The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Hohokam Dig, by Theodore Pratt

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Title: The Hohokam Dig

Author: Theodore Pratt

Release Date: August 24, 2009 [EBook #29793]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_From_ where _had these attacking Indians come? Out of a long
forgotten and dim past? Had their medicine man seen the one supreme
vision?_

the
hohokam
dig

_by ... Theodore Pratt_

At first they thought the attack was a
joke. And then they realized the truth!

At first the two scientists thought the Indian attack on them was a joke
perpetrated by some of their friends. After all, modern Indians did not
attack white men any more.

Except that these did.

George Arthbut and Sidney Hunt were both out of New York, on the staff
of the Natural History Museum. George was an ethnologist who specialized
in what could be reconstructed about the prehistoric Indians of North
America, with emphasis on those of the Southwest. He was a tall, lean,
gracious bald man in his early sixties.

Sidney was an archeologist who was fascinated by the ruins of the same
kind of ancient Indians. Medium-sized, with black hair that belied his
sixty-five years, he and George made an excellent team, being the
leaders in their field.

They had come west on a particular bit of business this spring, trying
to solve the largest question that remained about the old cliff dwellers
and the prehistoric desert Indians, both of whom had deserted their
villages and gone elsewhere for reasons that remained a mystery.

One theory was that drought had driven them both away. Another theory
ran to the effect that enemies wiped them out or made off with them as
captives. Still another supposition, at least for the Hohokam desert
people, the builders of Casa Grande whose impressive ruins still stood
near Coolidge, had to do with their land giving out so they could no
longer grow crops, forcing them to go elsewhere to find better soil.

No one really knew. It was all