Navajo Administrative History

For Navajo National Monument, these efforts initiated new approaches to the story of the park. The monument benefited both from the attention focused on southwestern archeology as well as the new information that helped explain the past. A systematic approach offered much to the Park Service and the Southwestern National Monuments Group as Frank Pinkley sought to interpret prehistory for the public.

Archeological work in Navajo National Monument predated the beginning of a systematic approach to archeology. It preceded the founding of the monument by more than a decade, reflecting the earliest trends in the history of southwestern archeology. In January 1895, Richard Wetherill, Alfred Wetherill, and Charlie Mason found Keet Seel. They began to explore the area, inspecting the trash midden, making an extensive collection of pottery, and describing the ruin. Wetherill counted 115 rooms on his first trip, informing his partners--the Hyde brothers--that Keet Seel was "the best place to get a collection I ever saw." [15]

That sentiment spurred Wetherill's return in 1897, when he again excavated in the ruin, this time to quench his sponsor Teddy Whitmore's desire for a collection. On this trip, Wetherill diagramed the floor plan of Keet Seel and measured its dimensions. The party also dug in numerous places in the ruin in search of artifacts. [16]

Wetherill's sentiments typified the character of excavation in his era. Late in the 1890s, the uproar concerning his activities remained muted. Federal officials had yet to take umbrage at his actions. Wetherill was merely a well-positioned competitor in the hunt for artifacts that dominated the horizons of the archeological community. He and his party collected artifacts and did some preliminary excavation. Wetherill himself made field notes of the activities.

In the decade that ensued, the climate in the archeological profession changed. Wetherill was labeled a pot-hunter by federal officials and academic and government scientists alike, and the GLO made serious if sometimes misguided efforts to protect important ruins. A permit system was established, although its creator, Edgar L. Hewett, used it as a license to hoard a large piece of archeological turf for himself and his friends. But by 1909, when William B. Douglass recommended the establishment of Navajo National Monument, a different set of assumptions governed both his efforts and those of other federal officials.

The attempts to use federal power to halt the previously authorized excavation of Byron L. Cummings in the summer of 1909 reflected the changes. Cummings fit the profile of the first generation of American archeologists. Self-trained in archeology but possessing other academic credentials, Cummings found his position at the University of Utah to be an opportunity to be part of the growth of an exciting new field. Protected by Hewett's permit, he seemingly had every right to excavate in Tsegi Canyon in 1909. But much of the power of the Smithsonian Institution, the General Land Office, and the Department of the Interior joined to prevent his actions. [17]

Yet Cummings managed to excavate within the monument not only in 1909, but, with an important two-year exception, in nearly every year that followed through 1930. Most of his field work had the emphasis on collections typical of the era. Any publications that resulted were descriptive in character. Cummings and his party set up camp at Keet Seel in the summer of 1909, working there until July. A trip to Nitsin Canyon made them the first official party of Anglo-Americans to see Inscription House. On their return, they were directed to Betatakin, which they investigated for the better part of an hour before Cummings headed off in search of his real objective that summer: the location of Rainbow Bridge. As a result, most of their activities that first summer were preparatory in nature, reconnaissances designed to prepare for future work. [18]

There was also a cavalier dimension to such work, particularly in the eyes of federally affiliated scientists and bureaucrats. With his overriding interest in Rainbow Bridge, Cummings seemed to fashion himself as much an explorer as an archeologist. To those who questioned the integrity of western academics, he seemed the epitome of a man in search of the limelight. Perennially in search of a new discovery, Cummings appeared to lack the ability to see a project through to fruition.

With this feeling foremost in their thinking, Frederick Webb Hodge of the Bureau of American Ethnology and Charles D. Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution sent J. Walter Fewkes to Navajo National Monument to make a preliminary, if permanent, assessment of the attributes of its ruins. The monument had yet to be reduced to its final size and did not then include Inscription House. As a result, the Fewkes party visited Betatakin, Keet Seel, and a number of smaller ruins within the general area. At each site, Fewkes compiled intricate descriptions of archeological and architectural features, creating the kind of record of which a society that sought to document its past could be proud. [19]

There were differences in character between Fewkes' two trips and the summers that Cummings spent in the region. Fewkes represented the federal government and was not bound by the demands upon either academics or museums. Fewkes and the Bureau of American Ethnology regarded the monument as the property of the public. Documentation rather than excavation appeared to be their objective. Cummings used the ruins in a time-honored archeological fashion. He brought students with him to train, including Neil Judd and more than two decades later, the distinguished Americanist Gordon R. Willey; made collections; and generally behaved in what federal officials regarded as a proprietary manner. A contest between generations of the archeological profession was underway.

Changing realities in the region did not deter Cummings. He returned to dig Betatakin even as Fewkes approached. But the results of the excavation provided ammunition to those who sought to restrict access to the ruins. Forced to leave in haste by approaching bad weather, the Cummings party left a number of artifacts hidden in the ruin. They were never again seen.

Cummings' foray in the fall of 1909 was his last in the area until Fewkes departed. Only in 1912, after Fewkes was gone, did Cummings return to Betatakin. He continued his practice of taking students with his parties as trainees in the summers, excavating Inscription House in the summer of 1914. But after the Fewkes survey, Cummings became less important as the objectives of government-sanctioned science took hold.