A NEW NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY EXPEDITION 



641 



cultivate it. Hence the 

 question, What has 

 happened there? Did 

 the climate change? 

 Were the surrounding 

 arid wastes once fields 

 of cotton, corn, squash, 

 and beans? Or did 

 these aborigines of 

 northwestern New 

 Mexico have an irri- 

 gation system akin to 

 that of the Ifugaos of 

 the Philippines or the 

 rice terraces of China? 



Was the American 

 Indian independent of 

 any Nile, toward whose 

 delta such an ingenious 

 people as the Egyp- 

 tians tended ; and did 

 he build apartments no 

 less colossal and of 

 more immediate serv- 

 ice than the Egyptian 

 "race of undertakers" 

 constructed for their 

 dead? 



One fact is fairly 

 certain, that this peo- 

 ple of a period vari- 

 ously placed between 

 the time of Julius 

 Caesar and William 

 the Conqueror had a 

 democratic form of 

 government and elected 



a governor every year. 

 To the explorer, the 

 Sherlock Holmes of 

 ancient annals, equip- 

 ped with pick and 

 shovel, even a cursory 

 inspection reveals clues 

 that point to the re- 

 covery of buried treas- 

 ure of history. For 

 example, attention was attracted by ma- 

 sonry reinforced by timbers beneath the 

 precipitous rocks that frown over the 

 Pueblo Bonito. This represents a naive 

 effort to support a huge mass of solid 

 rock weighing thousands of tons which 

 threatened to topple on the great building 

 beneath. This child-like engineering ex- 

 periment was surprising, in view of the 

 architectural skill disclosed in the con- 

 struction of buildings which are superior 



NEIL M. JUDD, LEADER OE THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 

 EXPEDITION, AND SANTIAGO NARANJO, GOVER- 

 NOR OE A SANTA CLARA PUEBLO 



Having been a member of numerous expeditions sent to study the 

 natural wonders of the Southwest, Mr. Judd is admirably equipped 

 by experience to undertake the work entrusted to him by the National 

 Geographic Society. He was one of the members of the Utah Ex- 

 pedition, which, with a surveying party of the General Land Office, in 

 1909 discovered the Nonnezoshi, greatest of nature's stone bridges 

 (see ''The Great Natural Bridges of Utah," in The: Geographic for 

 February, iqio). 



in masonry to any other aboriginal struc- 

 tures in the United States. 



The Society's reconnaissance party ex- 

 amined and reported upon the availabil- 

 ity of 16 of the canyon's 18 major ruins. 

 The Pueblo Bonito and the Pueblo del 

 Arroyo were selected as promising the 

 richest rewards. These two ruins lie in 

 the very heart of the Chaco Canyon 

 National Monument. 



Pueblo Bonito has been called the fore- 



