Part 4

For years the wind blew the sand into the open doorways, through the widening cracks in the walls, past the sealed doorways, down through the floors, until even the deepest and most inaccessible rooms had a layer of 4, 6, or 8 inches of fine sand deposited over them and whatever secrets they held. Rats and other rodents infested the place and little disturbed the brooding silence except for their piping squeals. Occasionally weakened beams gave way or a wall here and there crashed down as its plaster and rubble fill were washed out by rains and melting snows. Bit by bit the old pueblo slowly crumbled.

Why and how the first great pueblo was built by a Chaco-like people and then suddenly and for no apparent reason abandoned is a real mystery. Strangely, this abandonment seems to agree roughly with the time at which the Chaco area itself was being depopulated. In Chaco Canyon, an arroyo, much like the one which exists today, was cutting its way backward up the canyon, and this arroyo-cutting would have made it impossible for many of the inhabitants to continue to flood-irrigate their fields. It may have been the basic factor involved in the general abandonment of the great communal dwellings of the Chaco Canyon around A.D. 1150, no doubt coupled with a certain amount of strife and considerable periods of drought.

But this would not have been true at Aztec. The Animas River is a perennial stream, and there is no apparent cause for the abandonment of the pueblo by the Chaco-like people, unless for some reason they decided to leave Aztec because the last of their kinfolk in Chaco were leaving that area.

In fact, it could better be proposed that some of the first groups, which had to leave Chaco Canyon about 1100 because of the incipient arroyo and its accompanying loss of irrigation water and generally lowering water table, might actually have moved to the Animas and established Aztec. Perhaps a rather coincidental event may have occurred at Aztec which caused its abandonment just as Chaco Canyon was almost depopulated. The early settlers in the Animas recall evidence of a prehistoric canal flowing along the lower slopes of the terrace to the north of Aztec Ruins, somewhat lower than the modern one. This canal took off on the right bank of the river, several miles upstream from the pueblo. A major shifting of the river, a swing of the main stream against this old river terrace on the right bank, would have effectively cut the canal at a point below which the people could not take off water to irrigate their fields and in a manner they could not repair. Such a disaster would have forced them to move to other cultivable fields; if none were available nearby (and they may have all been taken up by other local groups), they would have had to go far away. They couldn’t return to Chaco Canyon or other areas near there, for these places too were being depopulated. So perhaps they followed some of their Chaco kinfolk who were intermittently migrating in groups to the Rio Grande, or to the Hopi country. In these new areas, mixing with the local population, they lost their distinct cultural identity. We can look at the modern Pueblo Indians of today and wonder if perhaps some of their long ago ancestors may not have actually lived at Aztec or in Chaco Canyon.

But there is a double mystery at Aztec: as indicated earlier, overlying the evidences of a Chaco-phase occupation, Morris found evidence of rebuilding and rehabitation of many rooms. Large-sized Chaco rooms had been shortened, reduced, or cut off by interior walls and lowered ceilings. Older doorways had been blocked up, or had been partially filled and reduced in size. In some cases entire small rooms, complete with ceilings, had been built within larger rooms. New floors had been laid down upon the debris and windblown sand which partially filled some of the older rooms. Older beams had been pulled out of rooms and reused elsewhere, or new walls in a different style had been built in place of those that had collapsed.

A newer style of pottery, reminiscent of the Mesa Verde-type pottery, was prevalent. The majority of burials found within the ruins, 149 out of a total of 186, seemed to belong to a different period as shown by the type of artifacts associated with them. T-shaped doorways, an architectural trait characteristic of Mesa Verde times, was prevalent in the later parts of the pueblo. Keyhole-shaped kivas, another Mesa Verde trait, were inserted into and between rooms of the earlier period. And finally, the Great Kiva in the central plaza, which had fallen into disuse, was rehabilitated—in a much poorer style of construction, surely, but nonetheless obviously repaired and temporarily put back into use.

These factors inclined Morris to feel that some time after A.D. 1124 the pueblo at Aztec was abandoned by the Chacoan builders. Then about 1225, a new group arrived, bringing with them the general styles and culture of the area we know as Mesa Verde.

As with the earlier occupation at Aztec, we do not know exactly who these second people were or exactly where they came from, although it is obvious that they had a close affiliation with the people of the Mesa Verde area. Nor do we know if they were a large group, representing a mass migration, or whether once again some of the local population may have decided to attempt building a large community. Perhaps for a second time a few people, possessing special abilities or representing a religious organization, prevailed upon either the local population of the Animas Valley or wandering migrant groups to assist them in erecting large community structures.

We do know that at about this time there was a considerable population shift all over the Mesa Verde area. The people were dispersing from their normal habitats and moving into more protected locations or consolidating into larger, more defensible units. In the Mesa Verde itself, for example, they were abandoning their mesatop pueblos and crowding together in the caves or moving out of the area entirely. In the Hovenweep area, they retreated to the heads of the canyons and built watchtowers along the canyon sides and bottoms to protect their dwindling water supplies. It was evidently a period of considerable strife and turmoil. There were short periods of recurrent drought, and possibly many of these groups had begun to fight among themselves over land and water rights and other necessities of life.

The second occupation at Aztec was more intensive and one in which parts of the local population participated actively. The construction style of this period shows a considerable use of local cobblestones set in adobe mortar, as in many of the small ruins throughout the Animas. Sometimes cobblestone walls are overlaid or underlaid by, or even intermingled with, sandstone walls. It was at this time also, as far as we know, that the other pueblo units—now all ruins—within the monument boundary were constructed, as well as several other major Mesa Verde-phase structures elsewhere in the Animas Valley.

In addition, large quantities of new material had to be secured fairly rapidly to keep pace with the feverish building activities at Aztec. While some of the rooms of the large Chaco-style pueblo were rehabilitated by these new inhabitants, others were dismantled and their materials, in addition to those from fallen walls, were used elsewhere. But even this great pueblo could not supply all the stone needed. So from the old quarry to the site of the pueblo two paths were built, side by side, each wide enough for eight men to walk abreast. For many months, men with stone mauls and hammers cracked and chopped and ground the sandstone into building blocks. Other men and the stronger boys toiled all day in straggling lines, carrying the blocks on large wooden litters or in great slings strung on poles. Long lines of workers streamed down one path, loaded with blocks, to return over the other path with their empty litters and slings.

Although the Great Kiva was repaired, with rather sloppy workmanship in many places, it was probably only used for a brief period. The focal point of the community’s religious life seems to have centered around the peculiar and somewhat puzzling tri-wall structures, two of which exist at Aztec. One is the excavated Hubbard Mound site just to the northwest of the main ruin; the other is Mound F, which is also to the northwest of the other major but largely unexcavated ruin—the East Ruin. If there was such a thing at this time as the beginning of a priestly hierarchy among the Pueblo peoples, these tri-wall structures with their centralized kivas may have been the domiciles and religious quarters of this hierarchy.

Once again life seemed to flourish at Aztec. This time, with all the extra pueblo units close to each other, the area must have resembled a veritable beehive. It would have taken an extensive farming area to support the population. If a shift in the river had cut the Chacoans’ canal, another shift back again may have made it possible to restore the old canal, improve it, and once again make the surrounding fields green in summer with growing corn, beans, squash, and cotton.

In contrast to the Chacoan occupation, Morris found a large number of burials (149) from this period, mostly in the rooms. Many were buried with great care and had numerous and varied grave offerings. For a while, evidently, the Pueblos prospered and traded far and wide for luxury items. But once again bad times set in, possibly accompanied by almost constant armed harassment by less fortunate groups. Although Morris did not find any direct evidence that the people at Aztec were actually killed off or driven out by armed conflict, the later burials were all hastily made and usually unaccompanied by grave offerings. In addition, almost the entire east wing had been destroyed by fire. This could have been accidental and such a disaster might have proven the final straw for an already beleaguered group; or they may have fired the pueblo before leaving, or some marauding group might have been responsible.

Exactly why, after 25 or 30 years, the second group also abandoned the site we may never know. Times were hard in the Four Corners country, and by 1300 this area seems to have been virtually depopulated. Perhaps the abandonment of Aztec, sometime after 1252, was simply a local manifestation of this much larger dispersal.

No doubt the great drought of the last quarter of that century contributed substantially to this general abandonment, but there must have been other factors at work as well. The Indians regard the forces of nature in a different manner than we do. They may have been struggling through long years, not only with nature but among themselves. They may have felt that their gods were against them, that somehow they had offended them, and that nothing they could do in that country would be right again. It may have seemed easier to them, family by family, group by group, and perhaps pueblo by pueblo, to give up the struggle and go elsewhere, to start over in new surroundings where the gods might smile upon them once again.

_Explorations and Excavations_

Despite popular opinion, and despite the name applied to the ruins, the Indians who built this ancient pueblo were not related to the warlike Aztecs of Mexico. In the late 1800’s, there was considerable interest in the seemingly mysterious Aztec, Toltecs, and other Indians of Mexico. The writings of Stephens, Prescott and others had fired imaginations, and new communities—particularly those in the vicinity of Indian ruins—were often given names of Indian groups from south of the border.

So it was with the town of Aztec. When white settlers first moved into the Animas Valley, they were intrigued by the great stone ruins. Believing them to be the work of a long-vanished race from the south, they named their town Aztec.

The ruins, in turn, became known as “those ruins at Aztec” or simply as “the Aztec ruins,” and so the name remains today. We know now that the Aztecs of Mexico, whom Cortez conquered, had nothing to do with these ruins. In fact, they were built and abandoned several centuries before Cortez, and even before the Aztecs themselves were well established in the Valley of Mexico.

The earliest reference to ruins along the Animas River in the vicinity of Aztec is found on the map of Escalante’s Expedition in 1776-77. On that map, the cartographer, Miera y Pacheco, has written in between the lines representing the Animas and Florida Rivers the following:

The branches of these two rivers are capable of being inhabited by very large populations as is shown by the ruins of very ancient towns.

It is doubtful that Escalante or any of his party actually saw the Aztec ruins themselves, since the map would indicate that they were well north of that particular spot, probably somewhere in the vicinity of the present-day Durango. Further, the Escalante map shows the Rio Florida as flowing directly into the San Juan where actually it flows into the Animas. Likewise, it shows what are now known as the La Plata and Mancos Rivers as flowing into the Animas, whereas they flow directly into the San Juan. If any of the Escalante party had followed these streams or the Animas to their junction with the San Juan, these mistakes would not have been made on the map, so the party must, therefore, have been well north of what is now Aztec.

Possibly other earlier explorers may have passed near, or by, the Aztec ruins, but the next recorded visit occurred on August 4, 1859, when Dr. John Strong Newberry visited the site. Newberry, like many of the 19th-century men of science, was a man of many talents. He graduated from Western Reserve University in 1846, then obtained a degree in medicine, and later studied geology in Paris. At one time or another he was associated with the Smithsonian Institution and also taught geology at Columbian (now George Washington) University. In 1859, he accompanied Capt. T. N. Macomb (a topographical engineer) on an exploring trip from Santa Fe to the junction of the Grand (now upper reaches of the Colorado River) and Green Rivers where they formed the Colorado River. The following paragraph about the Aztec ruins is taken from his account of this trip:

The principal structures are large pueblos handsomely built of stone, and in a pretty good state of preservation. The external walls are composed of yellow Cretaceous sandstone, dressed to a common smooth surface without hammer-marks; in some places they are still 25 feet in height. As usual in buildings of this kind, the walls were unbroken by door or window to a height of 15 feet above the foundation. The interior shows a great number of small rooms, many of which are in a perfect state or preservation, and handsomely plastered. These structures are surrounded by mounds and fragments of masonry, marking the sites of great numbers of subordinate buildings; the whole affording conclusive evidence that a large population once had its home here.

White settlement of the valley around the ruins area began in 1876, and from that time on the ruins have been well known.

The first scientific investigations of the ruins were made in 1878, when Lewis H. Morgan visited the site and later published a description with a good ground plan. Morgan, sometimes known as “the father of American anthropology,” was one of the most distinguished scientists of the 19th century. He is well known for his ethnological studies of the Iroquois Indians in New York. Though usually thought of as a “social anthropologist,” Morgan had a great and abiding interest in archeology, particularly that of the southwestern part of what is now the United States, Mexico, and Central America. On his trip to the Southwest in 1878, he kept a journal full of observations and notes about the various ruins which he visited.

In those days the railroad extended only to Canyon City, Colo., and from there Morgan and his party had to proceed by wagon. One of the ruins which especially seemed to intrigue Morgan was the one on the Animas River, which we now call Aztec. He not only made a ground plan of the entire ruin, but noted that there were other structures of considerable size and interest in the immediate vicinity. He also entered some of the rooms, particularly in the west wing of the larger ruin, which still had their ceilings intact. Even at that time, evidently a good bit of the ruin had already been destroyed by the early settlers, for Morgan records the fact that one man at Animas City, who had lived near the ruins, told him that about one quarter of the stones had been taken away by the settlers to use in building houses, lining wells, or for other construction purposes. Morgan also talks about entering rooms on the second story, so presumably some of these upper stories may still have been intact in 1878.

In 1892, Warren K. Moorehead visited the Aztec ruins, studied them, and in 1908, he published an article and sketch map in the _American Anthropologist_. Moorehead is better known for his work among the prehistoric mounds and temples in southeastern United States than for investigations in the Southwest, but he was a competent archeologist and keen observer of prehistoric remains. He and his party, like other early explorers, were evidently able to enter a number of intact rooms—he says, “twenty or thirty apartments.”

In 1915, Dr. N. C. Nelson, who was then curator of archeology for the American Museum of Natural History, examined the ruins and was impressed by their potential for further intensive investigations. At this time the museum was undertaking the Archer M. Huntington Survey of the Southwest, one of the objectives of which was to make an intensive study of a large pueblo site. Because of Nelson’s recommendations, permission was obtained in 1916, from the owner, H. D. Abrams, to clear it of brush and weeds and to make trial excavations, the expense of this undertaking being borne by J. P. Morgan. As a result of these preliminary investigations the museum decided that complete excavation and repair of the West Ruin was desirable not only for the purpose of procuring data on the culture of its ancient builders, but also, in order that it might be preserved as a permanent exhibit. As a result, the museum engaged the services of Morris, who for the next 5 years devoted his time and attention to very careful excavations of the West Ruin.

However, some 35 years before Morris undertook his excavations, an interesting and somewhat fortuitous event occurred at the old ruins that caused them to gain notoriety, at least locally.

By 1880 the settlers in the valley, concerned about the education of their children, had established a small, 1-room school. Sherman S. Howe, long a resident of the Animas area, was one of the first boys to attend this school, and in 1947, a few years before his death, he recorded for posterity his remembrances of the valley and the first real exploration of the Aztec ruins. A schoolteacher named Johnson, who hailed from Michigan and who must have been quite a remarkable man for his day, was greatly intrigued by the ruins. Sometime during the winter of 1881-82, he encouraged the school children to go out with him for a day on a trip to explore the ruins. Howe remembers the event well, for although he was among the younger boys, he was also among the first to volunteer to go. The following Saturday, about seven or eight of the boys arrived at the Aztec ruins with picks, shovels, and a crowbar, to meet with the teacher. As Howe used to tell it:

It was snowing a little and quite cold. We went into a second-story room, more than half full of dirt, and began digging down at the corner of the room. We struck the second floor at about five feet, and broke a hole through about two and one-half feet in diameter, but could see nothing but a black dungeon below. There was a prolonged debate about the depth of it, what might be at the bottom, and how a person could ever get back if he did go down there. Some thought it might be full of rats, skunks, bats, or rattlesnakes. We could imagine a hundred things. I believe the dread of ghosts was the worst.

Howe evidently wanted to be the first one down but the teacher felt it would be better if one of the older boys went first; so one was selected and lowered on a rope. Naturally at the last moment the boy was a little hesitant about being lowered into a dark hole which, after being sealed airtight for centuries, had a “musty odor which was not at all pleasant.” Finally, however, having been teased by his friends, he dropped down into the room. Soon the rest of the boys were also getting down the best way they could. As Howe described it:

We were in a room—a clean room, with ceiling and walls, open doorways, all just as they had been left. We were walking on floors which had not been trodden by human feet for centuries. There was an open door leading into the next room to the northwest. It was also clean and in perfect condition. There was no trash on the floor, no ashes, nor even a scrap of pottery.

Mr. Johnson seemed disappointed and puzzled. “Who were these people who built these large buildings and such splendid rooms? Did they not leave something behind that would give us some information? Could they not write, to give us some description of themselves or a bit of history?” Such thoughts and questions as these were racing through the mind of our teacher. He was thinking aloud, and making us do some thinking also. I felt very nervous and uncomfortable down in that dark, dismal place.

Disappointed at not finding anything in these first two rooms, the teacher and his boys broke a hole through one of the walls into a third room next door. This room, too, had been sealed for many centuries, and the candles they had brought would not burn properly until enough fresh air had circulated through the hole in the wall. But this room held a surprise for the boys. Bit by bit, as their candles burned better the room became brighter, and then:

When we could see across the room, there was a human skeleton facing us with its back to the wall. It had been placed there with no wrappings around it whatever. It was not mummified, but the ligaments had dried, holding the bones in place except that the head had tilted back and was resting against the wall. There was some dried skin and hair lying around it. The body had been flexed in the usual manner, but instead of wrapping and tying in the matting, as the custom was, it seemed to have been just placed there nude. We all stood motionless, nobody saying a word. It must be that we were struck dumb with awe, and that we were debating in our minds whether to stand our ground or retreat.

This was as much as the boys and the teacher could do in the short time they had the first day out at the ruins, but they all agreed that they would meet again the following Saturday and continue their explorations. However, during the week the boys had told their parents about what they were doing, and the next Saturday when Howe showed up there was a crowd of older men present who quickly began to break into a number of other rooms. Howe remembers entering one room with them: