The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn A Look at Prehistoric America His name was Wayne, and he was a gangling, towheaded junior-high-school boy. We were going with our guide along the edge of Pine...
...They took us from one excavation to another...
...The Superintendent, Oscar W. Carlson, and three of his archeologists, Cal Burroughs, Leland J. Abel and Jean M. Pinkley, were endlessly patient in answering our questions...
...One thing I can say for sure...
...This is all very clear, and it gives a fine idea of the breadth of vision of the man who drew up the statute...
...And often enough he would come up with a cogent question which gave the guide a chance to explain something he might have overlooked...
...In 1916, the Park Service was established and this became a part of its domain...
...I had even dropped in at the headquarters of the Service in the Interior Department building in Washington...
...If the guide asked us to guess the use of some special feature of a structure, he was always ahead of us with a good guess...
...The act of Congress establishing the Service provides that "the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life" in the parks are to be preserved "in such a manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations...
...The Mesa Verde group of old Indian dwellings was first entered by a man who left a record of it in 1874...
...This was a part of a day in Mesa Verde National Park...
...But that is not what we wanted to know...
...And possibly—just possibly —if we learn how the Pueblo folk lived and progressed, we may be more inclined to give our contemporary Indians a fair deal...
...The wild flowers are lovely, varied and gorgeously abundant...
...At last, when we turned back toward our cabin after viewing the fortlike house which the peaceful Pueblo Indians had built just before they retreated from their enemies, Wayne drew a deep breath and blurted out: "Gosh...
...It is a spectacular wilderness in southwest Colorado owned and managed by the National Park Service...
...Edith and I rolled into the 8,000-feet-high wilderness two days ago...
...Never have I seen a set of men more sure of their way of life and happier in their jobs than these archeologists of Mesa Verde...
...The canyons are breathtaking...
...I was curious about this...
...And, especially, they explained their own basic objectives with conscientious care...
...What about these prehistoric Indians...
...This story, as revealed in the archeological remains, is told with infinite dramatic detail to 200,000 visitors each year...
...In 1888, it was taken over by the Government...
...Finally, about 200 years before the tiny caravels of Columbus bobbed into our seas, they suffered drought and were persistently attacked by warlike enemies...
...In fact, why should the United States Government be spending millions of dollars to preserve and explain such an exhibition...
...So they gave up and moved out...
...They had their troubles and their triumphs much like other peoples...
...I had consulted my travel-wise friends before starting on a tour of our national parks...
...Americans love their continent, our archeologists told us, and they want to know what has happened here...
...The second is to exhibit and explain the remains of the ancient civilization so as to give our citizens a more intelligent view of our own life and of the history of various nations...
...There I had taken counsel with Assistant Director Hillory A. Tolson and that prince of salesmen, S. Herbert Evison...
...He would race along the sharp edge of the canyon or lean far out over it to get a better view of some point of interest...
...The Indian dwellings, most of them 600 or 800 years old, were exciting...
...The guide was jolly and full of information...
...What about these excavated and unexcavated cliff-dwellings...
...Step by step, these Indians advanced through many phases of living...
...He overheard some words of our guide, and he deserted his parents, who were taking in the sights on their own, and clung to us with his ears cocked to take in every word...
...The first object is, as Congress directed, to preserve both the natural resources and the archeological treasures...
...Here was the Pueblo civilization beginning in this region about 2,000 years ago...
...I've learned more today than I ever did in school...
...On horseback or on foot, the visitor can cover unspoiled wilderness to his heart's content...
...They explained the peculiarities of Pueblo building and Pueblo life...
...Why was it obligatory to spend time and money on a mess of old cliff-dwellings and a museumful of ancient relics...
...We were going with our guide along the edge of Pine Tree Canyon from one excavation to another...
...Through it all, he never missed a trick...
...What was there about this particular national park that made it a must...
...If we come nearer to knowing and understanding our predecessors, we shall come closer to all the races and nations of the world...
...All these advisers pushed for Mesa Verde...
...There are two purposes: enjoyment and preservation...
...But somehow the whole experience did not come alive until this typical American boy caught up with us...
...From the point of view of fun, we have never had a better time...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 29
