Remembering Emil Haury

32 ARIZONA ANTHROPOLOGIST CENTENNIAL Remembering Emil Haury Raymond H. Thompson Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Former Director of the School of Anthropology & Arizona State Museum University of Arizona I am honored and pleased to Cave in the Arizona State Muse- have this opportunity to review um, and greatly facilitated my the life of Emil Haury, but first I pursuit of you know whom. At must conform to the ethical stan- the end of the following summer, dards of modern scholarship and Emil played a key role in getting disclose to you that I am an un- us married. He consoled her par- abashed great admirer of him. ents by assuring them that the im- Although I try to avoid using poverished graduate student who the perpendicular pronoun, a was taking their youngest daugh- brief explanation is in order. After ter Molly far away from the ranch a tour of duty in the north Pacific was somehow reliable. He bought with the U.S. Navy Seabees, I re- me a suit, a shirt, and a tie, drove turned to Tufts University to com- me to Tombstone to watch us get plete the education that had been married on this very day sixty-six interrupted by World War II. I ap- years ago, and then put us on the plied to Haury’s new archaeolog- train to Cambridge so that I could ical field school at Point of Pines complete my graduate studies at in Arizona. He accepted me as one Harvard University. Emil, who of the twenty lucky students and I continued to foster my career, spent the summer of 1947 happily soon hired me as an Assistant confirming my boyhood desire to Professor and within a few years be an archaeologist. It was there asked me to take on the task of that I found the rancher’s daugh- nurturing and expanding the fine ter who brightened my life for anthropological program Cum- three score and five years. mings and he had established at When I arrived at Point of Pines the University of Arizona. Clear- my GI Bill budget was down to ly, my great admiration for Emil the lonely buffalo nickel left in my Haury is honest and appropri- pocket. At the end of the field sea- ate. Now that I have completely son, Emil took me to Tucson, put absolved myself of any possible me up in his home, fed me, hired complaint about bias or conflict of me to build an exhibit on Ventana interest, I want to share with you Arizona Anthropologist Centennial Edition: 32-47. ©2015 Arizona Anthropologist Thompson - Remembering Emil Haury 33 some stories about this remark- Haury and Ruth families, moved able man. to east central Kansas where Gus- Emil Walter Haury, born in tav and Clara were married 11 Newton, Kansas at the beginning June 1891. Two years later, Gustav of the twentieth century on 2 May became one of the founding fac- 1904, was the youngest of the four ulty members of Bethel College, sons of Gustav Adolf Haury and the oldest Mennonite institution Clara Katharina Ruth. The story of higher learning in the country, of his life, however, has its be- along with Peter John Wedel, the ginnings in the terrible loss of life father of Waldo, who became an during the Thirty Years War in the authority on the archaeology of first half of the seventeenth centu- the Great Plains, and Heinrich ry. Some two hundred Mennonite Daniel Penner, who would later families, Haury’s among them, become Emil’s father-in-law. left the Aargau of north central Emil and his brothers grew up Switzerland to settle in the Palat- on the campus of Bethel College in inate in southwestern Germany. the modest, comfortable, orderly, At the beginning of the nineteenth and academic environment pro- century, many of them moved to vided by his liberal and support- Bavaria to farm undeveloped land ive parents. It was there that Emil on the Danube west of Ingolstadt. learned the traditional values of However, by the middle of the hard work and industriousness, nineteenth century, lack of land integrity and honesty, cleanliness for the expanding population, and simplicity of living, personal poor economic conditions, the loyalty and commitment, cooper- failure of Germany’s Revolution ation and community service, and of 1848, and the constant threat compassion and help for others of military service caused many – values to which he subscribed Mennonites to look to America. throughout his life. Emil and Emil’s paternal grandparents, Waldo roamed the nearby fields Jakob Haury and Maria Schmitt, and woods, exploring especially migrated to Iowa where Emil’s the prehistoric treasures of Sand father, Gustav, was born. His Creek, that legendary incubator mother, Clara Ruth, was born in of both of their archaeological ca- Illinois where her parents, John reers. If Emil were here, he would Ruth and Elise Strom, had settled. remind us that Bethel College Before long, many of the Iowa and and the University of Arizona Illinois Mennonites, including the produced a third archaeologist, 34 ARIZONA ANTHROPOLOGIST CENTENNIAL Roland von Steen Richert, who fered to pay his son’s train fare to gave many years of public service Mexico if Cummings would allow to Southwestern archaeology in him to join the Cuicuilco project. the National Park Service. Cummings not only agreed, but In 1923 Emil began his freshman also offered to pay Emil’s fare from year at Bethel College, nurturing Mexico to Tucson and to give him his ambition to be an archaeolo- a student job in the Arizona State gist, but wondering how in the Museum so that he could complete world to make it happen. About his college education in archaeolo- that same time a former Beth- gy at the University of Arizona. el College faculty member, Emil In 1927 Emil and Clara Lee Fraps Richert Riesen, who was teaching earned the first BAs in archaeolo- philosophy at the University of gy at Arizona. Emil had planned Arizona, learned that pioneer Ar- to spend the following summer izona archaeologist, Byron Cum- furthering his romantic interest mings, was making a trip east to in Hulda Esther Penner, whom seek funding for his excavations he had known since elementa- at Cuicuilco in central Mexico. ry school. Her parents, Heinrich Riesen suggested that Cummings Penner and Katharina Dalke, were stop in Kansas and give a lecture among the many Mennonites who at Bethel College on his archaeo- migrated to Kansas in the 1870s logical work in Arizona. from the large Molotschna colony Emil attended that lecture in on the Black Sea when they lost early 1924 and asked Cummings the exemption from military ser- to let him take part in the fol- vice granted to their ancestors by lowing summer’s explorations Catherine the Great in 1786. in northern Arizona. Cummings Hulda was conveniently in Tuc- could not grant that request be- son visiting her oldest sister, Ra- cause he expected to be in Mexi- chel Rebecca, the wife of Profes- co, but he urged Emil to keep in sor Riesen. However, Cummings touch. The following year Emil sent Emil to northern Arizona to wrote to Cummings asking to collect archaeological material be considered for the summer of for the State Museum. The sum- 1925. When Cummings replied mer was not a total loss because that he would again be in Mex- Cummings invited three students, ico, which he considered one of Emil, Clara Lee and Florence the best places to be introduced Hawley, who had earned her BA to archaeology, Gustav Haury of- with a major in English, as well Thompson - Remembering Emil Haury 35 as Hulda, to join him in attending from Andrew Ellicott Douglass, the conference on Southwestern an astronomer at the University archaeology hosted at Pecos, New of Arizona, who was interested Mexico by Alfred Vincent Kidder, in long term climatic change for the nation’s leading archaeologist. which he hoped to find evidence Cummings was President of the in the growth records of conifer- University in 1927, so they trav- ous trees. He had assembled a eled to Pecos in the president’s chronology of tree rings extending Lincoln touring car with Emil as from the present back to AD 1260 the driver. He remembered that and had a second older, but un- journey as much for its many flat connected sequence of 585 years tires as for its archaeological and based on archaeological collec- romantic benefits. He, Hulda, tions. Emil and Lyndon Hargrave and Clara Lee had a unique op- helped Douglass find archaeolog- portunity to observe the greats of ical specimens to connect these Southwestern archaeology. How- sequences. On 22 June 1929, a ever, poor Florence Hawley did small piece of charcoal was found not accompany them because her at the Show Low Ruin that closed mother did not think the group the gap between the two tree-ring was properly chaperoned. sequences, enabling Douglass to Cummings promised his three date many of the major prehistor- students teaching jobs if they ic sites in the Four Corners region would continue their studies at of the Southwest. the graduate level. They earned Emil was the first person Doug- the first MAs in archaeology at lass trained in dendrochronology Arizona in 1928 and began teach- and his year of work on the huge ing that year. This employment backlog of undated specimens allowed Emil to propose to Hul- provided the first independent da and they were married by her test of the Douglass method. He father on 7 June 1928. They had helped Douglass teach the first two sons, Allan Gene, an engineer class in tree ring dating, with born in 1934, and Loren Richard, a Waldo Wedel, Clara Lee Fraps, biological oceanographer, born in and Florence Hawley among the 1939.

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