T & yf LA inn * i t n '*' M ' 5n UiEjO ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA PAPERS OF THE SCHOOL OF AMERICAN RESEARCH New SeriesNumber Two THE SOUTHWEST: YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW BY EDGAR L. HEWETT American Association for the Advancement of Science, Southwestern Division First Annual Meeting, El Paso, December 2, 1920 ,. NEW SERIES PAPER NO. 2 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF SAN CIEGO BY EDGAR L HEWETT PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE SOUTHWESTERN DIVISION FIRST ANNUAL MEETING, EL PASO, DECEMBER 2, 1920 A T this, the initial session of the South- western Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, it seems fitting that we should take a broad survey of the Southwest as it has come to us from the ages and as it expands to the future, inviting the efforts of science, commerce, industry and art. The natural character of the Southwest sets it apart as a definite unit in our land; co-ordinate with the Mississippi Valley, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Coast, the Gulf States, the Atlantic Seaboard. To understand the natural history of this vast heritage is the first step for those who seek life, fortune and happiness within its borders. It is the foundation upon which all material development must rest. The human history of the Southwest stretches back over milleniums. In its first phase, that preceding the conquest by Europeans, it affords an almost unbroken record of the evolution of the human mind under certain definite conditions. It is the life history of a race that sought adjust- ment to a not very hospitable environ- ment, by adaptation to it rather than by conflict with it. In the second phase, that from the conquest to our time, we have the record of the efforts of a race that seeks not so much to adapt itself to existing conditions, as to change the con- ditions, even to the extent of transforming a region from a naturally adverse charac- ter to something agreeable. This is a heroic process; therefore the history of our race is the prolific source of spiritual ideals. From history come the inspiring stories of achievement, the mod- els of personal character. The results of the long experiments, trial, errors, successes, failures, in human society and government point out the way of assured progress. A forwardlookmg people can know the for- ward way only by being intelligently backwardlooking. There is no othe light upon the future, save that of history, and the future can only reap from what was planted in the past. The Spaniards have a proverb, true as it is beautiful, "Manana flor de sus ayeres." In plain truth, tomorrow is the flower of all the yesterdays. In veneration of the tradi- tions of the past, a community lays the foundation of its home life; a nation rests secure in the patriotic devotion of its peo- ple. Whatever may come to the South- west, its wealth in history is assured. But the subject of material resources will engage the efforts of more investiga- tors than all the other fields put together. What mountains can be pierced with mine shafts and tunnels? where are the oil sands to be tapped? what areas can be brought under irrigation? what of the timber? what of the ranges? It is the extension of the most primitive activity of -4 man the food quest. Perhaps with the American people it has gone beyond the supplying of actual needs, even beyond wise provision for wellbeing and that the pyramids of wealth that are being raised in our lime, will in the future seem as useless as, and far less enduring than the gigantic works of ancient Egyptian kings. Let us hope not, but that on the contra- ry this unparalleled accumulation of wealth is destined to be the foundation of a civ- ilization, in which commerce and culture and industry may flourish equally. How- ever that may turn out, our age and our people look upon development cf resour- ces as the corner stone of their welfare. Most imperative of all are the human relations that demand consideration. If the people of the Southwest are to be as successful intellectually and spiritually as they hope to become commercially, then education, scientific research, social and moral conditions, must be considered in a spirit of community of interest through- out the Southwest. When it comes to lo the education of our children, the health and happiness of our families, so- cial morality, the pursuit of science, the people of Texas, Chihuahua, New Mex- ico, Sonora and Arizona may and should strike hands in firm accord. From the viewpoint of time, research- ers are in two camps. Yesterday is to the historian, the archaeologist, the pal- aeontologist, to the student of beginnings and of the slow evolutionary processes; the shaping of the earth and the devel- opment of life; the building of man in body, culture and spirit; the making of races, tribes, communities and nations; the story of the extension of man's sup- remacy over land, sea, air, and the forces of nature. Tomorrow is to the electrician, the chemist, the engineer, the economist, to those who see in mat- erial progress the duty and destiny of man. Those of the former group cal- culate in milleniums. They contemplate the long leisure of the centuries. Their thoughts move in vast orbits. With them "a thousand years are but as yesterday." Those of the latter group split seconds. They do not care to await the slow pro- cession of nature. They know no orbits. They plow deep channels straight ahead. I have spoken of the Southwest as a physiographic unit, co-ordinate with mountain, plain, valley, and seacoast areas. Among these indefinitely bounded re- gions, it is not the least in extent, though it is the least known. Roughly, it extends a thousand miles north and south and eight hundred east and west. It em- braces in its physiography, features of all the other named areas. No other is so varied in natural condition! s and re- sources. At the same time none is more definitely characterized. It lies mainly in high altitudes and for the most part, is not abundantly supplied with water. Be- cause of the scarcity and uneven distri- bution of moisture over the seasons, vast areas have remained and. This is the dominating factor in the Southwest; in its history and in its future. A great part of the human energy that has been spent in the Southwest in the past has been in struggle with desert con- ditions and so it will be in the future. Aridity then is a sort of key word in sci- entific research, as well as in industry in the Southwest. It determined the entire life history of the first race that settled here and it is engaging a large part of the mental and physical energies of the people today. Of all the land areas the desert has been the most refractory to man's ef- forts. The European has been accus- tomed to working quick and radical trans- formations. Plains and forests have yield- ed to agriculture. Cities have sprung up from primeval swamps. The mountains are honeycombed with mines. The sea has been brought into the service of com- merce. But the desert remains unmas- tered. Here for a millenium man wrought and made no visible change. It was for him to take it as he found it, leave it, or die. The Indian made little effort to conquer it. He matched his wits against the scorching winds and smothering sand storms and wintry blasts for centuries. He -5 learned its ways and adapted himself to its conditions, as the desert plants did. He therefore survived and made it a hos- pitable home. To the white man it was uninviting, save to a few who fell under its spell and forgot discomforts in its in- describable charm. It is a privilege to be one of those who love the calm des- ert land. The majesty of silence and space that rests upon it, suggests the vast- ness in which Eternal Mind organizes the energies of the universe. The human spirit so immersed for generations must live in a state of freedom that is unknown in crowded centers of population. Hu- manity in this environment for ages would probably be content without rapid move- ment, instantaneous communication, the division of time into fractions of seconds, the incessant shock of machinery; politi- cal campaigns, class hatreds, industrial revolutions and world wars. Space is the first requisite of mental and spiritual tranquility. It is reflected in the imper- turbable nature of the Indian race, whose psychology was established in the free- dom of limitless plains and deserts, forests and mountains. If you have known the hospitality of the ranches and haciendas from northern New Mexico to southern Chihuahua and from western Texas to southern Cal- ifornia and Sonora, you know what those primeval conditions that I have described did to the spirit of man. The open- handed hospitality, the buoyant social life, the calm courage, the determined resourcefulness of those pioneers, Span- ish and Anglo-Saxon, are reflections of that vast environment. These are not sim- ply romantic memories of early days. They are charming realities that some of us have been privileged to know. The men who still live from that time, calm and silent and strong and gentle and generous, are the ones to whom we turn today with our difficulties and our visions, with certain assurance of wise and sym- pathetic counsel. One loves to dwell on those characters of the pioneer times of our Southwest. They are the greatest asset we have ever had or ever will have. Let us hope that their courageous spirit has been transmitted to us, for assuredly it is needed now as much as it ever was. I would like in this rapid survey to give you a picture of the ancient Southwest- ern world, as this is something that may not be done in the section meetings. Will you for a moment obliterate in your minds, every vestige of our civilization? Consulting a map showing the distribu- tion of sedentary population in the cen- turies antedating the coming of Europe- ans to America, it is seen that this exten- sive province was composed of five drain- age basins namely, the Rio Grande on the east side of the Continental Divide, the San Juan, Little Colorado and Gila on the Western slope and the Inland Basin of Chihuahua. This was one phy- siographic unit. That it became in time a culture area that was coextensive, speaks distinctly of the coercive influence of environment upon human society. The groups of population distributed over this region may be considered con- temporaneous. This use of the term must not be taken to imply exactly synchron- ous periods, but construed in the newer historic sense in which evolution is the dominant factor in human history. A difference of a century or two in time does not disturb the contemporaneity of the people. Here is the picture I want you to see. Looking across the desert from where we now stand to the north two hundred miles are the cliff dwellers of the plateau near Santa Fe, and still farther north the cliff dwellers of Mesa Verde, Colo.; to the northwest the forebears of the Seven Cities of Cibola, the ancient Zuni towns; north of them the settlements in Canon de Chelly; in the San Juan valley a num- erous population of cliff and mesa dwell- ers, with isolated outposts of small popu- lation in every direction. There in west- ern Arizona are the ancestors of the Ho- pi, and the Little Colorado valley is the seat of many towns. In the Rio Grande 6 drainage the communities are forming, which are to become the settlements of Jemez, Taos, Pecos and Gran Quivira. In Southern New Mexico are the people of the Mimbres and along the Gila al- most from the headwaters in New Mex- ico to its mouth in Arizona are settle- ments of Cliff Dwellers where geograph- ical conditions so direct and Mesa and Valley towns like Casa Grande in the level flood plain. To the south in Chi- huahua are the populous districts of Ca- sas Grandes, Cave Valley and the cliffs and canons of the headwaters of the Yaqui. may be considered contemporaries and cultural cognates. It may be reasonably supposed that far to the south on the Mexican Plateau, the pre-Aztecan towns are flourishing; that in Central America the earlier Maya communities of Yuca- tan and the temple cities of Guatemala and Honduras are in their prime and that in distant Peru, the Incas are running thetr course. I hope you can visualize this situation. It was ah epoch of building in Ameri- ca, from Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico to Peru, lasting several centuries and finished before the Euro- pean invasion. It would seem that the period originated with the formation of the sedentary communities over this vast region, all of which invited this mode of life as the great plains with the countless buffalo herds, the temperate forests and mountain areas, with abundant game and fish; and coast regions with bountiful re- sources of sea food would not. Where subsistence was derived mainly from the soil and com was the chief product, it was a matter of vital interest to the peo- ple to secure their land in permanence and insure its water supply and build per- manent structures for residence, defense and religious practices. There is a similarity of resources throughout this entire region. It occu- pies the Cordillera with its principal foci of population in high altitudes. From its northern to its southern extremities, corn was the common factor of cultural evolution, as metal was in Europe. It was necessary to farm by irrigation, rain- fall being too unevenly distributed over the seasons to insure germination, growth, fertilization and maturity of corn and oth- er food crops. The conditions of climate and subsistence were sufficiently alike throughout to produce a general type of social structure, discernible in the plans of the towns, and a religion which was prac- ticed with great zeal, based largely upon the Indian's view of nature. Pottery ma- king and weaving were arts that were generally cultivated. So a building culture flourished in Am- erica in localities that invited permanence. An age during which the energies of the people were thrown into construction, not altogether out of need for housing, but partly as an expression of religious fervor. The epoch ran its course and was far into its decline when Amenca was invaded from Europe. This decline would have been easy to account for, had it not set in until after I 492. The shock of the European conquest could not fail to change radically the evolu- tion of the people. It would give them a new and dominating concern, which would modify their entire history. But the movement reached its apex some centuries before. It would seem that it simply ran its course and passed nat- urally into decline, as did the epoch of Cathedral building in Europe in the middle ages and as such exuberance of energy usually does. The interesting suggestion has been made that the human animal manifests characteristics identical with those of other animals insects, birds, etc., in which there is an instinctive impulse to action, an expenditure of vital force far beyond the necessities of life, this being so imperative and often earned to such extremes as to work great harm to the species. So this organic impulse of the sedentary peoples of the American Cordillera spent itself perhaps in building vast community 7 houses, sanctuaries and temple pyramids, along with the correlative activity of religious ceremonials, which were practi- ced with prodigious zeal. In the isolation of the Southwest the range of interests was small, so that the forces of the people that were not em- ployed in food production went into re- ligious ceremonies, building and ceramic art; all rather closely integrated. The re- sult was such a piling up of architectural monuments as rarely occurred even in the ancient world. As an illustration of this, Lt. Simpson estimated that in the construction of Cheltro Kettle, a ruin in Chaco Canon, now being excavated by the School of American Research, not less than 30,000,000 pieces of stone were quarried, transported, shaped and laid in the walls. We now know that he might have made his estimate 50,- 000,000, so much more of the town be- ing buried than he supposed, and in a great part of the walls there being an average of 800 pieces to the square yard, instead of the 450 counted by him. n addition to this, the thousands of logs, poles and slabs that had to be cut in distant forests, transported by man power, prepared with stone tools and built into the structures; the tons upon tons of mor- tar that had to be made-altogether it represents an enormous task for the small population of Chettro Kettle. This was repeated proportionately in each of 1 2 large communities and in an unknown number of small villages in sev- en miles of Chaco Canon. It was no unwilling work under the lash of priestly or kingly task masters; the American In- dians were never so ruled. It was the spontaneous, perhaps intuitive, industry of a strong people, comparable to the heaping up of mounds in excess of actual needs by insect communities. It may indicate the operation of an important or- ganic law. Similar happenings were the building of the earth mounds of the Mis- sissippi Valley, the Pyramids of Egypt and of Mexico, the great wall of China and the European cathedrals of the mid- dle ages. A parallel to it is seen in the present day accumulation of wealth, which goes on far beyond the needs or possible uses of owners, a characteristic of our commercial age, which is being lived as unconsciously by the majority of peo- ple, so far as its real meaning is concerned, as was the building age of the aboriginal Americans in their time. Such was the Southwest of yesterday. What of its future? The titles of the papers to be read in the various sections of this meeting show the scope of present scientific research. It is a showing that we may look upon with profound satisfaction. Apparently there is hardly a subject that is vital to progress that is not receiving attention. So adequately are all the questions of our material development to be presented, that a reading of the program of this meeting is more convincing than anything I can say. May I venture to express this hope. These investigators are doing . work of a highly constructive character. It will influence agriculture, stock raising, mining, finance, education, art every branch of commerce and industry and culture. They are among the creators of the Southwest of the future. There must be some among them who are not too closely limited to special problems; some who see as a whole the vision of what the Southwest should be. There must be integration of these diverse ef- forts, inquiry into methods and purposes, and a strong influence for unity in ulti- mate ends. This I take it, is the partic- ular function of our universities perhaps to a certain extent of this Association. The name university implies this breadth of purpose and the word association should connote the bringing together of forces for common ends. It remains for me to speak of the hu- man relations that have grown out of the peopling of the Southwest. On this sub- ject it might seem that no basic princi- ples have been accepted, at any rate, not put into practice. It is true however, that a social structure is emerging from the in- 8 coherent elements and efforts of this time. Note the words and phrases that occur and recur in your daily experience, whether in business or professional life, that, with the exception of the first, you rarely heard a quarter of a century ago. Education child welfare social hy- giene race betterment- sanitation so- cial justice. They refer to movements touching human relations that are taking hours from your business and professional and domestic affairs every day labor for which you have no material compensa- tion, but instead, to which you give along with your time and work, a far greater part of your income than the traditional 1 per cent. Assuredly there is some great impulse working toward the clarifying of the basic principles in human relations. When the period of incoherence has passed, these will probably stand out as clearly defined as are the laws in biological sciences that are understood and applied as a matter of course. Social justice is only the gold- en rule made operative. A system of education will come to mean simply the provision of that environment which will induce whatever development each indi- vidual is capable of. Child welfare will mean merely the protection of infancy from the beginning of embryonic life to the end of the period of dependence. I will extend this to include the guarding of the sources of life through some genera- tions preceding parenthood; for the time will come when .civilized people will pre- vent a very large part of the imbecility and prenatal infection and transmitted disease inflicted upon childhood by getting at the ignorant and vicious and defective who are to blame for it. Race betterment is the application of perfectly well known biological laws to breeding the human species. Social hygiene depends upon plain individual morality; personal decen- cy in man and woman alike. Sanitation is mainly a matter of cleanliness, as vice and disease breed in filth. Why not! have a year throughout the nation devoted! to war upon uncleanliness in all its pha-[ ses. I propose as a slogan for the cam-j paign "Cleanliness breeds Godliness." In this brief survey of the Southwest as a field for scientific efforts, I have not thought of it as divided between two nations, but as one natural province. In science we are in the happy situation of not being limited by natural boundaries, j The Southwest means Chihuahua and! Sonora, as it means Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Our natural conditions and i resources are identical. Our scientific, ed- i ucational, social and economic problems i are the same. We have a common history | not merely through a few centunes, but for ages past. These are strong bonds, and stronger still is the common ideal of government to which both these nations j are irrevocably committed. Let it not be forgotten that through this decade of i turmoil, the Mexican people have never wavered m their adhesion to republican government and free institutions. The government of Mexico has gra- ciously sent its official representative to participate in this meeting. We trust that he may see fit to bear to his govern- ment from us a message of good will that does not stop with mere words; the message that a cordial welcome awaits the youth of Mexico who care to come for the privileges of our univer- sities, normal and technical schools and institutions of research; that we shall deep- ly appreciate the scientific opportunities that Mexico can open to us, and that to bring about a free interchange of thought and opportunity between these two countries, in mutual understanding and helpfulness is one of the objects to which the Southwestern Division of the American Association for the Advance- ment of Science is dedicated. E. L. HEWETT.