Southwest U.S. -- Vandals, Tourists Are Wiping Indian Ruins Off The Maps

Some of the Southwest's most ancient and finest Indian ruins are being wiped off the map.

Keet Seel, Awatovi, Hawikuh, Cutthroat Castle - all are being removed from key road maps and guidebooks, although people can still view these Anasazi treasures if they contact the proper authorities.

Federal budget cutbacks, exploding numbers of tourists and the red-hot clandestine market for sacred Indian objects are all to blame.

Map publishers say such a decision - to remove names and symbols locating ruins - usually comes after a concerned archaeologist or park official suggests removing map information would help protect the site.

"These contacts come about at a low level," Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the National Park Service's Western Region in San Francisco, said recently. "There is no national directive making this official policy."

The Park Service oversees 56 major ruins in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah, including 20 in Arizona.

"This is not censorship," archaeologist Roger Whittaker said of the move to make the ruins vanish. "This is a last-ditch effort to save the past before we love it to death."

In Arizona, ruins targeted to "vanish" include the spectacular Keet Seel on the Navajo Reservation, which may be the nation's most intact Anasazi settlement, and Awatovi - a Hopi village destroyed by other Hopis in 1700 after its 800 people refused to give up Christianity.

Other ruins disappearing from some maps and guidebooks include Hawikuh on the Arizonan-New Mexican border - a Zuni community destroyed in the first battle between Spanish conquistadors and Indians north of the Rio Grande - and several 13th-century villages in Colorado's Hovenweep National Monument and Mesa Verde National Park, both major international tourist venues.

Protecting petroglyphs

Also being deleted are references to petroglyphs near Ridgecrest in Southern California, which has the world's greatest collection of rock drawings - 100,000 of them dating back 3,000 years.

"We have stopped telling just anybody where to find petroglyphs," said Richard Senn, director of Ridgecrest's Maturango Museum. "Where the public has been allowed access, they will try to chisel off petroglyphs. They will shoot them with guns."

One of the most troubling maps is the long popular "Guide to Indian Country," published by the Automobile Club of Southern California. It and other maps published by the club (26 million have been printed) identify hundreds of ruins and other prehistoric sites and often show unpaved roads enabling access.

Layna Browdy, a spokeswoman for the club, said Keet Seel was removed from the club's map in 1985, after a "request - not an order or anything - came to our cartographers from a federal agency that we should do this out of respect for the monuments, and because of fears of vandalism.

"It was oral, and it went something like, `Oh, by the way, we'd appreciate it if you'd alter the map."'

She declined to name the agency.

Browdy said the latest version, due later this year, will not show the ruins of Awatovi or the Ridgecrest petroglyphs.

Ironically, Awatovi has been mislocated on the club's maps for years, 25 miles east of its actual site - an accident, she said, not disinformation.

New versions of the map also contain a warning that disturbing prehistoric structures is a violation of the Antiquities Act of 1906 and the Archaeological Resources Act of 1979, punishable by a fine of up to $20,000 and possible imprisonment.

Arizona's Automobile Club does not publish maps, spokeswoman Cydney DeModica said.

Not all map makers have been approached about ancient sites.

Vern Booth, chief cartographer for the Arizona Department of Transportation, which publishes a map available across the state, said even if he were asked, he might not agree.

Both Keet Seel and Awatovi are identified on the ADOT map.

"I really don't know if that would be legal," Booth said. "If it is a point of interest, it should be there. If it is history, it's not up to us (map makers) to preserve it. Someone else has to do that. I show history."

John Heyer, owner of North Star Mapping in Flagstaff, Ariz., which publishes the "Road Map of Navajo and Hopi Nations," said he had not been contacted but would honor such a request.

"If people are not allowed into those places and if the Indians lock them up, I don't want them on my map," Heyer said. "If it is open to the public, it is public domain."

Authors of at least two popular soft-cover guides to Anasazi ruins also said they had not been approached.

"I have mixed feelings about removing names," said Norman "Ted" Oppelt, who wrote "Guide to Prehistoric Ruins of the Southwest."

"There are people with real, genuine interest in the past. Pothunters know about these sites, anyway."

Santa Fe, N.M., author David Grant Noble, whose "Ancient Ruins of the Southwest" has sold 70,000 copies, said he favored hiding ruins until the public could be better educated.

Leigh Jenkins, cultural preservation officer for the Hopi Tribe, said he had approached map makers and organizations such as Arizona Highways and the Arizona Heritage Council about deleting Awatovi from publications "because the ruins are so isolated, and because pothunting has really increased since the 1960s and '70s.

"We are very concerned about the impact of tourism and promotion," Jenkins said. "The walls of Awatovi are very delicate. The (350-year-old Spanish) mission can easily be damaged. Collectors will pay thousands of dollars for relics."

He said the tribe was still willing to send a ranger out to Awatovi with tourists if they contact his office.

"But of course," he said, "we'll ask for their address and driver's license, so we know who we are dealing with first."

National Park Service officials say they are being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of visitors, making protection of sites almost impossible.

Anna Marie Fender, superintendent at Navajo National Monument, said the service asked that Keet Seel's location be removed so tourists would be obliged to check in at the park's visitor's center for a dose of education and cultural sensitivity.

Then, she said, a maximum of 20 people per day - five at a time - will be taken by a ranger on the eight-mile hike to Keet Seel, a picturesque village with 160 rooms and kivas built into a canyon wall. Reservations are taken months in advance.

Ellen K. Foppes, superintendent of Hovenweep National Park in Colorado, said she was asking map publishers to delete five important Anasazi villages - Cutthroat Castle, Holly, Horseshoe, Hackberry and Cajon.

The number of visitors doubled from 15,000 in 1992 to 30,000 in 1993, and is up 34 percent over last year, she said, mostly because dirt roads to Hovenweep were paved for the first time last year. There are only two staff members for the park's 800 scattered acres.

"There are a lot of Anasazi aficionados who get a map or guidebook and go looking for Indian ruins," Foppes said. "They do it innocently. But they don't realize what they do to history by walking across a site without realizing it is there."

She said some visitors attempt to camp in the ruins. Others may jump up on fragile walls to have their photo taken.

"We are not denying access," she said. "We are trying to be proactive in our management of the sites by forcing people to come to us first to get oriented before they go to a ruin."

Larry Wiese, Mesa Verde National Park's superintendent, said he was allowing only 200,000 visitors this year to the Colorado location's two major attractions - Cliff Palace and Balcony House - which last year received 370,000 and 330,000 visitors, respectively.

"We have the duty of protecting these sites for future generations," Wiese said. "This means preserving sites any way we can. If they vanish from maps, that's OK.