In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

4 Discovering the Mountain Mogollon Increasing attention to those other areas, the arid desert to the southwest and the verdant mountains to the south and east, was being given by the staff members of newly founded private institutions devoted to archaeology. . . . Their findings quickly reinforced the beliefs that the records of the past in the mountainous and desertic regions did not fit the Plateau mold as outlined at Pecos. —Emil Haury (1985a:xv) Haury and Russell Hastings, another Gila Pueblo archaeologist, set out in the summer of 1931 to survey the mountains of Arizona and New Mexico . The survey began as just another piece of Gladwin’s master plan to define the geographical boundaries of the Red-on-Buff culture, which only that year had been renamed the Hohokam. The two young surveyors set out to define the eastern range of the Hohokam culture, yet they accomplished far more in discovering evidence for the existence of previously unknown, ancient peoples whose archaeological remains would shortly be named the Mogollon culture of Arizona and New Mexico. On May 23, 1990, nearly sixty years after this survey of discovery, we talked to Haury about that remarkable summer long ago. Because the interview was taped, Haury’s own words formed the framework for understanding that event. Years later, as we began piecing together the Mogollon story, contradictions arose concerning this survey, so we decided we needed to retrace major portions of the route. Like Stephen Ambrose’s (1996) tracing of the path taken by Lewis and Clark, our initial journey raised more questions than it answered. But it also provided insights into the original explorers, Haury and Hastings. They were much younger and far hardier than we, a conclusion reached over a chilled Dos Equis Amber in the bar at Glenwood, New Mexico, after a long, hot day of searching for the critical pit-house village called Mogollon 1:15 in the Gila Pueblo system. In June 1931, Haury had just turned twenty-seven, and in May 2000, Reid was more than twice that age. Thankfully, answers to our questions lay in paperwork rather than in further fieldwork. An undergraduate working in the Arizona State Museum archives, Erin O’Meara, decided to take on this project for her honors thesis. She went through the Gila Pueblo survey files to pinpoint the actual date that Haury and Hastings were at specific sites and from these plot their route on maps showing the roads of the period. To our surprise, O’Meara demonstrated that Haury’s sixty-year-old recollection of the 1931 survey had merged two separate expeditions. One took place in the fall of 1930 and traveled through Payson to Heber; the second was the 1931 summer survey. Except for the exact road from Show Low to Springerville, we now have an accurate map of their trail of discovery, which we recreate here (fig. 4.1). The Survey of Discovery The excursion began at Gila Pueblo on the outskirts of Globe on June 12, 1931. Haury and Hastings, who had joined the Gila Pueblo staff the previous summer, packed an old woody station wagon with camping gear and supplies. In those bygone days, archaeological reconnaissance, especially of areas as vast as those encompassed by Gila Pueblo’s surveys, typically was carried out by automobile. Haury and Hastings headed east toward the Apache town of San Carlos, then north through the San Carlos Reservation over roads that still challenge the modern off-road vehicle . They crossed the Black River and drove through the Fort Apache Reservation to the town of Whiteriver, the headquarters of the White Mountain Apache Tribe. Haury and Hastings set up camp north of town. Haury recalled that their camp latrine had a stunning view of the whitewater roiling some two hundred feet below and the timber-clad slopes of Mt. Baldy, sacred to the White Mountain Apache. From there, they visited sites up the East Fork of the White River and saw pueblos that would later feature prominently in the story of the Mogollon Pueblo. Since leaving Globe, Haury and Hastings had been traveling through a country of unparalleled ruggedness and scenic beauty. To many, visions of the Southwest comprise vistas of mesa tops, sheer sandstone cliffs, and the carved pinnacles of the Colorado Plateau. To our minds,“Southwest ”means the landscape of the San Carlos and FortApache Reservations. Discovering the Mountain Mogollon 35 Lying below the Mogollon Rim, the geographic feature that separates the mountain...

Share