Davey Jones' Desert Locker

WHEN I tell you that the old-est inhabited house in the United States is, in the near future, to be permanently vacated, do you visualize a tumbledown Puritan log cabin in New England? Or do you think of an old stone fort at St. Augustine, Florida; some venerable adobe structure in Santa Fé, New Mexico, or an ancient California mission? In any case you are wrong, for what is believed to be the oldest still inhabited house in our country rears its red sandstone and mud-mortar walls from the ruins of an Indian pueblo among the vol canic-cinder duneland of Arizona's Painted Desert. Long before Miles Standish, or Coronado, or Ponce de Leon; over 400 years before even Columbus himself, archaeologists believe that a group of farmer Indians moved into this wasteland of cinder-smothered soil and, near the magnet of an ever-flowing spring, began the construction of a many room dwelling. Today, parts of the house still stand and, in the best preserved sections, in three tiny rooms, live a National Park Service ranger and his wife. For today this ruin together with the remains of several hundred smaller edifices scattered over an area of 35,865 acres comprise one of this country's most interesting national monuments.

As ranger at Wupatki National Monument, David Jones has two major duties to perform. One of these is to protect the ruins from damage, either from natural causes or from the shovels of souvenir seek-ers or commercial "pot hunters;" the other and by far the most pleasant, to explain to the several hundred visitors who come to the ruin each month, all that is known about the prehistoric people who built, occupied, and later abandoned the rambling structure. These jobs require his constant presence on the monument which is 40 miles from the nearest town and 15 miles from a highway.

These jobs require his constant presence on the monument which is 40 miles from the nearest town and 15 miles from a highway.

When Jones was appointed to this job, the problem of housing was acute since the Park Service neither provided quarters nor permitted the erecting of any structure which would not harmonize with the natural surroundings. The only shelter which Davey could find was the ruin itself, and this sev eral century-old structure was far from waterproof. Moreover, Park Service reg-ulations regarding meddling with the orig-inal architecture of any historic or prehis-torie building are very strict. Jones might have found himself in the unenviable posi-tion of having violated important federal laws by merely repairing the roof had it not been for the fact that, before the area had been proclaimed a national monument, a scientific institution had excavated a por-tion of the ruin and restored parts of several walls and roofs. In fact, two of the stabil-ized rooms had been occupied by the scien-tists and later by the first ranger and his wife, Jimmie and Sally Brewer. Their in-genuity had solved many problems of life in the tiny cubicle of space which the pre-historic Indians had called home. The door-way was typically small, never having been intended to admit modern furniture, so the resourceful Ranger Brewer had constructed comfortable and fitting tables and cupboards inside and left them there for possible future occupants. Furnishing the living room-bed-room-office was the Joneses' problem. It was met by careful measuring and the choice of such pieces as could be brought in through the small doorway or reassembled inside. The Park Service supplied for the "office" an imposing steel desk and file. The filing cabinet came in, but to the supressed de-light of the Joneses, the desk was too large so one had to be built of native pine in keep-ing with the rest of the furniture. After Davey was married the monument was sup-plied with a modern "canned gas" refrigera-tor, truly essential to a housewife 40 miles from a grocery store, especially during the suffocating Painted Desert summers. Since it would neither fold up nor come apart, it become necessary to repair a small room behind the kitchen, remove the roof, and lower the refrigerator into it from above. This was accomplished with the aid of Navajo Indians who live in their pole-andmud hogans near the ruin. Navajos, as a rule, are very superstitious regarding a ruin and will not enter one. Some of them who have been to white men's schools will go into a ruin, but even the highly educated insist on leaving by the same aperture through which they entered. Following the installation of the refrigerator, Davey thought he might have to maintain a trapdoor in the roof of the refrigerator room for the benefit of his Navajo friends.

When Davey first came to Wupatki, he found that his only neighbors were several families of Navajo Indians who grazed their sheep on the area during a portion of the year. This raised a technicality for only native animals are permitted at large on a national monument. Since they had been roaming the Southwest long before Coronado's followers gazed upon the muddy waters of the Colorado, the Navajos were certainly native. Separate a Navajo from his sheep (technically his wife's flock) and both will perish, so the Park Service found itself in a dilemma which it handled in a most humane manner by officially recognizing the Navajos and unofficially overlooking the sheep. It was a case of "love me, love my sheep."

One of the Navajos living on the monument was a sagacious and shrewd Indian by the name of Clyde Peshlakai. Clyde spoke reasonably intelligible (at times) English, although his wife disclaimed any interest whatever in the foreign tongue. Davey's friendship with the Peshlakais resulted in several humorous situations. Clyde proved to be the source of valuable, interesting, and sometimes remarkable information, and has been of great assistance to Davey on numerous occasions. Soon after the establishment of a new route for a transcontinental air line which brought the big transports over the monument several times daily, Clyde came to Davey to request that the ranger intercede with the proper officials to divert the roaring machines to some other route. The Indian explained gravely that the planes made so much noise that they would frighten the thunder birds away and there would be no rain. The scanty herbage would dry up and there would be no feed for the sheep. Seeds of corn and watermelons planted by the Navajos would fail to sprout. The Indians would starve. Sure enough, not long afterward came the worst drouth in 20 years in the Navajo country.

On another occasion, Clyde complained to Davey about the subjects taught by white men in the Indian schools. "I don't want my boys learn read and write," Clyde argued, "I want them learn make hoes, axes, horseshoes." Puzzled, Davey asked for an explanation. "Because," stated Clyde, "they'll need know those things after all white men gone."

Although the Navajos and their close relatives, the Apaches, were among the fiercest and most determined fighters to oppose the irresistible westward march of the white men, recent years have found them, although self-sufficient, proud, and aloof, the instigators of very little serious trouble. It was Clyde and his family, however, who threw Davey into a state of consternation, and he might have fled the country had he not followed the native custom of council and reconciliation. It happened this way.

When Davey came to Wupatki, he was newly graduated from the University of Arizona, and unmarried; his fiancee, a classmate, remaining in Nebraska with her parents until Davey became settled in his position (Turn to Page 30)