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.