nature in a different manner than we do. They may have been
struggling through long years, not only with nature but among
themselves. They may have felt that their gods were against them, that
somehow they had offended them, and that nothing they could do in that
country would be right again. It may have seemed easier to them, family
by family, group by group, and perhaps pueblo by pueblo, to give up the
struggle and go elsewhere, to start over in new surroundings where the
gods might smile upon them once again.




                     _Explorations and Excavations_


Despite popular opinion, and despite the name applied to the ruins, the
Indians who built this ancient pueblo were not related to the warlike
Aztecs of Mexico. In the late 1800’s, there was considerable interest in
the seemingly mysterious Aztec, Toltecs, and other Indians of Mexico.
The writings of Stephens, Prescott and others had fired imaginations,
and new communities—particularly those in the vicinity of Indian
ruins—were often given names of Indian groups from south of the border.

So it was with the town of Aztec. When white settlers first moved into
the Animas Valley, they were intrigued by the great stone ruins.
Believing them to be the work of a long-vanished race from the south,
they named their town Aztec.

The ruins, in turn, became known as “those ruins at Aztec” or simply as
“the Aztec ruins,” and so the name remains today. We know now that the
Aztecs of Mexico, whom Cortez conquered, had nothing to do with these
ruins. In fact, they were built and abandoned several centuries before
Cortez, and even before the Aztecs themselves were well established in
the Valley of Mexico.

The earliest reference to ruins along the Animas River in the vicinity
of Aztec is found on the map of Escalante’s Expedition in 1776-77. On
that map, the cartographer, Miera y Pacheco, has written in between the
lines representing the Animas and Florida Rivers the following:

  The branches of these two rivers are capable of being inhabited by
  very large populations as is shown by the ruins of very ancient towns.

It is doubtful that Escalante or any of his party actually saw the Aztec
ruins themselves, since the map would indicate that they were well north
of that particular spot, probably somewhere in the vicinity of the
present-day Durango. Further, the Escalante map shows the Rio Florida as
flowing directly into the San Juan where actually it flows into the
Animas. Likewise, it shows what are now known as the La Plata and Mancos
Rivers as flowing into the Animas, whereas they flow directly into the
San Juan. If any of the Escalante party had followed these streams or
the Animas to their junction with the San Juan, these mistakes would not
have been made on the map, so the party must, therefore, have been well
north of what is now Aztec.

Possibly other earlier explorers may have passed near, or by, the Aztec
ruins, but the next recorded visit occurred on August 4, 1859, when Dr.
John Strong Newberry visited the site. Newberry, like many of the
19th-century men of science, was a man of many talents. He graduated
from Western Reserve University in 1846, then obtained a degree in
medicine, and later studied geology in Paris. At one time or another he
was associated with the Smithsonian Institution and also taught geology
at Columbian (now George Washington) University. In 1859, he accompanied
Capt. T. N. Macomb (a topographical engineer) on an exploring trip from
Santa Fe to the junction of the Grand (now upper reaches of the Colorado
River) and Green Rivers where they formed the Colorado River. The
following paragraph about the Aztec ruins is taken from his account of
this trip:

  The principal structures are large pueblos handsomely built of stone,
  and in a pretty good state of preservation. The external walls are
  composed of yellow Cretaceous sandstone, dressed to a common smooth
  surface without hammer-marks; in some places they are still 25 feet in
  height. As usual in buildings of this kind, the walls were unbroken by
  door or window to a height of 15 feet above the foundation. The
  interior shows a great number of small rooms, many of which are in a
  perfect state or preservation, and handsomely plastered. These
  structures are surrounded by mounds and fragments of masonry, marking
  the sites of great numbers of subordinate buildings; the whole
  affording conclusive evidence that a large population once had its
  home here.

[Illustration: Aztec Ruins in 1895.]

[Illustration: AZTEC RUINS—GROUND PLAN]

White settlement of the valley around the ruins area began in 1876, and
from that time on the ruins have been well known.

The first scientific investigations of the ruins were made in 1878, when
Lewis H. Morgan visited the site and later published a description with
a good ground plan. Morgan, sometimes known as “the father of American
anthropology,” was one of the most distinguished scientists of the 19th
century. He is well known for his ethnological studies of the Iroquois
Indians in New York. Though usually thought of as a “social
anthropologist,” Morgan had a great and abiding interest in archeology,
particularly that of the southwestern part of what is now the United
States, Mexico, and Central America. On his trip to the Southwest in
1878, he kept a journal full of observations and notes about the various
ruins which he visited.

In those days the railroad extended only to Canyon City, Colo., and from
there Morgan and his party had to proceed by wagon. One of the ruins
which especially seemed to intrigue Morgan was the one on the Animas
River, which we now call Aztec. He not only made a ground plan of the
entire ruin, but noted that there were other structures of considerable
size and interest in the immediate vicinity. He also entered some of the
rooms, particularly in the west wing of the larger ruin, which still had
their ceilings intact. Even at that time, evidently a good bit of the
ruin had already been destroyed by the early settlers, for Morgan
records the fact that one man at Animas City, who had lived near the
ruins, told him that about one quarter of the stones had been taken away
by the settlers to use in building houses, lining wells, or for other
construction purposes. Morgan also talks about entering rooms on the
second story, so presumably some of these upper stories may still have
been intact in 1878.

In 1892, Warren K. Moorehead visited the Aztec ruins, studied them, and
in 1908, he published an article and sketch map in the _American
Anthropologist_. Moorehead is better known for his work among the
prehistoric mounds and temples in southeastern United States than for
investigations in the Southwest, but he was a competent archeologist and
keen observer of prehistoric remains. He and his party, like other early
explorers, were evidently able to enter a number of intact rooms—he
says, “twenty or thirty apartments.”

In 1915, Dr. N. C. Nelson, who was then curator of archeology for the
American Museum of Natural History, examined the ruins and was impressed
by their potential for further intensive investigations. At this time
the museum was undertaking the Archer M. Huntington Survey of the
Southwest, one of the objectives of which was to make an intensive study
of a large pueblo site. Because of Nelson’s recommendations, permission
was obtained in 1916, from the owner, H. D. Abrams, to clear it of brush
and weeds and to make trial excavations, the expense of this undertaking
being borne by J. P. Morgan. As a result of these preliminary
investigations the museum decided that complete excavation and repair of
the West Ruin was desirable not only for the purpose of procuring data
on the culture of its ancient builders, but also, in order that it might
be preserved as a permanent exhibit. As a result, the museum engaged the
services of Morris, who for the next 5 years devoted his time and
attention to very careful excavations of the West Ruin.

However, some 35 years before Morris undertook his excavations, an
interesting and somewhat fortuitous event occurred at the old ruins that
caused them to gain notoriety, at least locally.

By 1880 the settlers in the valley, concerned about the education of
their children, had established a small, 1-room school. Sherman S. Howe,
long a resident of the Animas area, was one of the first boys to attend
this school, and in 1947, a few years before his death, he recorded for
posterity his remembrances of the valley and the first real exploration
of the Aztec ruins. A schoolteacher named Johnson, who hailed from
Michigan and who must have been quite a remarkable man for his day, was
greatly intrigued by the ruins. Sometime during the winter of 1881-82,
he encouraged the school children to go out with him for a day on a trip
to explore the ruins. Howe remembers the event well, for although he was
among the younger boys, he was also among the first to volunteer to go.
The following Saturday, about seven or eight of the boys arrived at the
Aztec ruins with picks, shovels, and a crowbar, to meet with the
teacher. As Howe used to tell it:

  It was snowing a little and quite cold. We went into a second-story
  room, more than half full of dirt, and began digging down at the
  corner of the room. We struck the second floor at about five feet, and
  broke a hole through about two and one-half feet in diameter, but
  could see nothing but a black dungeon below. There was a prolonged
  debate about the depth of it, what might be at the bottom, and how a
  person could ever get back if he did go down there. Some thought it
  might be full of rats, skunks, bats, or rattlesnakes. We could imagine
  a hundred things. I believe the dread of ghosts was the worst.

Howe evidently wanted to be the first one down but the teacher felt it
would be better if one of the older boys went first; so one was selected
and lowered on a rope. Naturally at the last moment the boy was a little
hesitant about being lowered into a dark hole which, after being sealed
airtight for centuries, had a “musty odor which was not at all
pleasant.” Finally, however, having been teased by his friends, he
dropped down into the room. Soon the rest of the boys were also getting
down the best way they could. As Howe described it:

[Illustration: Mummies of Aztec Ruins.]

  We were in a room—a clean room, with ceiling and walls, open doorways,
  all just as they had been left. We were walking on floors which had
  not been trodden by human feet for centuries. There was an open door
  leading into the next room to the northwest. It was also clean and in
  perfect condition. There was no trash on the floor, no ashes, nor even
  a scrap of pottery.

  Mr. Johnson seemed disappointed and puzzled. “Who were these people
  who built these large buildings and such splendid rooms? Did they not
  leave something behind that would give us some information? Could they
  not write, to give us some description of themselves or a bit of
  history?” Such thoughts and questions as these were racing through the
  mind of our teacher. He was thinking aloud, and making us do some
  thinking also. I felt very nervous and uncomfortable down in that
  dark, dismal place.

Disappointed at not finding anything in these first two rooms, the
teacher and his boys broke a hole through one of the walls into a third
room next door. This room, too, had been sealed for many centuries, and
the candles they had brought would not burn properly until enough fresh
air had circulated through the hole in the wall. But this room held a
surprise for the boys. Bit by bit, as their candles burned better the
room became brighter, and then:

  When we could see across the room, there was a human skeleton facing
  us with its back to the wall. It had been placed there with no
  wrappings around it whatever. It was not mummified, but the ligaments
  had dried, holding the bones in place except that the head had tilted
  back and was resting against the wall. There was some dried skin and
  hair lying around it. The body had been flexed in the usual manner,
  but instead of wrapping and tying in the matting, as the custom was,
  it seemed to have been just placed there nude. We all stood
  motionless, nobody saying a word. It must be that we were struck dumb
  with awe, and that we were debating in our minds whether to stand our
  ground or retreat.

This was as much as the boys and the teacher could do in the short time
they had the first day out at the ruins, but they all agreed that they
would meet again the following Saturday and continue their explorations.
However, during the week the boys had told their parents about what they
were doing, and the next Saturday when Howe showed up there was a crowd
of older men present who quickly began to break into a number of other
rooms. Howe remembers entering one room with them:

  We entered the room through the hole in the floor and passed through
  the open doorway into the northwest room. We broke a hole through the
  wall and entered the room to the northeast, and there we really did
  see things! I got into that room and stood, trying my best to take it
  all in and see everything I could, while that excited crowd were
  rummaging it, scattering and turning everything into a mess. There
  were thirteen skeletons ranging from infants to adults. The infants
  were two in number. The skulls had not knit together. One of them had
  two teeth. All were wrapped in matting similar to that around tea
  chests that come from China, and tied with strings made from fiber of
  the yucca plant. There were large pieces of cotton cloth. Most of it
  was plain, resembling our ten-ounce duck. It was in good state of
  preservation except that it was somewhat colored with age. Some of the
  cloth had a colored (red) design in stripes. There was also some
  feather cloth, and several pieces of matting of various types. There
  were several baskets, some of the best that I have ever seen, all well
  preserved. There were a lot of sandals, some very good, others showing
  considerable wear. There was a large quantity of pottery, all Mesa
  Verde. Some of the pottery was very pretty and new looking.

  There were a great many beads and ornaments. I cannot give a
  description of these, as I had no opportunity to examine them closely.
  I remember seeing quite a lot of turquoise. There were a number of
  stone axes, polished, and much nicer in appearance than the average
  type found in this vicinity. There were also skinning knives,
  so-called, and sandal lasts; cushions or rings they wore on their
  heads for carrying burdens—some made of yucca, nicely woven or
  braided; some made very plain, in coils of yucca strips, tied in
  various places to hold the strips together; some were made of juniper
  bark wrapped with strings, and some were made of corn husks. These may
  have been used also as jar rests to support vessels with convex
  bottoms which would not stand upright very well without some kind of
  support.

[Illustration: Woven yucca sandals.]

[Illustration: Probable snowshoe made of willow, reeds, and yucca
fibers. Length 20″.]

Obviously, findings such as these could not long remain a secret, and
for a considerable time it was a favorite weekend sport to hunt for old
remains at this ruin and others in the immediate vicinity. A great
quantity of invaluable archeological material must have been carried
away in this manner and has long since been lost or scattered among
private individuals. A little of it got into museum collections, but
most of it was carried off by the people who found it and who then left
it in obscure corners of their houses until it was broken or lost. As
Howe himself said in his later days when he remembered these early
findings:

  When we had finished this work, the stuff was taken out and carried
  off by different members of the party, but where is it now? Nobody
  knows. Like most of the material from the smaller pueblos around the
  larger buildings, it is gone. I, being only a small kid, did not get
  my choice of artifacts, I had to take what was left, which made a nice
  little collection, at that. But it, too, is about all gone.

  We went on with our work, opening all of the rooms that visitors now
  pass through with the guides, but we found nothing more. The holes
  that we made through the walls have been converted into doorways
  through which all visitors now pass from room to room.

For a number of years, rather indiscriminate looting by pothunters and
others interested in these antiquities continued sporadically. Luckily,
the pothunters did not get into the rooms which seemed to require a lot
of hard work and digging, but merely broke into those rooms which were
still more or less intact and in which readily accessible material was
lying around on the floor or scattered through the debris.

In 1889, a patent covering the site of the Aztec ruins was issued to
John R. Kuntz and continued in his possession until 1907, when it was
transferred to H. D. Abrams. Due largely to the efforts of these
gentlemen, the ruins were relatively protected against vandalism until
it could be scientifically investigated by Morris in 1916.

The name of Earl H. Morris is well known in Southwestern archeology.
Although he also did considerable archeological work in Central America,
particularly at the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza in Yucatan,
trying to unravel the story of the prehistoric inhabitants of the
American Southwest was always his first love. Morris was born on October
24, 1889, in Chama, N. Mex. His family had originally come west from the
Pennsylvania oil fields in the mid-1870’s, and his father engaged in
construction work such as building railway grades and roads, digging
canals, and hauling freight. In 1891, the elder Morris moved his family
to Farmington, N. Mex. There, he was able to rent out his teams on a
canal construction project. This left him free to pursue his
hobby—digging for Indian antiquities—the love of which he was able to
impart to his son Earl.

When Earl was 3½ years old he actually excavated his first Indian pot.
As he used to tell it:

  One morning in March of 1893, Father handed me a worn-out pick, the
  handle of which he had shortened to my length, and said: “Go dig in
  that hole where I worked yesterday, and you will be out of my way.” At
  my first stroke there rolled down a roundish, gray object that looked
  like a cobblestone, but when I turned it over, it proved to be the
  bowl of a black-on-white dipper. I ran to show it to my mother. She
  grabbed the kitchen butcher knife and hastened to the pit to uncover
  the skeleton with which it had been buried. Thus, at three and a half
  years of age there had happened the clinching event that was to make
  of me an ardent pot hunter, who later on was to acquire the more
  creditable, and I hope earned, classification as an archaeologist.

Morris’ father was killed when he was 15, and he had to go to work to
support his mother and to put himself through school and college as
well. In 1908, he entered the University of Colorado, but he left
temporarily to join an archeological expedition to the Maya country of
Guatemala. Later he returned to college and received his B.A. in 1914
and his M.A. in 1916.

[Illustration: The Earl Morris house about 1933; today the Aztec Ruins
Visitor Center.]

Having spent the winter of 1915 in New York City at Columbia University,
Morris was well acquainted with the leading archeologists at the
American Museum of Natural History. It was, therefore, upon Dr. Nelson’s
recommendation that the ruins at Aztec would make an excellent subject
for intensive study by the museum, that Morris was hired to conduct the
investigations. He was in charge of the Aztec excavations from 1916-21,
and sporadically through 1923, at which time the area became a National
Monument. Morris was the first custodian, as they were called in those
days, and was officially appointed on February 8, 1923, at the salary of
$12 per annum.

He not only excavated the major part of the West Ruin very carefully,
but also stabilized and repaired the walls as he went along, for the
museum greatly desired that this ruin might be preserved as an
outstanding monument. Later, in 1933-34, Morris’ services were loaned to
the National Park Service by the Carnegie Institution so that he might
accurately restore and reroof the Great Kiva at Aztec.

Morris dug in a number of other places throughout the Southwest in
addition to Aztec and therefore was in a better position than any other
man of his time to interpret and explain the development of the
prehistoric cultures in the Four Corners country. He produced a number
of valuable archeological reports, most of them under the auspices of
the Carnegie Institution for which he worked for many years. With his
death in 1956, Southwestern archeology suffered a severe loss, for there
are not many scientific investigators with both his skill and
motivation. As his lifelong friend A. V. Kidder has said about him:

  Throughout his career, Morris was doubly motivated. First, of course,
  by the urge to trace the course and discern the causes of historical
  events and cultural developments. Secondly, by an exceptionally ardent
  wish to make evident to the world of today the achievements of the
  past. Back of this was his own admiration for and striving to preserve
  all ancient things that were beautifully and soundly made. I think he
  may also have felt, perhaps subconsciously, an obligation to repay, by
  rescuing their work from oblivion, the men and women of long ago whose
  artistry and manual skills gave him such keen and lasting pleasure.

[Illustration: Mesa Verde-style pottery mugs. Left mug: Diameter at
bulge, 4⅓″; Diameter at mouth, 3″; Height, 4¼″. Right mug: Diameter at
bulge, 4⅓″; Diameter at mouth, 3″; Height, 4¼″.]

Digging in ruins such as at Aztec, where a dry climate has helped
preserve many perishable items normally lost to archeologists and where
there was always the opportunity of suddenly discovering a fairly
complete and undisturbed room, must have been a stimulating experience
to a man of Morris’ capabilities. One has only to browse through his
reports and articles, or to glance at the pictures therein, to get the
feeling of intense excitement about each discovery that prevailed
throughout the 5 years he was digging there. It would be impossible to
describe everything that Morris excavated, but several of the burials
that he uncovered were of exceptional interest.

[Illustration: Pottery ladles from Aztec Ruins. Left ladle: Diameter of
bowl, 4¼″; Handle length, 12½″; Height, 2¼″. Right ladle: Diameter of
bowl, 5″; Handle length, 6¾″; Height, 2½″.]

One consists of what may be the only known case of prehistoric Pueblo
surgery. In one of the rooms Morris found the remains of a young female
17 to 20 years of age accompanied by several bowls and a pottery mug.
The body had been wrapped in an excellently woven cotton cloth, which in
turn, had been covered by a mantle of feather cloth and finally, with a
mat of plaited rushes. The young lady had been seriously injured,
perhaps in a fall, for the hip had been severely fractured, several
vertebrae cracked, and both bones of the left forearm badly broken. But
what was of particular interest, was that an attempt had been made to
treat the broken arm. Six wooden splints, each flat on one side and
convex on the other, had been bound in longitudinal position around the
arm. As Morris said, if the Indians who attempted to help this girl
realized that her pelvis was also broken they were unable to do anything
about that, but evidently they had attempted to set the arm and return
it to normal. Unfortunately, death occurred before sufficient time had
elapsed to permit the healing to begin, so we do not know how successful
this sort of treatment might have been. Although the surgery may seem
crude and bungling to us, at least it shows an awareness of what was
wrong and an attempt to correct it.

[Illustration: Full-grooved ax with fragment of hafting material.
Length, 7″; Maximum width, 3½″; Width at groove, 2¾″.]

Another fascinating burial was the one which Morris referred to as the
“warrior’s grave”, in which he found an adult male buried in a grave-pit
sunk into the floor of a room. A wrapping of feather cloth enveloped the
entire body, and there had been an equally extensive outer covering of
rush matting. Along with numerous other grave offerings of artifacts and
pottery vessels, a large, ornate shield was laid over the body. It
consisted of a flat piece of coiled basketry 36 inches long and 31
inches wide, and on one side was lashed a hardwood handle. The outermost
5 coils of the shield had been coated with pitch and thickly spangled
with minute flakes of selenite; the next 5 were stained dark red, while
the remaining 48 were greenish-blue. In addition to the shield there
were axes of a form intermediate between axes and hammers, so that it
would appear they were intended for use as weapons rather than tools.
One is beautifully fashioned from a piece of hematite or similar iron
ore, and both had wooden handles which lay near the right hand of the
body. Near the left hand was a long knife of red quartzite, positioned
so that it might have been inserted in a belt or girdle. Also beside the
body was a long, thin, tapering wooden object which might have been
interpreted as a digging stick but which Morris felt would also have
been serviceable as a sword.

It is not often an archeologist has an opportunity to uncover
spectacular remains of this sort, but these are only two of the
fascinating burials which Morris recovered from the Aztec ruins. In all
he found 186 interments. Strangely enough, only 6, with possibly 2
others, could be identified as belonging to the Chacoan phase at Aztec;
149 were definitely of the Mesa Verde period, 12 others probably so, and
17 were found in circumstances which made it impossible to tell to which
period they belonged.

But burials were not the only things which Morris uncovered. He began
his diggings in the southeast corner of the ruin, excavating the entire
east wing from south to north. The problem of moving the dirt, debris,
and fallen rocks was considerable, especially when he did not want
merely to pile it off to one side where he might subsequently have to
move it a second time. Furthermore, the ruin was to be stabilized as a
permanent monument, so it was necessary to remove the debris well
outside the ruin area. At one time he evidently considered building a
sluiceway from an irrigation ditch which runs along a higher level on
the north side of the ruin, thinking that most of the debris could be
dumped in the sluice box and washed out to a lower area by the river.
Perhaps this scheme did not prove to be feasible, for instead, during
the first season’s excavations, he constructed a narrow-gage tramway on
which the workmen ran dump cars. Unfortunately, this method of dirt
removal did not work satisfactorily either, because the relatively light
rails which were used would not support the weight of the loaded dump
trucks. He also had difficulty with the size and quality of the wheels
on the dumpcarts. Although excavators elsewhere have sometimes used this
method of removing dirt, it frequently presents its own type of
engineering problems. In the remaining years of the work at Aztec,
Morris employed horse-drawn carts which could be loaded directly from
the excavations and hauled to a vacant area to be dumped.

[Illustration: Early “diggings” at Aztec Ruins.]

In many places the digging was extremely laborious, for over the
centuries the dirt and debris had been packed into a consistency almost
like that of concrete. In other places the rooms were full of all sorts
of prehistoric rubbish, intermixed with broken artifacts which had to be
carefully sorted out. In describing the excavations in one room Morris
said:

  The ceiling failed in the most unusual way, the supports having been
  broken first at the center, then at each end, where they entered the
  wall. The small poles seemed to have parted from the walls almost as
  soon as the center timbers gave way. Some were standing upright
  against the end walls, while the majority were mashed back against and
  along the east wall. The splints, bark, and adobe were in a grievous
  tangle, most difficult to excavate. Above the first ceiling were
  decayed, but unburned, timbers and lumps of charcoal and reddened
  earth representing, respectively, the second and third ceilings.

Morris completely excavated the east wing and the eastern half of the
north wing. In addition he also excavated 29 rooms in the west wing and
about two-thirds of the small cobblestone 1-story rooms which close off
the southern third of the plaza area.

[Illustration: Exterior of the reconstructed Great Kiva.]

Besides excavating many of the kivas enclosed within the pueblo rooms,
Morris also excavated the large Chaco-like kiva in front of the
northeast corner, as well as the Great Kiva which is centrally located
on the south side of the plaza. Later, in 1933 and 1934, Morris returned
to Aztec and supervised the stabilization and reconstruction of this
Great Kiva, so that today you see it as it supposedly existed when the
Indians used it for ceremonial purposes.

Immediately to the west of the main ruin, where the brush had been
cleared, Morris found a rather extensive low mound area.

  The surface was an orderless succession of hummocks and depressions,
  the former thickly strewn with cobblestones, the whole presenting an
  appearance characteristic of most of the ruins in this end of the
  valley.

Thinking these might be the remains of an earlier structure, he
excavated most of it. To his surprise, the reverse proved to be true.
Although there had undoubtedly been an earlier Chaco-like sandstone
structure at this point, most of it had been torn down and the debris
carried elsewhere or utilized in building the great ruin itself. Morris
said:

  Overlying the earliest remains there are deposits of clean earth, some
  of it presumably laid down by the elements, but the bulk of it is
  excavated earth intentionally dumped where it lies.

At some later date, the Mesa Verde-like people had built cobblestone
houses, pit rooms, and small kivas on top of this earlier debris. Today
the outline of some of these cobblestone walls can be seen on the ground
just to the left of the visitor trail as it proceeds northward to enter
the main part of the West Ruin.

Since Morris’ excavations at Aztec, there has been sporadic digging,
much of it in connection with the Service’s ruins stabilization program.
To prevent soil moisture from seeping into the lower footings of these
ancient walls, it is frequently necessary to dig down to their bases and
cap them with concrete or preserve them by other suitable methods. In
doing so, old refuse pits, broken fragments of pottery, or even a burial
is occasionally turned up.

Recently, in making excavations in which to place dry barrels for
drainage purposes in two rooms on the east side, two interesting
ovenlike structures, each exactly centered in a room, were accidentally
found. Their location in adjoining rooms, and their central position in
the rooms, precludes the possibility that they were pit ovens from an
earlier period before the pueblo was built. Doubtless they had been
placed deliberately in these two rooms, and they may have been used for
roasting large quantities of corn or preparing certain types of baked
corn meal or cornbread.

Also since Morris’ time, the rooms through which you may now pass, and
which lie between the plaza proper and the rooms with the intact
ceilings, have been partially excavated in order to allow you easier
access to the plaza. Finally, as part of the stabilization program, the
remaining rooms in the south wing which enclosed the plaza, and which
were largely composed of cobblestones, were cleared and stabilized.

Morris also excavated a few rooms in the East Ruin simply as a test to
see if it belonged to the same general period as the larger ruin in the
west. From his findings there he felt that the East Ruin was erected
during the Mesa Verde phase of Aztec.

In recent years, one other major excavation has been undertaken at
Aztec. This was the complete clearing and stabilization of the circular
structure to the north of the ruin known as the Hubbard Mound—a massive,
circular, triple-walled structure, with underlying scattered remains of
earlier structures. Two heavy radial cobblestone walls now extend to the
south of the main structure, and excavations revealed remnants of other
heavy walls disappearing under the road to the west. This indicates that
the building had originally been one corner of a group of structures.
The main part of the Hubbard Mound consists of three concentric circular
walls; the spaces between the outer two rings are partitioned into
rooms. There are 8 rooms in the inner circle, including an entrance room
on the south, and 14 in the outer, if you again count an open passageway
on the south side.

Interestingly enough, the three circular walls are heavier and extend
deeper into the underlying sand than do the partition walls, and
therefore were constructed first as continuous circles. Within the
innermost circle there is a standard, small-type kiva. Evidently the
entire structure represents a building for the use of a highly
specialized religious organization. Part of the construction is of
sandstone blocks, part is cobblestone, and all of it seems to have been
generously plastered with adobe mud.

There are other examples of tri-walled structures in the Southwest, but
they are not very numerous and the exact uses to which they might have
been put are unknown. An analysis of materials found during the
excavation of the Hubbard Mound reveals that it belonged to the Mesa
Verde phase.

When Morris first undertook the excavations at Aztec it was his
intention, and that of the American Museum of Natural History, to
excavate the ruins completely. However, the undertaking was a massive
one. World War I intervened, with all its uncertainties, and funds
frequently ran short. In the later days of the excavations, Morris
realized there was an advantage to leaving parts of any ruin unexcavated
so that better archeological techniques in the future might extract
information of which he was unaware. At present, the National Park
Service feels much the same way. Perhaps 25 or 50 years from now further
excavations may be undertaken in this area, but for the present, the
ruins will be left as they are, complete with their feeling of mystery.




                        _The Aztec Ruins Today_


Aztec Ruins National Monument consists of an enclosed area of 27 acres
containing six major archeological complexes of rooms and structures,
and at least seven or eight smaller mounds which may contain structures
or may simply be trash and refuse mounds from the larger occupation
zones. Two of these major complexes have been excavated: the West Ruin
and the Hubbard Mound. Two of the others—the East Ruin and Mound F—have
been tested. Mound F is evidently very similar to the Hubbard Mound.

[Illustration: Aztec Ruins during excavations of the 1920’s.]

The East Ruin, if excavated, might be similar in most respects to the
West Ruin, both in appearance and time of occupation. As to whether the
smaller mounds contain trash or house remains, only thorough
archeological investigations can tell. Morris’ diggings and subsequent
small tests have indicated there may be earlier (Developmental Pueblo)
remains underlying the main prehistoric complexes. Also, such remains
might still be found under the windblown sand in the flatter areas
between the major ruins. No real archeological work has ever been done
in the monument area to determine the possible extent of such earlier
remains.

The two main sites seen by the visitor to the monument are, therefore,
the West Ruin and the Hubbard Mound. The West Ruin was the one first
entered by early settlers in the late 19th century. The profuse remains
caused extensive digging and looting for about a decade. Then, under the
ownership first of John R. Kuntz and later of H. D. Abrams, the area was
given a certain amount of protection. During 1916-21, the American
Museum of Natural History excavated extensively in the West Ruin under
the guidance of Morris. Today, three-fourths of this ruin has been
excavated, cleared, and stabilized so that you may gain a firsthand
impression of its original appearance. The remaining one-fourth is
largely unexcavated and, for all anyone knows, may contain archeological
riches equal to any recovered in the early days or during the
excavations by the American Museum of Natural History.

Although some of the rooms and walls seen by the first white settlers in
the valley have now collapsed, evidence of at least three stories is
still clearly visible in several places in the ruin. The main part
consists of three sides of a rectangle with a slightly bowing outer wall
on the fourth side, composed of single rooms, which seals off the
central plaza. The only entrance into the pueblo was the one along the
path by which visitors enter the ruin today.

The pueblo was built of yellowish-brown and tan sandstone blocks, most
of them shaped into rectangles by pecking or grinding. To support the
weight of the upper rooms, the lower walls are much thicker and are
composed of rubble fill with an outer veneer wall of the better shaped
rectangular blocks. In many places, the spaces between them are filled
with small chinking stones set in adobe mud. Sometimes broken pieces of
pottery vessels were used for spalls. Originally, the walls were
plastered with layers of adobe, most of which, unfortunately, have
eroded away.

[Illustration: Section of wall at Aztec Ruins showing a band of green
sandstone.]

One unusual feature in the West Ruin consists of two very fine bands of
green sandstone blocks which extend horizontally along the west outer
wall of the pueblo and into a few of the interior rooms of the southwest
corner. There are indications in a few places that originally there may
have been three such parallel bands.

The north and northwest sides of the ruin contain the most extensive
building remains. The highest walls and best construction still exist
there, and one can see evidence of at least three stories. Also in the
north portion, along the extreme back row of rooms at the ground level,
there is a series of seven rooms, each of which has its original ceiling
intact. These seven were the first entered by early relic hunters, who
found most of the original doorways to the south sealed up and who broke
through the walls of each room in an easterly direction. These breaches
in the walls have been repaired but left open, so that today you can go
from one room to the next along the path taken by the early explorers
rather than through the doorways used by the Indians.

From the plaza, the Indians gained access to these northwestern rooms by
entering the west side rooms. Then, turning at right angles, they
proceeded northward through the doorways and rooms until they reached
the final row of rooms at the north.

Although not all are open to the public because of their difficulty of
access, there are 19 rooms in the ruin which still have their original
ceilings intact. In making a ceiling, the Indians used two or more main
stringers—that is, large beams of pine or juniper—which they set into
the walls of the room at a height of 8 or 9 feet, traversing the shorter
dimension of the room. Running at right angles to the stringers, they
placed cottonwood poles or splints of juniper, and, over these, reeds,
rushes, or woven matting. Upon this they put adobe mud which was well
packed to make a firm roof, or, if there was to be another room above
it, a stout floor.

Since the entire ruin has not been excavated, it is possible there may
be more rooms with ceilings intact, or others in which, although the
ceilings have collapsed, the first-floor walls and part of the second
remain. As far as we can tell from the excavated rooms and from the
surface evidence, there are 221 first-story rooms. There are intact
portions of 119 second-story rooms and at least 12 third-story rooms.
When originally inhabited, there were many more than the 352 rooms that
we can count today. Generally, access from one room to another was by
doorways that led from the back or side portions of the pueblo out
toward the central plaza. However, several rooms also had lateral
doorways, many of which had at one time been sealed up, either by the
first inhabitants or by the second group. When burials were made in a
room, it must have been necessary to seal all the doorways, unless the
bodies were placed in subfloor pits or covered with dirt or debris.

Among the second-story rooms in the northeastern section are four
special doorways, each placed in the corner of a room so that it
connects with the adjoining diagonal room. As far as we know, corner
doorways occur only in second-story rooms, with the possible exception
of the double doorway mentioned below. One corner doorway leads into a
room that had four normal doorways, one in each side. We do not know if
this room had a special function, but it was the most accessible in the
entire pueblo.

[Illustration: Section of wall at Aztec Ruins showing sealed door at
left.]

One corner doorway is possibly unique in the entire Southwest; beneath
it is a second and much smaller one which led from the second-floor
level into a first-floor room which could be entered only by this means.
Although there is a step arrangement in this lower doorway, it is so
small and its roof is so low that it must have been a matter of crawling
rather than walking through it. This doorway enters the lower room so
high in the wall that it would also have been necessary to have a ladder
inside the room to enter or leave it.

In addition to doorways, many rooms, especially toward the back or sides
of the pueblo and in the lower tiers, had one or two openings about a
foot square, high in the back wall. These are above the height of an
average man even today, and could not have served as view holes or
windows for the Indians. They must have been put there for ventilation.

[Illustration: ]

[Illustration: Cross section and photograph of an over-under corner
doorway.]

There are a few other openings in some walls which are not as large as
the average doorway or as small as the ventilators. Usually these are
placed at a medium height in the room and could well have served as
windows to allow a view from one room to another. None of these
so-called windows, however, opens to the rear or sides of the pueblo,
nor is any known that opens onto the plaza in front.

Not counting the Great Kiva, which bulks so large in the plaza,
excavations have revealed at least 29 other kivas or ceremonial
chambers. Several, especially in the southeast corner, underlie the main
structure and may represent kivas from the earlier or Developmental
Pueblo Period. Besides the cluster of small kivas around the
southeastern corner, there is a second grouping of larger kivas among
the rooms in the northeast corner and out into the northeastern part of
the plaza, where a rather large Chaco-type kiva is located. A third
cluster, composed of smaller Mesa Verde-type keyhole kivas, is located
near the southwestern corner of the pueblo, and Morris found scattered
remains of one or two other kivas toward the front of the southwestern
part.

The Great Kiva, or House of the Great Kiva as Morris called it, is
centrally located in the south side of the plaza. It is essentially
circular in form and has two distinct parts. The inner part—the kiva
proper—has a floor about 8 feet below the surface. At ground level, and
surrounding this inner section, is an outer circle of 14 arc-shaped
rooms. Twelve of these are essentially similar, but the other two are
markedly different. One is merely an open passage about 3½ feet wide
which leads directly from the plaza to the head of the south stairway.
The other is a large rectangular alcovelike structure on the north side
of the kiva proper, with a stairway leading up into it from the kiva
floor. On the north and west sides of this alcove, there is a low
benchlike structure around the inner wall, and on the south side are
what appear to be a piece of a wall and two rectangular masonry blocks.
Toward the center back portion of the alcove is another low square
masonry structure which may have been an altar. When excavated, this
latter structure had burned poles embedded in the north side as though
it once had a small roof or some kind of entablature over it.

The kiva proper is 41 feet 3½ inches wide at floor level and 48 feet 3½
inches wide at a height of 3 feet above the floor. This difference is
caused by two benches or concentric rings which completely encircle the
kiva base. At the north end three masonry steps led to the second bench,
which at this point formed a fourth step in the stairway leading to the
alcove. Above this, another masonry step was surmounted by five sets of
double juniper logs set in the sides of a recess, with an average rise
of 9½ inches each. These logs formed the final steps leading from the
kiva floor into the north alcove.

[Illustration: SCHEMATIC PLAN OF THE GREAT KIVA DURING CHACO TIMES]

Originally there had also been a stairway on the south side, leading to
the small exit at that point. Some time while the kiva was in use, these
stairs had been eliminated, the two benches had been filled in smoothly
at that point, and the recess above had been partially closed. The
modern wooden stairways at both these points have been placed there by
the National Park Service for the convenience of visitors.

On the floor of the kiva are remains of the central altar or firepit,
flanked on either side by two large rectangular stone-lined pits, the
bottoms of which are well below the kiva floor. These pits, often
referred to as foot drums, may have served at other times as hiding
places for the shamans, or medicine men, who performed magical rites
during ceremonies.

Surrounding the kiva at ground level are 12 similar arc-shaped chambers
of varying dimensions, which represent components of the building as
last used. Some time during one or another of the several alterations
made by the Indians on the Great Kiva, every door from the plaza into
these peripheral chambers was sealed with masonry. The floor of the
rooms was adobe, without much sign of use, and the quantity of gypsum
found by Morris indicates they may have been painted white.

[Illustration: Reconstructed interior of the Great Kiva.]

Once the outer doors were sealed, entrance was doubtless by way of the
niched vertical stairways in front of each room. About 10 inches from
the top bench, in front of most of the alcove rooms, Morris found a slot
8½ inches wide and 8 inches deep which continued to the top of the wall.
About a foot apart in each niche, were two round juniper sticks, laid
side by side with their ends extending into the masonry. On the east
side of the kiva, the veneer facing of the wall had fallen, and it could
not be positively determined if these alcove rooms also had similar slot
stairways in front of them. If they did not, the rooms would have been
nonfunctional in connection with the kiva proper, and therefore the
present-day restoration shows them correctly.

That the Great Kiva was originally roofed was determined by Morris’
finding the remains of four rectangular columns, countersunk below the
level of the kiva floor and composed of alternating courses of masonry
and wooden poles. Each course of wooden poles was laid at right angles
to the alternating one below. Each column was supported by three thick
circular sandstone blocks, evidently to prevent the weight of the
columns, and the roof they supported, from pressing them down into the
soft ground or spreading out the footings. In the excavation of the kiva
fill Morris also found many pieces of charred timbers, so that although
we do not know the exact method of roofing the kiva, one method which
the Indians could have used has been duplicated in the modern
reconstruction. Evidently the kiva burned and was then abandoned.

Just to the northwest of the main ruin at Aztec is a small tri-walled
ceremonial structure known as the Hubbard Site. Sixty-four feet in
diameter, it consists of three concentric walls of stone and adobe, with
a small 24-foot circular kiva enclosed in the center. This kiva is not
directly connected with any of the tri-walls; there is a space 1½ feet
wide between the outer shell of the kiva and the inner side of the
nearest wall. There are remains of eight roof pilasters, a central
fireplace, a deflector, and a ventilator shaft in the kiva. On the south
side are openings in the two outer walls, one directly behind the other,
so that access could have been along this passage and then up over the
roof of the kiva and down into it through the smoke hole. None of the
rooms in the outer two circles connect in any way with the kiva.

There are seven rooms of roughly equal size within the inner circle; an
eighth “room” might be the one mentioned above, which forms part of the
passage leading out to the south. These rooms do not connect with each
other, and access to each of them must have been through the roof.

In the outermost circle there are 13 rooms, with another constituting
the outer portion of the south passage. This is the same number of
alcoves as surrounded the Great Kiva, except that in the latter case two
were entranceways. Here in the Hubbard Mound there is no north alcove
entranceway as there is in the Great Kiva.

In the outer circle of rooms, the first four east of the south entrance
opened into each other through a lateral doorway, and the next two rooms
around to the northeast also opened into each other. The following room
toward the north was self-contained. Proceeding around to the west, the
next five rooms all opened on each other through lateral doorways.
Finally, on the southwest there is a single room not connected to any
other. None of the rooms in the outer circle opened onto any in the
inner circle or to the outside, except for one doorway on the west which
led to the series of five interconnecting rooms. The separate rooms and
the other series of connecting rooms must have been entered through the
roof.

Extending southward from the tri-wall structure are two massive parallel
walls made of cobblestones laid in thick mortar, and two more equally
massive walls extend westward from these. There are scattered smaller
walls, also of cobblestones; while we do not know their original
dimensions, they suggest rectangular enclosures which may have contained
house rooms of lighter construction.

The ruins contained within the Aztec Ruins National Monument constitute
a complex of prehistoric remains representative of several different
construction periods. Different groups of Indians seemed to have been
involved at various times, and only further excavation will fully
clarify their relationships.




                          _The Natural Scene_


Aztec Ruins National Monument is located on the Animas River in
northwestern New Mexico, about 20 miles below the Colorado State line
and 14 miles above the point where the Animas flows into the San Juan.
The monument is on the west bank of the Animas on high ground about
halfway between the river and the low-lying hills and mesas which border
the river valley.

The valley, although narrow at spots, is about 2 miles wide at the point
where the ruins are located. The floor of the valley is composed of
fertile alluvial soil, which produces fine crops if irrigated. Today, as
in prehistoric times, the population of this area is concentrated along
the river. It was this permanent source of water that induced the
builders of the Aztec pueblo, and in later times the white man, to
settle this valley. No doubt many of the fields cultivated today are the
same ones that were tilled by the original inhabitants of the area.

The valley floor and valley terraces are dotted with saltbush,
rabbitbrush, greasewood, and sagebrush. The riverbanks and ditches are
lined with willows and huge cottonwoods. Cattails and reeds grow in the
marshy areas, and wild roses grow in the shady spots. The low hills and
uplands bordering the river valley have a sparse cover of vegetation
because of the small amount of rainfall. Therefore the main growth is
juniper and pinyon. Typical of the Upper Sonoran Life Zone, these small,
hardy trees can withstand dry periods and survive in semiarid country.

Today much of the valley is under cultivation or in pasture, and the
mild and very dry climate is well suited to growing non-citrus fruit.
Elevation at the monument is about 5,600 feet above sea level. Average
annual rainfall is about 9½ inches; the humidity is usually very low.
Temperatures will reach the mid-90’s during July and August, but
evenings are cool and pleasant. Night temperatures in the 60’s are not
uncommon even after the hottest summer days. Occasional afternoon
thundershowers give relief from the heat during late July and August.

[Illustration: Skunk.]

Spring and autumn are relatively dry seasons when the skies may remain
cloudless for weeks at a time. In September a great range of temperature
from night to day—as much as 45°—is noticeable.

[Illustration: Porcupine.]

The winters are mild. The temperature rarely drops to zero or below, and
there are very few prolonged periods of cold weather. Infrequent snows
are usually light, and melt quickly. Many days are warm and cloudless.

At the time that the Aztec pueblo was inhabited, no doubt a few deer,
pronghorn (“antelope”), and bighorn could be found in and near the
valley. Occasionally, deer still may be seen along the river to the
north of Aztec Ruins. Many of the smaller animals which were familiar to
the people of the Aztec pueblo are still present in the valley and may
occasionally be observed in the monument. Jackrabbits, cottontails, rock
squirrels, skunks, porcupines, and an occasional gray fox, all of which
were probably well known to the Pueblo people, frequent the monument.
Gambel’s quail and pheasants, which are both relative newcomers, may
also be seen in the monument. Ducks, geese, and a few large shore birds
may be seen along the river during the cooler months. Meadowlarks,
robins, and numerous other birds may be seen during warmer months.

[Illustration: Bobcat.]

Several species of lizards and a few bullsnakes (which are harmless and
beneficial and should not be disturbed) may be observed around the ruins
area during summer.




                   _Establishment and Administration_


Aztec Ruins National Monument was established by Presidential
proclamation on January 24, 1923. Most of the land was donated to the
Government by the American Museum of Natural History in 1921, 1928, and
1930. In 1931 an additional 6.8 acres was purchased by the Federal
Government from the heirs of H. D. Abrams who had originally owned the
entire site. And in 1947, the Southwestern Monuments Association
purchased the 1.2 acres containing the Hubbard Mound and presented it to
the Government. The monument, now containing 27.1 acres, is administered
by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Created in 1849, the Department of the Interior—America’s Department of
Natural Resources—is concerned with the management, conservation, and
development of the Nation’s water, wildlife, mineral, forest, and park
and recreational resources. It also has major responsibilities for
Indian and Territorial affairs.

As the Nation’s principal conservation agency, the Department works to
assure that nonrenewable resources are developed and used wisely, that
park and recreational resources are conserved for the future, and that
renewable resources make their full contribution to the progress,
prosperity, and security of the United States—now and in the future.

A superintendent, whose address is Rt. 1, Box 101, Aztec, N. Mex., is in
immediate charge of Aztec Ruins National Monument.

[Illustration: The visitor center at Aztec Ruins.]




                            _Related Areas_


Other monuments in the National Park System also preserve the remains of
different types of prehistoric ruins. Two of these, Mesa Verde National
Park, Colo., and Chaco Canyon National Monument, N. Mex., contain
remains of Indian groups which seem to have been related to those at
Aztec Ruins National Monument. A third, Bandelier National Monument, N.
Mex., contains remains of another type but still may be one of the areas
in the Rio Grande drainage in which some of the Indians lived after they
abandoned the San Juan region.




                          _Suggested Readings_


  Howe, Sherman S. _My Story of the Aztec Ruins_, _The Basin Spokesman_,
          Farmington, N. Mex., 1955.
  Morris, E. H. _The Aztec Ruin._ Anthropological Papers of the American
          Museum of Natural History, Vol. XXVI, Part I, New York, N.Y.,
          1919.
  —— _The House of the Great Kiva at the Aztec Ruin._ Anthropological
          Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XXVI,
          Part II, New York, N.Y., 1921.
  —— _Burials in the Aztec Ruin; The Aztec Ruin Annex._ Anthropological
          Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XXVI,
          Parts III and IV, New York, N.Y., 1924.
  —— _Notes on Excavations in the Aztec Ruin._ Anthropological Papers of
          the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. XXVI, Part V, New
          York, N.Y., 1928.
  Reed, E. K. _The Distinctive Features and Distribution of the San Juan
          Anazazi Culture._ Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol.
          2, No. 3, Albuquerque, N. Mex., 1946.
  Vivian, R. G. _The Hubbard Site and Other Tri-walled Structures in New
          Mexico and Colorado._ Archeological Research Series Number 3,
          National Park Service, Government Printing Office, Washington,
          D.C., 1959.
  Wheat, J. B. _Prehistoric People of the Northern Southwest._ Grand
          Canyon Natural History Association, Bulletin Number 12, Grand
          Canyon, Ariz., 1955.
  Wormington, H. M. _Ancient Man in North America._ Denver Museum of
          Natural History, Popular Series No. 4, Fourth Edition, Fully
          Revised, Denver, Colo., 1957.


                         U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1963 of—665208

[Illustration: ]




                          Transcriber’s Notes


—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook
  is public-domain in the country of publication.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by
  _underscores_.