Archeological investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah — Reading Notes

SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOLUME 68 NUMBER 1

Archeological Investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah

CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION MAY, 1917

The Lord Baltimore Press BALTIMORE, MD., U. S. A.

ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN NEW MEXICO, COLORADO, AND UTAH

During the year 1916 the author spent five months in archeological investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, three of these months being given to intensive work on the Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado. An account of the result of the Mesa Verde work will appear in the Smithsonian Annual Report for 1916, under the title “A Prehistoric Mesa Verde Pueblo and Its People.” What was accomplished in June and October, 1916, before and after the work at the Mesa Verde, is here recorded.

As archeological work in the Southwest progresses, it becomes more and more evident that we can not solve the many problems it presents until we know more about the general distribution of ruins, and the characteristic forms peculiar to different geographical localities. Most of the results thus far accomplished are admirable, though limited to a few regions, while many extensive areas have as yet not been explored by the archeologist and the types of architecture peculiar to these unexplored areas remain unknown. Here we need a reconnoissance followed by intensive work to supplement what has already been done. The following pages contain an account of what might be called archeological scouting in New Mexico and Utah. While the matter here presented may not shed much light on general archeology, it is, nevertheless, a contribution to our knowledge of the prehistoric human inhabitants of our country. Primarily it treats of aboriginal architecture.

The author spent two months in searching for undescribed buildings concerning some of which comparatively nothing was known. During June, 1916, headquarters were made at Gallup, New Mexico: the Utah ruins, new to science, were visited from the Indian agency at Ouray, Utah.

The plan of operations in these two fields was somewhat different. The work in New Mexico was an attempt to verify existing legends of the migrations of a Hopi (Walpi) clan that once lived in a ruined pueblo called Sikyatki, where the cemeteries, exhumed in 1895, yielded one of the most beautiful and instructive collections of prehistoric pottery[1] ever brought to the U. S. National Museum from the Southwest.

Legends mention by name several habitations of the Sikyatki people during their migration from the Jemez region, before they built their Hopi pueblo, but lack of time prevented the author from tracing their trail throughout the entire distance back to their original home. The object of the present investigation was to examine one of their halting places, a ruined pueblo called Tebungki, or Fire House,[2] on the prehistoric trail about 25 miles east of Walpi. Between this ruined village and the ancestral home there are large and as yet undescribed ruins, such as those of the Chaco Canyon, which may once have been inhabited by some of these people.

Our knowledge of the former shifting of ancient clans, derived from legends, is fragmentary, and one way to gain further information and revivify forgotten or unrecorded history, is to study the remains of their material culture. Architecture is a most important survival, and pottery, which has transmitted ancient symbolism unchanged, is also valuable. It happens that both these aids characterize the southwestern culture areas. Other objects, as stone implements, woven and plaited fabrics, and basketry, are not greatly unlike those made by unrelated Indians and consequently add little to our knowledge in studies of cultures, but architecture and ceramics are distinctive and afford data from which we can gather much information on the history of vanished races.

TEBUNGKI (FIRE HOUSE)

Hopi legends of clans whose ancestors once peopled the Sikyatki ruin, but are now absorbed in the Walpi population, recount that in their western migration they built, near a deep canyon, a village which they named Fire House. These legends were first obtained from the Hopi by A. M. Stephen and recorded by Victor Mindeleff[3] who located Fire House ruin over 20 years ago. His valuable description and ground plan, the only account heretofore printed, is graphic and substantially correct. He calls attention to the characteristic or salient points which distinguish Fire House from ruined buildings in the Hopi reservation, especially its circular or oval form and the massive, well-constructed masonry of its walls.