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..."
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." 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." 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."
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."
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."
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."
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.'" 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."
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." 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."
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."
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."
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."
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. Photo Album
Provided by William John Wetherill John Wetherill & Zane Grey's trip to Rainbow Bridge 1913
Diary of an Arizona Pack trip of Wetherill and Chanler
Archaeological Expedition.
1931 picture of John Wetherill at age 65 in Glen Canyon, Arizona. He
and and Patrick Flattum spent twenty-one days in a fifteen foot boat on a
survey trip in connection with a movement to make the area around
Rainbow Natural Bridge a National Park. John Wetherill and Flattum
fought whirlpools, rapids and used dynamite to forge through ice jams.
When no word was heard from them , newspaper headlines flared that the
famous frontiersman was lost in the river.
Teddy Roosevelt at the Wetherill Trading Post, Kayenta, Arizona.
John and Louisa
Wetherill Photo Album. Ben W. Wetherill son of John and Louisa Wetherill had a life among
the Navajo's as interesting as his parents
Chavez Trading Post
John Wetherill moved to the Chavez Trading Post in
1902-03 from the Ojo Alamo Trading Post leaving his partner Clyde Corville
at Ojo Alamo to manage it. A drought forced the closure of both the Ojo
Alamo and Chavez trading posts in 1904. John his family and Clyde Corville
then moved to the Chaco Canyon Trading Post 1904 remaining there until 1906
when they moved to Oljato, Utah.
Oral history interview with Betty Rodgers adopted Navajo daughter of
John and louisa Wetherill, 1999
Text
of interview with Betty Rodgers. Chaves Trading Post 
By Zane Grey
John
Wetherill
