Richard Wetherill Anasazi

Rating:
Summary: Pioneer Explorer of Anasazi Ruins
Review: Frank McNitt's biography of Richard Wetherhill, the pioneer explorer of the Anasazi culture of the Four Corners Region of the southwest has been in print since 1957. Not a bad record for a trade book, that is to say not a textbook. McNitt's eastern based publishing family owned the Brentwood Newspaper in suburban Los Angeles. Frank, sent out as publisher, vacationed with his family in New Mexico and was ever after attracted to the Southwest. On subsequent trips he heard of Richard Wetherill, the Quaker rancher from Mancos,CO whose family property was below Mesa Verde. As a Quaker, son of a former Indian Agent, Wetherill's honest relationship with the local Utes permited him to range the nearby Mesa Verde canyons unmolested. Here he and his brothers made the first significant explorations of the mostly unknown Anazasi ruins there. Sponsored by the Babo Soap heirs he would eventually discover or explore every significant Anasazi site in four states. He homesteaded at Chaco Canyon,the grandest Anasazi of them all. To finance his commitment to exploration he became one the most successful promotors of Navajo crafts, igniting a national decorative fad before WWI. His goods hung in the Waldorf Astoria Bar, a young Joseph Campbell saw Wetherill's Anazazi collections at The American Museum of Natural History, the St. Louis World's Fair featured his basketmaker culture artifacts. Independent, individualistic and highly humanistic in his relationships, Wetherill,by his very nature threatened those less talented or secure. His archeology was demeaned by professionals. He was subverted by agents of the Dawes Severalty Act,a law binding native Americans to enforced assimilation and dependency. Wetherhill's business enterprises among the Navajo gave lie to the need for the Dawes Act. Assassinated from ambush in what McNitt concludes was a political manipulation, Wetherill was dead by 1910. McNitt's investigative talents lead him through years of research and oral history depositions with living contemporary's of Wetherill. McNitt moved to New Mexico to be closer to his research, supporting himself as a publisher at Farmington and breifly as an employee of The University of New Mexico Press. He wore out a Land Rover driving the unpaved reservation roads of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah to track down facts about Wetherill. McNitt's awe at what he found is disclosed in balanced journalistic terms which build, chapter-upon-chapter into the stuff of legend without a scintilla of sentimentality to mar the art.

Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Very interesting and complete. Makes you want to visit and keep exploring. Well written. Holds you interest.