Good evening!
What I'm asked to speak about the life as
someone as important as Omer Stewart I always
feel intimidated.
I thought I knew Omer.
I felt very comfortable with Omer always,
but I found out from this exercise that I
didn't know a lot about Omer.
Since this started Ive renewed by sense of
understanding of Omer and hope in this evening's
presentation to talk about why Omer is important.
I'd like to speak about what he did, at least
some of the important things he did, and maybe
most importantly, what can we learn from his
life.
In order to learn something of the rich record
that Omer left us, Ive talked to a number
of people over the years.
Some are deceased and some are not.
But all have contributed to my knowledge of
Omer.
Among those I have spoken with Joe Ben Wheat
was one of the first.
Joe Ben said some very nice things about Omer.
Omer was ahead of him at Berkeley and when
Joe Ben showed up he needed a place and after
Omer and Lenore were married, he said that
their home became a home for him.
So Joe Ben spent a lot of time with Omer and
Lenore at Berkeley.
Another person, compatriot from Berkeley,
now deceased also is Gordon Hughes.
Gordon Hughes was another fellow student at
Berkeley and Gordon Hughes managed to convince
everyone that he was heir apparent to Kroeber.
He knew as much as Kroeber.
That was an incredible endorsement since Kroeber
knew everything.
Another person Ive talked to thats helped
me understand Omer, and I suggest you talk
also when you have a chance, is Jack Kelso.
Omer founded this department and took it through
its first growing pains, hiring a number of
important people who hired yet other important
people, but among the most important they
hired was Jack Kelso, in my opinion.
Jack took what Omer had created and ran with
it, and built a department I think we can
all be proud of.
I'll talk more about that.
I also want to express my appreciation to
Steve Stewart who is sitting to my right.
Omer's older son, and to Carl his younger
son.
I also want to mention a couple other people
that I have talked to from which I have learned
a great deal about Omer.
I've talked to some of the claims case attorneys
in Washington D.C. with whom he worked and
for whom he was so successful in securing
the judgments for the tribes against dear
Julien Stewart, with whom he had a lifelong
tension to say the least.
In fact, they confronted each other in the
Indian Claims Courts and to much to Julien's
dismay, Omer put him down every time.
Omer won against Julien.
Okay?
But Julien never forgave him.
Julien tried to destroy him and blacklist
him.
And these are some things that I have learned
in talking to the attorneys.
The attorneys and law firms like Wilkinson,
Cregin and Barker who I've met and talked
with including Omer, but I have also learned
a lot from Omer by talking to the tribal leaders
who knew Omer.
And Ive encountered them along with Native
American church leaders over the years, its
sort of like Omer has left a trail.
Its still warm, when I get there I can always
find out who he visited and a lot of what
they think about him.
But I think its important to say that Omer
probably is the only anthropologist, there
may be one or two more, at whom American Indians
showed up at his funeral in large numbers.
He was revered, he was admired, and he was
respected in all his interactions with the
tribes and I've confronted many of the tribes
where he worked, I've worked with peyote leaders
and land claims cases and so on.
So I know a little bit about how the tribes
view him and I have learned that as part of
getting a fix on this very complex character,
its extremely difficult to properly represent,
so one of the things that I want to do in
the beginning is to apologize for leaving
something important out.
Im sure Im going to leave something important
out thats important to one of you or maybe
more than one of you, so I don't think I can
do Omer 100% credit but Im going to try my
best tonight to tell you what I think of Omer.
And I'll start with my own association with
Omer.
As a beginning graduate student up at the
University of Oregon I found that Omer's name
was known among my professors.
In fact, because of my interest in acculturation
in the tribes and tribal religions, a couple
of my professors suggested that I go find
Omer.
Take a trip to Colorado, see if you can find
him.
Talk to him.
Listen to him.
Tell him what you're interested in.
Homer Barnett was one of his classmates at
Berkeley and Homer was directing some of my
graduate work, along with David Aberle who
published with Omer on peyote.
They have a joint publication, Ute and Navajo
peyotism published by the University of Utah.
And David Aberle was actually my dissertation
director and helped me understand Omer and
why Omer was important in terms of the interests
that I had.
Anyway, as a grad student I began to understand
something of Omer's importance and I began
to read things.
If you can imagine reading the cultural element
distribution list.
4000 items in some of those lists that Omer
put together and another 24 that Berkeley
graduates put together for Kroeber.
Kroeber's aim at Berkeley was to create a
more scientific ethnology.
What he wanted was comparability and detailed
information across tribes within large coastal
areas like the Great Basin.
Omer was happy with that, Omer found that
workable.
He sent Omer-- He sent Omer out to do some
work in the basin with a cultural element
distribution form and I guess toward the end
of his preparations to go, he asked Kroeber
what he should take with him.
Or how he should prepare himself, and Kroeber
said, "I think a notebook and a pencil would
be a good idea."
So Kroeber's advice, I think reflected something
about Omer and Kroeber.
I think their relationship was one of father
to son.
It was a filial quality about their relationship.
Another very famous teacher at Berkeley was
of course, several, in fact several good people,
all of whom act as uncles, all of whom acted
as essentially relatives.
I happened to like kinship and talking about
relationships among people in anthropology
and I can point to some even in this room
in which kinship connects people.
Jack Kelso, who knows an awful lot about Omer,
speaks in terms of intellectual themes and
transformation of the field as different themes
emerge.
However, backing up a little bit, I had the
good fortune in the spring of last year to--
in fact, Im sorry it was the spring of this
year---in April to talk with Steve Stewart.
Steve came to the High Plains Applied meetings
in Denver and he said he was going to give
a paper about his dad.
And I listened to that paper and I thought
about that paper since that time and Ive thought
about that paper that Steve gave in light
of everything else that Ive learned about
Omer.
And I want to recite the key values that Steve
received from Omer and I presume Carl, and
Kate and Anne, likewise.
Science is important.
Value one.
All people are equal.
Value two.
Anthropologists need to put their knowledge
to work.
Value three.
Right wrongs where you can.
Value four.
Try new things.
Value five.
Share your knowledge.
Learn and respect other cultures.
And finally, work for the good of others.
Although these seem like values that many
parents might want to teach to their children,
the import point was that these values carried
through Omer's life, I think, into his work
with the tribes, with the citizens of the
University of Colorado and the surrounding
community.
I think he carried these values and expressed
them in numerous ways and I want to talk a
little bit about those tonight.
I think that its important to imagine Young
Omer appearing from Utah, showing up at Berkeley,
and beginning a very long career that really
begins at Berkeley, some would say it begins
at Utah where he wanted to be a lawyer to
start with, until he heard a lecture from
his nemesis Julien Steward.
Nevertheless, I would think that his life
as an anthropologist really begins under Kroeber.
Who doesn't know who Kroeber is?
Who cares to know who Kroeber is?
Some of you!
Kroeber is the Dean of Anthropology as far
as Im concerned in the U.S. Boaz is sometimes
cited as the founder, but Boaz while important
did not have near the influence that Kroeber
did.
And I think that Omer reflected Kroeber throughout
his life.
But I'd like to show you, how you like, a
timeline of Omer's life, his professional
life.
We have prepared a timeline, its very difficult
probably to see in its entirety.
But the timeline begins, and I don't know
if anyone will do that for anyone else's life,
its a very difficult task, but you can see
that it begins really quite early.
Of course he was born in 1908, died in 1991
here in Boulder.
For us, I took an arbitrary date, 1928, where
we would begin the line of his career leading
up to 1987 with the publication of his massive
always influential Peyote Religion book.
Wherever I go in the tribes, the tribes want
the book.
So I would say Ive bought more and distributed
more of those books than any book salesman
in this country.
But, Omer lived a long and productive life
and I want this timeline to be shown in whatever
record is kept of this meeting because its
our best effort to construct the important
mileposts along the way that he achieved.
Everything from leaving Utah and going to
Berkeley, to his final lifelong work that
was published at the University of Oklahoma
in 1987.
Not to say however that peyote is the only
important thing, I would like to go to the
maturation of Omer under Kroeber, if we can
talk a little about that.
Their series of items in Kroeber that show
up I think in Omer's work.
There's a kind of encyclopedism, a wide ranging
control, of highly diverse sets of data, highly
diverse interests, nevertheless all steaming
to fit together.
Omer's many interests from peyote to culture
element distribution lists to fire ecology
to social activism in regard to the racism
in Boulder and elsewhere, to the Indian Claims
Commission work.
There's a unity here that I think is a vision
he shares with Kroeber and I think Kroeber
tried to share that vision with yet others.
Kroeber succeeded with Omer in a way that
I think he did not succeed with many others.
There are a number of other famous people
that Kroeber did succeed with, but not like
Omer.
I think Omer was as close to the Kroeber ideal
anthropologist as anyone might ever think
possible.
I think his first field work was very formative.
These are the culture element distribution
lists in which he was sent by Kroeber with
pencil and notebook, plus some forms, to determine
the cultural content of Great Basin groups.
I think the learning of this quantitative
assessment, this detailed assessment, this
formal method of describing led to and is
influencing if you look at the development
of peyotism, his research on peyote.
I think it also influenced his work that appeared
and he developed along the way on fire ecology.
The idea of controlling a large geographic
area and controlling a particular piece of
information and understanding that information
as it shifted from one context to another
within a very large region like the United
States for example with the fire ecology book.
And likewise with peyote which extends from
Northern Mexico up into Canada.
I had the good fortune of attending a few
meetings with Omer and Duck Valley was our
paths tended to cross, but he also managed
to reach clear out into the Northwest.
There was one area left that he hadn't really
throughly investigated for the peyote book,
but really his peyote book is a continent
wide coverage.
And its a several centuries coverage.
The fire ecology book is the same.
The cultural element distribution lists are
the same.
And I trace this influence to Kroeber to Sauer,
he took courses from the famous geographer
Carl Sauer.
I traced that to Loy who was very interested
in the Great Basin and got him going.
Robert Loy.
And all these relationships went in to Omer.
But I think Omer's background which we haven't
talked much about in Utah, which most people
want to talk about, his Mormonism, or at least
his membership in the Mormon church that he
abandoned early in his life after an unsuccessful
mission I think when he went to France.
Gordon Hughes his good friend who used to
teach here whom he hired from Berkeley thought
that the experience in Europe as a Mormon
missionary had done a lot to shape Omer's
vision of the world also.
To give him a continent wide, intercontinental
wide, view of the world.
I think that most people would think that
Omer's major administrative achievement is
building the early department of Anthropology
here at the University.
And this is his fieldwork, there are, this
is right after a peyote ceremony by the way.
And he's coming out of this, and he suffered.Omer
wasn't above suffering with the people that
had to sit all night with only one break at
midnight as they do in the peyote ceremony.
He suffered like all who go through that suffer.
Its not just about ingesting peyote, however
sacred that is, it is about suffering.
And suffering for some purpose or for some
person.
And you'll see that in the faces of some of
these people who are just coming out of the
ceremony.
In particular this gentleman.
The pain is incredible.
Sitting bowlegged 6 hours at a time, getting
a break at midnight, then going on through,
until the sun rises.
Omer did that, Omer did that a lot.
And it was his idea of field work that I think
Kroeber and Loy had instilled in him.
You need to know the people . You need to
be there.
You can't like Paul Rayden or Morris Opler
or some of his other adversaries say that
really the peyote church is anything until
you have been there.
And Omer was there, but he found that the
work of Oplers', the two brothers, and people
like Rayden who wrote voluminously about peyote
had it all mixed up.
And as with Julien, Omer managed to antagonize
them as well.
Because he found them to be wrong, incorrect
and he demonstrated it by a simple recording
of fact, that he observed because he believed
in participant observation.
And that he had been taught that very successfully,
very successfully at Berkeley by Kroeber,
Loy, and others.
I think that in building this department,
Omer tried to instill some of these values
in the people whom he hired like Bob Lister,
Gordon Hughes, Dottie Kaschube, and others
as time unfolded.
But particularly as I said earlier Jack Kelso.
So Omer had adopted not only a method of research,
he also adopted a four field idea of archaeology,
biology, cultural, and linguistics.
And felt that the four were absolutely essential
to a complete department.
So early on, he committed the department to
a four fold division.
Not only that however, as he built this department,
he took yet other inspiration he had, perhaps
from his Mormon background, I don't know.
But social justice began to emerge as a major
concern.
And his work in applied that reflects the
value of making your work beneficial to others,
came to the fore early on.
His applied anthropology of course was something
that interested me a great deal, because I
share his view that anthropology should be
helpful, useful, and that we should try to
right wrongs.
And Omer found that applied-- especially after
his discharge from the military, he came back
and he managed to help found the Society for
Applied Anthropology and for years as one
of its leading members, he received the Malinowski
award toward the end of his life from the
same Society of Applied Anthropology.
So not only did the department have a four
fold division here, and he began building
that and expanding that, it also had a real
concern with application.
While building this department, and in building
this department, many administrators had to
face Omer, and I wanted you to see this.
I want you to dwell on it for just a minute.
And think of yourself as a Dean of Arts and
Science confronting this guy.
Just try to absorb what you think Omer is
like, looking at this.
I think it really does reflect what Jack Kelso
said about him.
He was blunt, abrupt and effective.
In his dealings in building the department
and confronting the university in securing
the resources necessary for its development.
So, I always feel that this is one side of
Omer you dont mess with.
I've seen him put down administrators at the
University of Colorado like Lawson Crow, who
is trying to take away the anthropology publications,
and he blasted Lawson Crow, who was Vice Chancellor
at the time in such a manner that Lawson started
crying.
You ever seen an administrator cry?
I have!
I saw Lawson Crow cry.
I was with Omer that day.
Omer had a way of slamming you that I think
a few people in this room probably know.
Other things he did to build the department
was to build the library.
The Human Relations Area file for example,
he got it here.
Slotkin was one of the early students of peyotism
at Chicago, and Slotkin's papers came here.
Why?
Because Omer again.
Omer was able to bring a number of libraries
here to this library in a manor that enhanced
the strength of the anthropology and related
departments.
I think that Omer always felt that the department
was never big enough, always needed expansion,
improvement, growth, development.
Omer is a guy who believed in not only quality
research but he also had this deep commitment
to growth and development and cultivation
if you'd like.
I sometimes think that again may reflect some
of his rural background but its like growth.
Lets make it grow, lets plant some seeds here.,
lets let this thing come alive and grow.
I think he had that attitude about the anthropology
department.
There are a number of things that I think
that we could talk about in the early days
of the department.
Theres Joe Ben Wheat and Omer Stewart with
some of their first students.
If you remember, Joe Ben came and went to
the museum and Omer went to the department.
And Joe Ben was always very careful to compliment
Omer not only because he had stayed in Omer's
home in Berkeley with Lenore and Omer.
But because when he got here anthropology
was an essential part of the museum, as far
as Omer was concerned.
And he made that connection very early.
It may be that Steve's going to talk about
that but its clear that Omer thought that
the two belonged together.
He cross-listed courses for example with the
museum and did much to build the museum.
I think that again in his adversarial advocating
role in approaching the administration, he
succeeded where many others failed.
They would make a promise and he would never
let them forget it.
They made it under pressure and he would never
let them forget it.
Most of us know great men by one or two things
that they've done.
I think we don't fully appreciate all the
things that many great men do or women.
We will pick one thing.
One of the big things that everyone remembers
Omer for is what?
Peyote.
Peyote is the one thing that virtually everyone
knows about Omer.
And I think thats fine and I think that it
is in fact a great testament to Omer, to his
passion, to Native Americans and especially
to his methodology and his history.
He put a rigor to the study of peyote that
was never present before.
I've mentioned that he participated, okay?
But he then made a point of being encyclopedic
in his coverage.
He covered North America which I mentioned.
And I want to talk just a little bit about
what Vine Deloria said about Omer.
Some of you know who Vine Deloria was.
You know who Vine was?
Most people know who Vine was?
Ok.
Vine after reading it, having read many anthropological
treatises decided that this was the way all
anthropology should write.
None had equalled what Omer had done, that
all anthropology should read Peyote Religion.
That it is the way anthropology should do
it.
And its to talk to the people.
It is to record what the individual has to
say about what you're investigating.
And Vine saw this in Omer, and they were good
friends.
Even though Vine is one of those vaunted enemies
of anthropology, which he never was really.
He was actually friendly but he was a very
competitive kind of guy and felt that critical
arguments were constructive and he liked to
have them with anthropologists including myself.
But, I was always loser in those contests
but Omer and he seemed to really get on.
Omer knew everybody Vine knew and Vine knew
almost all anthropologists that Omer knew.
So they had a great deal in common and it
came out, I thought beautifully, in the manner
in which Vine complimented Omer on his book.,
The Peyote Religion.
This is Omer as a young man about what he
must have looked like when he was building
the department at Boulder.
I think this is about the right age, about
the right image for that period of time.
And I think that you have to agree he's a
pretty handsome guy.
And I'm told that lot of women thought so.
In a nice way of course.
But he was widely admired for his looks, for
his gift of gab, for his work and all that
comes together I think in this picture.
He is in Washington D.C., this is one of his
first entries into the Indian Claims Commission
business.
The Indian Claims Commission in 1946 was passed
by Congress to make sure that tribes that
had not been given proper compensation for
the lands that had been taken from them, would
receive adequate compensation.
So, the law firm from Utah actually, Wilkinson,
Cregin and Barker, retained Omer.
And I think they retained him on Kroeber's
recommendation, but I'm not sure of that.
In any case, Omer became very close with Wilkinson,
Cregin and Barker.
And handled literally dozens of cases.
These cases produced many millions of dollars
for the tribes and allowed them once again
to hold their heads up and to take pride in
their sovereignties such that they could actually
file a claim with the U.S. government and
win as governments, as domestic dependent
governments certainly, but as governments
nevertheless.
And I think that its during this time, that
some of the fruit of the Indian Reorganization
Act that began under FDR was beginning to
take hold.
And the Indian Claims Commission Act I think
strengthened a lot of tribes.
They had some money to work with for a change.
And Omer was a very big hand in that.
I think this is during that period in D.C
when the Indian Claims Commission work was
really getting under way.
Another thing that I think Omer needs to be
recognized for his work with fire ecology.
Fire ecology is a practice by whomever of
altering the ecology of a region by fire.
Seems obvious enough.
The problem is is that anthropologists and
much of the public until Omer in the early
50s brought it to their attention that the
whole of the continent had been managed by
fire by Native Americans or American Indian
people.
They did it for specific reasons increasing
the return from that environment, increasing
the productivity of the environment, eliminating
unwanted products of various types, and in
the process essentially turning the environment
into a large garden.
Nevertheless, Europeans when they came to
the New World, what did they find?
They found a wilderness of course, devoid
of human impact, when indeed the whole area
is being managed.
Not only agriculture in the Southeast and
Southwest, but fire throughout the whole continent.
Systematically applied to produce more of
the necessities of life.
Im working with the Yakama right now and I
was reminded the other day that they are currently
practicing fire ecology to increase the return
on their huckleberry patches.
The canopy needs to be open above huckleberries,
so that the huckleberries will form and will
take the shape and taste that they require.
Fire is being used at Yakama to enhance huckleberries
at this time.
We didn't start the fire in Four Mile Canyon.
But I am convinced that its going to really
improve things up there for several reasons.
I happen to live up there and we think the
fire is going to be a great benefit.
We have had a huge overgrowth of timber up
there from the days of the miners.
Took all the timber and then everything came
back in a hurry, and none of it was very healthy
but a great deal of it disappeared and we
are going to see some improvement I think.
Fire ecology we think is a major contribution
area in which Omer was able to bring to the
attention of ecologists in biology, the importance
of this influence in the transformation and
management of the American ecosystem.
Since that time theres been some sharp increase
in the awareness of people, not only in the
United States, ecologists and biologists and
others, but also in countries like Australia
and Canada.
Theres been a good deal of more study on the
tribal use of fire to manage the environment.
One of the things--this is in Australia by
the way-- fire ecology is now a recognized
area within ecology and its being employed
systematically under controlled conditions.
I think that when we look at Omer's contribution
in this area, it went for 50 years without
recognition.
He started working on his book in about 52
or 3 or 4.
It came out 50 years later.
But when it did, it made clear for all to
see that there was no wilderness.
There was no unattended lands and resources
here.
I think that anthropologists are among those
guilty of ignoring this, I think archaeologists
need to do more with fire ecology and the
understanding of how it might have influence
on the prehistoric situation and the New World.
But I think that I would like to summarize
with a few contributions that I think we can
trace to our good friend Omer.
First of all, I think he is more systematic
and more controlled in his methodology than
virtually any other anthropologist that Ive
known.
If Omer said it, if Omer said it was this
way, you can rest assured it was this way.
Omer knew what he talked about.
Omer saw theory as dogma.
Some people think that that came from his
rejection of Morman dogma, but it also came
with the rejection of Julien Steward's dogma
about cultural evolution and the effort to
combine the environment with the technology
to produce an ecology that explained human
cultural evolution.
Omer said that was nonsense.
Ecology is to be studied in terms not only
of what the environment has for the people
but what the people do to the environment.
You cannot go one way or the other.
He thinks that ecology requires a coming together
of both what people take from it, what it
can give but also what people do to the environment
and this is the basis of the fire ecology
that was so important to him that he actually
started working on very early in his career.
So, other things that we could say about Omer
beyond the fact that he built a really fine
department.
I think his spirit lives with us in anthropology
at this time, I think that Omer was able to
build a department that now fits the image
that he acquired from Kroeber which was a
world science of mankind or of humankind I
think we would probably use humankind right
now.
But I think that the fact that we have activities
in South Africa, Central Africa, North Africa,
Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Tibet, Vietnam,
we have in Middle America, we have in Mexico,
we have in Brazil, and of course we have in
Oceania.
All of Oceania.
We have representation in the skills of our
faculty, in the focus of our faculty in these
areas.
I think of course North America continues
to be a focus.
It is especially for archaeologists but for
ethnographers like myself as well.
So I think that what Omer began as a very
limited enterprise has done what Omer liked.
It has grown and expanded and is thriving.
This department enrolls more undergraduates
than virtually any other department in the
region.
We have a very distinguished faculty, we have
a very distinguished group of graduates who
have gone on to important contributions in
yet other areas of the world.
So, there are many things that I could add
and say, but I'd like to take a few moments
and see if there's some questions that we
might entertain at this point providing I
am able to deal with them and if I'm not there
will be someone in the room who can.
I was just wondering--I was just wondering
if, so Opler never was at any of those ceremonies
himself -- No-- it was always informants coming
and telling him?
No according to Omer, no.
Neither was Paul Rayden.
And the point being that the two Oplers and
Rayden said that the peyote complex moved
and was modified and reshaped by the culture
in which it was found.
He said "No."
He had detailed records of exactly how the
ceremony was performed in each tribal group
and it didn't change.
That was his main argument against the Oplers
and against Rayden I think.
I don't have any particularly good question
but I wanted to just make an observation to
add what you've said.
I'm a physician but my first course in Anthropology
was in 1957 with Omer Stewart.
And I was in my second year of the university
and I just would say that it was a tremendously
important moment for me in my life because
he made me think, maybe not for the first
time but for the first time really become
engaged with certain important subjects and
challenge my beliefs and my thoughts and I
think that I owe a great deal to Omer as I
have told him.
For any intellectual progress since I have
made since then, and I revere him.
I don't make a practice of revering people,
but in his case I'll make an exception.
But, he was a fantastic person.
He was a little cranky sometimes, but as I
was reinforced when he and I rode together
to Society for Anthropology, a lot of anthropology
meetings in Santa Fe, and he drove part of
the way but we had a great time.
But anyway, I think of him very fondly both
in terms of personal affection and in terms
of my own personal intellectual growth.
Wonderful.
Thank you also for what you are doing.
Oh, thank you.
Are there other questions or comments?
I have one last thing I'd like to bring out.
When you think of a great man like Omer and
all he did, you wonder what did it all amount
to?
So he published all these papers, he published
all the books, he died and he went away.
A few of us remember him.
But what else is there about Omer that we
should talk about?
And I'd like to point to recent investigations
of the citation index and I'd like to point
out ways in which Omer continues to be alive
and help us.
How he in his life has managed to persist
in his influence.
You can see the increasing use of his various
books.
They include the fire ecology book, they include
the life history, of course, but they include
the peyote book, they include the book he
did with Martha Knack on Pyramid Lake.
But, I think that Omer's life lives, his influence
is evident, as it has increased from the early
60s to now where it is in a sense overwhelming
in the citation record that is evidence of
his influence of ideas increasing through
time.
I think the fact that the laws now governing
and protecting American Indian uses of peyote
are part of his enduring heritage.
He is a main figure in providing testimony
in congress to secure the protection of American
Indians who choose to be members of the peyote
church and to transport and ingest peyote.
I think that his influence is evident right
today as a number of NARF attorneys, Native
American Rights attorneys who helped him a
lot and whom he helped a lot in the defense
of peyotism.
Those attorneys are now in Mexico developing
a connection between the Native American church
of the United States and the Native American
church of Mexico.
His influence is still evident all around
us.
Anyone that does anything in the Great Basin
has to confront Omer dead or alive.
I think the fact that Omer has left downstairs
a massive inventory of his papers reflects
the fact that he was such a good documentarian.
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of citations
appear in the fire ecology book, likewise
in the peyote book.
He was just absolutely indefatigable in the
manner in which he would search out documentary
evidence to sustain the evidence that he had
acquired from direct participation in the
cultures of the Basin, in the areas he studied
with fire ecology, and peyote and so on.
So, I'd like to say that Omer Stewart is alive,
or rather Omer Stewart's influence is alive
and well.
And that he continues as does this department
continue in many ways reflecting his influence
which I think it always will.
But I think in the field at large, several
fields at large, Omer is still very much alive
as he is downstairs in the archives.
If you want to see what Omer was like, go
take a look at the archives.
Go try to find something in the archives,
you'll find it there.
Omer did it.
Whatever it is you find.
One of the things that came up just now is
the singing of Peyote Song and Steve has suggested
that he might lead us in a peyote song that
Omer frequently, I think, repeated and taught
him well.
If you'd like to stand, Steve is going to
lead us in a peyote song.
Please stand.
(Drums)
(Singing)
Then the chief or the road man takes his staff
and the drummer kneels by him and drums in
unison.
And this is the opening hymn, there are four
fixed hymns.
That goes like this.
Now you just follow my rhythm.
(Singing) You should sing four times, four
is a sacred number but I have to strain too
hard so I don't sing four, unless I have had
a little peyote.
(Audience Laughing) The whole evening is spent
singing these hymns.
The road man sings four and then he passes
it on to the cedar man and he drums for the
cedar man.
Oh I should have held the fan.
The fan and the rattle are put together and
passed on and each person sitting on the front
of the row can sing or not.
Now I didn't know any hymns and so, what did
I do?
Well, I drummed twice and then passed on.
And after midnight, I did a little more peyote
and I felt a little more religious (Audience
Laughing) and they said to sing any song that
you wanted.
So, I was thinking now what hymn do I know
that fit that rhythm.
And then, the only one I could really think
of was "Jesus wants me for a son" and that
wasn't the same rhythm.
(Audience Laughing) And I couldn't, I couldn't
do it.
Well, I went and ate a little more peyote
and then I decided I could sing one.
So, we'll...
(Drumming) This is my first peyote song.
(Singing in French) (Audience Laughing) Several
of the men smiled broadly, they don't laugh
in church, but they'd been in World War I
and knew that that was a Canadian folk song
and they said, "That's alright" you know.
Anything you can sing.
Right.
The ritual goes on, different people take
turns singing until midnight.
Well, Joe Ben Wheat today is famed for his
work with Southwestern textiles, Navajo textiles,
Pueblo textiles, Northern New Mexico, Rio
Grande Hispanic textiles.
And I'll return actually to this theme at
the end here.
He went after textiles and built an amazing
collection, one of the world's greatest collections
of Southwestern weavings is over in the Henderson
building, the Natural History Museum on campus.
His analysis and this is one of his analysis
sheets on, I'm going to get the left.
Led to a study that, a seminal study in understanding
the history and the technology and the economics
in the cultural anthropology of weaving in
the Southwest.
Having said that, the guy was an archaeologist.
Right?
And so am I.
So, most of this talk is going to be talking,
I'll be considering Joe Ben Wheat's archaeology.
He was a highly respected archaeologist.
There are two main associations, two main
professional groups for people like me and
people like Joe Ben.
The American Anthropological Association and
the Society for American Archaeology.
Joe Ben was the President of Society for American
Archaeology.
He was a very respected archaeologist.
Just a quick summary here, he got his BA and
we heard a little bit about that with Omer
Stewart and Dr. Walker's summary of the early
days.
He did a lot of field work, archaeological
field work, in California, Nevada and Texas.
Then he did a stint in the Air Force during
World War II, where he was in intelligence.
But he wasn't a spook, he was looking at aerial
photographs which is actually not a bad thing
for an archaeologist to do.
Of bombed out Japanese cities.
After he got out, he worked for the River
Basin Survey, which is a big archaeological
public works project almost.
And his work in Texas for the River Basin
Survey was subsequently turned into his masters
thesis and was published as a chapter in the
Bureau American Ethnology Reports on river
basin survey work.
At the University of Arizona.
he got his masters and his PHD at the University
of Arizona.
He got the PHD in '53 in Crooked Ridge Village,
which I will talk to you about in a minute.
After '53, he went immediately from being--he
was the second archaeology PHD out of that
department-- I was going to say, yeah second
archaeology PHD out that department.
And he was second because his last name was
Wheat and they were in alphabetical order
and the first guy was Depeso.
He went right from there to his first and
only job here at the University of Colorado
as curator of anthropology.
Probably hired by Rodeck who was an entomologist
director of the museum, who was very interested
in archaeology.
And he worked at a series, any number of sites,
but the big ones were Yellow Jacket in Southwest
Colorado, he did a little time in the Sudan,
which I'll talk about as part as the Asjuan
Dam Project.
And in Jurgens and also in Chubbuck which
are two sites out in the plains of Eastern
Colorado.
The story starts down in Van Horn, Texas,
where he was born April 21st, 1916.
His father, among other things ran a hardware
store and his wife, Joe Ben's wife told me
that he got an interest in the Southwest because
his father stocked Navajo saddle blankets
in 1916 as saddle blankets.
They weren't decorators, they weren't collectors
items, they were going under cowboys' saddles.
And Joe Ben looked at those and said "Where
are those from?" and his father took him on
a buying trip to the Southwest and then he
learned about the Southwest.
He was very interested early on in archaeology.
He picked up arrowheads and he actually crossed
paths with a number of very influential archaeologists
in his youth in Van Horn, who sent him on
his professional career.
From Van Horn, he goes up to California, gets
educated and winds up in Tuscon, at the University
of Arizona.
A little background, the Southwest, like Gaulle
is divided into three parts.
And those of you that know Southwestern archaeology
or travel in the Southwest, have probably
heard these names.
The pueblo Anasazi up in the North or ancestral
pueblo is another name used for that now.
Under Phoenix and Tuscon is another civilization
called Hohokam.
Okay, so, in the early days in Southwestern
archaeology it was the Anasazi, the pueblo
stuff that got all the attention.
Places like Cliff Palace and Chaco Canyon.
These really dramatic, very photographable
things that produced wonderful objects that
would go back to expositions and museum exhibits.
At the University of Arizona, there was a
gentleman, I'll show you in a minute, who
was a pioneer of that department.
It was actually started by Cummings, but Emil
Haury was a mountain of land, as it were,
intellectually.
Big guy too.
Who worked from the South to the North.
He didn't work in the Anasazi country.
He was part of a team of archaeologists who
defined those other two cultures, or civilizations,
or whatever you want to call them.
Which were not met with great enthusiasm by
the Anasazi archaeologists.
A guy who worked at Chaco and Mesa Verde kind
of, would stop in Phoenix and be like, "Who
cares?"
But they gave them Hohokam, they gave Haury
Hohokam, and said okay that really is very
much a different -- from all material remains
and from Native American stories -- it seems
like there is a whole different civilization
than what we have up North.
So that was kind of the Anasazi archaeologists
to allow another civilization.
Then Haury comes up with a third, Mogollan,
which is not named for a Native American group,
its named for a Spanish colonial governor
of New Mexico.
Don Juan Flores Jose-- something something
something-- de Mogollan, who used to chase
Apaches around in the area-- I'm pointing
to a map that doesn't exist, I can see it.
In Southwest New Mexico and Central Arizona.
Haury proposes this third division in the
Southwest and the archaeologists are all up
in arms.
This would be in the 20s and 30s, late 30s.
You know they already--from the point of view
of some guy working at Mesa Verde-- I mean
they already pulled this Hohokam stunt on
us, now he's got this other thing.
Mogollan
Then, Joe Ben Wheat comes along and Haury
is his advisor.
And again, Haury is a man of -- they're both
strong intellects and strong personalities.
But, Haury says basically Joe Ben I want you
to help me out with this Mogollan stuff, people
don't believe me, So, Haury started a major
project at a place called Point of Pines which
is smack dab in the Mogollan area, what should
be the Mogollan area of Arizona.
And assigned Joe Ben to dig a site called
Crooked Ridge Village.
And this is in '48.
In 1948, Emil Haury who is a very influential
archaeologist on his own, invited all the
other major archaeologists to an annual meeting
called The Pecos Conference.
They were going to have that at Point of Pines,
which is really remote, but his point was
to get the leaders, the leadership, of Southwestern
archaeology out there and show them a Mogollan
site by golly.
And that was Crooked Ridge Village.
And it was sort of a demonstration site that
Joe Ben Wheat excavated a couple of what --pit
houses-- and you'll see what one of those
things are in a minute here hopefully.
It didn't look anything like the stuff up
North, it didn't look anything like the stuff
in Phoenix, and Haury hoped that this would
convince the leadership, the greybacks and
grey beards of Southwestern archaeology that
Mogollan was real.
So, they had their conference.
Are we getting there?
Ok, they had their conference.
Joe Ben dug up Crooked Ridge Village for his
dissertation project.
And it was published in 2 venues and the second
venue had two parts.
The first was a descriptive account of what
he found at Crooked Ridge Village, which Joe
Ben was an excellent field archaeologist and
his reports are excellent but very technical.
And I'll get to that in a bit, just really
descriptive and you know, certain amount of
culture history interpretation.
As part of his dissertation, Dr. Haury who
wanted Mogollan to be real, Joe Ben synthesized
everything that existed on Mogollan.
Not just the Crooked Ridge Village but this
whole area south, Northern Chihuahua, Southwestern
New Mexico, East Central Arizona.
Crooked Ridge Village, pit houses, thats a
cross section of a pit house.
Are kind of hard to see from the surface,
where a thing like Cliff Palace, sticks up.
I mean you can walk though a door . Its there.
Joe Ben had to pioneer a technique which we
use today with a soil logger.
That's Joe Ben in Crooked Ridge Village looking
for pit houses.
And he got-- its really good for upper torso
development.
Ok so, he published the technical report through
the Bulletin of the University of Arizona.
The synthetic thing that he did-- pulling
together everything that everybody knew on
Mogollan and trying to basically hammer it
home to the profession that this thing was
real.
Came out in two different places simultaneously,
because Haury was so influential, okay, and
he was and because Joe Ben Wheat's work was
so good, this report appeared as simultaneously
memoir number 10 of the Society of American
Archaeology and memoir 82 of the American
Anthropological Association.
So one morning, every practicing anthropologist
and certainly every practicing archaeologist
went to the mail, got this, and that what
was on their breakfast table.
It was just a masterpiece of marketing.
Just absolute market saturation, just this
big book that just contained a synthesis of
everything that was known to that point, that
point being 1954 I think on Mogollan.
And it kind of sealed the deal.
You know, it was a combination of Joe Ben's
excellent field work, impeccable field work,
and Haury's influence, and Joe Ben's ability
to synthesize, and Haury's influence in getting
this thing out in the marketing part of it.
Getting it out simultaneously as a AAA memoir
and a SA memoir to every practicing archaeologist
and anthropologist in the United States.
So that pretty much took care of that!
Needless to say, Haury allowed Joe Ben to
have his doctorate, he got the degree.
And got his first job here at the museum.
He did a lot at the museum.
Our collections when he got here, he was the
first curator of anthropology, we had an archaeologist,
a famous archaeologist named Earl Morris who
kind of flitted around the place in various
capacities, but Joe Ben was the first curator.
And just talking about our anthropological
collections, not the archaeological collection
of pots and rocks and things, but what we
call the ethnographic collections like textiles,
and objects from living peoples and tribes,
there are a few hundred when Joe Ben got there
and there are 20 or 30 thousand pieces, individual
pieces that he added to the collection and
comparably in the archaeological collection
too.
He really built the collections at the museum.
And, oh, part of the collections that he built
was coming from this place.
Where he immediately started field work in
1954 and worked there, not every year, but
for over twenty years in between 1954 and
1991.
At Yellow Jacket, which is down near Mesa
Verde.
So this guy who had been working down in Southern
Arizona is now in Colorado, he's going to
do some Colorado archaeology.
He wanted to do the same things for Anasazi
that he had done for Mogollan, where he actually
built all the chronologies that everybody
still uses.
Because in '54, we didn't know too much about
Anasazi.
We knew about cliff dwellings and you know,
we knew about the big sites but we didn't
know much about the deeper history.
We really didn't in '54.
So Joe Ben wanted to start at the beginning
and follow them up to cliff palace and to
the pueblos which is what Anasazi eventually,
-- or ancestral pueblo--becomes.
A guy named Hotton Stevenson, a farmer down
near Yellow Jacket, picked up his mail here
I suspect, had sent some sherds, some odd
sherds, because all of those guys know, you
know, they know what the archaeology looks
like, its all over their fields, they're plowing
over it all the time.
Some sherds popped up that looked different
to Hotton who had seen quite a few of these
things and he sent them to the museum, to
Joe Ben.
And Joe Ben said "Hot dog that's what I'm
looking for!"
This is early stuff.
What I want to--okay.
Here's Yellow Jacket and Joe Ben moves north.
He migrates north to Van Horn to Tuscon to
Point of Pines to Yellow Jacket and he winds
up here.
In his interest.
Everybody knew about these things in '54,
but we didn't know where they came from, so
Joe Ben went down to Yellow Jacket to investigate
this early looking pottery that intrigued
him so.
And this is an aerial photograph of Yellow
Jacket which with this lighting really doesn't
show much, so I'll show you Dennis Halloway's,
an architect who works a lot with archaeological
sites.
Yellow Jacket is a huge site with just streets
and streets and streets and streets of pueblos,
of stone masonry, pueblos with you know, beautiful
black and white pottery.
That's the main Yellow Jacket site and its
the biggest Mesa Verde site there is, it just
doesn't happen to be in the park.
Those cliff dwellings like the one I showed
you, which is Cliff Palace, which is the biggest
cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde would be about
the same as that one street of Yellow Jacket.
And Yellow Jacket is six or seven times bigger
than the biggest sites in Mesa Verde.
But because its out in the open, in a bean
field, or in an area that had been surrounded
by bean fields, its all tumbled down, so there's
no walls sticking up, so its not a National
Park.
Despite the fact that historically, in terms
of the history of that area, its probably
way more important than the stuff thats in
the park.
Joe Ben didn't start out right on the big
part of Yellow Jacket.
He snuck up on it through the suburbs, and
this is the area where Hotton Stevenson had
found that early pottery.
And, so that's where he started working.
At three sites, that have numbers, 5MT1, 5MT2,
and 5MT3, these are just code numbers we use
to keep track of sites, in the Stevenson site,
named for Hotton Stevenson with the early
stuff, and this eventually the stuff he did
over the course of '54 to '91.
Near about the size and scope of the site,
he mapped it.
Thats him and Andy Darling, for those of you
who know Southwestern archaeology looking
at a map of the larger pueblo.
But he was interested in the early stuff.
This is that earlier pottery he was talking
about.
Not the exact pieces but the same kind of
pottery that Hotton Stevenson sent up.
From an era when they weren't building big
stone pueblos, like those cliff dwellings.
They were living in pit houses, and that's
again another of Dennis Halloway's reconstructions
of what a pit house looks like before you
put the dirt back over it.
Just dig a hole, put the dirt to one side,
have a framework, put the dirt back on, you
got a fine house.
Its warm in the winter, cool in the summer,
lasts for about twenty years.
So, he went after the early stuff, he didn't
go for the flashy standing architecture, you
know, fancy pottery that we knew about, he
went after the stuff we didn't know about.
And found it!
That's an excavated pit house from, I think
from Stevenson, maybe from another part of
Yellow Jacket.
This is a time period called Basketmakers
3, which is archaeology jargon, but you don't
need to know about Basketmaker 2 or 4 or 1
or whatever, but we call this Basketmaker
III, its 500-700 AD.
This is 500 years before cliff, the cliff
palace, the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde.
He's trying to get the history of where these
things came from.
And succeeding.
This is the excavation map for Stevenson,
which took him several years to dig going
out during the summers.
And then he kept rolling, I mean he knew there
was this big site, the biggest Mesa Verde
site anywhere, right across the wash from
these sites he was working on.
So he worked on later time periods at Yellow
Jacket as well.
He wanted to get the whole sequence, just
like he had done for Mogollan.
He wanted to do for Anasazi what he had done,
what he and Emil Haury had done for Mogollan,
which was just fundamental for Mogollan because
no one else was working in Mogollan.
That wasn't the case in the Anasazi-- oh this
is part of the excavations of MT3, complicated
stratigraphys and you know all the stuff that
you need to figure out a sequence and a history
or the outlines of a history for that area.
And this is the other end of the Joe Ben Wheat
site complex, which is down on the National
Register.
He was always careful to be a good neighbor,
with the Stevenson's, Hotton Stevenson's land.
Charles Porter was another owner of this,
the Wilson family is still down there owns
part of Yellow Jacket.
And of course the local press, where "Archaeologists
Uncover New Findings in Bean Fields Near Yellow
Jacket".Okay, and that's a Cortez paper from
1957 I believe.
He did it all with field schools and that
was the point of the previous slide, those
are all students working during the summer.
And the people around--there's some people
in this room that were on those field schools,
and field school this isn't really remote,
but its remote-ish.
And there's a social aspect of field schools
where you get a group of young people out
in a somewhat remote area doing very interesting
but hard labor all day long.
Where they bind together, and I think if you
got all of those students from Joe Ben Wheat's
field schools, some of them turned into very
famous archaeologists and professionals in
the field, that would be a source of lovely
stories which I'll get to one of them in a
bit here.
And Joe Ben's--I picked this one because you
couldn't see the faces, but unfortunately
you can't see Joe Ben either.
But this is sort of representative of a field
crew in a camp.
Well Joe Ben is doing this from '54 on, when
he started in '54 he was sort of alone in
working in this area.
Unlike the Mogollan area, there's a lot of
other interest in the Anasazi and events overtook
Yellow Jacket.
In '58, four years after he started, National
Geographic Society and National Parks Service
threw a ton of money at Mesa Verde itself.
And a big archaeological project on Wetherill
Mesa which is one of the areas on Mesa Verde
itself.
So, they could outspend Joe, they certainly
could--there was a lot more publicity than
Joe's work, and as soon as they cleared out,
as that project ended that National Park's
Service project ended, their buildings were
turned over, temporarily, to the University
of Colorado to the department of Anthropology.
Bob Lister and Dave Brennovitz, Jack Smith,
Frank Eddie, professors from the department
started to see Mesa Verde Research Center,
which is going on at the same time up on the
mesa, that Joe Ben was working with the museum
group down in the flats of Cortez on Yellow
Jacket.
If that wasn't bad enough, when that got over,
the Parks Service threw a ton of money at
Chaco Canyon and I was part of that from 1970
to 1979.
Also is going on while Joe is working with
field schools at Yellow Jacket.
This big time stop where there's a lot of
money and huge crews, Chaco Canyon got all
kinds of publicity, you know, got a NOVA,
and it got a National Geographic and that
sort of thing.
And it also got big, where the canyon itself
is very interesting, but it turned out from
the archaeology that it was sort of a capital
city and had secondary centers over an area,
about 150 of these, over an area the size
of Ireland that were connected back to that.
And the term for that was an outlier, okay.
And this did not sit well with people at Mesa
Verde, both on the mesa, they didn't want
any Chaco outliers on Mesa Verde, thank you
very much.
And certainly not at Yellow Jacket.
And, sometimes around one of the campfires
at Yellow Jacket, possibly a lubricated campfire,
they got to grousing about this and what came
out of it was a bumper sticker that's just
kind of weird, but it must have made sense
at the time.
Here's Chaco, here's Yellow Jacket, okay,
that's the dot.
And Chaco Canyon is Dairy Queen Outlier, and
I have one of the few remaining bumper stickers,
that was, yeah, part of this rivalry.
But, it didn't end, even after the Chaco project
ended, there was the Dolores Archaeological
project again at the University of Colorado
with Dave Brennovitz.
Huge project just north of where Joe Ben had
been working, again you know cast of thousands,
enormous because they were damming up a river,
and there's laws that kick in that deal with
the archaeology And then, Crow Canyon comes
on board in '83, and again Joe is working
there until '91.
Crow Canyon Archaeological Center takes over
as that's, that's the research center for
Anasazi these days.
And Joe is watching all of this stuff happen
at Yellow Jacket, and you know, very modest
small field school shoe string excavation-
operation.
Interestingly enough, Crow Canyon Archaeological
Center which is great, I mean I used to be
involved with Crow Canyon myself, after Joe
got done at Yellow Jacket, came back and worked
some more at Yellow Jacket.
Everybody recognizes the importance of that
site, and just this year is going back to
Basketmaker III, which is what took Joe there
to begin with.
The beginnings of the history there in that
part of the world that's resurfaced as a--you
know Joe was 50, 60, years ahead of his time
in that interest.
The guy worked there for 20 plus seasons and
even with a small scale operation over 21
years, there's a lot of stuff that comes out
of the ground.
There's over 100,000 objects that came out
of Yellow Jacket, mostly pot sherds and the
kind of flakes that are left over from making
arrowheads and things like that, but you know,
some more substantial pieces as well.
Those are all in the museum, thats our single
biggest collection in anthropology is the
Yellow Jacket collection.
Well, Joe got side tracked-- I'll come back
to this.
He got side tracked and was watching the research
energies were coopted by these other big projects-
the Wetherill Mesa Project, the Chaco project,
the Delores project, the Crow Canyon-- those
became the leaders in the research in that
area.
And not a lot came out of Yellow Jacket, a
whole lot of student papers, some wonderful
student projects.
It was a field school and it was all about
training students, culminating in Jean Mobe
Tenakis dissertation on Yellow Jacket.
She was Joe's last archaeology student.
Joe himself didn't write that much about Yellow
Jacket and this is---in archaeology if you
don't analyze and write up the site, you know,
you're not done!
Its not over.
Joe died before he could get to that.
He got on some other things, which happens
to us all.
But also, you know again the research energies
were his--overshadowed by these projects with
much larger budgets and much higher profiles
in the same area.
The collections are still there and they are
superbly excavated, meticulous notes, maps,
photos.
Everything you need.
In 2004, this is after Joe is gone, we got
a bunch of money.
I'm very proud of how this happened, but I
won't tell you right now, but yeah, we got
some money to rehouse and re-inventory those
collections.
To go through all the paper records and get
them all set up so that somebody could use
Yellow Jacket.
Because you couldn't really afford to do the
kind of work done at Yellow Jacket these days.
He employed a lot of students doing this.
And there's a webpage that came out of this
if you're interested, the yellowjacket.colorado.edu.
Talks about that project and other subsequent
projects.
So, Clarkson is all dressed up and ready to
go and we are using him in a class, in a Yellow
Jacket lab class, to analyze Yellow Jacket
with undergraduates doing--and graduate students
doing analysis.
They haven't made much of a dent in it yet,
but its a very large collection like I said
300,000 objects.
So Joe, you know, he's working on Yellow Jacket
on and off from '54 to '91, other stuff happens,
in the late '50s with mainly Soviet money
I think, they built the high dam at Aswan
and they flooded a whole bunch of the Nile
Valley up above the dam, down into Sudan.
And various universities were invited to come
in and do salvage archaeology on the sites
that were going to be flooded.
And Joe and several other members of the Anthropology
department, this is a big deal and it still
is the anthropology department, collections
from these operations are still very much
in use especially in the biological anthropology
at our department.
Joe went over in '62 and '68, excuse me '63
and '66, to participate in the excavations
which is totally different from Southwest,
you know?
You go from Mogollan to Anasazi to woah, Mesolithic.
That took him out of Yellow Jacket and out
of Southwest Colorado and he also got deeply
involved in what we call PaleoIndian, more
archaeology jargon.
It just means the earliest human presence
that we can see archaeologically and that
doesn't mean there weren't human beings before
that, its just that stuff we can actually
see archaeologically called PaleoIndian.
Its you know, 12,000 BC to I mean 5000 BC,
and more towards the 12,000 BC end than not.
He got involved in two sites.
Okay its characterized, the archaeology is
characterized by animals that aren't here
anymore, these enormous bison and elephant
like critters and things like that, that are
no longer around.
And beautifully made projectile points are
on the end of spears, and these are maybe
three times life size.
And a whole series of different types that
archaeologists call them.
And he worked at Jurgens which is up near
Greeley, and Olsen Chubbuck which is not near
anything.
Sorry, the closest town you might know is
Eades.
Which are out in the plains of Colorado.
I'm going through these a little out of chronological
order here, but at Jurgens he was there from
'68 to '70, there's a site and this was reported
by a farmer, Mr Jurgens, I believe, where
some bison bone comes pouring out.
And there's a large site that included a bison
processing area where they had already killed
the bison and now they're butchering them.
And a long term camp for Indian people.
This is really cool because you don't find
too many camps, so its hard to see these,
they're very mobile hunters and gatherers,
so its hard to see them sitting still for
a while.
You can see them when they're doing things
like killing bison but you can't-- you know
their homes are hard to find.
This is one of his crews at Jurgens in the
corn field, and thats Joe Ben there.
And there's the bone bed, of bison bone, these
are bison bone.
And he wrote it up, you know Joe was a superb
scholar and very conscientious about writing
things up.
Yellow Jacket got away from him, but everything
else he did ha superb reports on them.
And again, he's very-- he's a museum guy and
also very interested in sharing with the public,
so you know "cornfield archaeological fin"
and there's Joe Ben with his pipe reporting
to the public on what he did.
And finally, oh this actually came before
Jurgens, Olsen Chubbuck.
Two avocational archaeologists, Sigurd Olsen
and Jerry Chubbuck, who you know, liked to
pick up arrowheads, found this site on another
farmer's field and reported it to the University.
And dug a little bit of it themselves, tried
to do a nice job of digging it themselves.
And Joe couldn't get out there immediately,
but he finally got out there and saw what
they had and said, "Okay we are going to have
to deal with this.
This is pretty cool."
What Olsen Chubbuck was was an Arroyo, a gulley,
that paleo-- the Indian people--long ago had
chased a whole bunch of bison into and the
bison just stacked up on top of each other.
And then the Indian people, Native American
people dispatched the bison and butchered
them and used the meat and you know, you get
a lot of stuff out of a bison.
The, you know, the key thing is find the bison
bone from this extinct bison, but these bison--
if you know Ralphie, everybody knows Ralphie
right?
I mean these things are like 5 Ralphies, these
are big and horns like that.
Finding these beautifully made spearpoints
in direct association with the bones.
I mean there is not much question that human
beings did those bison in, but you know, by
driving them into the arroyo.
Okay, in Joe Ben's reports, they're meticulous
scientific reports, you know?
Every measure, every map, every cross-section
are reported and analyzed and described in
ways like he did for Yellow Jacket, but it
never got published.
It's all in the notes.
With Olsen Chubbuck he let himself go a little
bit and here again, he was ahead of his time.
He began reporting on Olsen Chubbuck which
came out as another memoir for the Society
of American Archaeologists like his Mogollan
book, with a reconstruction of what happened
at Olsen Chubbuck because it was an event.
It probably happened in the course of one
day and then several days after the bison
were killed and processing the bison.
So I'll read this, a bit of it.
I'm reading just a bit of it here, this is
the Olsen Chubbuck.
"Down in the valley, the little steam flowed
gently southward.
Pleasant groves of trees were heavy with the
new burden of early summer leaves.
Here and there, small herds of bison were
drinking.
In the lush prairie bottoms, paralleling the
stream and occasionally crossing it were the
main Bison trails.
An abandoned bison trail had gradually diverted
the flow of the stream and in the process
had become a gulley, an arroyo.
Ten feet wide, seven feet deep.
To the north, of that gulley, a small herd
of long horned bison, cows, bulls, yearlings,
and young calfs were grazing in the small
valley.
The breeze was blowing from the South.
As the bisons grazed, a party of hunters emerged
from the North.
Quietly undercover of the low divide to the
West and the steep slope to the East, the
hunters begin to surround the grazing herd.
Moving slowly and cautiously, keeping the
breeze in their faces, so as not to disturb
the keen-nosed animals, they closed in on
the herd from the East, the North and the
West.
Escape from the South was blocked by the arroyo,
now the trap was set.
Suddenly, the pastoral scene was shattered,
at a signal, the hunters rose from their concealment,
shouting and yelling, waving ropes to frighten
the herd.
Spears began to fall among the animals and
at once the bison began to stampede to the
South.
Too late, the old cows leading the herd saw
the arroyo and tried to turn back, but it
was impossible.
Animal after animal pressed from behind, spurred
by a shower of spears and the shouts of the
Indians now in full pursuit.
The bison, impeded by the calves, tried to
jump the gulley, but many fell short and landed
in the bottom.
Others fell twisting, kicking, turning on
top of them, pressing those below them ever
tighter into the confines of the arroyo.
In a matter of seconds, the arroyo was filled
overflowing with writhing, bellowing massive
bison forming a living bridge over which a
few animals escaped.
The hunters moved in and began to give the
coup de grâce to those animals on top, while
underneath the first trapped animals kept
up their bellows and groans in a struggle
to free themselves until finally, the heavy
burden of the slain bison crushed out their
lives.
Within minutes, the kill was over."
And then he goes on to talk about the processing.
Every detail in there including the direction
of the wind, the time of year, is all based
on both on the archaeological data and on
the prevailing climate and things like that
of the area.
That's a real classic in archaeology.
That--this report and that interpretation,
that interpretative phase, this is not something
that archaeologists did back then.
Its not even something that archaeologists
do right now.
Is try to put real people behind a river of
bones.
Joe Ben, I've talked to many of his students
and read things that they wrote on his passing,
when they had a memorial service, always emphasized
to his students that it wasn't about arrowheads
and bones, it was about the people that made
the arrowheads and the people that were relying
on those bison and managing those bison herds
and dealing with those bison herds.
For the people at Yellow Jacket, who were
building those kivas and having their families
and having their domestic triumphs and failures
and successes and unhappy times and happy
times.
This was published in 1972 and for that kind
of a ---its not historical fiction-- well
you could say its historical fiction, but
to do that kind of interpretation of archaeological
data in 1972 was actually rather daring.
And people are just finally getting around
to that sort of thing today and getting in
a lot of trouble for it, sometimes.
After Olsen Chubbuck and Jurgens, after his
period with PaleoIndian archaeology and he
is still working at Yellow Jacket up until
'91, in 1972 he took a sabbatical and turned
to one of his other great loves which was
Southwestern textiles.
Remember, this story that his wife told me
about his interest in Southwest was peaked
initially by his father bringing in Navajo
saddle blankets, and he really got interested
in not just the saddle blankets as a saddle
blanket, but also the people that were making
them.
Because the people-- its not just the object,
its the people behind it.
In '72, he took a sabbatical and went to museums
internationally, but mostly in the U.S., and
looked at over 3500 really old textiles.
This was '72, this was before the market takes
off, I mean you know there was already a market,
but its before the market really goes through
the roof on Navajo weaving.
And did the kind of analysis that first image
I showed you.
Really detailed technological analysis.
While he was interested in the people, he
still was an archaeologist, so he looked at
these objects as an archaeologist would.
Technologically.
He's interested in the weave, he's interested
in you know, what was a loom like.
What can we tell from the piece about how
it was woven?
What about the dyes?
Where are they getting the dyes from?
You know a lot of the dyes are natural, but
you know, after the trading post shows up
you've got dyes that are chemical dyes, and
commercial dyes.
Of course he was interested in the designs,
how could you not be interested in the designs?
But he also looked at that in terms of culture
contact, as an anthropologist, as an archaeologist
would.
How much of these designs are being influenced
by Navajo interactions with Pueblos?
How much are they being impacted by Navajo
interaction with Mexican weavers?
Mexican ranchers wearing saltillo serapes
that I think there was a big inspiration for
a lot of Navajo weaving.
And of course when trading posts show up,
how much of it is being driven by the market
and how does that work?
You know in Joe's book, Blanket Weaving in
the Southwest, by Joe Ben Wheat and Ann Hedlund.
Its very important.
This came out posthumously and Ann Hedlund
saw it to completion.
That was his last student, I think, in terms
of textiles.
This thing is--was published when?
2003 I believe.
And its acknowledged as the Bible of Southwestern
textiles, not just Navajo, but Navajo, Pueblo
and again Northern New Mexico Hispanic weaving
and the cultural interactions you can see
in the material object.
Again, Joe is an archaeologist, he's a museum
guy, it's always about the object, but for
Joe, I think, it was always about what can
we squeeze out of the object that can tell
us about the people that made it, the people
that used it, the people that appreciate it
today.
"We were talking about eccentric weaving.
This is eccentric weaving personified.
This is so called wedge weave and if you notice
this, the stripes are all diagonal.
It has a number of names.
Absen called it a pulwarup and George Pepper
who worked with the Navajo around Chaco Canyon
in the late 1800s called it lazy weave.
And the idea was that this was the lazy way
to get diagonal stripes without having to
do true tapestry.
Notice that all these are --the stripes--the
lines of weaving go like that.
And what you do, you start at the end like
this and weave a wedge and after that you
weave in all these stripes being careful of
your upper limit and over time you get over
here.
Sometimes you can make different kind of designs,
but this is pretty standard.
When this is on the loom, everything is stretched
tight and so, these instead of being this
curved they're vertical.
But the minute that you cut it loose from
the loom, you lose the tension and what happens
is all these warps that have been deflected
all of the sudden try to get back at a right
angle relationship with the weft and so you
got these great big scallops on the edge.
This is an interesting piece for several reasons,
one of them is that is was woven in the San
Luis Valley probably about 1876 or 1877.
So it was woven by a Navajo slave in a Spanish
household down there.
Slave, servant, there are various names but
they were certainly captured as slaves and
then might be married into the family and
become servants and things like that later
on.
But at any rate, the colors that you see here
are very typical of the colors used in the
Rio Grande Valley.
These pastels pale greens, blues, yellow and
so on.
So this is a very typical color scheme for
a Rio Grande blanket, but the weave, as far
as I know, well it couldn't be woven on a
Navajo-- I mean on a Spanish loom.
So this then is an example of a slave blanket,
an example of a wedge weave and an example
of a Navajo being captured by and used by
the Spanish."
Joe Ben is still with us.
Every year we have an auction in his honor.
Joe Ben Wheat Benefit Auction of Navajo textiles
that benefits his textile collection.
The proceeds from this auction, which is organized
by Jackson Clark, who is a guy--he and his
father were traders in one of the best galleries
in Durango, bring up pieces and the proceeds-all
the proceeds go to the care and feeding of
Joe Ben's textiles.
Its next Thursday down in Denver.
At the Denver Post Lobby from noon to 7:00,
and its on the museum webpage if you're interested
or come talk to me about it and I'll tell
you more about it.
Are we ready to roll now?
Ok, I'm glad I had a chance to put the commercial
in there.
And with that picture of Joe Ben.
I'd like to make an observation concerning
Joe Ben and Omer.
They were connected in many important ways
starting at Berkeley then coming here.
And in fact, Omer started in Archaeology,
I don't know if you know that.
But, I always saw Joe Ben as being as much
cultural or ethnologist as he was archaeologist.
And, the fact that they both were here and
supported one another in building each others'
programs is very important.
But one of the most outstanding things I think
is there respect for data integrity that you
see in each of them.
It really stands out.
And use of the scientific method.
Two really important intellectual similarities
I think.
I simply want to add that to what you've offered,
which is excellent.
Thank you!
Absolutely agree.
Joe Ben, when I say his reports are technical,
I mean it.
I mean they're very precise, very technical,
scientific documents and I think he must have
engaged more in the interpretative stuff around
the campfire.
And maybe Nancy Melville can tell us about
that, but when he let himself go, not let
himself go, but when he took the next step
at Olsen Chubbuck that is really a cool thing.
Other questions?
I had the good fortune and enjoyment of working
with Joe and also with Kate Peckant down at
the University of Denver.
And I---my first--when I went back-- I enrolled
at DU to get my Masters in Anthropology under
Kate, but my first class was actually an independent
study that I did with Joe.
And I think one of the most important things
about him when I first called him up to see
if I could do this, I was a little apprehensive.
Because he was the expert in the field and
so famous and so on.
As I think is often the case, you turn --turns
out that the guy at the top was also the most
generous with his knowledge and very approachable
and very supportive as a person.
So, it was great, he just turned me loose
in the store room with the museum and said
start in that cabinet up there with the top
drawer and work your way through and I had
a pile of those textiles analysis forms and
worked through one by one.
Then, at lunch we would get together and talk
about the textiles, it was just great.
I'll ask you a question.
Kate Peckant who was down at DU, was another
major name in scholarship on Southwestern
textiles and weaving and they're contemporary,
one is in Boulder and one in Denver.
Surely they must have collaborated on things.
But I haven't heard much about that.
Her papers are down in---- I don't really
know how much they worked together on projects
but they were colleagues of course.
They did compare notes I know.They must have.
Kate, Kate's main --first interest in Southwestern
weaving was in prehistoric textiles and she
did a great work on prehistoric Pueblo weaving.
But, she later branched into more contemporary
Pueblo weaving, whereas Joe I think was more
interested in Navajo persay.
But--I think you're right.
It might have been the division of labor or
just a happy accident, complimenting.
Yeah, yeah.
And I just, another little personal note,
I think I'd like to throw in was a great quote
I remembered Joe saying, he said, "Un beso
sin bigotes es como un huevo sin sal," which
means "A kiss without a mustache is like an
egg with no salt."
Can't top that (Audience Laughing)
Thank you very much!
(Audience Clapping)
