During the year 1916 the author spent five months in archeological
investigations in New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, three of these
months being given to intensive work on the Mesa Verde National Park
in Colorado. An account of the result of the Mesa Verde work will
appear in the Smithsonian Annual Report for 1916, under the title “A
Prehistoric Mesa Verde Pueblo and Its People.” What was accomplished in
June and October, 1916, before and after the work at the Mesa Verde, is
here recorded.
As archeological work in the Southwest progresses, it becomes more
and more evident that we can not solve the many problems it presents
until we know more about the general distribution of ruins, and the
characteristic forms peculiar to different geographical localities.
Most of the results thus far accomplished are admirable, though
limited to a few regions, while many extensive areas have as yet
not been explored by the archeologist and the types of architecture
peculiar to these unexplored areas remain unknown. Here we need a
reconnoissance followed by intensive work to supplement what has
already been done. The following pages contain an account of what might
be called archeological scouting in New Mexico and Utah. While the
matter here presented may not shed much light on general archeology, it
is, nevertheless, a contribution to our knowledge of the prehistoric
human inhabitants of our country. Primarily it treats of aboriginal
architecture.
The author spent two months in searching for undescribed buildings
concerning some of which comparatively nothing was known. During June,
1916, headquarters were made at Gallup, New Mexico: the Utah ruins, new
to science, were visited from the Indian agency at Ouray, Utah.
The plan of operations in these two fields was somewhat different.
The work in New Mexico was an attempt to verify existing legends of
the migrations of a Hopi (Walpi) clan that once lived in a ruined
pueblo called Sikyatki, where the cemeteries, exhumed in 1895, yielded
one of the most beautiful and instructive collections of prehistoric
pottery[1] ever brought to the U. S. National Museum from the Southwest.
Legends mention by name several habitations of the Sikyatki people
during their migration from the Jemez region, before they built their
Hopi pueblo, but lack of time prevented the author from tracing their
trail throughout the entire distance back to their original home. The
object of the present investigation was to examine one of their halting
places, a ruined pueblo called Tebungki, or Fire House,[2] on the
prehistoric trail about 25 miles east of Walpi. Between this ruined
village and the ancestral home there are large and as yet undescribed
ruins, such as those of the Chaco Canyon, which may once have been
inhabited by some of these people.
Our knowledge of the former shifting of ancient clans, derived from
legends, is fragmentary, and one way to gain further information and
revivify forgotten or unrecorded history, is to study the remains of
their material culture. Architecture is a most important survival, and
pottery, which has transmitted ancient symbolism unchanged, is also
valuable. It happens that both these aids characterize the southwestern
culture areas. Other objects, as stone implements, woven and plaited
fabrics, and basketry, are not greatly unlike those made by unrelated
Indians and consequently add little to our knowledge in studies of
cultures, but architecture and ceramics are distinctive and afford data
from which we can gather much information on the history of vanished
races.