Tuzigoot Ruins

IF YOU don't want to come down with a touch of archaelogitis, stay away from Tuzigoot Ruins. Because it is an interesting spot, and very possibly you'll find yourself succumbing to a real curiosity about Arizona's earliest inhabitants. Tuzigoot-even the name is an intriguing one. It was suggested by a present-day Tonto-Apache Indian, and refers to the little lake at the foot of the hill, known to local palefaces by the prosaic name of Peck's Lake. Tuzigoot means literally: "crooked water;" who can deny the expressive advantage of this over the other?

Tuzigoot is one of the newest excavations of one of the oldest ruins in Arizona, and it is full of interesting facts and findings for both the curious sight seer and the serious student.

We went as a party of the first, and so, probably, will you. No matter, you'll doubtless come away, as we did, feeling professionally full of fascinating knowledge about new-old Arizona!

Since we live within easy driving distance we packed a lunch and hied us over the hill, through precarious Jerome, and down into the busy smelter town of Clarkdale. Just outside the city limits on Highway 79 we took a side road posted "Tuzigoot Ruins."

On a rise about two miles from the town we stopped and stepped out in front of the museum, built of rock and adobe to resemble the original structures as much as possible.

Inside we noticed first the ceiling, entirely of slender willow branches, packed closely together. The modern touch of electric lighting, set in flat to resemble skylights, detracted not a bit from the atmosphere of age and primitive beauty rather, added to it.

The friendly attendant, Miss Rosalind Svob, after "signing us in" told us about the ruins, the museum, and the cases of findings. It wouldn't do to try to duplicate her talk, but the gist of it was: A pair of enthusiastic young U. of A. students in archaeology, Louis R. Cay wood and E. H. Spicer, started the whole project. They were backed at first by the United Verde Copper company, then by its civic-minded successor, the Phelps Dodge corporation. Much credit for the success of the undertaking must go to the Yavapai County CWA board also, under whose sponsorship the excavating was done.

The digging was started in 1933, and continued, along with reconstruction, over some two and a half years.

The young students' elation was great when they found that Tuzigoot was the largest of three adjacent villages, the three of which had housed some 1500 Indians over a period of about three centuries, beginning somewhere about 1000 A. D.! They found indications, too, that these people were of the same tribe as those who lived in Montezuma's Castle; at any rate, they were contemporaries, and had very similar cultures.

Some of the discoveries made in the excavating were unusual, even in archaeological circles. The jewelry, especially, was of a rare quality, with its intricate mosaic and its shell work. The immense ollas, too, are prizes, one was found intact, but the rest had to be reconstructed patiently "worse than a jig-saw puzzle," Miss Svob smiled. They had been literally crushed by the timecrumbled walls.

Skeletons of the buried dead, found often under the floors of the rooms, remnants of tapestry-like cloth, charred grains, shells from coastal water, pottery from tribes far north or south-all these articles told a story to the skilled scientific minds of the two young men. To them it was plain that the ancient dwellers of the ruins had been peaceful agriculturists, comparatively unsuperstitious, and skilled at trading with other tribes.

Miss Svob had told us enough about the ruins themselves, that we were able to appreciate them doubly when we had climbed the little slope to see them.

Standing on top of the hill, on the roof of the most elaborate of all the rooms evidiently the ceremonial room-we looked down on a veritable maze of rooms terraced out below us. Miss Svob had called this a rambling pueblo type village, explaining that this meant the rooms had been added as needed, not built at once. Apartments aren't so now, after all, we couldn't help thinking. But, with the "fireplace" in the center of the room, no pipe nor chimney, and not even any windows, they evidently had no air-conditioning!

Tuzigoot Ruins By Gladys Thompson Niehuis AN ACCOUNT OF ARIZONA'S NEWEST NATIONAL MONUMENT