Navajo Administrative History

Cummings' foray signaled the end of undocumented excavation in the monument. The following year, the BAE sent Fewkes to make a written record of the treasures of the new monument. Cummings stayed away. Like Hewett, Cummings lacked formal training in archeology. He too recognized that either federal affiliation or further training would be essential to preserve his position in the changing world of science. Between 1905 and 1908, Hewett acquired a Ph.D. from the University of Geneva. After he left Tsegi Canyon, Cummings went to Berlin to study archeology. Only in 1912 did Cummings return to Betatakin. [31] Fewkes replaced him as the primary excavator of Navajo National Monument. Federally sanctioned science had triumphed over its university-based equivalent.

In this respect, an effort to control who had access to federally reserved ruins succeeded. Douglass, Holmes, and Fewkes paved the way for "responsible" rather than individualistic science--people and activities sanctioned by the Smithsonian and the Bureau of American Ethnology that had more than collecting artifacts as their objective. Combined with the revolutionary application of stratigraphy by Nels V. Nelson in the Galisteo Basin later in the decade, archeology began to move away from the romantic approach of Hewett and Cummings toward a more empirical style. Alfred V. Kidder carried the new mode even further in his excavations at Pecos. The field was changing, and the new way of doing archeology limited the significance of the work of people such as Hewett and Cummings. As a result, the struggle over access at Navajo National Monument and many similar instances in the Southwest degenerated into power struggles between people in the region in proximity to the ruins and representatives of federal agencies with the ability to sanction but not to enforce.

Sanctioned scientists became the beneficiaries of the monument proclamation. A structure for the process of excavating federal ruins had been established. After the confused situation at Navajo National Monument, federal officials watched more carefully the permits they issued as BAE scientists sought to make at least preliminary explorations before those interested in making collections got their chance.

The first of two Fewkes expeditions arrived in September 1909. Fewkes had spent the summer at Mesa Verde working at Cliff Palace, but as the tension increased in northeastern Arizona, Holmes needed a first-hand account from a dependable professional. Despite his experience in land matters, Douglass did not have the credibility of someone familiar with archeological excavation. Fewkes was close at hand, and received orders to inspect the monument that had become the source of all the trouble.

It was a brief visit that Fewkes made, although he and his party visited most of the ruins in the area. They traveled to Betatakin and Keet Seel, visited numerous smaller ruins, and made the forty-mile trek to Nitsin Canyon and Inscription House. Yet this was clearly a preliminary trip, for little or no excavation was accomplished and Fewkes spent only a short time in each place.

The following spring, Fewkes returned to the area for further work, permit in hand, made out in his name. After the second visit, Fewkes made comprehensive descriptions of each of the ruins, his view of their place in American prehistory, as well as the approaches to this remote part of northeastern Arizona. These were included in Preliminary Report on a Visit to the Navaho National Monument, Fewkes' account of the trip that was published as Bureau of American Ethnology report #50 in 1911.

Fewkes' report was precisely the kind of document that William B. Douglass thought was essential for the protection of prehistoric ruins in the Southwest. Officials at the Smithsonian Institution and the BAE concurred. Here was a document that chronicled the condition of the site and its attributes, written before wholesale excavation took place. Despite its overly descriptive nature, it was a practice federal officials sought to encourage. [32]

At the close of his report, Fewkes proposed a plan for the monument. He suggested the excavation, restoration, and preservation of either Keet Seel or Betatakin as a "type ruin," presumably for visitors and scientists. The selection seemed ideal. Both Keet Seel and Betatakin were spectacular places with much appeal to anyone who saw them. They inspired a romantic vision of prehistory that meshed with the dominant tone of the time period.

The boundaries of the monument also needed adjustment, for in his haste to prevent unauthorized excavation, Douglass had actually facilitated the establishment of a 160-square-mile monument. Fewkes recommended the addition of Inscription House to the monument. It had been left out of the original proclamation, for whites did not find it until after the monument was established. By coincidence, Betatakin, also not yet discovered, had been included in the original proclamation.

Fewkes' trip and subsequent report brought many more visitors to the region, most of whom hired John Wetherill as a guide. In the fall of 1909, the Wetherills and Clyde Colville moved their trading post south to Kayenta, Arizona, much closer to the ruins of the Tsegi area. Dr. T. Mitchell Prudden, a physician with an intense interest in archeology and an important list of publications in the field, visited the monument with Wetherill in 1910. Herbert E. Gregory of Yale University, a geologist who assisted the U.S. Geological Survey during the summers and was reputed to be able to outwalk a horse in desert sand, attempted to map the region in 1910. Gregory reported that besides the ruins of the Tsegi, there were additional ruins of interest in the vicinity of Navajo Mountain. But Department of the Interior officials decided that the existing monument was sufficient. [33]

The increase in activity in the area contributed to the adjustment of the boundaries of the monument. With the surveying of the 160 square miles, even the most ardent advocates of preservation recognized that too much land had been reserved if the purpose of the monument was to protect archeological areas. William B. Douglass was the first to recognize this reality, and the work of Herbert Gregory confirmed Douglass' observations.

Other pressures came to bear on the Department of the Interior and the General Land Office. Although the land in the region was marginal at best, livestock interests in Arizona sought to lease portions of the monument for grazing and prospecting. One particularly persistent attorney, Clarence H. Jordan of Holbrook, Arizona, made the case for his client, Kenneth M. Jackson. Jordan and Jackson were aware that the monument existed to preserve prehistory, for they promised that the cattle enterprise would not damage the ruins. They also suggested that livestock grazing and preservation were compatible. But after an exchange between Secretary of the Interior Walter L. Fisher and his subordinates, Jordan's proposal was turned back. [34]

The pressure for the grazing permit was an issue that the Department of the Interior wanted to avoid. National monuments were new, and federal officials did not want animosity towards the idea. They were also aware Navajo National Monument was far too large. With some inside maneuvering, General Land Office officials put together a measure for the President's signature that added Inscription House to the monument, but reduced the total area of the monument to two 160-acre sections surrounding Betatakin and Keet Seel and a 40-acre tract around Inscription House. On March 14, 1912, President William H. Taft signed the document. The reduced size of the monument eliminated grazing, the Jordan-Jackson proposals, and most of the potential for antagonizing local constituencies. [35]

The Navajo National Monument that resulted was as much a product of the times in which it was established as of a desire for preservation. Fear of depredation inspired the original proclamation, but no one from the government had yet seen the ruins. Competition between different groups within the scientific community played a significant role in shaping the original boundaries. Establishment of the monument ostensibly eliminated the threat of untrained, unaffiliated "pot-hunters." A rivalry among scientists representing different kinds of archeology ensued.

When it was finally pared down to a more reasonable size for its purpose, the monument was awkward and gerrymandered. Visitation had no place in the thinking of the people who redrew the boundaries of the monument. They sought to preserve ruins, apparently assuming that the remote nature of the monument would protect it forever. As a result, three non-contiguous areas did not seem unwieldy. But the 1912 revision attempted to fuse three discrete and unconnected entities with forty miles between them and histories and patterns of their own into one unit. Subsequent management would always be difficult.

Navajo was the classic remote monument. There was no easy way to get there, nor did it fit in any of the schemes for tourism that appeared during the first two decades of the twentieth century. As a remote place, it could not command the resources of federal administrators. No visitors accidentally discovered it and returned with their friends. It had no advocates or constituents save archeologists, no one who could argue that it merited the attention of the federal bureaucracy. As a result, it remained outside of the mainstream of General Land Office and later National Park Service policy and direction. A pattern of exclusion that haunted the monument until the 1960s existed at its founding.