Wetherill
A History of Discovery
John Wetherill
By Harvey Leake
John Wetherill, "Hosteen John", was well known as
an frontiersman of the Four Corners region. His career in that
country spanned more than fifty years, from his early involvement
with Mesa Verde in Colorado to his many explorations in the Navajo
Country of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.
John was born in Kansas in 1866. His
parents were
Quakers--his
father, Benjamin Kite, from Pennsylvania, and his mother, Marion,
from Iowa. The family's western migration eventually landed them in
Mancos, Colorado in 1880. There, in addition to ranching and
farming, John and his brothers began their explorations of the
Southwest, beginning with nearby Mesa Verde.
In 1896 John married
Louisa Wade. Four
years later they left Mancos
with their two children for
the Navajo country of New Mexico. There
they made a living running trading posts at Ojo Alamo, Chavez, and
Chaco Canyon and guiding travelers through the country. In 1906 they
again moved--this time to a remote region of southern Utah where
they built their own trading post. The location was Oljato, or
Moonlight Water, seventy miles from their closest Anglo neighbor.
They made Navajo and Piute neighbors, however, with whom they made
lifelong friends.
It was from Oljato that the 1909 discovery expedition to
Rainbow
Bridge embarked. Numerous other trips explored the cliff-dwellings
and geological wonders of places such as Tsegi Canyon, Tsegiotsosi
Canyon, Monument Valley and Navajo Mountain. In 1910 John, Louisa,
and their partner Clyde Colville, moved their operation about twenty
miles south to Kayenta, Arizona where they lived until their deaths
in the 1940s.
Hosteen John's legacies are best explained in the words of those who
knew him. Most common are accounts of his exceptional backcountry
skills which have been recalled by many of the archaeologists,
geologists, and tourists who utilized his services to explore the
remote and little-known canyons of the complex Navajo Country.
Photographer Grace Hoover, who participated in the Rainbow
Bridge-Monument Valley Expeditions in the 1930s said, "...we are
immensely privileged to know John Wetherill, first white settler
hereabouts. As advance crusader for the knights of the trowel and
brush, he is still exploring, still guiding the wayfarer to remote
wild parts of this exciting land..."[1]
To John's admirers he seemed the quintessential explorer of the
early Twentieth Century. Noted Harvard anthropologist Clyde
Kluckhohn wrote: "For frontiersmanship in that region I don't think
anyone can be compared with him; for endurance only Dean Cummings.
He is the first citizen of the Four Corners country, a fine American
and a great man. I have mentioned before that it is in a common
experience in the next-to-last frontier to think that one has got to
a place where no white man had ever been before and then to find the
initials J. W."[2]
John possessed not only a unsurpassed knowledge of the remote
reaches of the region, but also the skills necessary to organize,
outfit, and lead others on long treks into the terra incognito.
According to archaeologist Neil Judd of the Smithsonian Institution,
"John Wetherill was a determined man, especially on the trail. He
improvised but never turned back; he always fought his way forward
to his intended destination."[3]
Judd was a member of the 1909 Rainbow Bridge expedition. Another
member of that party, government surveyor William Boone Douglass,
recalled: "I never saw anyone who could get a party over as much
ground in so short a time as he."[4]
From 1919 to 1930 Hosteen John guided New Yorker Charles Bernheimer
on expeditions into through the Navajo Mountain country and the
surrounding areas. On their first trip into unmapped territory,
Bernheimer observed: "Mr. Wetherill is of course a genius and has a
sixth sense which one riding behind him feels guides and directs
him. He has not made a single mistake in his guidance of our party
and is a thoroughly bred and highly educated man such as I rarely
ever met. No subject seems strange to him, and in most of them he is
a master."[5] A few years later, after pioneering a new route to
Rainbow Bridge, Bernheimer recorded in the register beneath the
arch: "My chief thought at this time is that posterity may recognize
and appreciate the ability of John Wetherill at finding and
constructing the trail through Red Bud Pass which after 4 full days
of labor yielded to his genius."[6]
Hosteen John's remarkable backcountry skills and the many
discoveries that he participated in are only part of the story,
however. The other legacy that can be found through the writings of
his compatriots can best be described as a unique depth of
character.
Again quoting photographer Grace Hoover, "...we did not find him a
'rugged westerner' at all. He might rather have been one of our
academicians were it not for a subtle quality that bespoke an
induration grafted by harsh frontier living. John Wetherill has been
cast in a mold at once gentle in outline and strong in singleness of
purpose--of malleable but intrasigent stuff. One is mindful of his
quiet force, while not forgetting the twinkle in his eye."[7]
Visitors to the Wetherill's' home were often struck by what would be
called, in today's lingo, the "cultural diversity" represented
there. Pioneer archaeologist Byron Cummings recalled: "We spent a
happy Christmas as Oljato, enjoying the hospitality of the
Wetherill's. For forty years their home was a haven to many a
traveler and explorer in those regions. John and Mrs. Wetherill were
friends of the Indians and of all white men who wandered into the
Southwest on one quest or another. The doors of their home were
never locked against any person, regardless of creed or color."[8]
Writer John Stewart MacClary noted: "Although his name perhaps will
always be linked with the Rainbow Bridge, John Wetherill denies
credit for its discovery. 'Nasja and Nasja-begay-the Pahutes-led us
to Rainbow Bridge. The Indians found it long before the white men
came.'"[9] He concluded: "Mr. and Mrs. John Wetherill have been
trail-blazers of courage and integrity on a frontier where there was
a very great need for that type of character."[10]
During a harrowing boat trip up the ice-choked Colorado River in
1930 John's partner, Pat Flattum, observed: "John, with that never
fading smile on his face, that signifies patience and great courage;
in his presence one feels that there is something more in life than
just mere joy of living, something more eternal."[11]
Although they had been doused in the icy water several times and
lost all of their food in an upset, John recorded in his
characteristic optimistic way when they arrived at Rainbow Bridge:
"Had a wonderful trip through a country of much grandeur and beauty.
I doubt if it can be surpassed anywhere else in the world. The
hardships we went through only add value to a wonderful
experience."[12]
Writer Robert Frothingham said: "you will like Wetherill-he is a
real man, and as the Navajos said years ago (and Roosevelt confirmed
later) he speaks with "a straight tongue." Finally, he is about the
last of the Arizona pioneers, and he won't be here very much longer.
When he's gone, the Arizona desert won't be quite the same."[13]
Erna Fergusson: "John Wetherill was a unique person, fine and
gentle, and humorously wise. None of us who knew him will ever
forget him nor know his like again."[14]
Randall Henderson, editor of Desert Magazine said: "In the heart of
Hosteen John was more gentleness and greater courage than are often
combined in one human."[15]
In a touching letter to Louisa, Neil Judd summed up John's other
legacy: "What a full, rich life he has led! Repeated disappointments
and discouragements, of course, but he brushed them aside. He never
quite reached the end of the rainbow but he had a lot of fun
searching for the pot of gold. And all the while the gold lay within
him, too close to see. Of few men can it be said with greater truth:
'He had a heart of gold.'[16]
REFERENCES
[1]. Grace Elwood Hoover, "Trespacsers in Mesa Land," Arizona
Highways, June 1941: 5.
[2]. Clyde Kluckhohn, Beyond the Rainbow, 1933: 169
[3]. Neil M. Judd, Men Met Along the Trail, 1968: 96.
[4]. William Boone Douglass, letter to Louisa Wetherill, 19 Sept.
1909.
[5]. Charles L. Bernheimer, field notes, 22 May 1920.
[6]. Charles L. Bernheimer, Rainbow Bridge register, 5 July 1922
[7]. Hoover, ibid.
[8]. Byron Cummings, Indians I Have Known, 1952: 12.
[9]. John Stewart MacClary, "Trail-Blazer to Rainbow Bridge," Desert
1 (June 1938): 34.
[10]. Ibid.
[11]. Pat M. Flattum in Ibid.: 41.
[12]. John Wetherill in "Early Trip Up the Colorado from Lee's Ferry
to Rainbow Bridge, January 1931," Plateau 34 (Oct. 1961): 43.
[13]. Robert Frothingham, Trails Through the Golden West, 1932: 60.
[14]. Erna Fergusson, quoted in Mary Apolline Comfort, Rainbow to
Yesterday, 1980: 191.
[15]. Randall Henderson, "Just Between You and Me," Desert 8 (Feb.,
1945): 38.
[16]. Neil M. Judd, Letter to Louisa Wetherill. Dec. 2, 1944.
John Wetherill
1866-1944
Fanny and Betty Wetherill, daughters of John and Louisa Wetherill.
Photo courtesy of Harvey Leake, great grandson of John and Louisa Wetherill.
John Wetherill & Zane Grey's trip to Rainbow Bridge 1913
By Zane Grey