New Pueblo Excavations

CONTINUED FROM PAGE EIGHT blue tick hound of yours got into Mrs.__________'s cabin and ate up their pound of butter. The whole pound! "That so?" drawled Jess, "Well, I don't reckon it'll hurt him none."

The East Fork of the Black, coming from the north, to its confluence with Beaver Creek, is some of the prettiest fly fishing water in the White Mountains. The drop is gradual, gentle enough to allow the water time to pool. There are lots of nice holes and the creek and banks are open enough for you to let out plenty of line and handle a dry fly right.

At Buffalo Crossing, the road to the left takes you north to Greer, past Big and Crescent Lakes, where you can find the best lake fishing in the White Mountain area.

Greer, too, has its own distinctive color and atmosphere, that of a mountain village. Molly Butler, known for miles around, runs Butler's Lodge. George Crosby runs the store, there are some cabins strung along the creek, and that's the town.

The center of all fishing activity is concentrated in this area. The West Fork and the East Fork of the Little Colorado come together here. The lakes are just over the hills. Rosey, Benny (yes, those are the names) and Hall Creeks are almost within walking distance of Greer. The West Fork of the Black is within easy driving distance, and Three Forks is just a hoot and a holler over the hill, with your car. Trout fishing in the White Mountains can be as you like it: with worms, wet flies or dry. Light tackle, a split bamboo rod equipped with a fly casting line and a six to seven foot leader tapering down to four, three or two pound test, is preferred. The rest is up to you.

And something else is up to you: how much you get out of your fishing trip besides trout.

Just last year, below the bridge on Hall Creek, I found a series of beaver dams forming four small ponds. Trout were dimpling the still surface and I was in no hurry. I fished the first. Then the second. Then, looking downstream, I saw water movement on the pond below, and stopped, thinking maybe there was a big trout feeding on the surface. Instead, a mallard hen duck swam out of some willow brush, and behind her were four downy ducklings. The little ones skittered around over the surface, feeding on the bugs, while mother turned her head this way, then that, always watching with those black, shoe-button eyes.

I watched for a while, then went quietly on. My companion, coming along behind, decided to stay. The ducks came out again from their hiding place in the willows, and while he sat silent there, he saw that little duck family feed and play on the surface of that pond, doing things he'd never read about in any textbook about wild ducks. He says he'll remember that little scene long after he's forgotten the number of trout he might have caught in that time.

Another evening, on the West Fork of the Little Colorado above Greer, we "wasted" another evening's trout fishing time, standing and sitting as solid and still as the stumps that furnished us our back rests, watching beaver come out to work, play and eat. Five of them swam around in the pond, inspected their dam, investigated and surveyed a small spillway, sampled the bark of an aspen, felled the night before. We even saw a little fellow, hardly a foot long from his blunt nose to his paddle tail's end, take what must have been one of his first looks at the beautiful Little Colorado, just at sundown.

There's a favorite quotation among the fishing fraternity to the effect that "Allah does not deduct from the allotted time of man those hours spent in fishing". Certainly it must be true of those hours spent angling for trout in the White Mountains. For, if you move quietly, slowly, taking time to see a little and daydream a little, you not only fish, but you see wild turkeys,

Josef Mueuch

deer, elk, an occasional bear, and perhaps if you are reverent enough in Mother Nature's august presence, the tawny shape of a mountain lion or golden lynx will appear magically before you, and fade away again into the dense green shadows of the spruce.

Such experiences multiply in memory. You live the moment once, then you relive it over and over again the rest of your life in pleasant retrospect.

There are surprises too, out on the stream. One time we had spent one whole day driving to an "end of the road," climbing down into a canyon and fishing the upper end of the West Fork of the Black. That evening, still early, I wandered over to my beaver ponds below the bridge on Hall Creek. I walked past the four, let them rest for minutes, and started back, this time fishing. My fly, a white miller, settled on the dark water in the dusk. I got a strike and landed the trout, a Brookie, stippled brilliantly along his sides from Nature's vermilion paint pot. I offered the miller again, on the other side of the pool, and another trout went into my creel. The second pool gave up another eight-incher, and then I had three trout, all under nine inches.

There was absolutely no build-up to what happened then.

I offered the miller again, at the head of the second pool down stream from the bridge, just where the water tumbles in from the one above. I got another strike, and hooked the trout. My rod curved and quivered; it was a heavy one! He leaped once there in the dark. The splash was solid he was big. But he got Away, as they will do, these big ones that's why they get big. And unless some smarter Isaak than I got him, he's still there in that second beaver pond below the bridge on Hall Creek. And so is peaceful Little Round Valley, the fried chicken at Alpine, Jess and his hounds, the beaver, the spruce thickets, fresh sawdust from the sawmills, and all the mountain people who will make this summer an unforgettable one if you'll "visit a little, b'fore you go on."

I'll be there at dusk on one of the beaver ponds, fly fishing for trout. Anyway, I can dream, can't I?

High up on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in some of Arizona's most spectacular timber country, the University of Arizona Department of Anthropology, under the direction of Dr. Emil W. Haury, last summer began seeking the solution to many of Southwestern archaeology's most perplexing riddles when the department's new field school took pick and shovel to one of the greatest expanses of prehistoric ruins yet discovered by scientists in the Sunshine State.

The 1946 work began excavations which will take at least ten seasons to complete. Ten students, eight of them veterans of the late war, worked with University and Arizona State Museum scientists in preliminary digging and the building of a permanent camp for the school.

The ruins being unearthed are another key in scenic Arizona's repeated unlocking of many mysteries in the past history of the nation. No area of the state has failed to yield findings of scientific importance. Yearly for generations a wealth of prehistoric sites has inspired leading archaeologists and their labor crews to bring out of hiding the cultures of the Southwest's earliest peoples.

Southern Arizona provided the early chronology of the Hohokam, desert farming people, when Gila Pueblo, led by Harold S. Gladwin, carried out the extensive Snaketown excavation on the Pima Reservation south of Phoenix. In the eastern area of the state Dr. Byron Cummings found the mixture of early northern and southern cultures as his University of Arizona field school dug and restored Kinishba Pueblo on the Fort Apache Reservation.

The recent work of Harvard's Peabody Museum at Awatovi, southeast of the Hopi Villages, will contribute important knowledge of the Pueblo III people wiped out by the Hopis in 1700 for accepting Spanish priests again after the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680.

In the Arizona State Museum, Tucson, can be seen the material from Ventana Cave, the site in which Dr. Haury and Julian Hayden found evidence of occupation extending from early man of 10,000 years ago to the modern Papago. Among other major archaeological projects which have contributed important chapters in the science of man are Dr. Harold S. Colton and the Museum of Northern Arizona's study of the effect of Sunset Crater's eruption on pueblo people in the Flagstaff area; the excavation of Pueblo Grande by Odd Halseth, city manager and archaeologist of Phoenix; the story of migrations as told by the findings at Casa Grande, where northern mountain people lived side by side with the southern Hohokam; and Clarkdale's Tuzigoot Ruin.

Now, to add to the knowledge that has been secured from Arizona plateaus, desert, cliffs, and valleys, the University of Arizona, in conjunction with the Arizona State Museum, is digging into ruins estimated to have been inhabited from the days of the early Christians into the 15th century.

The vast sites are at Point of Pines, in the central part of the San Carlos Reservation, south of the Black River. On the old Double Circle Ranch near the northern foot of Nantack Ridge, Circle Prairie stretches from tall timber toward the White Mountains in a magnificent scenic sweep. As far as the eye can see lie great mounds, the graves of large agricultural communities which flourished for hundreds of years before Coronado crossed Arizona and which the conquistador passed as his party made its way toward the White Mountains from the Gila.

Present evidence shows that the Indians who chose this scenic location for their pueblos were a sedentary, stable people, living in large communal dwellings and farming for their subsistence. Crop cultivation they carried on in Circle Prairie itself and on flat ground between nearby ridges. On these ridges the archaeologists have discovered terracing to catch and spread rain water, the same technique used by CCC engineers in the 1930's to prevent soil erosion. Close to the ruined pueblos are open reservoirs, constructed by the prehistoric peoples for the storage of domestic water. Apache cattle today still drink from these ancient tanks.

The presence of the sites has been known to southwestern archaeologists for some time. Van Bergen of the Los Angeles Museum, Dr. Cummings, Ben Wetherill, Neil Judd of the U. S. National Museum, Norman Gabel, and Fred Scantling all had been through the Point of Pines area at one time or another.

E. B. Sayles, Curator of the Arizona State Museum, made the survey, however, which led to the current project to dig into the ruins. In 1940, while associated with Gila Pueblo, Mr. Sayles visited the mounds to check the potsherd collection made there some time before by Wetherill. On his return to Globe he reported a great wealth of ruins. This resulted in his revisiting the scene with Dr. Haury in the summer of 1944 after the closing of the latter's university field work at Forestdale. It was evident to the two archaeologists that important discoveries might be made in the region, so they decided on making an extended survey of the ruins during the next summer. Granted support for this project by the Viking Fund of New York, Dr. Haury and Mr. Sayles spent six weeks in 1945 riding over the country. The two spotted 200 ruins, made potsherd collections from each, and studied variations in masonry construction. The survey convinced the observers of the area's long occupation by prehistoric peoples. "The sites differed greatly in character," said Dr. Haury. "There were some with very little pottery or with just plain brown and red ware. Trash areas indicated a fair-sized population, possibly four or five thousand people by the 14th century. Also, there were indications of sub-surface pit-house structures. As we moved carefully over the prairie, we came across successively more complicated locations with stone masonry houses. Pottery found about these showed more sophisticated cultures."

Preliminary study has shown that a historic pueblo people pulled out of the area probably about 1400. Dr. Haury hopes a later date may be proved, as it might do much to explain one of archaeology's knottiest perplexities, the reason for the sudden abandonment of communities by pueblo dwellers after long years of labor and cultural development.

"One answer we may find here," Dr. Haury asserted. "The Apaches came into this area after 1400. We want to find out whether they found these pueblos inhabited when they arrived, or if there was a hiatus in the Point of Pines occupation. It won't be easy to solve this problem, but we're going to dig a region with a wealth of late ruins which may show us, after we get farther into them, just what did happen."

With this problem and the great range of ruins in which to work, not to mention the natural beauty and invigorating climate of the high San Carlos country, Dr. Haury has ideal conditions for a field school to succeed the University's pre-war Forestdale project. Visited at the site last summer, he and Mr. Sayles, ably assisted by the ten University students, were at work constructing the permanent camp buildings. They were using rocks quarried and shaped 800 years ago for masonry walls long since fallen in. Excavation had also been started on one of the larger pueblos. Dr. Haury was acting as camp boss, chief archaeologist, and summer school instructor all in one. Mr. Sayles was superintending the construction of the permanent buildings, running additional surveys of sites in the surrounding country, and, as official photographer, making hundreds of pictures for the record. The students were mixing cement, doing carpentry, unearthing a room apiece in the ruin, and, in the evenings after supper, attending lectures around the camp fire. The atmosphere was one of ceaseless hard work carried out with the incentive that everything being done would help to bring unknown scientific facts to light. The excavations were begun in a 14th century stone pueblo, the rectangular rooms of which had been built over the site of an earlier pit-house village. Some rooms had been used for stor-