… rode out on what is now Sun Point in search of lost cattle on this date in 1888 and first saw Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. That afternoon, Richard found Spruce Tree House, and the next day, the two men discovered Square Tower House. Al Wetherill, Richard’s brother, saw Cliff Palace sometime the year before, but he did not enter the dwelling, so the credit for the “discovery” has been given to Richard Wetherill and Charles Mason.
In 1901, Richard Wetherill homesteaded land that included Pueblo Bonito, Pueblo Del Arroyo, and Chetro Ketl in what is now Chaco Culture National Historical Park. Wetherill remained in Chaco Canyon, homesteading and operating a trading post at Pueblo Bonito until his controversial murder in 1910. Chiishch’ilin Biy, charged with his murder, served several years in prison, but was released in 1914 due to poor health. Wetherill is buried in the small cemetery west of Pueblo Bonito.
What possible thing could make you imagine that someone with an gringo name could have ‘discovered’ Mesa Verde?
There are 300 years of Spanish history in New Mexico before gringos came. I’d bet that some Spanish resident ‘discovered’ those ruins hundreds of years earlier.
First of all, I believe the ancestral pueblo people who lived in Cliff Palace and the other dwellings “discovered” them, not the Spanish.
Secondly, there is no documentation to indicate anyone of European ancestry “discovered” the Mesa Verde dwellings before Wetherill and Mason. You have to tell people about it to get credit for a discovery.
Third, I put “discovery” in quotation marks to indicate that I think the whole concept of discovery is somewhat dubious.
The Mancos river area was pretty remote from any areas of Spanish settlement and the Mesa Verde was all Navajo and later Ute country during the Spanish period, also I don’t think any pueblo people had been there in centuries by the time any records were made. I don’t think a lot of settled people, indians, mexican or anglo were wandering in canyons North of Farmington until the 1850s or 60s.
I always thought that ruins were reported in the 1870s though. My books and jornals are all packed up right now, but I looked it up online and I did find these really interesting pictures I had never seen before by William Henry Jackson from 1874.
I’m not trying to knock Wetherill here, but I think he is credited because he made the ancestral pueblo his life’s work after finding cliff house, not that he “discovered” Mesa Verde.”
The last time I looked I found that Spain is still in Europe.
Spaniards entered New Mexico in significant numbers starting in 1598, some 240 years before Kearny. If it took gringos 40 years to ‘discover’ Mesa Verde then Spaniards could have done it in the same length of time.
The area near the four corners is Navajo Apache country today and was Navajo Apache country in the early years. Spaniards and Apaches were always fighting each other so it is easy to believe that Navajo war parties and Spanish soldiers met each other in and around Mesa Verde all the time.
The assertion that there is no documentation of European ‘discovery’ of Mesa Verde before Weatherill is just flat wrong. Maybe there’s no evidence in the historical records consulted but I think that’s just a failure to look in the right place. Instead of looking in eastern-centric places look in Spanish, Mexican and New Mexican places and look before 1840.