Q: Is it coincidental that the site at Chaco Canyon was abandoned at about the same time as the purported departure from Aztlán?

A: The history of movements from Chaco Canyon, and from the Four Corners region, and other areas, is still shrouded in mystery. It’s shrouded in mystery partly because many of the Pueblo peoples will not reveal their detailed oral histories. They do not want anthropologists or others to know those detailed oral histories, and as a result, we do not know for sure where each pueblo originated, that is of today’s pueblos. It’s very likely that they do have detailed accounts of how they migrated to where they are today. The general belief is that most of them probably came from the Chaco region or from the Four Corners region.
Now, the Navajo also have a tradition that one of their clans was originally known as the Turkey Clan, but came to be known as the Quiya Ani Clan, which means tall house people, because they originated at Tall House in the Chaco area. They came from Tall House, and migrated out. And as they migrated, they said “well, we’re from Tall House.” And so instead of being the Turkey People, they became known as the Quiya Ani. The western Apache also have the same clan. According to Carl Gorman, my old friend, who was a member of the Quiya Ani Clan, they also had a tradition that they migrated all the way to the Pacific coast, and then returned to the Arizona area. So that you have very elaborate migrations going on in the area. And you have people probably changing languages as they perhaps become under different religious influences, as they intermarry with other people. The Navajo, for example, who have very detailed origin stories about the region, sometimes meet cliff dwellers who speak the same language that they do. Other times they meet people who speak different languages that they don’t understand. They have people that come and join the Navajo from the Colorado River, for instance, so that it’s a complicated thing. And we really can’t, I think, put together the detailed history of the region, as long as the Pueblo people want to keep their traditions to themselves.
We have to remember, also, that there are many pueblos to the south that were inhabited by people whose languages we don’t know today, throughout the Mogollon Mountain area of Arizona. You have pueblos that are commonly ascribed to a people as Salado People, partly because of the Salt River. There is some indication that some of those people might have spoken O’odham, for example, Pima. Tepejuan language. It is very possible that some of the Salado Puebloans spoke in O’odham language. Which is again, a group of people that, some of them, at least, end up in the Valley of Mexico. It’s possible that some of them spoke an Athapaskan language, and they certainly were part of the same cultural tradition as Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, and Casa Grande in southern Arizona.

Q: Would you rule out that some group of Anasazi, or people from the Four Corners area, might have been the Mexitíns?

A: I would not rule out that Pueblo people, who are called Anasazi, might have been among those who migrated to Mexico. The people who eventually ended up in the Valley of Mexico, of course, are made up of a number of different tribes or tribelets. We don’t know that they all spoke the same language, even, for example. Although we assume that they probably did. And after migrating that distance, they certainly would’ve all been able to be multi-lingual. Probably they spoke many languages, as typical of Indian people of that area. I think that it is quite possible that they were among the Pueblo peoples at that period of time.

Q: One last thing. The Fremont people. Are you familiar with, with them?

A: Slightly. You mean the prehistoric people that lived up in the Utah--

Q: In the Utah area. And I presume that they’re named Fremont after John C.

A: That’s the Fremont, I think the plateau, or something like that, the basin is named after him, I think.
I think that it’s very important to know that all these people, every time they find one of these ruins, they ascribe it to the Aztecs? That was a part of common Mexican folklore. Like when Anza was traveling, of course, his soldiers, and almost all the people that were with him, were Mexicanos. Even though he was a Spaniard, as I recall. But all the rest were Mexicanos. Mostly Indians. And so that’s what they thought. That was the general belief, that the Aztecs had come from this region, had been up in that region. It’s just such a powerful, obviously epic, belief.
I’m trying to see here if there [are] any references in here to the Mexican language. The people who lived in the Great Salt Lake area, in the Late Historic Period, say, the 1770's, when the Escalante expedition gets up into that area, are basically, Shoshone people in the northern end of the area, and Utes, Utes Barbones or Bearded Utes, living to the south of Salt Lake City. The Utes Barbones probably are people that we would call Paiutes today. But for the Spaniards, Ute and Paiute were, essentially, the same people. Their way of life may have, at one time, had some Puebloan characteristics, because we know that the Pueblo cultures extended up into the Mauopa Valley of southern Nevada, and even up into southern-most Utah and parts of Colorado. But by the time that the Spaniards get into the area, they’ve acquired horses, and they’re primarily hunting and fishing peoples. They’re not growing much in the way of crops, although agriculture does extend somewhat up into that area.

Q: Would these people have been privy to the kind of farming technology that others, like the Anasazi and other people, would have had?

A: Not necessarily would these people have the kind of agricultural knowledge that the people in the Valley of Mexico later [have]. Or the Anasazi, for that matter. The Chichimec people, who, again, play a very very important role in all of the myths of the Valley of Mexico, appear to have been a people with only a marginal interest in agriculture. They lived in desert areas, where they probably did some farming along the washes, and so on, but primarily they were probably hunting and gathering peoples. Zacatecos, for example, and Pames, Juamares. So there wouldn’t necessarily have been a strong agricultural tradition. What you find throughout desert areas is that all people will do a little bit of farming when they can. They’ll do a little bit of farming in desert washes and canyons, letting old people stay and take care of things and watch them, but the main life support comes from hunting and gathering of wild foods. They know about agriculture, and they can make the transition very rapidly if they’re in a better environment.