Day Four in Chaco

Jason Conner

10/7/2016

           I grew up going to Chaco Canyon. Over the years, I have visited countless times, slept under the moon for countless nights. Chaco is the place that I saw my first scorpion, sparking an interest in insectology. It was here that I first started playing my favorite childhood game: “Dirt Clod.” I would play this game with pieces of sandstone, which is sand that has been layered on top of itself so tightly it becomes a rock. My friends and I would throw sandstone rocks into the air and watch them smash into the ground, returning to their sandy origins. The knowledge gained from this game led me to my love of rocks, a study called geology.

            I have explored the ruins of Chaco since I was a child, and the remains of these prehistoric buildings have always been a source of awe. Staring at the impossibly straight lines, the dilapidated, crumbling bones of an ancient society, has always ignited my imagination. I like to go amongst the ruins and think “What would life had been like for the people that lived here, hundreds of years ago?” It is humbling to think of a people that lived in this desert, gathering water that rushed from the canyon walls during monsoon season, growing a crop of sustenance in a place that seems entirely alien and inhospitable to life. What would it have been like for a child here, playing amongst the prickly vegetation, amongst rattlesnakes, jackrabbits, and mountain lions? What was the role of the Chacoan man in a society where graffiti was painted fifty feet high against a bare cliff? How about for a woman, spending hours among other women, grinding down plant matter to make it more palatable and delicious?

            My love for geology, history, and insectology all come to the forefront in our excavation of the Wetherill Trading Post, just outside of the largest ruin in Chaco. A large number of the ruins have already been explored, and then filled back in with dirt. This may seem odd, to find something and then cover it with dirt again, but it is actually one of the best ways to keep these important sites from degrading further. That being said, Richard Wetherill was here in the last decade of the 19th century collecting pots, woods, and other artifacts. His house and surrounding buildings, just outside of Pueblo Bonito, included a trading post, a horse corral, and served many other purposes, including as housing for National Park Service staff later in the 1900s. Wetherill repurposed some of the wood from Pueblo Bonito into some of his workings while here, and was the first Westerner to sort and organize the different kinds of jewelry, stone artifacts, and pottery made by these Ancestral Puebloans. Unfortunately, the modern day Parks Service has little record of Wetherills’ buildings, the layout of these buildings, or what was in them when they were bulldozed and covered with dirt in the 1950s. By uncovering these secrets, we will gain a very important vantage into a pivotal period of the parks past that goes largely forgotten.