The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [405]
Congress, in effect, had been tricked by the otherwise ethical Lacey. The Antiquities Act was a dangerous precedent to set with Roosevelt in the White House. The legislation had placed a new conservationist weapon—the national monument—at T.R.’s disposable. To think that Roosevelt wouldn’t stretch his new powers to the extreme was naive. Certainly Roosevelt was honest about the prehistoric ruins in New Mexico and Arizona: these resources were preserved for the sake of science. No longer would southwestern pot hunters or tourist vandals have free rein to desecrate these ancient sites. Where Roosevelt grew mischievous, however, was in exploiting the loose language of the Antiquities Act, which stipulated that national monuments were ipso facto of scientific value. To Roosevelt a marsh, an arroyo, and a limestone cliff were all of scientific interest. What wasn’t a biological or geological birthright to him? And now, as of 1906, the federal government would become the caretaker of historically significant ruins.
At first, the Antiquities Act would permanently protect part of the Four Corners region in the West. Lacey had traveled earlier that spring from Santa Fe to Durango, Colorado, and had been aghast to see thieves taking artifacts from Mesa Verde. He knew that Roosevelt wanted to make life miserable for such heirloom robbers. Lacey began pushing harder for the Anasazi cliff dwellings near Durango, Colorado, to become a national park. Along with Hewett, he also championed preserving the ruins of the Pajarito Plateau in New Mexico near Los Alamos. A grassroots effort was forming to create a “national cultural reservation” on the Pajarito Plateau. When Lacey first visited the region in August 1902, he had been mesmerized by the deserted caves, communal ruins, and adobe villages where Indians still lived. And he knew that the trail guide at Four Corners, John Wetherill, was Roosevelt’s idea of a great American. Wetherill was a real-life John Ermine in the Navajo-Apache-Hopi lands.*
Old photographs show Wetherill with deep-set eyes and a pronounced nose, looking looking like a weathered, desert version of Seth Bullock. He wore a turquoise stone to ornament his favorite belt buckle, and his hair was cut bare on the sides; this midwesterner had clearly adopted the Southwest as his home. The novelist Zane Grey wrote about Wetherill, idealistically but simply, in his essay collection Tales of Lonely Travels. Once the Antiquities Act was passed, Wetherill made recommendations in the Southwest as requested by Forest Order 19, which asked national forest supervisors to report on prehistoric structures and other artifacts and sites of scientific interest located on the western reserves.
Born in Kansas in 1866, “Hosteen John,” as he was called, had moved to Mancos, Colorado in 1880. Although ranching was the family business, Hosteen John became obsessed with the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado. By 1900 Wetherill, with his wife, Louisa Wade, moved to the Navajo lands of New Mexico. Tired of dealing with droughts and rustlers, he decided to own trading posts at Ojo Alamo, Chavez, and Chaco Canyon. Besides selling trinkets and provisions he became the best-known trail guide for the entire, vast Four Corners region. It was Hosteen John who had taken Hewett and Lacey to see the astounding prehistoric ruins there.31
In retrospect, Lacey, Hewett, and Wetherill were together the ideal advocates for southwestern antiquities: a congressman,