Jonathan Reyman joins Community Voices to discuss his new book Pueblo Bonita and Chaco Canyon Revisited, his time at the Illinois State Museum, and his love of anthropology and archeology.
Transcribed by AI with human editing for accuracy and readability.
Randy Eccles:
This is Community Voices on NPR Illinois. I'm co-host Randy Eccles. We're joined by a friend of the station, Jonathan Reyman. Jonathan, thanks for coming into the show today.
Jonathan Reyman:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Randy Eccles:
Jonathan and I were discussing that in the past, he helped with fundraising and pitching when we used to do more of the traditional style fundraising. Thank you for that.
Jonathan Reyman:
You're welcome.
Randy Eccles:
You also spent time at the Illinois State Museum.
Jonathan Reyman:
Yes, I was a curator of anthropology there. from 1994 until 2015, when former Governor Rauner shut it down and put a lot of us out of work.
Randy Eccles:
That was a sad time during the two-year budget impasse. Of all the places, Illinois State Museum seemed impacted the most.
Jonathan Reyman:
The one thing that really disturbed me, he said it was to save money, but yet we made money through admissions and programs and grants. We were in the black. His argument really was just a fight with Madigan.
Randy Eccles:
From what you know, has the museum recovered?
Jonathan Reyman:
To an extent, they don't have a permanent director, there's an interim, or acting, director. They have not replaced all the curators they lost.
Randy Eccles:
There was a lot of talent there.
Jonathan Reyman:
Tremendous, they were internationally known curators like the late Eric Grimm. I'm not sure they have replaced the money that we had brought in through grants from the National Science Foundation or NEH and so forth. One of the biggest things we brought in over time, I was able to secure a bequest from Ida Classen. She gave us two-thirds of her estate in perpetuity, and we got checks twice a year. By the time I had left, which wasn't all that long after her death, we had gotten something like $250,000. Now, it's probably double or triple that.
Randy Eccles:
That's significant for any nonprofit to be able to have that type of revenue to help them.
Jonathan Reyman:
Yes, and forever.
Randy Eccles:
There's a lot a challenge to museums, higher education, sciences, grants, all those things. Are you finding your work being impacted by some of these changes?
Jonathan Reyman:
No, I'm retired and have been since Rauner put us out of business, even though it reopened 10 months later. It hasn't affected me, but I am very dismayed when I read about NPR, for example, losing funding from Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Randy Eccles:
Defunding at the federal level is a challenge that we continue to address. A lot of different organizations, sciences, arts, culture, and education are facing some changes and trying to figure out what to do. You said you retired after the budget impasse and Illinois State Museum impact, but you've been keeping busy because you've come today to talk about a book you've authored.
Jonathan Reyman:
People say when you're retired, "Oh, now you have all this free time. " I've never had free time. I took that time to write things I couldn't write when I was a curator because all the duties of the curatorship were such that I didn't have a lot of time. Since then, I've written and published 21 books. This book, and then I have another one coming out in a week or so on my professional work. What I've managed to do, which I'm proud of, is I have now, with the next book that comes out, I will have published all my professional research over a career that spanned 60-some-odd years.
Randy Eccles:
That's nice to be able to do with your career. Nice capstone. How do these books get used? Are they rfor esearchers? Are they textbooks being used in class?
Jonathan Reyman:
This book is used by researchers. It's won this prize from New Mexico as the best archaeology book of the year for 2025. That's boosted sales. The next book that's coming out is interesting in how it's been used. It's called Millions of Gifts for the Gods, the Feather Distribution Project, which was a 34-year project I had providing feathers to native peoples. Mostly in the South, Southwest, and elsewhere. They could maintain their religious practices and their First Amendment right to freedom of religion, which the government was curtailing. We gave away over 14 million feathers.
Randy Eccles:
Where'd you get all those feathers?
Jonathan Reyman:
From volunteers in Illinois and almost every other state in the union. We also got them from abroad. There was a club, the Hong Kong Parrot Club, and they sent me feathers. There was a veterinary clinic in Toronto, Canada, they sent feathers, and we distributed these feathers. The book has been available for advance purchase. The places that are buying the advances are the Pueblos themselves, because as a couple of their reviewers said about the book, we never knew this about ourselves. Having an oral tradition, not a written tradition, much of this was lost, and they knew why they used feathers, but they didn't know when they first used feathers, which was 2,000 years ago.
Randy Eccles:
Satisfying to see your work end up being a real help to the culture.
Jonathan Reyman:
It was. They were free of charge, but I did get some really nice perks from the Pueblos. For example, I was able to stay overnight where Anglos normally couldn't stay overnight. I could attend ceremonies that Anglos couldn't. I had meals with people. All sorts of nice things happened, including one man in one of the Pueblos, I won't mention which one, wanted me to marry his daughter so he could get all the feathers. I said to him, "You know I am married." He said, "Originally, we had more than one wife." I said, ""I don't think Laura's going to agree to that."
Randy Eccles:
"Hey, I came back from a visit and got some news!"
Jonathan Reyman:
"What do you think about Francine?"
Randy Eccles:
Interesting path your career has led you to. Are you focused mostly on Southwest archaeology, anthropology?
Jonathan Reyman:
I am. I firmly believe that our lives change markedly by events we can control. I wanted to be an Egyptologist from age 6. I had learned hieroglyphics in the 6th grade. I took Latin in high school, I learned ancient Greek. I learned Hebrew, and I was trying to learn Arabic because I knew I'd need all that.
I went to Ecuador with a professor for a chance to work with the living people, the Chachi of northwestern Ecuador, to do a re-study. They were very isolated. When we came back, the 1967 Arab Israeli War had come and gone, and there were no research opportunities for me in the Middle East for quite a while.
I had a chance to go to the southwest to Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico with a professor. I went. The morning I woke up and I was on Acoma land and stepped out of our vehicle and I looked around, I fell in love with the place. From then on, I was a southwestern archaeologist. That's what started this, which ended up being a 55-year project.
In 1968, I had moved to Santa Fe. I was working to get my doctorate in anthropology. The first book I read was a 1920 publication by a man named George Pepper for the American Museum of Natural History called Pueblo Bonito. In the beginning, the head of the anthropology program, Clark Whistler, at the American Museum of Natural History said, "I want to thank George Pepper, Dr. Pepper, for printing in full his field notes and diaries from Pueblo Bonito." Immediately I thought, "no, that's not possible. No archaeologist publishes all all they have." That got me on a 55-year quest to find all of Pepper's and Richard Wetherill's and others unpublished materials. Wrote it up, University of New Mexico Press seemed the obvious place because it was Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. They published it.
Randy Eccles:
Congratulations on the award.
Jonathan Reyman:
Thank you.
Randy Eccles:
It's good to be recognized. Pueblo Bonito means beautiful home or... ?
Jonathan Reyman:
Beautiful town.
Randy Eccles:
Tell me about this town, this area of New Mexico that you've researched.
Jonathan Reyman:
Chaco Canyon is a canyon. The central part of it is about 7 miles long. In that 7 miles, they have 12 what are called great houses, really large pueblos, of which Pueblo Mito is the largest. Then there are a number of outlying great houses as well on Chaco Canyon National Historic Park land, but they're not connected. You have to go a couple of miles, and then there's another part of the park.
This place was a mecca for ancient pueblo or ancestral pueblos are now called development. The canyon, when it started, had an arroyo, which was actually a flowing river. Through time, the climate changed, things happened. By 1150 to 1200, it was pretty much empty. There was a short repopulation around 1325 to 1375, but then it was abandoned completely. Later, when the Navajo came down from northern North America, they moved in. It's spectacular. If anyone has a reason or an inclination to look at archaeological sites aside from, say, Cahokia, which in itself is incredible, Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde are the places to go. They are paradise.
Randy Eccles:
It's amazing to think back that long ago. It sounds like through your research and studies, you have a real sense of what this looked like, what it might have been to have been back in that time. Anthropology and archaeology, that's what it's about, help us understand how things were.
Jonathan Reyman:
And how to apply that information to now, because when things at Chaco got so bad environmentally that they could no longer stay there, they picked up and moved. If things get that bad environmentally for us, we have no place to go. Space travel and planetary existence, whether it's Mars or the Moon, is impossible now and won't be for generations. We've got to look at what we have and think, how can we keep this and make it better?
Randy Eccles:
The environment that we like so much here is water dependent, and a lot of the other options are like deserts. Asyou said, we don't have interplanetary space travel yet.
Jonathan Reyman:
We do have a primitive desert in Mason City State Park. There is a geological desert. They've got desert plants, they've got sand, they've got cacti. It's incredible, and it's here in Illinois as a result of glaciation that came down and put all this sand and so forth in one particular place.
Randy Eccles:
I didn't realize we had one right here in the backyard.
Jonathan Reyman:
Mason City State Park.
Randy Eccles:
Jonathan, you've written this book. If people are interested in reading it or learning more about your work, where can they find it?
Jonathan Reyman:
You can order it directly from the University of New Mexico Press, and it comes in four types. It comes as a hardback, paperback, e-book, and then they have a program where you can rent it, and I don't know what format, but I'm guessing the e-book. Then when your lease has run out, you send it back.
Randy Eccles:
The book is called Pueblo Bonito and Chaco Canyon Revisited - The Published Versus the Unpublioshed Record.
We were talking about your time with the Illinois State Museum, and I don't think a lot of people understand the scope of the museum and how much excellent work they've done over the years.
I was surprised to see the research warehouse. Was that where you were based or were you based at the museum?
Jonathan Reyman:
Yeah, Research and Collection Center on Ash Street.
Randy Eccles:
It's large and there are a lot of artifacts there.
Jonathan Reyman:
I was in charge of curating the materials, for example, from the Southwest. The number of materials was over 100,000 objects. They've got literally millions of objects, and they have some of the great collections in the United States. People don't realize that.
For example, they have in the history department, one of the great collections of flies and lures and other fishing equipment. They have the guns from the miners' strike and rebellion in the 1930s. They have all the guns that were confiscated by the National Guard. They have wonderful Navajo textiles, including a couple Navajo textiles that go back to the start of Navajo weaving in the United States. That is back to the 17th century. Those are among the earliest anywhere in the United States. They have a tremendous African collection, and we did a number of exhibitions about Africa. One of them was out of the Department of Transportation. It was called 'Where the Animals Dance.' We had masks and outfits and all sorts of materials. Then, because it was important, we repatriated burial memorials to Kenya before I left the museum.
Randy Eccles:
That's become a trend in museums, returning things to where they came from.
Jonathan Reyman:
Yeah, repatriating. We had no problem with that. The problem was we had so many and we had to build wooden crates. But the Kenyan government took charge of them and flew them back to Kenya, where they were put back in the villages where they were taken.
The Illinois State Museum's Research Center has fencing around it to protect from theft.
Randy Eccles:
Is most of the collection Illinois-based? You mentioned Navajo things and things from the Southwest.
Jonathan Reyman:
It is. Mostly Illinois and surrounding states. The Southwest items we got from a local resident named Thomas Condell. Edward's Place is part of the Condell family. He was a collector, and he had a shop downtown in the basement of the Rhein Bank. At one point his father told him, "You've got to start selling some of that collection." He did. He'd sell one piece and buy 50 others.
One of the things we got from the Condells was an amazing collection of Valentine's Day cards that one of his sisters had collected. Japanese armor and swords.
Thomas Condell was one of these people who whatever he touches turns to gold. He goes to Missouri and he opens a fluorite mine, which was the largest fluorite producing mine in the United States. Goes to Colorado to a place called Silver Cliff. He has the largest silver mine in the United States.
Randy Eccles:
Does the museum handle it's vast collection with special exhibitions? Bring things out of the research center and into the museum for display, then that gets rotated back into proper storage?
Jonathan Reyman:
Right. We used to have a couple of days a year where we had research and collections day, and the center was open and people could come, no appointment, come and look at various collections, whether it's fossils or pollen samples from the very various collections. They loved it.
Randy Eccles:
I did, I went once. it's crazy because it's the museum on steroids. There's so much more to look at.
Jonathan Reyman:
Museums put out infinitely small part of their collection.
The museum was where I met my wife. I had met her. I asked her if she'd like to bring her class to the museum. She thought it was wonderful. She was teaching at Iles at the time, and she brought her class. While they were looking around and looking at various things, I asked her if she wanted to go out. She said yes. Three years later, we got married.
Randy Eccles:
So you were looking around too?
Jonathan Reyman:
By the way, the museum has the largest collection of glass trade beads that were used to trade with native peoples in the world, the Frost Trade Bead Collection.
It's important to support museums. They are a window to the past, but they also show you the future. They need your support, like so many of the other artists.
Randy Eccles:
Jonathan Reyman, we appreciate you coming in to Community Voices today. His latest book, Pueblo Benito and the Chaco Canyon Revisited: The Published and Unpublished Record, is available through the University of New Mexico Press.
Jonathan Reyman:
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity, and I wish you well, given the constraints that you're operating on.
Randy Eccles:
We appreciate that, and with everybody's help, we'll find a way to navigate on.
