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Conversation with:
Milton Wetherill
. . . . dialogue with a man who has spent his seventy years in the Four Corners area studying the archeological digs of Native American Indian cultures. He remembers it as it used to be, and he has seen most of it the hard way.
This interview, arranged and photographed by K. C. DenDooven and conducted by his editor, Gaylord Staveley, appeared in Western Gateways Magazine - Four Corners - Grand Circle Arches Bryce Canyon Canyonlands Capitol Reef Zion Grand Canyon - Issue in Summer 1967
Among the English families who crossed the Atlantic to North America were the Wetherills. They were mostly Quakers, who settled in what was to be Pennsylvania. One of the American Wetherill's was Benjamin, a restless man, who with his family began moving west in the middle 1800's.
For a number of years they farmed in Kansas and Missouri, but in 1879, when stories of the Colorado silver rush reached the midwest, Ben Wetherill gathered up his family and moved west.
The Wetherills never found a fortune in silver, nor did anyone they knew. They had started to move on through Utah when a flash flood turned them back, and they retraced their tracks to settle in the Mancos Valley of southwestern Colorado. After two years of living on the ranch of a friendly settler, they took up a homestead of their own on 160 acres. They named it the Alamo Ranch.
Benjamin Wetherill and his wife had five sons, Al, Clayton, John, Richard, and Winslow.
The Alamo Ranch was a cattle outfit, with rangeland in the canyons that cut back into he sharp Mesa Verde escarpment at the south edge of Mancos Valley. Generally the cattle were content to browse the canyon floor, but occasionally a few head would range up through the heads of canyons and out on top of the Mesa Verde. In riding after them the Wetherills had frequently come upon small Indian ruins tucked away in the sheltered crannies of the cliffs. Western lore boldly records the December day in 1888 when they great Cliff Palace was discovered by Richard Wetherill and Charlie Mason, riders from the Alamo Ranch.
The Wetherill sons became intensely involved in the great abandoned ruins, and their time from then on was divided between the duties of the ranch and the lure of the abandoned ruins with the strange ancient artifacts they held. They made expeditions to excavate in Grand Gulch, in Marsh Pass, and at Chaco Canyon. When necessary they branched out into trading operations to sustain themselves at the locations of the ruins, or nearby.
The year Ben Wetherill died, Ben's son Winslow became the father of his own son, Milton. Milt spent his first three years on the ranch, but by 1901 the Alamo had been sold at auction, and the "old home place" was no more.
Milt Wetherill's family moved on to a place north of Farmington, New Mexico, and tried ordinary farming for a few years. From 1904 to 1908, they operated Two Gray Hills Trading Post, renowned today for is location in a prime Navajo weaving area.
The four Corners is Milt's "country" and he has stayed near it all his life except for the interruption of World War I. He has made innumerable archeological "digs" as a member of organized expeditions, starting as a helper and later acting as "dig foreman". He has packed overland to Rainbow Bridge in the years when such trips originated only at kayenta. For a time he conducted automobile tours of the Four Corners area over the rudimentary roads and trails of the 20's.
Shortly after Flagstaff's Museum of Northern Arizona was established, Milt became associated there, and has remained for the last thirty years. His duties and talents are diverse, his favorite being osteology - - the identification of bones and bone fragments found in salvage archeology projects.
Milt Wetherill lives alone - - he has never married - - in half of a comfortable duplex apartment on the Museum grounds. We settled him in one of his favorite chairs and asked him to talk about his life and times.
Western Gateways: Milt, what do you remember about Farmington from the time your family left the Alamo Ranch to move there?
Milt Wetherill: Well, it was just a wide place in the road. It was all back country. There were dirt roads coming in, and the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. Not many outsiders. Everybody there was either a stockman or a farmer. We had a little farm out on the peninsula - - that's between Farmington and Bayfield that didn't even have a name. It wasn't a ranch. It was just a farm.
Western Gateways: Then your father moved from there to Two Gray Hills?
Milt Wetherill: They ran that for three or four years.
Western Gateways: Did he have anything to do with the high degree of development of Two Gray Hills weaving?
Milt Wetherill: Yes, he would never buy anything but the best. He went back to the St. Louis World's Fair with a display. I was just a pup in Two Gray Hills Post, I went over to Oljato to stay with John (Hosteen John, of the book "Traders To The Navajos" - Ed.). He had gone over there in 1906 to establish a trading post. He crossed the San Juan at Bluff, just below Cottonwood Wash, went on over those ridges south of the river, and got there that way. It was where old Oljato is now, but the original trading post was on just a little farther. In 1909 they moved to Kayenta.
Western Gateways: To establish another new post?
Milt Wetherill: No, they just closed down at Oljato. it was too hard to get supplies in.
Western Gateways: What was the situation on getting supplies for a trading post in those days?
Milt Wetherill: We got ours from Gallup. they had to come over the Fort Defiance Plateau by freight wagon. Usually there was a trailer behind the wagon. We only had to make two supply trips a year, but each one of them took thirty days - - one month - - for the round trip.
Western Gateways: Was Indian trading fifty years ago basically the same as it is now?
Milt Wetherill: Oh, the good things were a lot more basic. Flour and sugar and coffee were the main items. In those days, too, there was a lot of wool. Many more sheep than there are now. And grass!
Hosteen John used to tell how you could mow grass around Monument Valley - - enough of it to make hay. It came up to the stirrups on a saddle horse.
Western Gateways: That's hard to imagine. Why isn't it that way now?
Milt Wetherill: It was so overgrazed. There used to be so many more sheep, more cattle, more horses, all around that country. Finally the government set stock allotments on the people, but I guess it was too late.
Western Gateways: But before the move to Oljato, and then to Kayenta, didn't you have some sort of guide service?
Milt Wetherill: Well, I had that off and on. Occasionally we'd get correspondence from people who wanted to get out and see some of the back country. They weren't the "tin can" tourists you find today. I worked that out of Farmington, and we'd round up whatever we could in the way of cars and go out and fight the mud and sand. With those old narrow tires - - you know what I mean? We'd try to take two vehicles or more; it was pretty handy if one broke down.
Western Gateways: How many trips like this would you have in a season?
Milt Wetherill: Oh, just three or four. This was still back country, remember. Not many people came into it unless they had to. Our groups were usually four to six people. One car would carry the gear - - bedrolls, grub and so forth.
Western Gateways: Where did your trips go?
Milt wetherill: Some were into the Indian Villages over on the Rio Grande Valley, into Taos, and places around there. Sometimes we would bring them across to Grand Canyon.
Western Gateways: Wasn't that quite a trip on those roads?
Milt Wetherill: It took a week. The accommodations at that time were pretty poor, too. We camped out a lot of the time, wherever we could find a good stopping place for the day. There were towns at Gallup and Holbrook and Winslow, but we didn't' always end up there at the end of the day. A lot of Highway 66 is laid right on top of the old road. They just followed the old route, about the same way the railroad came across.
Western Gateways: How long did the guide business last?
Milt Wetherill: About four years. It never did pay, even though we were getting $25.00 per day at that time. We earned every bit of it. I don't think we ever had a trip, we didn't have to build a road, or dig out. someone who knows how to drive a modern car or pickup can take it about any place a four wheel drive will go, but those narrow wheeled underpowered cars were different, not to mention the bad roads we had to fight. I finally got tired of fighting it, and I was out of it by the late '20's.
Western Gateways: What about world War I? Did you get called?
Milt Wetherill: Yes, I was on a transport for the Navy. I didn't like it because I'd been on the desert all my life. But there wasn't much I could do about it, you know what I mean? I didn't get to see the world either, just go back and forth from the east coast to France - - Le Havre, Brest, and those places, taking supplies over and bringing casualties back. we'd land with the tide and unload, and by the time the tide went back out, so did we. I saw an awful lot of open sea.
Western Gateways: Then it was after the war that you had the guide business, and you got out of that by the late '20's. What was your next move?
Milt Wetherill: Well, I went back over to Kayenta where Hosteen John was trading, but there wasn't much doing there, so I went on down to Coolidge. Ben was working down there on the Grewe archeological project and I went to work for him. Then when we wound that up, we started another project at Owlhead Buttes, near Oracle Junction. These were Hohokam sites. The Grewe site is now a cotton field. We were working for the Los Angeles County Museum.
Western Gateways: Was it an extensive site?
Milt Wetherill: Two or three acres. It hadn't been investigated before, and we found a lot of artifacts - - some beautiful carvings from shell - - some cremation remains, dwellings, and such things. Most of the items are stored at the Arizona State Museum. They've never been put on display as far as I know. I don't know why. When I went down there in the spring they had been working two or three months, and I stayed until May, then went back to Kayenta. Kayenta can get hot - - but not as hot as that country down there! And there just wasn't any water down there - - we spent a lot of time just hunting water.
Western Gateways: What was going on at Kayenta by that time?
Milt Wetherill: Hosteen John was custodian of Navajo National Monument. That included the ruins - - Betatakin and Keet Seel.
Custodian in those days was about the same as Superintendent is now. I would take saddle trips from Kayenta to Betatakin and Keet ` eight miles from Marsh Pass to Betatakin. Then it's another eight miles on up to Keet Seel.
Western Gateways: It sounds as though Kayenta was at least on the map by that time.
Milt Wetherill: Oh, yes. there was a road put up from Flagstaff in 1921, and they even brought buses over it. Fred Harvey used to send us passengers for our pack trips, and the Santa Fe Railroad would charter a bus and bring them in from either Flagstaff or Winslow. It took pretty hardy people to make it, especially the pack trip part of it. From the other directions, there were just a bunch of trails to kayenta, and you just got on the most likely one and hoped for the best.
Western Gateways: What was Kayenta's nearest neighboring settlement?
Milt Wetherill: Tuba City for years and years. Later Shonto was established. I didn't recognize Kayenta when I went back for the dedication of the Navajo Monument a while back. Last time I saw it the whole town was still down in the valley.
Western Gateways: Getting back to the 1930's then, Betatakin and Keet Seel were having quite a few visitors?
Milt Wetherill: Well, there were enough that I finally set up a permanent camp at Betatakin - - packed in lumber and made a tent frame and set up to spend the summers there. The place was right where the old camp ground is, just below the ruins. I was there every summer between 1930 and 1937.
Western Gateways: You mean you built overnight tents, and facilities for visitors who came in?
Milt Wetherill: No, just for myself. Hardly anyone stayed over. Sometimes someone would hike down from the top and stay over if they had a bedroom. I was working trails most of the time, and there were still only a few people a month coming in, so it wasn't a very busy place.
Western Gateways: What happened in the winter?
Milt Wetherill: I'd go back out to Kayenta and work in the trading post. Except one winter we were in at Keet Seel cleaning up the ruin under a government project. It was cold on the bottom of the canyon, but we were up in the ruin, working in shirtsleeves, and it was pretty comfortable there. We were there for three months and nineteen days.
Western Gateways: How do you clean up a ruin?
Milt Wetherill: Well, you remove the accumulation of blow dirt and debris, re-establish walls, and that sort of thing. Not really reconstruction. Most of the walls were pretty solid, so there wasn't any bracing involved, to speak of. We'd clear it away to show what the floors look like, and screen the sand for small artifacts. Sometimes you get a lot of good information that way.
Western Gateways: What sot of small artifacts were recovered?
Milt Wetherill: Sandals, baskets remains of flutes. You've seen petroglyphs of the humpbacked flute player?
There are some of both a humpbacked (Kokopelli: the mythical hump-backed flute player - Ed.) and a straight backed flute player in this area. The flutes were made from Water Birch, which grew locally, long flutes like those in the petroglyphs.
Western Gateways: What people were these?
Milt Wetherill: They went clear through the Basketmakers, and through Pueblo III.
Western Gateways: They say Hosteen John was a typical frontier man, able to take care of himself in about any situation. Did that kind of life make you the same way?
Milt Wetherill: Well, you had to be pretty rugged out there. In his last days, Hosteen John could still make a trip to Rainbow Bridge. If you want an idea of how rugged he was, he made the round trip to Rainbow Bridge from Kayenta in four days. It was always an eight day trip. That was with Teddy Roosevelt.
I once rode from Rainbow Bridge to Kayenta in one day! (Rainbow Bridge National Monument and vicinity (From 1950 NPS brochure. Courtesy of Intermountain Support Office)
Western Gateways: Did the horse survive?
Milt Wetherill: That was on a mule!
Western Gateways: It must have been an emergency situation.
Milt Wetherill: Sort of. A party had come in unexpectedly, and they sent an Indian to get me so I could turn around and start off again the next day.
Western Gateways: There's a rather decent pack trail into Rainbow Bridge now. Did you have any part in building it?
Milt Wetherill: Actually the Indians had built a lot of trails in there long ago fort heir own use. There was a good trail up Tsegi. Then there was a trail up to what we call Bubbling Springs, and one from there over to Nez Nez, and down into Piute Canyon. Then one through the head of Piute and one down Cha Canyon. The trail over the slick rock from the east now goes way above the old trail. It was a bad one.
Western Gateways: What was the charge for making a pack trip from Kayenta to Rainbow Bridge in the 1930's.
Milt Wetherill: It was twenty dollars a day per person. That included meals and everything, for eight days. Sometimes we'd come back the long way, clear through Monument Valley before circling back to Kayenta. It was a good trip, for people who like to rough it, and take things as they come. There aren't many of them left.
Western Gateways: Years before you had lost money in a guide business at twenty five dollars a day, yet here you were operating pack trips at twenty dollarsl I don't suppose you made money that way, did you?
Milt Wetherill: I made it from the tips! A fifty dollar tip wasn't bad in those days. The biggest I ever got was seventy five dollars.
Western Gateways: You mentioned that you had run the pack trips from 1930 to 1937. What came after that?
Milt Wetherill: Well, actually I made periodic trips up there for quite a while, but in 1937 I became associated with the Museum in Flagstaff, and that same year I was dig foreman on a project north of Williams. I'd work on digs in the summer and in trading posts in the winter - - different ones all over the Arizona country. I knew most of the old traders. But I've been with the Museum in one way or another for thirty years.
Western Gateways: The Museum of Northern Arizona isn't much more than thirty years old, is it? You must have seen most of its growth.
Milt Wetherill: There was nothing except the museum itself, on the west side, pretty much as it is now, except for the new wing, and the Museum Shop in recent years. Where the research Center is, on the east side, was just the buildings of the Colton Ranch - - the "coyote range", they called it. they ranched for a while and then started a dairy farm, and finally the museum activities started moving over.
Western Gateways: So there haven't always been duplex apartments for Museum personnel?
Milt Wetherill: Heck, no! For years and years we lived in those "chicken shacks" out there, when we weren't out on digs. Then we'd just set up camp wherever we were. Anyplace in Arizona that something would show up.
Western Gateways: We know you do a lot of things here for the Museum. What are some of them?
Milt Wetherill: Mostly Osteology. That's studying bones. When a salvage archeology group digs a site, they go over all the material they excavate and sort out the bones and bring them to me. I identify the bone and the particular animal it came from, and make a written report for them.
Western GAteways: Do you mean the bones of animals and birds that lived at he time the ruins were inhabited?
Milt Wetherill: That's right. We find deer, antelope, mountain sheep, and dogs. Very little coyote. Then we find fox, badger, water wren, and duck bones. Also turkey. Turkey is native to North America; it came up from Mexico, then was introduced from here to the Old World, and went clear around and eventually came back to the United States.
Western Gateways: It wouldn't seem that you have much to work with, what with some of these bones coming from sites that were occupied hundreds of years ago.
Milt Wetherill: It all depends on the location. Sometimes you get a good collection of bones, sometimes not.
Good cave sites are best because of the dryness they have.
We have a lot of open sites, like one up at Fredonia or another over at Holbrook. The bone is absolutely rotten, and harder to do anything with. If there is any kind of character left to the bone we can identify it.
Western Gateways: How do you determine the age of a piece of bone found at an archeological site?
Milt Wetherill: Usually through the dating of the ruin itself. This is generally done by pottery dating. We can tell from pottery fragments what the age of the ruin is. Pottery dating is more common than tree-ring dating, because tree limbs are just like bone - - not very likely to be preserved in open sites, and that eliminates a lot of them from tree-ring dating.
Western Gateways: Have you uncovered any bones of animals that are no longer common to the area where the bones are found?
Milt Wetherill: Yes. Out of Canyon Diablo they found bone of woodchuck and marmot. Those animals are not in there at all any more. I just happened to have a piece of woodchuck bone from a cave at Grand Canyon and was able to pinpoint it.
Western Gateways: When you have a little piece of bone, how can you tell that it's, canine, for instance?
Milt Wetherill: By the shape of the bone, and the size of it. Especially if you have the proximal and distal ends.
Western Gateways: What if the early people had taken just a piece of a bone, to make an awl or some other small tool?
Milt Wetherill: There's generally enough bone character in an awl. You can tell from most awls what kind of bone it is. And they generally used a certain bone, such as the meta-tarsals of a deer. Once in a while a tibia.
Western Gateways: As far as bones would indicate, do you find much difference between early cultures as to what they ate, on a geographical basis?
Milt Wetherill: Not a lot. Turkeys were quite wide-spread. Mesa Verde had them, Keet Seel did, and we found evidence of them at Hawk, and on Corn Creek over near Leupp.
Western Gateways: Milt, you've had a colorful and varied life, and at times a hard one.
Milt Wetherill: It's been good. But you know, I can't find many people any more who had that back country living. I guess those days were both good and bad. Anyway, they're gone.
