Marietta Wetherill

Marietta Wetherill: Life with the Navajos in Chaco Canyon (1997)
by Kathryn Gabriel

Beginning in 1897 Marietta Wetherill set up house in a Marietta Wetherill Book remote archaeological site near the Navajo reservation, while her husband, Richard, excavated the Anasazi ruins and created a trading post empire. Marietta and the Navajo women collaborated in midwifing, healing, and surviving the dry desert. Medicine men shared their rituals and taught her about the stark reality of aboriginal life. Out of confusion, rage, or conspiracy, a Navajo man murdered Richard in 1910, but Marietta's friendships endured. They beseeched her to tell their story and in 1954, a year before her death, she recorded her extraordinary experiences on more than 70 audio tapes. These tapes form the basis for this book.

The Story of Ruth

Marietta and Richard Wetherill had five children. The last was Ruth, born two weeks before Richard was murdered by an angry Navajo near their home in Chaco Canyon in 1910. Marietta remained in Chaco Canyon less than a year before moving to a valley in the Jemez mountains near Cuba, New Mexico. She was assisted by a friend named Ray Miera from Cuba, Bill Finn and another cowboy. She loaded her five children onto a wagon and drove straight east to the beautiful Jemez mountains establishing her new home there. It was in stark contrast to the hot dry Chaco Canyon area. The cool days and nights and a valley of lush grass beneath giant Ponderosa Pines were perfect for raising livestock. She began to increase her holdings as young Richard gathered Mustangs. It was here that Ruth died one year to the day after Richard was killed.

Ruth's four year old sister, Marion, was playing in the streambed below their cabin gathering Wild Iris flowers. She returned to the cabin giving Ruth these flowers which Ruth promptly ingested. Wetherill family members have repeated this story for several generations and suggested this caused her death because of the poisonous principle in the Iris plant. Some of the facts bear this out as the season of her death is part of the bloom cycle of the Wild Iris. There is however a discrepancy in the symptoms Ruth exhibited and the actual symptoms of Wild Iris poisoning. The discrepancy lies in the literature that describes the poisonous compound and it's location in the plant, which is in the roots and not the flowers. Some authors have even suggested that the roots of this plant were employed by both the Native American Indians and early settlers as a remedy for gastric complaints.

It may never be known what caused Ruth's death exactly, but the wild Iris may have contributed to it. In any event it was a tragic death which followed the murder of her father and subsequent events which included the death of Bill Finn.