Edgar Lee Hewett (November 23, 1865 – December 31, 1946) was an American archaeologist and anthropologist whose focus was the Native American communities of New Mexico and the southwestern United States. He is best known for his role in gaining passage of the Antiquities Act, a pioneering piece of legislation for the conservation movement; as the founder and first director of the Museum of New Mexico; and as the first president of the New Mexico Normal School, now New Mexico Highlands University.
Hewett's dealings with Maria Martinez, the matriarch potter of San Ildefonso Pueblo, were instrumental in establishing San Ildefonso as a center for Native American pottery. He helped stimulate the rebirth of pottery as a significant folk art form in the region.
Hewett also had a significant role in the formation of Bandelier National Monument and Chaco Culture National Historical Park, established to preserve extensive prehistoric ruins of the Pueblo people whom he studied. The Antiquities Act, which he had worked on, authorized the establishment by the executive branch of such national monuments.
Early years Hewett was born in Warren County, Illinois, on November 23, 1865. He was educated at Tarkio College in Missouri and thereafter settled in Florence, Colorado, as a member of the school system. He eventually became superintendent of the Florence schools. In 1894 he became a member of the faculty of the Colorado State Normal School in Greeley, Colorado (today the University of Northern Colorado), where he received a master's degree in 1893.
Hewett's 1891 marriage to Cora Whitford proved eventful for his eventual career and prominence. Cora was described in contemporary accounts as "frail"—frequently (and almost certainly in this case) a euphemism for a person suffering tuberculosis—and at her doctors' advice, the Hewetts started to spend time in the warmer climate of northern New Mexico. Tuberculosis was considered incurable as antibiotics had not been discovered. As a result, Edgar Hewett was exposed to, and became fascinated by, the prehistoric ruins in Frijoles Canyon near Santa Fe—a site that would eventually become the centerpiece attraction of Bandelier National Monument.
Pajarito Plateau
Hewett's interest in Frijoles Canyon was timely, for ethnologist Adolph Bandelier had just started to describe, through both scientific papers and his novel The Delight Makers (1890), prehistoric life on the Pajarito Plateau. Hewett came to know Bandelier and consider him his mentor in his own studies. By 1896 Hewett himself was conducting field work on the Plateau, although he continued to defer to Bandelier's expertise on the region for many years.
Hewett rapidly came to believe that the Plateau's archaeological sites constituted a national resource that should be preserved, and in the 1890s he advocated creation of a "Pajarito National Park" that would protect essentially the entire Plateau. However, the time was not yet ripe for such a step. Contemporary agriculture on the Plateau was not exactly widespread, but such as it was, the ranchers relied upon it for sustenance, and perceived a threat to their economic well-being if the land was put off limits to ranching and farming. (Many years later, Valles Caldera National Preserve was established in the adjoining Jemez Mountains with language that explicitly mandated promoting the economic interests of the region in terms of agriculture and forestry though that law was replaced by new legislation in 2015 moving the Valles Caldera National Preserve to the National Park Service without the economic language.)United States Public Law 106-248 (2000); text available at http://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/laws/106/publ248.106.txt (last accessed November 29, 2007). These pressures, combined with opposition from Santa Clara Pueblo, prevented Pajarito National Park from being approved at that time.
New Mexico Normal School In 1893 the New Mexico territorial legislature, anticipating the day when the Territory would achieve statehood, authorized the founding of a normal school at Las Vegas, New Mexico. The New Mexico Normal School, as it was originally called (renamed New Mexico Normal University in 1902, later becoming New Mexico Highlands University as it is today), took some time to form, but was ready for its first class of students in 1898. By this time Hewett had achieved a modicum of fame, at least locally, and had become friendly with some of the power brokers who were behind the creation of the Normal School. He was appointed in 1897 as the first president of the New Mexico Normal School.
Hewett's time at the head of the Normal School can be viewed as generally successful. The college was organized along conventional lines for normal colleges, and commenced with several areas of pedagogy directed to the production of degreed teachers, who were needed by the state-to-be. The enrollment increased rapidly and for a time exceeded that of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. However, Hewett fell afoul of some of the powerful figures of the region who disagreed with his increasingly vocal position that the archaeological resources of New Mexico Territory required preservation. He was also criticized for an "unconventional" approach to pedagogy—a euphemism for his enthusiasm for taking students into the field (at the Pajarito Plateau) at summer camps, a highly innovative practice at the time and one that reinforced the concerns that his critics had about his enthusiasm for preserving the sites there. Particularly contentious was that he included women in his field camps. By early 1903 he was pressured out of the president's office. Hewett is the namesake for buildings at today's New Mexico Highlands University.
Hewett's interest in the Pajarito Plateau intensified during his time at the Normal School. He enlisted students at the Normal School in the surveying of the Plateau, which gave him a basis for putting his studies there on a more scientific footing. He also learned the value of working "the smoke-filled room" to achieve support for his goals. This was one of the traits that set him apart from his contemporaries such as Richard Wetherill, and his skills contributed to the next phase of his career.
Antiquities Act
Upon stepping down from his position at the Normal School, Hewett decided that he needed to improve his academic credentials in order to advance. He earned a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Geneva in 1904. He spent little time in residence at the university, developing his dissertation mainly by collating a number of papers which he had written previously (a practice that, in the eyes of Hewett's many critics, would characterize and compromise much of his later writing as well) and having them translated into the required French. The resulting dissertation, bearing the title Les Communautés anciennes dans le desert Americain, was favorably received, and sufficed to earn Hewett his degree despite his inability to defend it in the customary French.
Meanwhile, the political landscape that had prevented the creation of the Pajarito National Park was starting to change. John F. Lacey, a congressman from Iowa, had visited northern New Mexico in 1902 to see the effects of pot hunting on ancient sites, and had enlisted Hewett as a guide. He was so impressed that he retained Hewett to report to Congress on the archaeological resources of the region.
By this time Hewett had become more adept at working the political system, and his skills were starting to show some results, frictions at the Normal School notwithstanding. He had traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1900 (no small journey at the time) and befriended the prominent anthropologist Alice Cunningham Fletcher among others. In 1902, he wrote a pointed complaint about the pot-hunting practices, which he believed were destroying resources at Chaco Canyon. Wetherill and the Hyde Expedition were forbidden to excavate there.
This set the stage for Hewett to deliver a truly influential report to Congress—and he delivered. On September 3, 1904, freshly back from Geneva, Hewett submitted to the United States General Land Office (GLO), which at this time had jurisdiction over government lands in the Southwest, a "Memorandum concerning the historic and prehistoric ruins of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, and their preservation."General Land Office Circular Relating to Historic and Prehistoric Ruins of the Southwest and Their Preservation (Washington, 1904) This report rapidly made its way to Congress and Lacey, who was moved by Hewett's declaration in the Memorandum that "it will be a lasting reproach upon our Government if it does not use its power to restrain" the destruction of the ruins.
Hewett spent most of late 1904 and 1905 shuttling between Washington and New Mexico, helping Lacey with a nascent Act of Congress at the one and continuing his archaeological fieldwork at the other. This was a time of personal misfortune for him, however, as Cora Hewett's illness had become terminal. While in Geneva, she had to use a wheelchair much of the time; after their return to the United States, she entered a sanatorium in Santa Fe, New Mexico for a time. She died in the fall of 1905. Hewett kept on working.
The result was the Antiquities Act of 1906, a towering piece of American legislation by any standards.Nation marks Lacey Act centennial, 100 years of federal wildlife law enforcement. US Fish and Wildlife Service press release. May 30, 2000. As a result of the Antiquities Act, it was now no longer necessary for Congress to authorize permanent withdrawal of land for the purpose of preservation of cultural or other resources; a presidential proclamation would now suffice. This apparent short-circuiting of separation of powers was controversial at the time, and has remained so for the 100 years since its passage, but Lacey's experienced hand guided the bill through Congress, meeting the objections of its critics and propelling it toward passage and presidential signature. President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act into law on June 8, 1906, and Hewett's place in the history of the conservation movement was secured. Ironically, Roosevelt's first use of the Antiquities Act was not to protect one of the ruins that Hewett had made his life's passion, but rather to establish Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming, a site of more geological and scenic interest than archaeological significance. However, the Act would soon be put, repeatedly and vigorously, to its (or at least Hewett's) intended purpose.
Building the national monuments
The first archaeological site to be preserved under the Antiquities Act was the Arizona complex that would become the centerpiece of the eponymous Montezuma Castle National Monument. Hewett knew of Montezuma Castle from his work inventorying the Southwest for the GLO and Lacey, and he knew that it was not only archaeologically significant but also imperiled by aggressive pot hunting (sometimes using dynamite to knock down walls so that rooms within could be excavated). Hewett lent his support to the creation of this national monument, which came into being in 1907.