In addition to classes taught by Sarah and Marie, the ladies invited tribal elders to share their wisdom. They brought in storytellers and artisans. Joseph Calling Bird taught the children about the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Later he built a sweat lodge in our back yard so the children could share the spiritual path that is common to many tribes.. During the summer of 1960, Sarah suggested a summer program about archeology and I was the logical choice of a teacher. Of course, I had to keep in mind that my students were in junior highschool, not at the university, but the children were so very bright that the age difference didn't seem to matter at all as things turned out.

First I had them find out all they could about La Casa by sending them out to ask their parents and the elders the history of the place as it was known to them. Then I presented them with a few documents to incorporate -- nothing as complicated as going through the State Archives or the Department of Records. Truly, the most boring part of archeology has to be digging through dusty tomes in the local courthouse in search of land grants, deeds and charters. I knew the children were as eager to dig in the dirt as I was and so I created a dig site as expediently as possible.

After they had graphed La Casa's known time-line on a big piece of white cardboard we selected an area that was mounded, suggesting that perhaps there was a midden or trash dump there. Some of the Navajo children were frightened at first, fearing that we might be breaking into a grave, but once I assured them that nowhere on the time-line had La Casa served as a burial site, they relaxed and enjoyed the dig.

We laid out a grid over an area 8 feet by 8 feet and I explained that it was important to go slowly and gently, to do drawings of each "find" and to describe it. I had told them about Heinrich Schliemann's dig at Hisarlik. He may well have found the lost city of the Trojan War but his methods probably destroyed as much as he had uncovered.

Not that anything at La Casa could compare historically with Troy, but I wanted to instill in them the notion that every dig was important, both in what is found and what is not. It is this latter point that the following research notes emphasize. Although I did not know it at the time, it would later be a matter of what was missing that would prove the greater mystery.