Chapter VIII Present Times
In 1880, Adolph F. Bandelier, famous Swiss ethnologist, archivist and historian, entered the Valley of the Frijoles.
At the time, he was connected with the Archæological Institute of America and had been sent to New Mexico to work among the Indians who today live in mud-walled pueblos up and down the banks of the Rio Grande. Bandelier spent a great many days at Santo Domingo and Cochiti seeking out legends and myths regarding the people’s past and present and it was from the Cochitenos that Bandelier learned of Tyuonyi. Bandelier’s descriptions of the surrounding country are thoroughly detailed. He must have possessed a very keen mind to have so well described geographical features in such brief association. He entered Frijoles Canyon, the Tyuonyi of the Cochiti Indians, on October 23 of that year.
It has been said that Bandelier lived in the caves of the Rito de Los Frijoles, and, according to stories passed around by hearsay, he could have lived in a dozen different caves. It would be nice, and perhaps poetic, to say that the famous student hung his coat or his hat on such and such a nail, when wire nails such as are found in these caves probably did not exist during Bandelier’s visits to the Canyon. The general opinion among people who remember Bandelier is that he did spend some time in one particular cave high above the Canyon floor. It was a double-chambered cave overlooking Puwige and the entire broad and open lower end of the Canyon. The view was perfect. It might have been here that Bandelier organized some of his notes which resulted in the never-to-be-forgotten ethno-historic novel, The Delight Makers. People have said that Adolph Bandelier lived for years at Frijoles, but this is not true. His investigation of practically the entire Southwest took only five years to complete. So we might limit his stay to days, but those days counted. It was Bandelier’s intent to portray history and archæology in the guise of fiction and here he laid the basis for his famous novel which brought fifteenth-century dwellers of the Tyuonyi to life again.
The works of Charles F. Lummis will never be forgotten—The Land of Poco Tiempo; Mesa, Canyon and Pueblo. Bandelier and Lummis were very good friends and although their opinions and ideas conflicted at times, this friendship was never broken. Many times has Lummis visited Frijoles and many times has he stayed in the old Indian cave rooms, even in quite recent times, when other accommodations were available.
In 1907, Judge A. J. Abbot settled in the Valley of the Frijoles. He built a ranch house out of the ancient building stones of volcanic ash. The stones came from Puwige, the big community house. Cut and fashioned in the sixteenth century or thereabout, by prehistoric Indians, they were used again. The place was known as “Ten Elder Ranch,” because of the box-elder trees growing nearby. The ranch changed hands three times and was subsequently known as “Frijoles Canyon Ranch” until the old buildings were torn down and replaced by modern unique pueblo style buildings designed by government engineers and known as “Frijoles Canyon Lodge.” It would be an utter impossibility to name all of the famous personages who have visited Frijoles or were entertained at the old ranch place. The Commoners and the Nobility, people from the four corners of the globe came, some of them leaving a little remembrance or token of their appreciation—a poem about the Frijoles perhaps, a card, a thank-you letter, an invitation—they are too numerous to mention.
In 1916, the area was created a National Monument and named in honor of Adolph Francis Alphonse Bandelier. It has been known as such ever since. But to the “old timers” it is still the “Rito” or “El Rito de Los Frijoles.” They remember the times they either walked or came on horseback from the north rim into the boundary valley—the valley between ancient Keres and Tewa lands—into a Hidden Valley clustered with the works of primitive Indians, the ruins alone being capable of revealing the incidents of a buried and hidden past. Their heads are gray now and they remember with the semblance of tears in their eyes.
From 1916 until 1932, the entire area was under the administration of the United States Forest Service of the Department of Agriculture. At this time it was transferred to the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. Thousands of visitors go to Bandelier every year chiefly just to look at this magnificent Valley of the Frijoles. A new modern highway replaces the old trail from the north cliff. The visitor now drives down to the valley floor to spend an hour or so on a tour conducted by the National Park Service, to hear the story of how Indians lived in the cliff homes and in pueblos long before Columbus discovered America. They wonder about cliff dwellers while ravens soar above the valley floor and caw just as they did four hundred years ago. They see the visible remains of the great kiva on the Canyon floor and stroll on to Puwige, the big community house. They view over two hundred excavated rooms, four hundred years old. They see the narrow passage through the east side and the remains of obstructions used to slow down the attackers of old. And then they climb to the base of the weathered and sun-drenched cliffs where many an Indian woman swept rubbish from her kitchen out on to the steep slope and ground many an ear of corn on crude metate. Visitors climb into caves, the floors covered with dust and ceilings still blackened with smoke. They push the hands of the clock back to the Stone Age, while the Keres to the south go on living on the banks of the muddy Rio Grande, apparently forgetting that there ever was a Tyuonyi, war or trouble; and while the Tewas to the north, having settled themselves, seem to have forgotten their ancestral home—the “Frijoles,” the National Park Service strives to protect, preserve, and make the ruins in Hidden Valley live again.