28 Facts About Richard Wetherill

Richard Wetherill, a member of a Colorado ranching family, was an amateur archaeologist who discovered, researched and excavated sites associated with the Ancient Pueblo People.

Richard Wetherill is credited with the rediscovery of Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde in Colorado and was responsible for initially selecting the term Anasazi, Navajo for ancient enemies, as the name for these ancient people.

Richard Wetherill excavated Kiet Seel ruin, now in Navajo National Monument in northeastern Arizona, and Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico.

Richard Wetherill was criticized as a "pot hunter" by his archaeologist competitors, although many of the artifacts he found were sold or donated to prominent museums and his work was often financed or overseen by museums.

Richard Wetherill's work was important in securing the designation of Mesa Verde as a National Park and Chaco Canyon as a National Monument.

When Richard Wetherill was one year old, his family moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Richard Wetherill married Marietta Palmer on December 12,1896 in Sacramento, California.

The Richard Wetherill family grazed their cattle along the Mancos River south of their ranch.

The ancient ruins in the canyon were known to travelers and the Richard Wetherill brothers were enthusiastic seekers of ruins and artifacts.

Cliff Palace, named by Richard Wetherill, is the largest cliff dwelling in the United States and had been undisturbed for almost 700 years since abandoned by the Ancestral Puebloans.

Richard Wetherill offered a collection of artifacts to the Smithsonian Institution, but funds to purchase them were not available.

Richard Wetherill described the landscape and ruins in an 1890 article and later in an 1892 book, The Land of the Cliff-Dwellers, which he illustrated with hand-drawn maps and personal photographs.

Richard Wetherill named the cliff dwellers the Anasazi, the Navajo term for "ancient enemy," and would coin the term "basket people" for his discoveries of a pre-cliff dweller people later known as Basket Makers.

In 1892, Wetherill met Frederick E Hyde, a New York physician with an interest in archaeology.

Hyde, his sons, and Richard Wetherill founded the Hyde Exploring Expedition, Hyde specified that all artifacts, notes, and records were to be turned over to the American Museum of Natural History.

Richard Wetherill led a team that excavated Grand Gulch in Utah in 1893 and 1894.

George Pepper, a 23-year old employee of the Museum who had never been in New Mexico, was appointed to lead the expedition, and Richard Wetherill was relegated to a secondary position of supervising the excavations by Navajo laborers.

Richard Wetherill excavated the Pueblo Bonito great house and at the end of the first season sent a railroad freight car of artifacts to the American Museum.

Richard Wetherill opened a trading post at Chaco Canyon utilizing the rooms at Pueblo Bonito to store goods.

Richard Wetherill used wooden beams from the structures of the ruin to build a three room house as his trading post and as living accommodations for Pepper and Richard Wetherill, his wife Marietta, infant son, and a nanny.

Richard Wetherill was called "Anasazi" by the Navajo, and he adopted the name for the culture he was excavating.

Richard Wetherill accumulated a large number of livestock, which caused friction with the Navajos as his livestock was competing with theirs for the sparse pasturage near Chaco Canyon.

Richard Wetherill was criticized by the superintendent of the Navajo Reservation who apparently saw Wetherill as a competitor for influence among the Navajos.

In 1907 Richard Wetherill relinquished his claim on the ruins in Chaco Canyon, contingent on its becoming a National Park.

In 1910, Richard Wetherill was still living in Chaco Canyon, homesteading and operating a trading post at Pueblo Bonito.

Richard Wetherill was owed more than eleven thousand dollars by Navajos, Hispanics, and Anglos.

Little of the money owed Richard Wetherill was ever collected by his widow who lived in modest circumstances, dying in Albuquerque in 1954.

Richard Wetherill's heirs donated a large collection of artifacts to the University of New Mexico in 1954.