{"id":114008,"date":"2015-03-11T19:24:18","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T01:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wetherill-legacy-lives-on\/"},"modified":"2015-03-11T19:24:18","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T01:24:18","slug":"wetherill-legacy-lives-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wetherill-legacy-lives-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Wetherill legacy lives on"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Marietta
Marietta Wetherill Eaton, left, is the manager of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. She recently gave a presentation on her famous Wetherill family legacy in the area. Here, audience members peruse items from the archives.<\/span>Jim Mimiaga\/Dolores Star<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The legacy of the Wetherill family, an adventurous clan who put the ruins of Mesa Verde on the map in 1888, lives on in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

Marietta Wetherill Eaton is the manager of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and director of the Anasazi Heritage Center. She carries on the family\u2019s love of archaeology.<\/p>\n

Her great-grandfather was Richard Wetherill, and she is named after his wife.<\/p>\n

Eaton shared some of her family history during a presentation at the museum she directs.<\/p>\n

The Wetherills coming of age in the late 19th Century was during a zeitgeist of science and exploration, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spirit of knowledge was really valued, a time of big explorations and expeditions. It was Manifest Destiny with a lot of opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mancos Wetherills originated from Ireland, where they were Quakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was that upbringing where they learned tolerance and allowed them to befriend their neighbors and the Indians,\u201d Eaton said.<\/p>\n

Family patriarch Benjamin Kite Wetherill was an Indian agent during President Ulysses S. Grant\u2019s administration, negotiating safe travel along the Chisholm Trail. He passed down his diplomacy to his sons.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of the success they had was talking with the indigenous people, learning from them,\u201d Eaton said. \u201cThe Wetherills made a point that they weren\u2019t the \u2018discoverers\u2019 \u2013 they gave credit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early explorers<\/p>\n

Richard Wetherill is known for his explorations at Mesa Verde, Keet Seel, Grand Gulch and Chaco, but was not given proper credit for being the first to identify the Basketmaker culture, Eaton said, citing a study by Winston Hurst and Kristen Turner.<\/p>\n

Richard revealed that the first Basketmaker people had been massively beaten, and people did not want to accept that image of the ancestral Puebloans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe noble savage was still a popular concept, so they just disregarded (Richard) Wetherill\u2019s discovery. That dark side of pre-historic life was not fitting their mythology,\u201d Eaton said.<\/p>\n

Richard and his brother Al famously famously found Cliff Palace in 1887-1888, triggering a flurry of discovery at Mesa Verde. While taking care of his ailing parents, Al became the postmaster in Gallup, N.M., for 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our archives are attributed to Tom Wetherill, Al\u2019s grandson,\u201d Eaton said. \u201cHe\u2019s the one that kept a lot of stuff \u2013 a hoarder, like I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eaton focused on the lesser-known, but talented network of siblings, scientists, and scholars that influenced the family.<\/p>\n

Clayton Wetherill was the daredevil of the family, \u201cthe guy willing to be tied off on a rope and be lowered over a cliff to see what was there.\u201d He went on to build the first trading post in Chaco Canyon, which was so successful that it led to 12 more to be started in the area.<\/p>\n

Anna Wetherill Mason earned the reputation for the family\u2019s hospitality on their ranch in Mancos.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a time when you didn\u2019t just turn on the stove or have a refrigerator,\u201d Eaton said. \u201cPeople referred to the Wetherill hospitality when they came to visit, and Anna was the unsung hero working behind the scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alice Eastwood was an important presence among the Wetherills. A botanist, she accompanied the family on six expeditions, collecting samples.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe named several species after Al, and was a science pioneer during a time when the field was male dominated,\u201d Eaton said.<\/p>\n

Eastwood made the first observations of the use of tobacco, rice-grass hairbrushes, and the use of cotton to make textiles. She became curator for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and ran into a burning building to rescue 1,500 specimens after the 1906 earthquake.<\/p>\n

Antiquities Act<\/p>\n

Gustaf Nordenskiold was the first scientist to excavate a cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde. When he tried to leave with boxes of artifacts by train from Durango, it caused an uproar, and he was arrested. He was allowed to leave, however, because there were no laws against it at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of the dominoes that ended up creating the Antiquities Act of 1906,\u201d Eaton said. \u201cInteresting enough, Canyons of the Ancients National Monument was created from that act.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mitchell Prudden was a Yale pathologist and archaeologist who worked with the Wetherills on excavations. He was one of the first to study bacteria and helped develop the first vaccines for cholera and diphtheria.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an archaeologist, he was the first to identify the unipueblo style,\u201d Eaton said. \u201cThe detailed maps he made of the region are phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prudden was the first to look at the bigger context of ancient communities, she said, and did research at Yellow Jacket, and Cannonball on the monument.<\/p>\n

Indigenous people made countless contributions to archaeology, but the names were unfortunately not often recorded, Eaton said. Native guides often led the way, including on the expedition to Rainbow Bridge in 1909.<\/p>\n

Zane Grey<\/p>\n

The Wetherills\u2019 Kayenta trading post became a destination for Harvey Cars. Tourists would take the train to Flagstaff, then take the touring cars to Monument Valley.<\/p>\n

Eaton recalled a story her grandfather would tell about famous author Zane Grey.<\/p>\n

He said Grey would travel with a Japanese cook and two Hollywood \u201csecretaries.\u201d<\/p>\n

They would always camp away from everyone else, and only the cook had his own tent!\u201d Eaton said.<\/p>\n

The Wetherills were part of a larger community fascinated with ancient cultures of the Southwest, Eaton points out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were constantly interested in learning,\u201d she said. \u201cThey learned from the best minds of the time and shared that knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@cortezjournal.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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