230 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I47 



thing to do with directing or diverting those floodwaters but it is 

 possible. 



SOIL AND WATER ANALYSES 



Since the subsistence problem of prehistoric Pueblo Bonito w^as 

 one of our paramount subjects for inquiry, we dug a number of pits 

 in order to test the character of soils formerly available for cultiva- 

 tion. Our first pit was located northwest of the ruin, about halfway 

 to the north-cliff stairway. Others were dug on the east side, north 

 of the upcanyon road. Because none of these seemed to offer more 

 than blown sand and silt they were promptly refilled against possible 

 injury to wide-ranging Navaho horses and only one, No. 3, left open. 



Test Pit 3, 9 feet 3 inches deep and situated on the plain midway 

 between Pueblo Bonito and the Expedition camp, looked more promis- 

 ing than the others, and so it was fenced and held for further 

 study (pi. 7, upper). At the suggestion of C. S. Scofield, soil 

 chemist and a member of the National Geographic Society's Com- 

 mittee on Research, earth samples were taken at 10-inch intervals, 

 bottom to top, and sent for analysis to J. F. Breazeale of the Office 

 of Western Irrigation Agriculture. Mr. Scofield warned, however, 

 that the soils represented by those samples would have less agricul- 

 tural value than anticipated if, like Chaco well and flood waters pre- 

 viously analyzed, they were found to contain a high percentage of 

 sodium in proportion to calcium. (Scofield, 1922, discusses irrigation 

 and alkali salts.) 



Although I have already quoted freely from it, Mr. Breazeale's 

 report of September 27, 1924 (Judd, 1954, pp. 10-12), on the 11 soil 

 samples from Pit Number 3 is so pertinent to our present subject 

 partial repetition seems justified : 



All the soils contain a little black alkali, that is, a mixture of sodium carbonate 

 and sodium bicarbonate, and they all contain approximately the same percentage, 

 0.144%. ... In their behavior the soils remind me very much of soils that have 

 probably originally contained some other alkali, such as common salt . . . 

 leached out through a long period of time. ... A long leaching of most good 

 soils with such water as I have been analyzing for you from Chaco Canyon, 

 would probably produce just such eflfects as I see manifested in this set of 

 soil samples. 



As you well know, the first requisite in irrigation agriculture is water 

 penetration, for unless we can get water into a soil we stand little show of 

 getting any crop out of it. So I first set about to see if I could make the soils 

 take water. I rigged up a set of one-inch glass tubes [10 to 12 inches long] 

 and poured 6 inches of [pulverized] soil into them, and added distilled water to 

 the top. . . . The water penetrated the soil column very slowly. Soil No. 11, 



