Point of Pines

In an isolated setting of high, pine-fringed parks on the San Carlos Indian Reservation near Point of Pines is Chinbegotá, which, in the language of the Apaches, means ghost town or devil's camp. In reality Chinbegotá is the field school of the University of Arizona, Department of Anthropology, where a key is slowly turning to open a doorway back into the past. The key is not an open sesame but rather a combination of many realistic things: shovels, trowels, knowledge and intelligence, a blending of science and sweat. The area around Chinbegotá or Point of Pines, forty miles wide and seventy miles long, was discovered and surveyed from an archaeological viewpoint in 1945 by Dr. Emil W. Haury, head of the University of Arizona Anthropology Department, and E. B. Sayles, curator of the Arizona State Museum in Tucson. The Point of Pines area was found to be the richest known trove of undisturbed archaeological treasure in the Southwest. Here three prehistoric cultures, Mogollon, Hohokam and Anasazi, built their communities, lived out their lives and disappeared. This is the only place in the Southwest where evidence of the three is found contemporaneously. Here were once great communities and walled cities where at least five thousand persons lived around 1300 A.D. Here there were great apartment houses of a hundred rooms, ceremonial kivas . . . some so large that five hundred Indians could be seated with still room enough for the dancers.

These were not a simple people with an impoverished culture, but a thriving, industrious community of farmers, architects, engineers and traders whose ability to solve their technical problems and utilize what they had was exceptional. Only the more permanent material evidence remains, such as turquoise, shell and bone jewelry and ornaments, pottery of many types, stone axes, tools, metates and arrowheads, buried examples of excellent and durable architecture constructed of expertly quarried building stone, and an occasional series of farm terraces or lime encrusted irrigation ditches. The countless articles made from less durable materials such as wood and cloth have long ago been dissolved into the earth except in isolated cases where rooms burned out by ancient fire are more complete capsules of time, as charred remnants are somewhat more impervious to the ravages of the elements over the ages.

Archaeological discoveries indicate that what was a teeming city one day in a land of plentiful game, fine forests and streams was the next day empty as though some fearful force with a tremendous pressure drove the inhabitants in panic from their homes never to return. In many dwellings pots of food were abandoned over the cooking fires and personal belongings were left in their place. There is much guesswork as to the cause of this overnight mass exodus, the most common reasons offered being drought, famine, epidemic, or marauding tribes. However, such evidence as tree-ring analysis, filled granaries, lack of unusual burials or sacked and burned dwellings seems to discount these theories considerably. The answer to this and many equally challenging puzzles are a part of what the archaeologists are trying to bring to light in an effort to speak for a race that cannot speak for itself. With the aid and backing of the University of Arizona and a number of private grants, and in full agreement with the Apache Tribal Council, the field school of Chinbegotá was established near Point of Pines in 1947 where it operates eight weeks each summer under the direction of Dr. Haury. The nearest point of purchase for equipment and supplies is Globe, some 90 miles or three and a half hours away over winding mountain roads all but impassable after each of numerous summer thunder showers. Though much of the first summer was used in building and equipping the camp, it was time well spent for Chinbegotá is a complete settlement with laboratory, dining room, kitchen, shower rooms, laundry quarters, power plant, running water, cabins, tent houses and an infirmary. Visiting scientists call this operation an archaeologist's dream camp second to none. Each summer approximately ten men students and ten women students are selected from a number of applicants to study the ancient Point of Pines cultures at Chinbegotá. They come from universities all over the world and from foreign lands as well to work in space and time fitting together a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle while gaining priceless field experience and at the same time actually contributing to the knowledge of Southwestern history. The prerequisite requirements are high. Health, scholastic record and an intention to pursue some form of archaeology as a career are all considered. The students are a most conscientious, serious group and, under Dr. Haury's skilled and inspiring guidance, they toil long and hard in both field and laboratory. The field work runs from blister-raising pick and shovel work to delicate dusting away of soil with a fine brush. Time and the elements have taken a high toll and the evidence left is in most cases fragile and elusive unless handled with the utmost care. Every shred of evidence might be a potential and much needed notch in the

key before it will finally release man's vision into this inexplicable enigma of the past. Here at Point of Pines a part of the future, too, may be found in the past. Such a study reveals man's struggle with himself and with his society. It also reveals an insight into present problems and what might happen in the future. There may be some comparison between water failure of the ancient cities and the rate of water table drop in the Southwest today. What were these people like, what did they eat? Their modes of living, their culture, their relationship to environment all may play a part in somewhat determining a likely course of human affairs. To judge the future of the Southwest only by the present might be a little like aiming a rifle with only the front sight. Problems of aboriginal shift of population and what happens when one race of people is forced to mingle with another may offer some clues to present day tensions brought about the same way.

One mistaken conception is the viewpoint often taken by the layman that an Indian is an Indian without taking into consideration that there were different groups, different languages, different religions and cultures. Here at Point of Pines a variety of different groups came and went. Cultures and customs overlapped. Even the progression from pit houses on up that has been thought of as the pattern is somewhat changed at Point of Pines where oldest and newest types of dwellings existed together. Geologists, zoologists and botanists work closely with such projects to study local sources of supply, landscape areas, physical environment, raw materials, wood, plants for economic fibers and medicinal purposes, etc. The Point of Pines area supported at least three or four thousand people and therefore this may show that it will produce as much in an agricultural way for the present day Apaches.

Nothing happens in the field of archaeology fast. it is a long, slow process, collecting, charting, cataloguing. What often appears to be useless knowledge by single units all fits into a pattern. No matter how tiring each long day's dig may be, you can sense a constant vitality in the archaeologist's efforts because foremost in his mind is always the inspiring, driving thought that the very next spadeful of earth may uncover just one more important answer he is seeking.

A DAY AT Point of Pines