Navajo Administrative History

Almost a decade after the creation of the monument, Congress finally invested in the upkeep of its national monument. An appropriation in 1916 allocated $3,000 for the preservation and repair of the ruins in the monument. The Smithsonian Institution was designated to administer the funds. Cummings' student and nephew Neil Judd had gone to work for the National Museum, a branch of the Smithsonian, in 1911. He served as an excellent compromise candidate to lead the party. Cummings himself wanted the opportunity and pressed for it through his congressmen and senators. BAE and the Smithsonian wanted someone over whom they held sway. Judd was acceptable to Cummings as well. In March 1917, Judd was named head of the field party and he headed West. [20]

On his arrival he realized the scope of the problems at the monument and made an important decision. With only a small appropriation, he could not do everything and chose to confine his efforts to Betatakin. One objective was to protect the ruins that had been previously excavated; Judd and his crew repaired Betatakin, reconstructing walls with mortar he replicated from prehistoric mortar that outlasted the sandstone building blocks of the Anasazi. Another was to collect artifacts and inventory architectural details, such as the lateral depressions "pecked with stone hammers" that allowed the Anasazi to have a seating on which to build their walls. [21]

The appropriation for repair was a figurative drop in the bucket. Each of the ruins had problems that required attention, but the money and workpower were not sufficient to solve them all. Nor did Judd have much time. His party arrived at Betatakin at the end of March and the federal budget expired at the end of June. The U.S. entered the First World War a few days after Judd's arrival, assuring that any money left at the end of the year would have to be returned to the federal treasury. The project progressed in a hurry, accomplishing what it could in the hope that more money would be forthcoming. [22]

But the establishment of the National Park Service created an entity responsible for Navajo National Monument, and no further direct funding for the monument followed. At its inception, the Park Service had few resources and many responsibilities. It was involved in a struggle for survival as a federal agency. A hiatus in government-sponsored science that lasted for more than a decade followed. During this era, the agency focused on the parks and monuments that could be used to develop a national constituency. With few resources and a vast and growing domain, the agency could not support efforts at every park area. What work was done was performed by museums during the 1920s. Only during the New Deal did federal efforts again extend to peripheries like Navajo National Monument. [23]

Museum-sponsored science dominated the 1920s. Under the aegis of the Peabody Museum's Northeastern Arizona Expedition, Alfred V. Kidder headed a field party that excavated Keet Seel and Turkey Cave in 1923. Other major archeologists also worked with the expedition. Among them was Harold S. Gladwin, who excavated Turkey Cave in 1929. A broader picture of the prehistory of the region based on efforts to develop a chronological sequence began to emerge from their efforts. But while these efforts added much to the knowledge of prehistory, they did little to preserve the ruins of the monument. [24]

Keet Seel in 1914, after Richard Wetherill's visits, but before stabilization work had been performed.

By the 1930s, the Park Service had a different set of objectives for archeological work. During the 1920s, visitors had started to come to the southwestern monuments in growing numbers. Many of the ruins were fragile, excavated poorly or arbitrarily before the Park Service had been created. Facing a seemingly never-ending parade of visitors meant damage to unprotected sites. From the point of view of the Park Service, stabilization became far more important than excavation and collecting.

This duality of purpose came to characterize archeology at Navajo National Monument. The monument held an important piece of the prehistoric past, and archeologists sought to explore it. Concerned with its mission of preservation and visitor service, the Park Service focused on stabilization work, often in debris left by prior archeologists. With a variety of uses and constituencies, the monument ruins required different kinds of management.

But again the shortage of resources did not help the monument. During the 1920s, Frank Pinkley received little funding to support the more than 250,000 visitors that explored his sixteen monuments. Stabilization was a haphazard process, usually done by the monument custodian and Pinkley himself, and confined to the most traveled monuments. With less than 500 visitors per year throughout the 1920s, Navajo National Monument rarely qualified. [25]

The New Deal increased the opportunities for remote monuments like Navajo. Through the Emergency Conservation Work program, funding for labor became easy to identify. Although it never received a camp or side-camp of its own, Navajo did benefit from the vast array of resources at the disposal of the Park Service.

CWA workers helped to stabilize Keet Seel in the 1930s.

During the 1930s, two of the three major ruins in the monument received attention from the NPS. Judd's stabilization work at Betatakin in 1917 had held up well. In the early 1930s, there seemed no need for additional work. Keet Seel faced greater threats. Little work had been done in the ruin since the era of Wetherill and Cummings, and it was in need of stabilization. For this purpose, the Museum of Northern Arizona sponsored a project funded through the Civil Works Administration. Archeologist Irwin Hayden took charge of the project, which worked at Keet Seel and Turkey Cave in 1933 and 1934. [26]

Hayden's CWA project performed work similar in character to Judd's project in 1917. At Keet Seel, Hayden's crew cleared unexamined areas, removed the dirt from backfilled ruins, recorded architectural details, and rebuilt collapsed walls. Hayden also re-excavated and stabilized two kivas in Turkey Cave, according to John Wetherill, finding much that Kidder had overlooked in 1923. The work was done well, earning Keet Seel the reputation as one of the best-preserved ruins in the Southwest. [27]

Keet Seel also yielded some interesting discoveries. Early in 1934, Irwin Hayden and Milton Wetherill uncovered the skeleton of a child in a trash midden at Keet Seel. With the skeleton were two pieces of Pueblo II type pottery, far older than the ruin itself. Other finds followed, including what appeared to be the skeleton of a parrot. Such unexpected results showed that the "down-and-dirty" emphasis of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century archeologists on collecting left many hidden treasures. [28]

In 1939, Inscription House received attention from the Park Service for the first time. Charlie Steen, a veteran archeologist and Park Service man, headed the project. Steen's objectives were similar to those of Judd at Betatakin and Hayden at Keet Seel. Steen was more concerned with architectural documentation than reconstruction. He recorded room configurations, structural features, and construction characteristics, and took numerous photographs. Most of the rooms were not disturbed. Some mortar was patched, some bricks replaced, and a roof was repaired. [29]

The efforts of the 1930s reiterated the difference between the approach of the Park Service and previous excavators. NPS efforts were directed at restoration, stabilization, and preserving ruins rather than at making collections. Turkey Cave, with little value as visitor attraction, was a prime interest of archeologists. Keet Seel, Betatakin, and Inscription House, the large and visible surface pueblo remains, were the primary focus of government and NPS efforts.