Imagine the North American Indians as astronomers carefully watching the heavens, charting the sun through the seasons, or counting the sunrises between successive lunar phases. Then imagine them establishing observational sites and codified systems to pass their knowledge down through the centuries and continually refine it. A few years ago such images would have been abruptly dismissed. Today we are wiser.

The tortuous canyon country of southeastern Utah conceals thousands of archaeological sites, ancient homes of the ancestors of today's Southwest Indian peoples. Late in the nineteenth century, adventurous cowboy-archaeologists made the first forays into the canyons in search of the material remains of these prehistoric cultures. Rancher Richard Wetherill (best known as the "discoverer" of Mesa Verde's Cliff Palace) and his brothers; entrepreneurs...