A Journey Into Many Yesterdays Ago

Memorable landmarks for the traveler in the Southwest are our prehistoric ruins-vestiges of civilizations which flourished centuries ago. We visit these ruins, upon which the dust of dreamy decades is a tapestry of silence and mystery, and wonder about the people who built the ruins and the lives they lived. In these pages we take a journey into many yesterdays ago, wherein we try to construct in word and picture the story of the prehistoric Southwest, whose only documents are the ruins themselves and what archeologists have pieced together from flimsy remnants dug from graves and trash piles. The story is told for us by three men eminently qualified to tell it-Dale King, Erik Reed and Charlie Steen of the National Park Service, each a scholar and authority in some phase of archeological research. They tie the loose strings together and briefly give us a lucid account of those who lived so long ago. Paul Coze, the artist, vivifies the story in a brilliant series of dramatic paintings and clarifies the subject with carefully conceived sketches and drawings. We not only see in photographs how the most celebrated of our ruins are now, but through Paul Coze's artistry how they were many, many yesterdays ago.

Months of research, months of travel, months of consultation went into these paintings. We do not present them as the imaginative musings of a romantic artist. We do present them as historical documents, conceived with a penetrating knowledge of Southwestern archeology, and executed with all the skill and care for meticulous detail a serious artist could put in them.

In reviewing these paintings for us, the eminent archeologist, Dr. F. W. Hodge, director of the Southwest Museum, says: “The paintings by Paul Coze reproduced herein are the result of a project which the artist had long in mind-to vivify, so far as possible, the aboriginal peoples of our Southwest from the early centuries of the Christian Era to the coming of the first Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century.

“This ambitious effort had its inception in many trips to the Southwest, including not only the living Pueblos, but the structural remains of their ancestors as well. With each journey the question arose (as it has come to the minds of many others): What of the life, the activities, of the people who lived in these now-ruined villages centuries ago? Would it be possible to depict enough of their daily life to render a fair impression of their primitive culture? Well, let's see!

“It was this challenge that inspired Mr. Coze to put his plan into effect.

“The literature of the ethnology and archeology of the Southwest has become voluminous during recent years, thanks to the many researchers who have applied themselves so assiduously to the interpretation of the relatively meager evidence that excavation has revealed. Indeed, all the archeological investigations made or to be made in the Southwest could not bring to light more than a very small part of the culture of the people involved, for almost nothing of their religious beliefs and ceremonies, for example, has been revealed by archeology. That which has been uncovered and recorded, however, has proved to be of priceless value in rendering such knowledge as is now required to restore the external life of these ancients as it was in the earliest known times.

“In pursuit of the answer to the inquiry Mr. Coze first became familiar with all the archeological evidence that had been accumulated, including a study of the literature and of every available specimen pertaining thereto. Finally, with such imagination as was necessary to integrate the various elements, as every student of science must do, his paintings were commenced, and the ultimate product is now revealed in faithful reproduction.

“This was not studio work, but intimate observation on the structural remains themselves, many of them in out-of-the-way places.

“One may ask, 'Why all this research to uncover the remains of a people long past? It may not be assumed that any direct benefit can accrue from such investigation, yet there is a sense of satisfaction to every intelligent person in learning something of those earliest of Americans, who, to be sure, did not attain that degree of culture reached by Aztec, Maya, or Inca, but who certainly have left to us a lesson in patience, ingenuity, and prodigious labor that succeeded, after many vicissitudes, in conquering an inhospitable land.” Paul Coze was born in Beyrouth, Syria, in 1903 of French nationality. He studied in France, served with the French Army of Occupation in Germany after World War I, became a successful artist in France, was one of the founders of the Boy Scout movement in France, ultimately serving as National Commissioner for France and assistant International Commissioner of Boy Scouts. He was official artist for the Madison Square Garden Rodeo for three years, was one of the founders and served as president of Club du Lasso (the Paris Roping Club) in Paris, and even wrote and illustrated a book on the rodeo in French. His paintings have been variously shown in leading galleries in this country and abroad, always with critical acclaim. He spends his winters in Pasadena where he teaches art and his summers on the Indian reservations of Arizona and New Mexico, where he paints and continues his anthropological and archeological studies. Lord knows how he has found the time to do so but he has also written books in French, done illustrations for newspapers and magazines, acted as judge for the Flagstaff Pow Wow and the Gallup Intertribal Ceremonials, staged ballets and pageants and has served as technical director for a number of movies. In between, when he should be resting, he thinks up things to do for ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. We hope you feel as we do about his work in this issue. Paul Coze did a fine job.

Again, as in so many instances in the past, we have had the pleasure of working with personnel of the National Park Service, through the Southwestern National Monuments and the Mesa Verde National Park organizations, in getting these pages together. Their whole-hearted cooperation and assistance have made these pages possible. We can all be thankful that there is a National Park Service, whose devoted employees protect our prehistoric ruins and retain for us and those who will come after us priceless historical landmarks in the grandeur and magnificence that is America. - R. C.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS is published monthly by the Arizona Highway Department a few miles north of the confluence of the Gila and Salt in Arizona. Address: ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, Phoenix, Arizona. $3.00 per year in U. S. and possessions; $3.50 elsewhere. 35 cents each. Entered as secondclass matter Nov. 5, 1941, at Post Office in Phoenix, under Act of March 3, 1879. Copyrighted, 1951, by the Arizona Highway Department.

ents in Basket Maker - Pueblo Times

(Following items of American Indians introduced into European life: potato, sweet potato, tomato, maize, tobacco and smoking, vanilla, chocolate, peanut, chili, cayenne pepper, tapioca, pineapple, guava, cascara, cocaine, quinine, curare, cochineal, balsam, rubber, turkey, lacrosse, canoe, snowshoe, toboggan, hammock.)