My professional interest into the land I have called home since 1944 arose when my late wife asked me to teach our daughter and her schoolmates the science of archeology. Where better to dig than in one's own backyard? Sarah argued. Besides, we already knew the history of the house so we could expect to find artifacts reflecting those periods. This manuscript was created from a compilation of my research notes made during several digs, both at La Casa and on the adjacent reservation land where Spirit Mountain rises above a fissure in the earth where we think an earlier unknown tribe once dwelled.

This is not a purely objective collection of dig notes, not is it written in the style of an academic thesis. For reasons that will become apparent on later pages, I am more inclined toward a memoir -- a retrospective of those days when I had my beautiful young wife and our inquisitive insightful child looking to me to show them what I do, what the University of New Mexico pays me to teach. I have published my fair share of scholarly works on tribal American culture as reflected in their artifacts. I have respected my Navajo neighbors' beliefs and US law protecting antiquities, and Margaret will no doubt follow in that respect.

I hope that those who read these words will finish my research within the guidelines laid down by the discipline's best methods and the law's restrictions.

For those who are unfamiliar with our life here at La Casa a little background information is in order. Sarah and I were married just before the great war when I was teaching back east. My passion had always been tribal American studies and when I got the job at UNM in 1943 I decided to settle here in New Mexico.