| 7 | tb | As a matter of fact he's fixing to get married. It didn't take him very long, you know. But anyway, people he... he remembered a Whitkind, a William Whitkind, and an Anne Dietz. (The list of people I am referencing here, actually comes from the Forward of Hibben's 1941 Evidences of Early Occupation in Sandia Cave, New Mexico and Other Sites in the Sandia-Manzano Region. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections 99, No. 23. Hereafter referred to as the Monograph in the interview.)
| 8 | jg | Yeah, I remember her.
| | 9 | tb | A Robert Sieglitz.
| | 10 | jg | Yeah.
| | 11 | tb | A Mary Darby, who he says not, I think is a McGregor, Mary McGregor.
| | 12 | jg | Yeah.
| | 13 | tb | And an Ernest Blumenthal. He remembered, he remembered you and he remembered Easterday and he remember a Gordon Page.
| | 14 | jg | Yeah.
| | 15 | tb | A James Spuhler, I guess that's the ones.
| | 16 | dg | On that trip, they came up, there was a Vance Davis.
| | 17 | jg | A Vance Davis. A Don Hastings.
| | 18 | tb | There's no Davis here and there's no Don Hastings... here, here's the list.
| | 19 | jg | Jane Olson. Jane was in my class. Mary Lehmer. Well I knew her husband. What was his first name? He came up, in fact, he drove one of the cars.
| | 20 | dg | Jim, I don't remember.
| | 21 | jg | Don, ...? (pause) Sieglitz sounds familiar, I can't recall, ...? (pause) Wesley Hurt, yeah. I remember Hurt. (Long pause and I changed the subject.)
| 22 | tb | I see you got the crows out there in the backyard, big old black crows.
| | 23 | jg | Yeah.
| | 24 | tb | We don't have the crows, we got the magpies.
| | 25 | dg | We got the magpies too. I put bones out there.
| | 26 | jg | I put bones out there. We had three pair of Flickers.
| | 27 | tb | Oh yeah.
| | 28 | jg | They like the bone marrow. Of course you can't keep the crows or starlings out either. You have to feed the whole mess. (Pause, and then returning to the list of people in the Forward of the Monograph.)
| 29 | jg | Lets see. I met Don Scott. Never did meet Hooton. Missed him somewhere in life.
| | 30 | tb | Who's that?
| | 31 | jg | Hooton. Dr. Hooton from...
| | 32 | tb | You've seen this report (Monograph), haven't you?
| | 33 | jg | Yes, but not for ages.
| | 34 | tb | I had the hardest time finding that study (Monograph). Had to go up to Boulder and found it back in the archives.
| | 35 | dg | Now, which report is that?
| | 36 | tb | That's the official Sandia Cave Excavation Report (Monograph).
| | 37 | dg | Oh, I see.
| | 38 | jg | Yeah.
| | 39 | dg | Two years ago, I guess, it would have been in the Fall, the local historical society managed to get permission to take a group in to the Lindenmeier Site, and present at that group was Jim and Bob Easterday, and this... I cannot remember his name. Stafford, is it?
| | 40 | jg | Yeah.
| | 41 | dg | But, you no longer can drive in there, and individual cannot. The only way they permit it was to have a bus, to get a bus from CSU.
| | 42 | tb | Well, who owns the property? Is it still on the ranch, the Lindenmeier Ranch?
| | 43 | dg | No. It's owned by a syndicate of people. There's no way in. They even checked us as we drove through the...
| | 44 | tb | Well, what is the purpose of the syndicate? Are they ranching?
| | 45 | dg | Yes they're ranching and holding the land. And who knows what. But Jim and I had no been there for a... and I don't think that Bob had either... for 40 years, Jim?
| | 46 | jg | That's about right. I got up there and couldn't even recognize it at first.
| | 47 | dg | No, we went in from the north and we had always gone in from...
| | 4 | jg | What used to be mountain, I got up there and looked to me like the excavation was on the wrong side of the arroyo.
| | 49 | tb | You know, I've seen my father do that recently. We'll go out and... well he was born and raised on a... no he wasn't born there, but he lived on a homestead for a number of years in the Panhandle of Oklahoma. And, he... We went back there and spent a week out there in the country. In fact it's more primitive now than it was when he lived there.
| | 50 | dg | Hum
| | 51 | tb | "Now dang it, that ought to be over here!"
| | 52 | jg | I tell you, it's surprising what 40 years can do to your... just like they always say, you know... you've seen cartoons where a guy will go back to his home town, that great big house he lived in. Turns out to be a little tiny thing.
| | 53 | tb | I know, I know.
| | 54 | jg | He just imagined it.
| | 55 | dg | Well, Jim went to his 50th high school reunion last summer and I go to mine next summer, so this has been an experience. (pause)
| 56 | jg | Boy, I tell you, that's the worst cave (Sandia) I ever got into.
| | 57 | tb | You have dug other caves besides that one?
| | 58 | jg | Yeah. A few, but that was the dustiest that I've ever... oh my gosh that, that yellow ocher. We had just started there. This kind of, well we really didn't do much of anything that first incidence of fall. We went up there, cleared the entrance , which was pretty much plugged and this...
| | 59 | tb | So this was when the university first started the...
| | 60 | jg | Well yeah. Well Bliss just unofficially got some of us in the department together. We were students.
| | 61 | tb | Um hum.
| | 62 | jg | ... and go out and see if we could do anything. That entrance way was so plugged. You know the whole thing was covered with travertine. When you get that pulled up, underneath it was several inches of that yellow ocher. Been there, I don't know how long. You could only stay in there about five minutes.
| | 63 | tb | I remember as a...
| | 64 | jg | So he got the idea, you know these little masks you wear when you paint?
| | 65 | tb | Um hum.
| | 66 | jg | We went to the hardware store and got a carton of those and we dipped those in water and you're good for about 15 minutes until they plugged up and you had to get out. So we would take turns. We finally got that entrance way. So then you could get in, in a crawl.
| | 67 | tb | Um hum.
| | 68 | jg | You see you couldn't walk in that thing, you had to... there were places where the roof had fallen. You just get on your belly and slide through and then it would open up a little ways and you get on your hands and knees and make a little progress. But, I sometimes wonder why, why he even let us go in there you know, it was kind of dangerous stuff. Get your arm tore up (I am interrupting) . We all survived, but I've often wondered how, because that's really dangerous.
| | 69 | dg | You didn't how as much then as what you do now.
| | 70 | jg | Well we were young and brave, I guess you can put it that way. But over a period of time, some progress was made with some students and a little later on, when I recall Hibben got into the act. I think he got some funds from somewhere. Probably... the WPA, I'm not sure.
| | 71 | tb | In this report (Monograph) here he (Hibben) mentions that the first four years, which would have been '36, '37, '38, and '39 were kind of hit and miss and unfunded you know.
| | 72 | jg | Yeah.
| | 73 | tb | And then he says in 1940, they got some funds from the American Society or this or that, but it sounds like they got a bunch of money and they were able to... was he in on the act, really, initially on?
| | 74 | jg | Hibben?
| | 75 | tb | You mentioned that just the students were up there kind of kicking around...
| | 76 | jg | Yeah. It first started... I don't know where Wes got a hold of the information about that cave. Now he didn't discover the cave. As far as I know it had been known ever since...
| | 77 | tb | Yeah. They (Monograph) say in the 20's the Boy Scouts had been in there...
| | 78 | jg | Yeah, well undoubtedly, yeah. The Indians had traveled back and forth in there. But I don't... you see it was so plugged up it wasn't usable for modern Indians say back 1200 or along there. It was obvious they hadn't used it either. It was just uninhabitable. But I assume from the geology of the thing, at one time, it was before the thing collapsed and the thing started coming in. But it could have been used for shelter. I don't know, does it (Monograph) say in there how far back we went? I think we only went back about 200 feet, and then we couldn't... there was more cave I'm pretty sure. I recall that.
| | 79 | tb | Yeah it does. (I do not want to influence Jim Greenacre's memory about the extent of his work., so I avoid answering his question.) I tell you what, when did you... did you... how long... oh how do I ask the question? Were you there 'til the excavation was completed or...
| | 80 | jg | No.
| | 81 | tb | How many years...
| | 82 | jg | I went up there in... we started in the Fall of '36.
| | 83 | tb | Okay, and that was Bliss at that time?
| | 84 | jg | Yes.
| | 85 | tb | Okay.
| | 86 | jg | And then we didn't do much in the winter, there was no place to stay up there. We took bedrolls and I think one of the last nights we stayed up all night trying to keep the fire going. It was cold. About two inches of snow fell you know. And then in the spring of '37 we went at it again. And that's the two... I was there fall of '36, and Spring of '37.
| | 87 | tb | Fall of '36, spring of '37. Okay.
| | 88 | jg | Hibben hadn't come into the act yet.
| | 89 | tb | Okay.
| | 90 | jg | He and Bliss were at each other's throats though.
| | 91 | tb | What was Bliss, a graduate student, a professor or what?
| | 92 | jg | He was, he had a Fellowship, working on his Masters. (Jim is incorrect here. Bliss received his Masters from UNM in 1935, so he is working on his PhD.)
| | 93 | tb | Oh, okay.
| | 94 | jg | He taught... lets see, he taught archaeological techniques. He taught some muesum techniques. (Moved the recorder to a better location.)
| | 95 | jg | He, oh I don't know for sure what it was they (Hibbon and Bliss) got into, I guess it was...
| | 96 | tb | But they were scrapping all the time, long before Hibben ever got into the cave?
| | 97 | jg | Yeah.
| | 98 | tb | I'll be darn.
| | 99 | jg | But, I think you know how some professionals get, they get a little jealous. "I was there before you were," that sort of thing.
| | 100 | tb | Archaeologists are, I think in particular are that way.
| | 101 | jg | Now a man named Howard (E. B. Howard) of the University of Pennsylvania. He got into the act on Wes' side.
| | 102 | tb | Ok.
| | 103 | jg | Well, Hibben had people, some of his students, write up his side of it, that he'd discovered the cave and that sort of thing.Well, I guess Howard knew that wasn't true or correct, because like you just mentioned... you're right, I think in the 20's some Boy Scouts stumbled onto the thing. I'm sure they didn't go anywhere, they just found out about it.
| | 104 | tb | Well, in the literature that I can find, there is a fellow named Ken Davis. Okay?
| | 105 | jg | Yes. That's all right.
| | 106 | tb | And some of the literature says Ken Davis pointed it out to Wesley Bliss. Okay?
| | 107 | jg | I think that's probably correct.
| | 108 | tb | Okay. But now Hibben, in his article here, claims that Ken Davis pointed it out to him.
| | 109 | jg | You know, I don't think that was... Ken Davis and I were very close friends.
| | 110 | tb | You knew Ken Davis?
| | 111 | jg | Yeah. I would have to agree he pointed it out to Wes.
| | 112 | tb | Well what was Ken Davis? What kind of...
| | 113 | jg | He was a student.
| | 114 | tb | Was he in archaeology?
| | 115 | jg | He was training to be one, yeah.
| | 116 | tb | He was an undergraduate also?
| | 117 | jg | Um hum.
| | 118 | tb | I see, I see.
| | 119 | jg | Yeah, one night Ken was taking me to work downtown, and some guys from Roswell Military Institute...
| | 120 | dg | Oh is that the one? It wasn't Vance, was it?
| | 121 | jg | Ken or Vance.
| | 122 | dg | Oh.
| | 123 | jg | Came tearing down a side street. They were all looped on beer with a couple of Mexican girls and smashed his big Buick. We rolled over on the side and this one fellow, he (Hibben) didn't mention, named Don Hastings, he was hurt pretty bad. I got a broken jaw. Ken, he was alright.And another fellow in the back seat, was alright. But that was the end of the big old Buick, which really hurt our trips going back to Sandia.
| | 124 | tb | That was what you were using as a truck? (laughter)
| 125 | jg | Well, his father... you know, those kids were in a rented car. Do you think... they just couldn't find any way to get anything out of the agency, the rental car agency. You just...
| | 126 | tb | Like fighting a tar baby.
| | 127 | jg | Ken's father was a... I think the reason they were down there was on account of his health. I don't know, I believe he's a tradesman of some kind; plumber, carpenter. They had, they were like all the rest of us, didn't have a dime, so we just walked after that accident cause that thing was totaled.
| | 128 | dg | And then Jim went for years with a jaw problem, you know.It was not taken care of properly.
| | 129 | tb | Did they have to wire it up or...
| | 130 | jg | No it's a crack and it finally grew together, of course.
| | 131 | dg | But for 20 years, at least, I guess when he would chew you could hear him pop, pop.
| | 132 | jg | No, but I think that after Howard (E. B. Howard) published some reports and tried to smooth this conflict over, it died out. (I was unable to find any published documents by Howard on the subject of Sandia Cave.)
| 133 | tb | I'm trying to get this straight in my mind. Wesley Bliss and yourself was... a couple other people... you mentioned the Buick like there was three at least... anyway you used to go up to the cave in the fall of '36.
| | 134 | jg | Um hum.
| | 135 | tb | And did a little bit of excavating and you mentioned the mask and then the winter ran you out and then the next spring you went back and did it again? And you still were operating just basically on your own funds?
| | 136 | jg | That's right.
| | 137 | tb | Just for the fun of it?
| | 138 | jg | Yeah.
| | 139 | tb | Okay. And then what... you then left?
| | 140 | jg | That's right.
| | 141 | tb | What? The University of New Mexico?
| | 142 | jg | Yeah, I went to... I left in the... hum?
| | 143 | dg | You left in '38.
| | 144 | jg | I left in "38.
| | 145 | tb | Somewhere in '38. Graduate?
| | 146 | dg | March, March.
| | 147 | jg | March of '38.
| | 148 | tb | Did you graduate at that time?
| | 149 | jg | No. I never did graduate from there.
| | 150 | tb | I see. Okay. Did you ever graduate out of curiosity?
| | 151 | jg | No.
| | 152 | tb | Okay.
| | 153 | dg | He should have, and he could have and with his experience he could go right up here (CSU), but...
| | 154 | tb | Well, that's the same problem with my father, he didn't graduate.
| | 155 | jg | Well, I was...
| | 156 | dg | We, it was a different world.
| | 157 | jg | I tell you. I went flat broke that's the reason I didn't graduate down there.
| | 158 | tb | He (my father) did too.
| | 159 | jg | You know Albuquerque's nothing like it is now. What about 40,000 some people there (in 1937). And I washed dishes in a saloon and since I was over 21, Saturday nights I tended bar to sell... I was supposed to be able to tell... or sell wine to a Mexican and an Indian.
| | 160 | tb | You couldn't sell to Indians then?
| | 161 | jg | No.
| | 162 | tb | I'll be darned.
| | 163 | jg | So I had to make a careful judgement and there's never a Saturday night went by there wasn't a stabbing at the back door. The Mexicans buy the wine and...
| | 164 | tb | Sell it to the Indians...
| | 165 | jg | ... and go out the back door, because in those days they weren't allowed to go in the front door.
| | 166 | tb | Oh, Mexicans couldn't use the front door.
| | 167 | jg | No, they had to go out the side door.
| | 168 | tb | White man could use the front door, Mexicans could use the back door and the Indians couldn't get in?
| | 169 | jg | That's right. My job was to figure out which was which.Wine was 20 cents a pint.
| | 170 | tb | I'll be darned.
| | 171 | dg | I think too you ought to mention, Jim, tell him about the rabbit and that gives you an idea of how dog-gone poor they were. The bunny rabbit that you caught on a field trip.
| | 172 | jg | Well we caught a young one and we were living in a basement of a place. Didn't even have a bathroom. We just used the coal bin, and run up to the filling station when we had serious business. We caught this rabbit and turned him loose down there and gave him what we could find to eat. He grew and grew. So one day we ate him.
| | 173 | tb | This outside the basement apartment, huh? I'll bedarned.You had a big old Thanksgiving dinner on rabbit or something.
| | 174 | jg | Yeah. One day I moved out... that was down on... was that Silver or Golden... that old apartment house. Anyway, I moved out south. The guy out there had a big house and he had a thing at one time, probably a place for servants... kind of a double shack.
| | 175 | tb | Um hum.
| | 176 | jg | One room on each side, and a bathroom in the middle. And we got that, the three of us took it. We got it for $12 a month, and he furnished the electricity, had a little wood heater in it. Went down to that Albuquerque lumber mill, got a huge truckload of kindling wood. It was about $2 delivered.
| | 177 | tb | This was scrap?
| | 178 | jg | Yeah. It ran us all the rest of that semester. Didn't need it for the summer to speak of.
| | 179 | tb | Um hum.
| | 180 | jg | We all left and the guy says that he really wouldn't rent it in the summer. We went back in the fall, there was this pile of wood all ready to go again. So we heated the place you might say for the two semesters that we were there. We heated it for about $2. You had to scrounge around in those days.
| | 181 | tb | I'll be darned. You know I'm basically... I do the same thing. Except my sawmill scraps now cost me a little more.
| | 182 | jg | Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
| | 183 | jg | I had a place I go, down here just to get kindle wood for the fireplace.
| | 184 | tb | Does this thing (recorder) click or anything? Oh, we're halfway through. I don't know how long it runs.
| | 185 | jg | I imagine it's a 30 minute one. I don't know.
| | 186 | dg | What does your tape say?
| | 187 | tb | They say 90. Does that mean it's 45 on each side?
| | 188 | dg | Yeah.
| | 189 | tb | Okay.
| | 190 | jg | Yeah, it does say 90.
| | 191 | dg | We've got a timer. If I'd only known, why we could have...
| | 192 | tb | Well, we'll just keep an eye on it this time.
| | 193 | jg | That timer's so loud you'd had to background, tick, tick, tick. It's easier to look at the clock.
| | 194 | tb | Maybe that tape recorder may not be any good, I don't know. So, I'm going to go on back to my story here. So you left Albuquerque in March of '38.
| | 195 | jg | '38.
| | 196 | tb | Okay, and Hibbon was not involved at that time. You guys were just doing it for the fun of it (excavating the cave), just to see what you could find.
| | 197 | jg | No, not really.
| | 198 | tb | Was there a class project or anything associated with it?
| | 199 | dg | Doing it probably because of Wes.
| | 200 | jg | Yeah. I think he had full intentions of working us into his thesis.
| | 201 | tb | Do you recall what he was planning for his thesis?
| | 202 | jg | Oh he started out, I think his actual thesis was on the scheme that he developed to remove murals from old Kiva walls. Are you familiar with that?
| | 203 | tb | The colored Kiva, the painted Kiva that existed up at Coronado?
| | 204 | jg | Um hum. And another one at Kuaua. In fact those murals that he pulled off the walls at Kuaua are right there in the museum in Kuaua. We saw them, what two years ago.
| | 205 | tb | Well, now. As I understand it there's only one painted Kiva... as I understood it, and that was that at Coronado just a little north of Bernalillo there.
| | 206 | jg | Um hum.
| | 207 | dg | Yes.
| | 208 | tb | I don't know where Kuaua is.
| | 209 | jg | Well, that's right across the river from Bernalillo.
| | 210 | tb | Okay, well that's the one... that's what I'm calling Coronado.
| | 211 | dg | Yes. See that's what we found out about three years ago we were down there. We went to this Coronado, see.
| | 212 | tb | Um hum.
| | 213 | dg | And suddenly found out that it was the same place. Jim took a picture of me at the edge of one of those adobe foundations.
| | 214 | tb | Um hum.
| | 215 | dg | And 45 years before that he had taken a picture of me sitting on the same bank.
| | 216 | tb | Well, somehow my dad is involved with this also, see?
| | 217 | jg | Yeah.
| | 218 | tb | My dad... wait, he left school but he stayed on the University's payroll and he was involved... with the first excavation of Alibates over... you know Alibates on the Canadian River just across the border in West Texas, around Amarillo?
| | 219 | jg | No. I'm not familiar with that.
| | 220 | tb | Okay. It's... basically it was a little Pueblo, but it's real claim to fame is the flint. It's the... I think they used to call it Amarillo.
| | 221 | jg | Um hum.
| | 222 | jg | Okay, well that's Alibates. And it gets its name after a man named Al E. Bates, who was an oil company geologist, who found it, okay. (Al E. Bates was the land owner or the son of the land owner. He was not an oil company employee.) As a matter of fact, that was some of the first material that was found in the original Folsom site. And nobody could figure out where it came from.
| | 223 | jg | Oh.
| | 224 | tb | He worked out there a couple of years, and then he worked... have you ever heard of the Quarai Mission?
| | 225 | jg | Oh, yes.
| | 226 | tb | Well, he excavated that, was involved in that. My mother and him both, they lived out there and then I think he was at Chaco for a year or two.
| | 227 | jg | Yeah.
| | 228 | tb | And I think he finally decided he'd had enough of that and came to town and got himself a normal job.
| | 229 | jg | Yeah, I worked...
| | 230 | dg | Joined the establishment?
| | 231 | jg | Yeah. We worked a little while up in Chaco as a... forgotten whose class it was, wheather it was Hill's or Wes'. Anyway the University had certain rights up there you know. And so the way some of that got excavated... like okay you guys go and excavate this room during this semester.
| | 232 | tb | Um hum.
| | 233 | jg | And using your techniques that they were teaching you.
| | 234 | tb | (unintelligible)
| 235 | jg | And so we worked up there some, and there is another one right out east of... no it would be west of... you know the sand dunes over across the river from Albuquerque. Where those old volcanoes...
| | 236 | tb | Yeah. Yeah.
| | 237 | jg | Just a little farther west of that, Wes discovered from an airplane one day, what appeared to be a small ruin. So he got permission... we excavated a room there. Another place that he discovered by air, in fact he's the first archaeologist I knew that... who used aerial photography with a box camera... that's all he had. But right south of Bernalillo on that Mesa that runs along he got some pictures of that, and that turned out to be... I don't think its ever been really excavated, but there must have been 150 rooms in that place. And from the air you could see it. The pictures weren't anywhere near what we have now with aerial photography. It was just as plain as A,B,C.
| | 238 | tb | I'll be darned.
| | 239 | jg | He gave it a name at the time. My gosh, I can't remember what he called it. I don't even know if he ever even did any work out there.
| | 240 | tb | Um hum.
| | 241 | jg | But, I know that some has been done.
| | 242 | tb | Okay well, now...
| | 243 | jg | More or less substantiated with photography, without him really doing anything more.
| | 244 | tb | When you left Albuquerque was he still there? Bliss, Wesley?
| | 245 | jg | Um hum.
| | 246 | tb | Okay. Hibben and him had not got to the scrapping point that...
| | 247 | dg | Well, let me think. When I took Lonesome that was the summer that he left for Canada and so forth.
| | 248 | jg | And what summer was that?
| | 249 | dg | Well, it would have had... I'm just trying to remember. It would have had to have been '37.
| | 250 | jg | '37, wouldn't it, yeah.
| | 251 | dg | Have you run across any...
| | 252 | jg | Well...
| | 253 | tb | Yes, yes.
| | 254 | dg | Lonesome, the dog?
| | 255 | tb | No, no. But I've run across him going to Canada. Okay.
| | 256 | dg | Okay, he was getting an expedition ready to go there, and you couldn't go because you didn't have any money, wasn't that it? Or you had that job with the Smithsonian?
| | 257 | jg | I got a job with Smithsonian. This was excavating at Lindenmeier.
| | 258 | dg | Yes, But Wes came to town to bid Jim goodbye and he had a group, I don't...
| | 259 | tb | This is Albuquerque?
| | 260 | jg | No.
| | 261 | dg | Oh, no. Fort Collins.
| | 262 | tb | Oh you were back up here.
| | 263 | jg | Yeah.
| | 264 | dg | This was summer.
| | 265 | tb | Summertime, okay.
| | 266 | jg | See, this is my hometown.
| | 267 | tb | I see.
| | 268 | jg | So, he (Bliss) came back and brought his dog, Lonesome.
| | 269 | dg | Well he had... there were people in that car. I mean others that were... and they were on their way, and they had this German Shepherd, Lonesome.
| | 270 | tb | And they were headed for Canada? (tb)
| | 271 | dg | Yeah. And Lonesome had been to college (laughter). He went and he was a smart dog. And he... Wes approached him (jg) about taking Lonesome, and he said he couldn't. His parents couldn't take him and he wouldn't be there and it just didn't work out. Well, of course, then they next narrowed down on me, and my mother said, "no, not a dog like that". Anyway, I wound up taking Lonesome.
| | 272 | tb | And you... okay, Fort Collins is your home also?
| | 273 | dg | Oh, yes. We were born and raised here and so I inherited Lonesome, and he was a real character dog and we had him until he was 14 and we had to dispose of him. He had various illnesses and was losing his eyesight, his hearing and had skin problem; this was back East.
| | 274 | tb | Un hum.
| | 275 | dg | But anyway, when he was 14... we by this time were living in Maryland. But anyway, what was that? He let Lonesome out downtown on the street, and then he got out of town and called you or called me. I don't know which, and said...
| | 276 | tb | Lonesome's downtown, huh?
| | 277 | dg | He'd let... gotten out of the car, he didn't know what he was going to do, they were committed to make this trip, and would we please find him.
| | 278 | jg | What I was...
| | 279 | dg | And we found him.
| | 280 | tb | Dumb like a fox, huh?
| | 281 | jg | But it turned out that it was alright because he was a wonderful dog. He was great.
| | 282 | tb | I'll be darned.
| | 283 | jg | Well, anyway I...
| | 284 | tb | Well, for as long as you worked in the cave, Wesley Bliss was associated with the cave?
| | 285 | jg | That's right.
| | 286 | tb | Okay, so you probably didn't work in the cave after he went to Canada, which would have been '37?
| | 287 | jg | Yeah. Of course he came back to the university but I don't... I assume he finished his thesis... yeah, he's working for his Masters... because I know that's what he planned to do is go East for a Doctorate, which he never accomplished, as far as I know. Now, he might have gotten one from California, later on. That's what I always wondered.
| | 288 | dg | But, you see this trip to Canada and Alaska, then this brought up a whole new series of... how would you explain it, Jim? Ill feelings or the same thing... you know because here again he was one of the first as I understand it... wasn't he... to go up and...
| | 289 | jg | Well. He was simply trying to trace the... from the Bering... the culture as it, you know...
| | 290 | tb | Walked across the Bering Strait?
| | 291 | dg | Right, right. Which now is...
| | 292 | jg | There's evidence on the shore that "yeah this took place". He was inland and he went down the Yukon... and... came right down the... east side of the Rockies right on down back into the states. Found evidence in numerous places. These early, might say encampments of early man. And what his idea was, well he was just going to try to tie in this string of sites right on into Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico. Just a chronological type of thing where... based on the artifacts found you could correlate one, step-by-step progress of his people as they came down. I think he made some pretty good points on it because he did find... well since then they've found plenty evidence, I guess. It was a worthwhile project. Now that, I think the money for that came partly on this... he grant for his fellowship work. In those days it didn't take a whole lot of money.
| | 293 | tb | Um hum.
| | 294 | jg | Like nowadays you have to have at least a quarter million dollars worth of equipment or you wouldn't dare take off. He went with a bedroll and a knapsack.
| | 295 | tb | Yeah.
| | 296 | dg | I remember they told... he visited us when we lived in Kentucky... after we were married. And he and his wife, and one of the stories he told was that, how cold it was, up there, and they had to push a canoe... was it, I think it was the Rat River, but I'm not sure. And I remember he told that the way they were able to do it, they had bacon and they would take the bacon grease and rub on their legs to protect them.And then he told about... eating the mushrooms that caused such peculiar...
| | 297 | tb | Hallucinations?
| | 298 | dg | They could see... it was like you were looking through a magnifying glass, or something. Everything became very clear.
| | 299 | jg | It.s a wonder it didn't kill him.
| | 300 | tb | What do they call that today, those mushrooms that the kids use all the time? I can't... something.
| | 301 | jg | Yeah.
| | 302 | tb | Angel dust or... I don't know what it is.
| | 303 | jg | I just read this little article in the news a few days ago, arrested some guy in Denver for selling mushrooms.
| | 304 | dg | Oh, a child... wasn't it, in Denver that a child is in the hospital. I read in the paper.
| | 305 | jg | Yeah. But anyway, they caught the guy that was selling them.
| | 306 | dg | But, I think...
| | 297 | jg | But, I think that early antagonism between Hibben and Bliss kind of started this way.
| | 308 | tb | Before you... could I use the restroom?
| | 309 | jg | Oh sure.
| | 310 | tb | And then I'm all ears. (I leave the room and Jim and Doris continue to talk.)
| 311 | dg | The man in the picture in this book has to be hisfather.Don't you think?
| | 312 | jg | Yeah, you want to get that book out...
| | 313 | dg | I'm sure it must be, it looks very... Was he a Senior?
| | 314 | jg | No he was a Freshman. He wasn't in my class, because when I went there I was a Sophomore.
| | 315 | dg | Well, you find it.
| | 316 | tb | (I return to the room.) Looks like you got a house full of kids you raised.
| | 317 | jg | Yeah.
| | 318 | dg | We just got back from a trip back East taking care of some of the grandchildren for a month while their parents went on a trip.
| | 319 | jg | Was that your father?
| | 320 | tb | No Sir.
| | 321 | dg | There was another Baker in there. Jim was looking through there at the other one.
| | 322 | jg | There's another one. Let's see, let's look under June.
| | 323 | tb | How old are you, sir?
| | 324 | jg | Uh, 69.
| | 325 | tb | Well, he was 68. He's 68 now.
| | 326 | jg | Well, then he would have been...
| | 327 | tb | And he didn't miss any school, so if you didn't either he ought to be one year younger than you.
| | 328 | jg | Now let's see, when this... I don't even know how come I got a hold of this thing. Nobody from my class is in this thing. I know one reason, none of us had any money to get our pictures taken. But it's real funny, I went through this the other day after you called (I first contacted the Greenacres by phone to set up this interview), and just happened to notice that there's nobody that was in my class that's in here.
| | 329 | tb | Are they in alphabetical order? Yeah, they are. Okay.
| | 330 | jg | Well, let's see, these are sophomores.
| | 331 | tb | Do they show Freshmen, maybe? I'll tell you one...
| | 332 | jg | Yeah, this is Freshmen back here.
| | 333 | tb | Okay.
| | 334 | jg | Now, let's go to the Juniors.
| | 335 | tb | I don't know that he ever made his Junior year.
| | 336 | jg | Well another picture... another Baker here, it's a different person.
| | 337 | tb | This is the start of the Juniors here?
| | 338 | jg | Yeah.
| | 339 | tb | No, (unintelligible) can take a peek.
| | 340 | dg | Start with the Seniors and...
| | 341 | tb | There, right there.
| | 342 | jg | Where is he?
| | 343 | tb | That's him right there.
| | 344 | jg | Okay.
| | 345 | dg | That's, I think that's the picture... I told Jim...
| | 346 | tb | That's right. He went to Panhandle A&M Junior College before he went here. That's the reason.
| | 347 | dg | See I told Jim when you left the room, I said you looked just like the picture. Well then I didn't know where the picture was, I got that out to find it.
| | 348 | jg | Well, let's see. What year was this, '37. See my class, I would have been a Senior, if I'd stayed, in '38.
| | 349 | tb | Um hum. Let's look here just a second further, okay. Do they have any... Okay, that's my mother.
| | 350 | jg | That's your mother?
| | 351 | tb | That's my mother and that's my father.
| | 352 | dg | Well, I'll be.
| | 353 | tb | And I guess they were married.
| | 354 | jg | Her name wasn't Baker?
| | 355 | tb | No, her name was Antoine.
| | 356 | jg | Okay. Well, I'll be darned. That's very interesting. Your dad doesn't have one of these?
| | 357 | tb | You know, I don't know. When you were a kid at your parents' house, you're not interest in things like this, you know.
| | 358 | dg | This is what we found out, that when kids get to be teenagers they're not interested.
| | 359 | jg | That's his mother right beside his father.
| | 360 | dg | Oh, how neat.
| | 361 | jg | We just didn't know that.
| | 362 | dg | Yes, well that's great.
| | 363 | jg | Well I want to go back to the Sandia matter.
| | 364 | tb | Yeah, Hibben and Bliss scrapping again.
| | 365 | jg | I think that the controversy got started...
| | 366 | dg | I can see the similarity between your looks...
| | 367 | jg | You see, that there Hibben was actually a full-fledged professor at the University, instructor. Dr. Brand was head of the department. But I think how it really got started is Bliss never told Hibben that he knew about this cave and we were going up there on weekends, see.
| | 368 | tb | Oh.
| | 369 | jg | And I think what happened someway or another a little information leaked out and Hibben found out about it and hit the roof, see? And then it was just strict mudslinging on both sides from then on, until I left anyway.
| | 370 | dg | Well and that continued...
| | 371 | jg | I think that's where it kind of got started.
| | 372 | dg | ... after Wes got to California, yousee.And after this trip up there because of, we used to have, and I have no idea where it is... we used to have some letters and literature about that. And Wes wrote to Jim and I mean he was... I think it upset him greatly.
| | 373 | jg | Oh yeah.
| | 374 | tb | Let me show you something here. I have some stuff. And I can understand why Wesley would have been very, very upset, okay.
| | 375 | dg | I think he felt like...
| | 376 | tb | See Wes published this, okay, in 1940. ("A Chronological Problem Presented by Sandia Cave, New Mexico." American Antiquity 5 (3):200-1.) My dad found this somewhere, okay. And it's basically discusses Sandia Cave somewhat. Some of the stratigraphy and stuff in it, okay. I made some notes. Let me see if I can find my notes I made on it. Here, here's some notes I've made. This kind of summarizes that article, okay. And you'll pardon my spelling, I'm an engineer so...
| | 377 | jg | That's alright. I had a brother-in-law who's deceasednow.He was an engineer. Beautiful printing, just like it come off a machine. The only thing was wrong with it, about every third word was misspelled.
| | 378 | tb | I know, I know.
| | 379 | dg | Tony, will you have some more rolls?
| | 380 | tb | Not right now. Here let me help you take it in...
| | 381 | dg | Oh, that's no problem. I can handle it.
| | 382 | tb | ... while he takes a look at this. (I help Doris carry some dishes to the kitchen while Jim reads the above mentioned 1940 paper by Bliss.)
| | 363 | tb | (When I return, I ask?) Are you down into this yet?
| | 384 | jg | Um hum.
| | 385 | tb | Okay. Well see Bliss did this (1940 "A Chronological Problem Presented by Sandia Cave, New Mexico." American Antiquity 5 (3):200-1.), okay. And for what reason, I don't know, but after this came out, then this Brand said, "hey that ain't right at all", okay. And he put this out. (1940 "Regarding Sandia Cave" Correspondence in American Antiquity 5 (4):339). But that ain't the butt-buster. Here, I'll show you the butt-buster. (Pause while I look for Hibben's 1941 "Sandia Cave." Correspondence in American Antiquity 6 (3):266. I don't find it.) And then Wesley put out this next one here (1940 "Sandia Cave." Correspondence in American Antiquity 6 (1):77-78.), okay; which was a rebuttal to Brand's. Here I got this one summarized, I think. Let me see here, okay. Here, and once again, I summarized what was interesting to me.
| | 386 | jg | Um hum.
| | 387 | dg | See, the war changed a great deal and not only taking lives, but it mixed people up into so many different places other than where they had been. So, quite a few people that we lost complete track of, and Wes was just one of them. His children would be grown. Probably ...
| | 388 | tb | Let's see, we read this. This is a summary of that one there, okay. And then Brand put out this little rebuttal, which is this one here that I summarized, okay. Just a couple briefly. (Same articles discussed in entry 385.) Excuse me I'm sorry.
| | 389 | dg | No, that's alright. I just...
| | 390 | tb | You just lost Wesley...
| | 391 | dg | Yes, yes. And he came from the Greeley area and there are still Blisses over there, but we just never gone over there to date. I'm sure that somebody over there... and we would love to know what happened to him because...
| | 392 | tb | Let me... how I'm doing here? (I am checking the recorder.)
| | 393 | dg | Used to correspond and so forth and then...
| | 394 | tb | Did you turn that over for me? (Did you reverse the tape?)
| | 395 | dg | No. (The recorder stops at this point and I reverse the tape and begin side 2.)
| | 396 | dg | I can't even remember what Wes' wife's name was. Jim?
| | 397 | jg | Oh gosh. I was the one that set the romance up, you know.
| | 398 | dg | I know, that's why I thought you surely could...
| | 399 | jg | Shirley.
| | 400 | dg | Shirley?
| | 401 | jg | Yeah, that was her name. Yeah Shirley. Shirley Bliss.
| | 402 | dg | He was so shy around girls that...
| | 403 | jg | Well, he was shy. But anyway she was in his class, one of his classes. I think it was probably Archaeological Techniques because he had a big class. Everybody in the university wanted to take that one. So one day I was talking to him and I said, "You know that girl that sits up there in front, Shirley?" (Yep) I said, "Well what's going on between the two of you, boy she's just, she's struck dumb over you." (What?) I said, "Well, if you can't see it while you're standing up there talking I don't know what's wrong with you." Well, next class he got to looking at her and he almost forgot what he was suppose to talk about, you know. This went on for a few weeks, and one day he went to ask her to go to the Student Union and have some coffee, so she did. And this kept going on day after day; coffee , coffee. Pretty soon a few days... first thing I knew, they were getting married.
| | 404 | tb | I'll be darned. Just teasing, huh?
| | 405 | jg | Yeah. But you know I never did tell him that. I think he got to looking at her and she said, well what'' he looking at me for.
| | 406 | tb | She got to looking at him, huh? ... I'll be darned.
| | 407 | jg | You know when you're trying to become an archaeologist, you know, it's the orneriest bunch of people in the world. I used to think they were the biggest pile of drunks I ever saw in my life until I worked with this bunch of astronomers for a year. Astronomers got us beat.
| | 408 | tb | Well, that's interesting. My father agrees with you on the first. He says they're the biggest bunch of drunkards, but I never heard that about astronomers.
| | 409 | jg | Oh boy. I tell you I...
| | 410 | dg | They're not all stargazers.
| | 411 | jg | ... worked with them 8 years down in Arizona and they're something.
| | 412 | tb | Well, anyway. So Brand put that (1940 "Regarding Sandia Cave" Correspondence in American Antiquity 5 (4):339.) out and so Wesley Bliss sent back this here (1940 "Sandia Cave." Correspondence in American Antiquity 6 (1):77-78), okay? And he said, no. He says dammit, I got it right. Is what he's saying in this article.
| | 413 | dg | I'll wait until Jim's through and may I read this?
| | 414 | tb | Well I'll get you started right here on this (Bliss 1940 "A Chronological Problem Presented by Sandia Cave, New Mexico." American Antiquity 5 (3):200-1.)
| | 415 | dg | Okay, I'm interested...
| | 416 | tb | This is the one he put out first, okay?
| | 417 | dg | Okay.
| | 418 | tb | And I have summarized it here... in what was important to me.
| | 419 | dg | Now, I have to get... now this is the date... is 1940?
| | 420 | tb | Um hum.
| | 421 | dg | Okay, that would coincide with... now let me just think back a minute. We were married the spring of '38. He (Bliss) visited us the spring of '39, right? I think. So this would have been... we had other correspondence with him, but this would have been after.
| | 422 | tb | Um hum.
| | 423 | dg | Okay.
| | 424 | tb | Like I said, you can probably read this and kind-of get the jest of that article easier.
| | 425 | dg | Probably, yeah.
| | 426 | tb | If you'll pardon my grammer and spelling.
| | 427 | dg | Sure. (There is a long pause in the conversation while Jim and Doris read the material.)
| | 428 | dg | I remember this discussion about the rodents and the breaking through and so forth.
| | 429 | tb | Well, at the end of looking at all of this I'm going to ask you which one's right.
| | 430 | jg | Well I can tell you this, that there certainly was evidence of rodents having burrowed their way through this...
| | 431 | tb | Limestone calcite layer.
| | 432 | jg | You know, the way I get it from the way Brand was writing, and Hibben... you would visualize this as being a solid mass with no cracks, fissures or anything. That wasn't true. As Wes points out there were rodent dung and piles of cracked up pinon nuts where the squirrels had hauled them in; mixed up with what really appeared like... some of these bones turned out to be Pleistocene animals, that's true, but they were not what you might call in-situ, because they were just scattered around with pinon nuts, dung and everything else. Some of them, I think, showed pretty good evidence that they had been gnawed on a little bit before they were so calcified.
| | 433 | tb | Okay. Well now, this... I'm left with the impression that there was this hard calcite limestone layer and then on top of that was the recent deposition, deposits, okay?
| | 434 | jg | Um hum.
| | 435 | tb | But you fellows broke through this hard layer...
| | 436 | jg | In some cases it had been broken through...
| | 437 | tb | Okay, and you did find these Pleistocene bones in the recent layer, or below this, that the rodents were kicking around, or do you recall?
| | 438 | jg | It would be in the recent...
| | 439 | tb | Okay, And what Bliss is saying that they had drug the bones out and put it on top.
| | 440 | jg | I think that makes sense, because as I recall, that's where they were. But when you finally got rid of all that material and went into... well it was sort of a, this ocher deposit; nothing in that except this plain old, old yellow ocher dust.
| | 441 | tb | Now where was this in relation to this hard calcite?
| | 442 | jg | That was below. That's what we called travertine at that time, the calcite deposit.
| | 443 | tb | Okay.
| | 444 | jg | Some of it was beautiful by the way. Cut, saw it, polish it, you know, beautiful travertine. Under that was this layer of ocher which would be, well depending on the slope of the floor, I assume it might be an inch thick; it might be seven or eight inches thick.
| | 445 | tb | Was this immediately under the calcite?
| | 446 | jg | Yeah, as I recall.
| | 447 | tb | There was nothing between it... the calcite and the ocher?
| | 448 | jg | Yeah. Then below that was, what you might call a productive layer, showing occupation prior to the time that the ocher was deposited, and on top of that the calcite was deposited, prior to that time. That's what we were really after.
| | 449 | tb | So you were after this... ("Productive layer" located below the ocher layer.)
| | 450 | jg | Because there wasn't really anything above that, scattered flint fragments of this or that, maybe a...
| | 451 | tb | Nothing Diagnostic?
| | 452 | jg | No, because I think Wes was right, it was a disturbed area.
| | 453 | tb | Um hum.
| | 454 | jg | You could separate all of this material.You could put all the bison bones in this pile, the deer teeth in this pile, the bird bones in this pile, the dung in this pile, but you see, you don't have anything. Just got all this stuff.
| | 455 | tb | Okay.
| | 456 | jg | But after you clean that off and get rid of the ocher, you come into what you can call an undisturbed area. Of which there was, of course, as everybody found later on, plenty of proof that cave men occupied that... prehistoric man.
| | 457 | tb | Okay.
| | 458 | jg | They found the stuff in-situ. One of those hearth... we uncovered a hearth, oh, not too far from the entrance.
| | 459 | tb | Below the yellow ocher?
| | 460 | jg | Um hum. It hadn't been disturbed. I mean, it was undoubtedly a hearth that had been used.
| | 461 | tb | Was it just charcoal, or did it have rocks around it? Or do you recall?
| | 462 | jg | No it was just a...
| | 463 | tb | Just a burnt spot?
| | 464 | jg | Yea. Well it's a... they, whoever built the fires, had in the a... what you might call the original floor of the cave. You know the floor of that cave wasn't smooth like this table, it undulated. This was in... the hearth...
| | 465 | tb | A pothole or something?
| | 466 | jg | They had found a place to hold the fire, you know. A basin-like type thing. I don't recall if you can say a true circle or...
| | 467 | tb | Just a recessed...
| | 468 | jg | An oval... but, anyway, it was a recess in the floor.
| | 469 | tb | Okay.
| | 470 | jg | Which just makes perfect sense, forsure.Why wouldn't you put it down if you saw...
| | 471 | tb | Beats packing rocks in.
| | 472 | jg | Yeah. I don't remember, now they might have found later on some hearths way back in there, banked up with rocks. I personally never found anything like that.
| | 473 | tb | Get her up to speed now. (Changing my attention to Doris).
| | 474 | dg | Now this...
| | 475 | tb | Okay, now...
| | 476 | dg | In Brand's letter (1940 article) he mentions that Bliss had not been connected with the University since he returned from the '37, '38 expedition.
| | 477 | tb | Which was in Canada?
| | 478 | dg | Right. So now, I'm sitting here thinking that when we last saw Wes... I'm a year behind. He... it must have been after this article came out because I'm positive we saw that (article) when he was here. Jim, don't you remember? Either he sent... I'll tell you what it was. It must have been... we were... we moved into Hager's house.
| | 479 | jg | Yes.
| | 480 | dg | And it was Halloween and I remember that very clearly, so it must have been Halloween of '39. And then he must have sent this to you or you had this. You have read this before, haven't you?
| | 481 | jg | Um hum. I think... you see, he (Wes) wrote to me and asked me to write to Dr. Howard my impressions of some of this junk going on.
| | 482 | tb | One of these (articles) he says that the students, his fellow students, will testify to his side of the argument.
| | 483 | jg | Yeah, and I don't have a copy. I used to... I think mine was published in American Antiquity.
| | 484 | tb | Your rebuttal?
| | 485 | jg | Um hum.
| | 486 | tb | Okay.
| | 487 | jg | It's not very long, you know...
| | 488 | dg | Why I...
| | 489 | jg | Two or three paragraphs. Just a...
| | 490 | dg | Why I remember the time element, Tony, now this again just a little silly story.
| | 491 | tb | Um hum.
| | 492 | dg | This gives you an idea of Wes. We lived in this mountain town, Paintsville Kentucky, and Jim was excavating Indian mounds up there at the university. And we had neighbors who we had gotten into trouble with them over our dogs, this Lonesome and then our dog whipped their dog and...
| | 493 | tb | They didn't like it.
| | 494 | dg | So we used to do all kinds of things to irritate them because they did things to irritate us.
| | 495 | tb | Um hum.
| 496 | dg | So we had been telling Wes about all of this when he visited, he and his wife, and so all was still this one night, it was after 9:00, and the people next door had their shades pulled and everything was still and Jim and Wes went out on our side porch beside their house, turned a washtub upside down and beat on it and sang a rain song. And so, I know it was Halloween. (Lots of laughter.)
| | 497 | tb | I'll be darned.
| | 498 | dg | And so this, now see this came out in 1940. He must have sent it to Jim after that because we lost... see the war came in '41.
| | 499 | jg | He wrote this (1940 "Sandia Cave." Correspondence in American Antiquity 6 (1):77-78.), when he was in Pennsylvania. That's the reason this Howard, as I recall was head of the department of Anthropology. You know, I had met him previously. We weren't friends or anything. I just met him, you know, through Wes and he certainly didn't seem like the type of guy that was going to cut your throat or anything. He was a very fine person I thought. That's about all I know about him. Except I did write that for American Antiquity.
| | 500 | tb | You did?
| | | | | | | | | |