William Curry Holden, professor emeritus of history at Texas Tech University, was born in 1896. His degrees were in history, but he had an interest in the ethnology and archaeology of his native West Texas. As a result, he was a primary figure in the development of anthropology in West Texas during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s and developed the combined History and Anthropology Department at Texas Tech. Although his main interests were West Texas history and prehistory and, later, the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, he was also no stranger to eastern New Mexico where he conducted excavations in the 1930s and 1940s in the Pecos area near Santa Fe. After World War II, his attention turned to southeastern New Mexico when he was shown an archaeological site (the Bonnell site) in the Hondo River Valley near the town of Ruidoso by his good friend Peter Hurd, a world-renowned western artist. In 1950 Texas Tech moved the headquarters of its archaeological field school to Roswell under the direction of Holden, to better supervise and coordinate the excavation of the Bonnell site.
Interestingly enough, Carlos Castaneda, an author of some renown that used Yaqui references in a series of eleven books, starting with THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (University of California Press, 1968) cited in his second book A Separate Reality (1971) that while in Arizona during the late Spring of 1960 "he met with an extremely seasoned anthropologist" that some have suggested might have been Holden. Castaneda even writes of going on a road trip with an anthropologist colleague that he calls "Bill." However, Holden's daughter Jane Holden
Kelley, who traveled with her father a great deal and eventually became an expert in the Yaqui Indians of Sonora and scholar in her own right, writes the following about Castaneda and the credibility of his works in her book YAQUI WOMEN: Contemporary Life Histories (published 1978) which pretty much negates Holden as being Castaneda's road trip colleague --- as well as, it might be said, possibly even negating the potential reality or existence of Castaneda's Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer Don Juan Matus:
"As everyone knows, the books of Carlos Castaneda have had a tremendous impact on a wide audience, and Castaneda's don Juan is a Yaqui. I would assume that every anthropologist who has worked with the Yaquis has been bombarded with inquires about Yaqui drug use, sorcery, and what have you. I have received letters from people wanting an introduction to a Yaqui brujo (witch or sorcerer), and the subject of my Yaqui research is never mentioned without someone asking me if there really is a don Juan. Do I know him or people like him? Or are all Yaquis like don Juan? To such inquiries, I can only say that I have not encountered don Juan or anyone like him, an admission guaranteed to lower my social value on the spot."
A contemporary of Holden, Edward H. Spicer, who, like Holden, had written and published a great deal on both the Yaqui Indians of Arizona and those of Sonora, Mexico told Castaneda, a Peruvian, "that the Indian societies of the Southwest were extremely isolationist, and that foreigners, especially those of Hispanic origin, were distrusted, even abhorred, by those Indians." Interestingly enough, on the use of Sacred Datura as introduced by Castaneda in his early works, Spicer is on record as saying "I know of no information or reference concerning Yaquis using Datura."
Back to Holden himself and in a totally other vein, according to such sources as UFO investigator Thomas J. Carey and the Roswell Incident: Updated, on Saturday, July 5, 1947, he, Holden, and some students who were working sites and looking for signs of pre-Contact Indian occupation around Roswell stumbled across the second of the infamous Roswell impact sites where some sort of an object had crashed. It has been said they are the ones who first reported to law enforcement officials the discovery of what they thought was the remains of a wrecked aircraft. Military personnel reportedly arrived soon afterward, cordoned off access to the site and escorted them out of the area. Holden never really discussed the incident and it was well into his later years before he was actually even inteviewed on the subject.
Regarding the Roswell Incident and the so-called Roswell UFO crash, Jane Holden Kelley is on record as saying that at the time interviews were being conducted, because of his age, her father was easily confused. Memories from his life were jumbled and reordered, and, even though she and her dad were close, he had never mentioned anything to her about the incident. As it is, a number of anthropologists and archaeologists OTHER than Holden have been named in association with the Roswell Crash, ranging from the little known fringe such as amateur rock hound and Pothunter known as Cactus Jack but whose real name was Larry Campbell to the more famous and academically established types such as Holden. For the most part, however, the more credible the credentials, the less likely they are to come forward or admit to any connection.
In December, 1947, a scientist friend of Holden's, not an anthropologist, but a vertebra paleontologist, by the name of C. Bertrand Schultz, a Professor of Geology and Paleontology at the University of Nebraska, presented at the 46th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association held December 28-31, in Albuquerque. Holden attended the conference as well, putting the two of them together within six months of the alledged crash. In conversation with Holden at the conference Schultz tells him he had tried to meet him over the Fourth of July holiday earlier that year. Coincidently, the mysterious bio-searcher that assisted famed astronomer and meteorite hunter Dr. Lincoln La Paz figure out the object's trajectory by studying the burnt and wilted plants along it's suspected path was at the same conference. He was attending in hopes of hearing his friend Ruth F. Kirk present Aspects of Peyotism Among the Navajo. In that he and Holden knew each other and had participated in Roswell events, he became privy to the content of the conversation between Holden and Schultz.
Some UFOlogists and Roswell researchers have Schultz going FROM Nebraska TO Roswell in July, 1947, but in reality the direction of his trip was just the opposite. He had been told that Holden was going to be at the Bonnell Site over the long weekend and since he was on his way TO Nebraska and had the time, thought he would go through Ruidoso to see what Holden was up to. There he was told Holden had taken a group of students on a field study near Roswell. Unable to find him he continued on to a site called the Arrowhead Ruin, an Indian pueblo dating from circa 1370 to 1450 located south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, between Glorietta and Pecos, then being worked by another colleague, William Pearce. Along the way he observed a series of military cordons blocking all the side roads on the western side of the highway as he headed north out of Roswell. However, since his eventual destination was Nebraska, he wasn't excessively over concerned about roads being blocked toward the west one way or the other. At the most, even though it just happened that weekend, not knowing anything about the Roswell Incident at the time, he attributed the military presence to no more than an exercise of some type. Only in retrospect did any of it take on any meaning. Did Holden reveal to Schultz the nature of what he saw in the mountains that morning near Roswell during the conference in Albuquerque in 1947? Conjecture would indicate the answer is yes in that it was Schultz that brought Holden to the public's attention initially.
W. Curry Holden passed away on April 21, 1993, at the age of 96.
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SEE ALSO: W. Curry Holden
Holden, William Curry, C.C. Seltzer, R.A. Studhalter, C.J. Wagner and W.G. McMillan. Studies of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico. Lubbock, Tex.: Texas Technological College, 1936.
Holden, William Curry. A Ranching Saga: The Lives of William Electious Halsell and Ewing Halsell. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1976.
Holden, William Curry. Alkali Trails, or, Social and Economic Movements of the Texas Frontier, 1846-1900. Lubbock, Tex. : Texas Tech University Press, 1998.
Holden, William Curry. Alkali Trails; or, Social and Economic Movements of the Texas Frontier, 1846-1900. Dallas, Tex.: The Southwest Press 1930.
Holden, William Curry. Episode in the Sun. Popular Library ed. New York: Popular Library, 1957. (Originally published under the title: Hill of the Rooster.)
Holden, William Curry. Frontier Problems and Movements in West Texas, 1846-1900. Austin, Tex.: 1928.
Holden, William Curry. Hill of the Rooster. New York: Holt, 1956.
Holden, William Curry. Rollie Burns; or, An Account of the Ranching Industry on the South Plains. Dallas, Tex.: The Southwest Press, 1932.
Holden, William Curry. Rollie Burns; or, An Account of the Ranching Industry on the South Plains. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University , 1986.
Holden, William Curry. Teresita. Owings Mills, Md.: Stemmer House Publishers, 1978.
Holden, William Curry. The Espuela Land and Cattle Company; A Study of a Foreign-Owned Ranch in Texas. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1970.
Holden, William Curry. The Spur Ranch; A Study of the Enclosed Ranch Phase of the Cattle Industry in Texas. Boston: The Christopher Publishing House, 1934.
Holden, William Curry. Why use Dobe? Lubbock, Tex.: Texas Technological College.
Hutson, Alton. Alton Hutson: Reminiscences of a South Plains Youth by William Curry Holden. San Antonio, Tex.: Trinity University Press, 1975.
Moisés, Rosalio, Jane Holden Kelley, and William Curry Holden. The Tall Candle; The Personal Chronicle of Yaqui Indian. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1971.
Studies of the Yaqui Indians of Sonora, Mexico / by W. C. Holden ... [et al.]. New York: AMS Press, 1979.
ANNA JONES
PRIMARY ARTICLE [1] IUR, Volume 19, Number 1; January/February 1994 J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies FOR THE BONNELL SITE SEE:
RESEARCH SOURCES
PROVIDED THROUGH:
International UFO Reporter, Copyright 1994 (see)
2457 West Peterson Ave.
Chicago, IL 60659
Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society
VOL 23:1952 (pp 78-132)