About the close of May, 1895, I was invited to make a collection of objects for the National Museum, illustrating the archeology of the Southwest, especially that phase of pueblo life pertaining to the so-called cliff houses. I was specially urged to make as large a collection as possible, and the choice of locality was generously left to my discretion.
Leaving Washington on the 25th of May, I obtained a collection and returned with it to that city on the 15th of September, having spent three months in the field. The material brought back by the expedition was catalogued under 966 entries, numbering somewhat over a thousand specimens. The majority of these objects are fine examples of mortuary pottery of excellent character, fully 500 of which are decorated.
I was particularly fortunate in my scientific collaborators. Mr F. W. Hodge, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, joined me at Sikyatki, and remained with the expedition until it disbanded, at the close of August. Much of my success in the work at that ruin was due to his advice and aid. He was constantly at the excavations, and the majority of the beautiful specimens were taken out of the graves by him. It is with the greatest pleasure that I am permitted to express my appreciation of his assistance in my archeological investigations at Sikyatki. Mr G. P. Winship, now librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Providence, visited our camp at the ruin mentioned, and remained with us a few weeks, rendering important aid and adding an enthusiastic student to our number. Mr James S. Judd was a volunteer assistant while we were at Sikyatki, aiding me in many ways, especially in the management of our camp. I need only to refer to the beautiful drawings which accompany this memoir to show how much I am indebted to Mrs Hodge for faithful colored figures of the remarkable pottery uncovered from the Tusayan sands. My party included Mr S. Goddard, of Prescott, Arizona, who served as cook and driver, and Mr Erwin Baer, of the same city, as photographer. The manual work at the ruins was done by a number of young Indians from the East Mesa, who very properly were employed on the Moki reservation. An all too prevalent and often unjust criticism that Indians will not work if paid for their labor, was not voiced by any of our party. They gave many a weary hour's labor in the hot sun, in their enthusiasm to make the collection as large as possible.
On my return to Washington I was invited to prepare a preliminary account of my work in the field, which the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution did me the honor to publish in his report for 1895. This report was of a very general character, and from necessity limited in pages; consequently it presented only the more salient features of my explorations.
The following account was prepared as a more exhaustive discussion of the results of my summer's work. The memoir is much more extended than I had expected to make it when I accepted the invitation to collect archeological objects for the Museum, and betrays, I fear, imperfections due to the limited time spent in the field. The main object of the expedition was a collection of specimens, the majority of which, now on exhibition in the National Museum, tell their own story regarding its success.
I am under deep obligations to the officers of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum, and the Bureau of American Ethnology for many kindnesses, and wish especially to express my thanks to Mr S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, for the opportunity to study the ancient ruins of Tusayan. Nothing had a greater influence on my final decision to abandon other congenial work and undertake this, than my profound respect for the late Dr G. Brown Goode, who suggested the expedition to me and urged me to plan and undertake it.
JESSE WALTER FEWKES.
Washington, May, 1897.
Plan of the Expedition
It seemed to me in making a plan for archeological field work in 1895, that the prehistoric cliff houses, cave dwellings, and ruined pueblos of Arizona afforded valuable opportunities for research, and past experience induced me to turn my steps more especially to the northern and northeastern parts of the territory.[1] The ruins of ancient habitations in these regions had been partially, and, I believe, unsatisfactorily explored, especially those in a limited area called Tusayan, now inhabited by the Moki or Hopi Indians. These agricultural people claim to be descendants of those who once lived in the now deserted villages of that province.
I had some knowledge of the ethnology of the Hopi, derived from several summers' field work among them, and I believed this information could be successfully utilized in an attempt to solve certain archeological questions which presented themselves.[2] I desired, among other things, to obtain new information on the former extension, in one direction, of the ancestral abodes of certain clans of the sedentary people of Tusayan which are now limited to six pueblos in the northeastern part of the territory. In carrying out this general plan I made an examination of cliff dwellings and other ruins in Verde valley, and undertook an exploration of two old pueblos near the Hopi villages. The reason which determined my choice of the former as a field for investigation was a wish to obtain archeological data bearing on certain Tusayan traditions. It is claimed by the traditionists of Walpi, especially those of the Patki[3] or Water-house phratry, that their ancestors came from a land far to the south of Tusayan, to which they give the name Palatkwabi. The situation of this mythic place is a matter of considerable conjecture, but it was thought that an archeological examination of the country at or near the headwaters of the Rio Verde and its tributaries might shed light on this tradition.
It is not claimed, however, that all the ancestors of the Tusayan people migrated from the south, nor do I believe that those who came from that direction necessarily passed through Verde valley. Some, no doubt, came from Tonto Basin, but I believe it can be shown that a continuous line of ruins, similar in details of architecture, extend along this river from its junction with Salt river to well-established prehistoric dwelling places of the Hopi people. Similar lines may likewise be traced along other northern tributaries of the Salt or the Gila, which may be found to indicate early migration stages.
The ruins of Verde valley were discovered in 1854 by Antoine Leroux, a celebrated guide and trapper of his time, and were thus described by Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner in the following year:
The river banks were covered with ruins of stone houses and regular fortifications; which, he [Leroux] says, appeared to have been the work of civilized men, but had not been occupied for centuries. They were built upon the most fertile tracts of the valley, where were signs of acequias and of cultivation. The walls were of solid masonry, of rectangular form, some twenty or thirty paces in length, and yet remaining ten or fifteen feet in height. The buildings were of two stories, with small apertures or loopholes for defence when besieged.... In other respects, however, Leroux says that they reminded him of the great pueblos of the Moquinos.[4]
A fragment of folklore, which is widely distributed among both the aboriginal peoples of Gila valley and the modern Tusayan Indians, recounts how the latter were at one time in communication with the people of the south, and traditions of both distinctly connect the sedentary people of Tusayan with those who formerly inhabited the great pueblos, now in ruins, dotting the plain in the delta between Gila and Salt rivers. That archeology might give valuable information on this question had long been my conviction, and was the main influence which led me to the studies recorded in the following pages.
An examination of a map of Arizona will show that one of the pathways or feasible routes of travel possible to have been used in any connection between the pueblos of the Gila and those of northern Arizona would naturally be along Rio Verde valley. Its tributaries rise at the foot of San Francisco mountains, and the main river empties into the Salt, traversing from north to south a comparatively fertile valley, in the main advantageous for the subsistence of semisedentary bands in their migrations. Here was a natural highway leading from the Gila pueblos, now in ruins, to the former villages in the north.
The study of the archeology of Verde valley had gone far enough to show that the banks of the river were formerly the sites of many and populous pueblos, while the neighboring mesas from one end to another are riddled with cavate dwellings or crowned with stone buildings. Northward from that famous crater-like depression in the Verde region, the so-called Montezuma Well on Beaver creek, one of the affluents of the Rio Verde, little archeological exploration had been attempted. There was, in other words, a break in the almost continuous series of ruins from Tusayan as far south as the Gila. Ruined towns had been reported as existing not far southward from San Francisco mountains,[5] and from there by easy stages the abodes of a former race had been detected at intervals all the way to the Tusayan pueblos. At either end the chain of ruins between the Tusayan towns and the Gila ruins was unbroken, but middle links were wanting. All conditions imply former habitations in this untrodden hiatus, the region between the Verde and the Tusayan series, ending near the present town of Flagstaff, Arizona; but southward from that town the country was broken and impassable, a land where the foot of the archeologist had not trodden. Remains of human habitations had, however, been reported by ranchmen, but these reports were vague and unsatisfactory. So far as they went they confirmed my suspicions, and there were other significant facts looking the same way. The color of the red cliffs fulfilled the Tusayan tradition of Palatkwabi, or their former home in the far south. Led by all these considerations, before I took to the field I had long been convinced that this must have been one of the homes of certain Hopi clans, and when the occasion presented itself I determined to follow the northward extension of the ancient people of the Verde into these rugged rocks. By my discoveries in this region of ruins indicative of dwellings of great size in ancient times I have supplied the missing links in the chain of ancient dwellings extending from the great towns of the Gila to the ruins west of the modern Tusayan towns. If this line of ruins, continuous from Gila valley to Tusayan and beyond, be taken in connection with legends ascribing Casa Grande to the Hopi and those of certain Tusayan clans which tell of the homes of their ancestors in the south, a plausible explanation is offered for the many similarities between two apparently widely different peoples, and the theory of a kinship between southern and northern sedentary tribes of Arizona does not seem as unlikely as it might otherwise appear.
