The North Americans of Antiquity / Their origin, migrations, and type of civilization considered

by John T. Short

CHAPTER VII.

THE ANCIENT PUEBLOS AND CLIFF-DWELLERS.

Casas Grandes of Chihuahua—Ruins in the Casas Grandes and Janos Valleys—Casa Grande of the Rio Gila—Ruins in the Gila Valley—Also in the Valley of the Rio Salado—Ruins in the Cañon of the Colorado—In the Valley of the Colorado Chiquito—Pueblos of the Zuñi River—Zuñi and the “Seven Cities of Cibola”—“El Moro”—Pueblos of the Chaco Valley—Cliff-Dwellers—Mr. Jackson’s Discoveries in the Valley of the Rio San Juan—Cliff Houses of the Rio Mancos—Cliff-Dwellings on the McElmo—Traditional Origin and Fate of the Cliff-Dwellers—Ancestors of the Moquis—Remarkable Discoveries by Mr. Holmes—The Seven Moqui Towns—The Montezuma Legend.

IN the State of Chihuahua, Mexico, and in our Territories of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and the State of Colorado, a class of remains are found, wholly unlike those of the Mayas, Nahuas, or Mound-builders, though in some instances they are associated with earthworks resembling those of the latter race. The style of architecture is unlike that of any other people on either continent, and though varying considerably in its individual examples, still present certain marked and general features which leave little room for doubt that the peoples of the Pueblos and the Cliffs were the same. The earliest discovered of this class of remains are known as the Casas Grandes, situated at about half a mile from the modern town of the same name, in the fertile valley of the Casas Grandes or San Migual River in Northern Chihuahua. These ruins have often been described second-hand and their nature is well-known to persons interested in this field of inquiry. Of the above-named class of descriptions, the latest and best is by Mr. Bancroft, who has added a bibliographical apparatus to his account.[439] We will, therefore, confine our discussion of this group of remains to the essential facts as given by Mr. J. R. Bartlett, whose account of his researches is quite full and satisfactory.[440] These facts we will give as briefly as possible, preferring to devote our space to the new material composing the latter part of the chapter. Several of the early writers refer to the Casas Grandes as one of the Aztec stations; but a little intelligent study of the characteristics of the ruins, especially in the light of recent explorations in the Territories, is likely to dissipate such an opinion. The first examination of the ruins of which any reliable record is left, was by Sr. Escudero, in 1819, published in his Noticias Estadísticas del Estado de Chihuahua. A contributor to the Album Mexicano (tom. i, pp. 374–5) furnished a good account of the ruins as he found them in 1842. None of the hasty sketches subsequently made by several writers are worth a reference until we come to the excellent description written by Mr. Bartlett in 1851, while acting as United States Commissioner, in fixing the United States and Mexican boundary line. The Casas Grandes, according to Mr. Bartlett, are built of adobe or mud, in large quadrangular blocks measuring about twenty-two inches in thickness by three feet or more in length. The irregularity of the length of the blocks, however, seemed to indicate that they had been formed on the wall, in situ, by means of a box open at the ends, which, when the block dried, was moved along to mould a fresh block. The mud is filled with coarse gravel from the plateau, which gives greater hardness to the material. The Casas face the cardinal points and consist of erect and fallen walls, ranging from five to thirty feet in height. The accumulation of rubbish is, however, considerable, and if the highest standing walls rest upon a common level with the lowest, they will measure from forty to fifty feet in height. The edifice was discovered in ruins by the conquerors, and could not have been occupied for a century, at the least calculation, prior to its discovery. It is, therefore, reasonable to presume that all the walls now standing were originally much higher than at present. It appears that the outer portions of the edifices were the lowest, and not more than one story in height, while the central ones were from three to six stories. The central or inner walls are better preserved, partly by their greater thickness—five feet at the base—and partly by the heaps of ruined walls which have fallen around them. Once prostrate, the blocks absorb the water, and in a few years are reduced to a mass of mud and gravel. It was with difficulty that Mr. Bartlett traced all the outlines of the buildings; but close examination revealed the fact that three lofty edifices were connected into one by means of a low range of buildings, one storey high, which may have merely inclosed intervening courts. The total length of this continuous edifice was at least 800 feet by 250 feet wide. A regular and continuous wall was observed on the south side, while the eastern and western fronts, with their projecting walls, were very irregular. The question of the exact number of stories is not capable of solution, as no vestige of timbers or wood now remains. The explorer could not even detect a trace of any cavities where the floor-timbers had been inserted in the walls, so decayed and washed was their condition. Many doorways remained, but the lintels having decayed, the tops had fallen in. Clavigero states that the edifice had “three floors with a terrace above them and without any entrance to the under floor, so that a scaling ladder is necessary.” García Condé confirms this statement as to the three stories besides a roof,[441] while both authors consider this to have been a station on the Aztec migration. Certainly, no architectural analogies with the remains farther south justify this opinion. Mr. Bartlett was unable to obtain but a partial plan of the Casas Grandes.

PART OF GROUND PLAN OF CASAS GRANDES CHIHUAHUA. One class of apartments, however, attracted his especial attention, from the fact that they were evidently designed for granaries. They were arranged along one of the main walls, and measured twenty feet in length by ten in breadth. They were connected by doorways “with a small inclosure or pen in one corner, three or four feet high.” Numerous long and narrow apartments, too contracted for sleeping or dwelling-rooms, lighted by circular apertures in the upper walls, are supposed to have been devoted to the same use. Large inclosures, too extensive in their dimensions ever to have been roofed, evidently were used as courts. Two hundred feet west of the Casas, on the plateau, are the remains of a building about 150 feet square, divided into compartments, as shown in the accompanying plan:

GROUND PLAN OF ONE OF THE CASAS GRANDES AT CHIHUAHUA. Between this edifice and the main building, are three mounds of loose stones about fifteen feet high, which the explorers did not have time to open. For a distance of twenty leagues and covering an area of ten leagues wide along the Casas Grandes and Janos Rivers, according to García Condé, are ruins resembling small mounds, from which jars, pottery in various forms, painted with white, blue and scarlet colors, corn-grinders (metates), and stone-axes have been taken. If this region was ever occupied by the Aztecs, even temporarily, this latter class of remains might more properly be attributed to them, than the Casas Grandes. Innumerable fragments of pottery, superior to that now manufactured by the Mexicans, are strewn everywhere in the neighborhood of the Casas Grandes. The decoration is in black, red or brown, on a white or reddish ground. Several graceful and highly artistic vases have been collected about the ruins, and stone metates, nicely hewn, have been recovered in perfect condition. On the summit of the highest mountain, ten miles south-west of the ruins, stands an ancient fortress of stone, the walls of which are said by the writer in the Album Mexicano to have been from eighteen to twenty feet thick. The fort, which is attributed to the occupants of the Casas Grandes, was two or three stories, and in the centre had a high mound for the purposes of observation. Clavigero, who describes the fort and all of the ruins from hearsay, falls into the error of supposing the Casas to have also been constructed of stone. A short distance from the point where the 111° (meridian) of longitude crosses the Gila River, in Southern Arizona, in the valley occupied farther westward by the Pima villages, stands the most famous ruin of all the Western remains. The Casa Grande, otherwise named the Casa de Montezuma, has attracted the attention of and furnished a fruitful subject for most writers on Mexican antiquity, the majority of whom, however, have contributed nothing to our knowledge of the history or uses of the edifice. Of describers at second-hand, Mr. Bancroft has cited thirty-four authors, according to our reckoning, and to this number the reader must add that author’s account and ours. This fact is an admonition to us to confine ourselves to the briefest possible statement of facts, for certainly the thirty-sixth repetition of the accounts furnished by two or three original explorers would be altogether inexcusable, were it not for the inseparable relation of the Gila Casas to the remains to be described farther on. Mr. Bancroft has treated the bibliography of the subject in his usually comprehensive manner,[442] and it only remains for us to refer the reader to the original descriptions. The first of these was written by Padre Mange, the secretary of Padre Kino, on the latter’s tour of visitation to the missions of the region in 1697.[443] Lieutenant C. M. Bernal, of the same expedition, adds also a description.[444] Padre Sedelmair, who visited the ruin in 1744, copies literally Mange’s description in his account of the Casas.[445] Father Font, who, in company with Father Garcés, made an expedition conducted by Captain Anza to the Gila and the missions farther north, left a diary—now preserved in the original, in the archives at Guadalajara—from which Mr. Bartlett translated and published an extensive description of the Casas.[446] Of later writers, only four wrote from personal observation, namely, Emory[447] and Johnston,[448] of General Kearney’s Military Expedition to California in 1846; Bartlett[449] in 1852, and Ross Browne in 1863.[450] These are the only original sources of information on the Casa Grande of the Gila, of which Bartlett’s account may be said to be the best. However, Bancroft has contributed much to facilitate the study of the subject by his addition of a full literary apparatus.

From all of these we draw the facts without further citation. Two and a half miles south of the Gila, on a slightly elevated plateau, stands the remains of the Casa Grande surrounded with a growth of mesquite trees. The ascent from the river bottom is so slight and gradual that its former inhabitants had constructed acequias between the river and the buildings. Mr. Bartlett found three edifices within a space of one hundred and fifty yards. The larger one only was in a fair state of preservation. Its four outer walls and most of the inner ones were standing. Three storeys were plainly marked by the ends of the beams remaining in the walls or by the cavities which they once occupied. No doubt the building was one story, at least, higher than this indicated, as the upper walls have crumbled away considerably and filled the first story with disintegrated adobe and a mass of rubbish. The central portion or tower furthermore rises eight or ten feet higher than the outer walls, and may have formed another story above the main building. At their base, the walls are between four or five feet in thickness, rising perpendicular on the inside, but on the outside tapering towards the top in a curved line.

The material of the walls consists of blocks of adobe, prepared as in the Casas Grandes of Chihuahua, in position on the walls, probably in boxes two feet high and four feet long; after the mud had dried sufficiently, the box was moved further along the walls and refilled. Some difference of opinion has existed as to the color of the mud employed, though all admit it to be that of the surrounding valley. Mr. Bancroft gives some attention to this point, and observes that Bernal pronounced it “white clay,” and that according to Johnston it is also white with an admixture of lime from the vicinity. Mr. Hutton, a civil engineer who had thoroughly examined them, reported to Mr. Simpson that the surrounding earth was of a reddish color, but the admixture of pebbles with the mud gave the Casa a whitish appearance in certain reflections. Mr. Bancroft seeks by this argument to identify this building with Castañeda’s Chichilticale, which is described as having been built of red earth.[451] The outer sides of the walls were finished with a plaster similar to that which composed the blocks, but the inner side was covered with hard finish of such fine quality that when visited they still retained their polish after centuries of exposure. It is estimated that the edifice must have stood a hundred years at least prior to its discovery by the Spaniards. The inner walls are slightly thinner than the outer ones, and divide the building into five apartments, as shown in Mr. Bartlett’s ground plan. The building measures fifty feet in length by forty in width.

Ground Plan. The three central rooms indicated are each about eight by fourteen feet, while those at each end of the edifice are ten by about thirty-two feet. The doorways indicated in the plan are three feet wide by five feet high, except that in the western façade, which is only two feet wide and seven or eight feet high. The main part of the edifice was probably thirty feet high, while the tower rose still ten feet higher. Padre Kino found a floor in an adjoining ruin still perfect, the supporting timbers of which were round and about five inches in diameter, while the floor proper was formed by placing cross-sticks on the joist and covering them with a layer of adobe. Mr. Browne observed the marks of a blunt axe still plainly visible in the timbers of cedar or sabine which had been thus employed, while their charred ends furnish the only clue to the cause of the ruin of the edifice, a fact suggestive of the ravages of the savage Apaches. No stairways or other means of ascent were discovered, and it is inferred that ladders were employed upon the outside as among the modern Pueblos. Near the main building, to the south-west, Mr. Bartlett discovered another Casa in ruins, and with difficulty traced its ground plan; while a third was so completely decayed as to leave no certain outline of its form. To the north-west about two hundred yards, was a circular embankment eighty or one hundred yards in circumference, which Mr. Bartlett supposes to have been used as a stock inclosure. A few yards farther north Mr. Johnston observed a terrace, two hundred by three hundred feet and five feet high, and having a summit platform seventy-two feet square, from which an excellent view of the valley is afforded. This monument is unlike any other found among the New Mexican remains. The entire valley is strewn with heaps of rubbish and ruined adobe edifices, which indicate that once the whole region was thickly populated by this remarkable people. Mr. Bartlett found broken metates (corn-grinders), and innumerable fragments of pottery painted tastefully with red, white, lead color, and black. The figures were geometrical, and many of the vessels had been decorated on the inside—a practice not in vogue with the modern peoples of the Gila Valley. The finish was also far superior to that of modern pottery. The Casa Grande, when last observed by Mr. Browne, was fast going to pieces, the moisture having undermined some parts of the outer walls, which were only kept erect by their great thickness. In 1873, Mr. Bancroft learned that the edifice was still standing, but it is evident that it must soon share the fate of its fallen neighbors. It is certain that this Pueblo civilization spread itself over a large tract of country north of the Gila Valley in the basin of the Rio Salado or Salinas, the principal tributary of the Gila. Numerous buildings similar to those previously described, have been noticed by different writers on the Rio Salado and its tributaries. The ruins of large edifices surrounded by smaller ones are described by Sedelmair (discovered in 1744) as standing between the Gila and Salado.[452]

Casa Grande of the Gila Valley. (As sketched by Ross Browne in 1863.)

Velarde has also cited the remains of similar structures at the junction of Salado and Verde and of the Salado and Gila.[453] We cannot refer to all of the remains reported in this region, especially since most of them are indescribable and shapeless heaps of ruins. One edifice, however, was observed by Mr. Bartlett, two hundred feet in length by sixty or eighty feet in width; and from the accumulation of debris, it is estimated that the edifice must have been three or four stories in height. This was but one of several similar heaps of ruins observed in the immediate vicinity. This locality, distant thirty-five miles from the river’s mouth, was evidently at one time the site of a populous city. The remains of numerous works, probably of a public character, such as irrigating canals—one of which is now more than twenty feet wide and four feet deep and several miles long, in the construction of which it was necessary to cut down the bank of the plateau—occur in considerable numbers. The whole region is strewn with fragments of broken pottery of fine workmanship.[454] M. Leroux, in 1854, discovered on the Rio Verde ruins of stone houses and regular fortifications which did not appear to have been occupied for centuries. The walls were of solid masonry of rectangular form, usually from twenty to thirty paces in length, and the style of architecture similar to that of the Casa Grande of the Gila. Still there was sufficient resemblance to the Pueblos of the Moquis to indicate a transition from the southern to the northern style of Pueblo dwelling. The sudden change in the material employed—that from adobe to stone in large blocks, well hewn—is rather remarkable. The ruins are found with more or less continuity between Fort McDowell and Prescott.[455] Mr. Bancroft, after citing the above, expresses regret at his inability to secure information in the possession of officers in the Arizona service.[456]

Lieutenant Whipple describes extensive ruins on the small streams forming the head-waters of the Rio Verde. Both stone and adobe structures were numerous, and the walls usually were found to be about five feet thick.[457] Emory has described some Pueblo buildings of singular structure on the upper Gila and its tributaries; most interesting of these is one with a labyrinthine plan of inner circular walls. The region also abounds in rock inscriptions of a rude though no doubt conventional character.[458] It is quite natural to suppose that remains of this ancient people would have been found extensively on the greatest river of the region—the Colorado. Mr. Bancroft passes the subject with the statement that “no relics of antiquity are reported by reliable authorities,” and fitly explains that it is unlikely, in view of the peculiarity of the region, that none will ever be found in the immediate vicinity of the river.[459] Whipple and his associates state that “upon the lower part of the Rio Colorado no traces of permanent dwellings have been discovered.”[460]

Since the publication of Mr. Bancroft’s fourth volume, the public has been made acquainted with the details of Major J. W. Powell’s exploration of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.[461] The descent of the river was accomplished by the Major and his companions in the summer of 1869, amid dangers so appalling and privations so distressing, that we need not hesitate in pronouncing it an exhibition of heroism having few parallels in the history of exploration. The Major has since repeated his perilous journey of which we have enjoyed the pleasure of a verbal description in part from the explorer himself. Groups of ruins were discovered in the gloomy depths of the Grand Cañon at three different points. In referring to them we will reverse the order in which they were discovered. A hundred or more miles (for we are unable to estimate the distance from the account) above the Virgen River, where the granite walls rise perpendicularly from the water’s edge thousands of feet, the cañon widened somewhat and a considerable group of ruined buildings were discovered on a terrace of trap. There had evidently been quite a village in that solitary spot, shut in by hundreds of miles of granite walls either up or down the river’s course. Mealing stones and fragments of broken pottery were scattered about the ruins, and so many beautiful flint chips that the discoverers conjectured that it might have been the home of an ancient arrow-maker. Major Powell found on a natural shelf in the rock, back of the ruin, a globular basket, badly broken, and so decayed that when taken up it fell to pieces.[462] Some distance farther up the river, the grim walls of more than a mile in height parted to admit the clear waters of a stream named by the explorers “Bright Angel River.” In a little gulch above the creek the foundations of two or three Pueblo houses were discovered. They were built of irregular cut stones, laid in mortar. An old, deeply-worn mealing stone and a great quantity of pottery were found, and old trails were observed worn into the rock.[463]

It cannot fail, however, to excite the wonder of the reader to learn that Major Powell found ruined pueblos hundreds of miles farther up that dismal, almost subterranean river. Not far below the foot of the Cataract Cañon, and a considerable distance above Escalante River, in Southern Utah, the explorers discovered on a wall two hundred feet above the river, but removed from the water by a narrow plain, an old stone house of good masonry. The stones were laid in mortar with much regularity. It had been a three-story building, the first of which still remained in good condition, the second being much broken, and but little being left of the third. Flint chips, beautiful arrow-heads and broken pottery abounded in the vicinity. The faces of the cliffs were also covered with etchings. Fifteen miles farther down the river another group was discovered, the principal building of which was in the shape of an L, with five rooms on the ground floor; one in the angle and two in each wing. In the centre of the angle there was a deep excavation, doubtless an underground chamber for religious services, known as an Estufa. Major Powell considers these remains the work of a branch of the people now occupying the province of Tusayan in northern Arizona. These Moqui peoples will be noticed farther on. In the neighborhood of the last-named ruin, the Major found a tall, pyramidal work of nature, formed by smooth rock-mounds, rising one above another. On climbing this he observed that this natural eminence had been used as an outlook by the people of the Pueblo. A stairway cut in the rock by human hands and an old ladder resting against a perpendicular rock were discovered.[464]

The Colorado Chiquito and its tributaries flows through the very heart of the Pueblo country. One hundred miles above its junction with the Rio Colorado, Whipple, Sitgreaves and others, found numerous ruins, crowning nearly every prominent point in the valley. The pottery of the region is unlike that usually met with, in that it is ornamented with impressions and raised work, instead of being painted.[465] Forty miles farther up the river colossal ruins were discovered standing on the summit of a sandstone bluff. The walls, such as remained standing, were ten feet thick, while the building measured 360 feet in length by 120 in width.[466] With the exception of the remains of stone-houses, at the junction of the Rio Puerco with the Colorado Chiquito, the only aboriginal remains reported are pottery, scattered arrow-heads and numerous rock inscriptions. The next tributary of the Colorado Chiquito—the Zuñi River—is celebrated because of its ancient and modern Pueblo structures. For fifty miles from the mouth of the Zuñi, the antiquarian who could, might read the history of this ancient people, spread out upon the imperishable cliffs—the parchment of Nature’s children. Within eight miles of the inhabited Pueblo towns, numerous ruins are encountered.[467] Here, within a few miles, the almost mythical “seven cities of Cibola,” described by Coronado in 1540, and by Marco de Niça the year previous, are demonstrated to have been situated.[468] Zuñi itself is the Granada of the devoted and romantic conquerors. In the centre of a plain upon a commanding eminence, stands the inhabited Pueblo of Zuñi. Its frontage is upon the river of the same name, while but a short distance in the background, the mesa terminates in tall cliffs of metamorphic rock several hundred feet high. The town is built in blocks, with terrace-shaped houses, usually three stories high, in which the lower stories do service as the platform for those immediately following them. Access is obtained by means of ladders reaching to the roof or terrace, formed upon the first story of each of the houses. The town is very compactly built, many of the streets passing under the upper stories of houses. The whole is divided into four squares, and the houses in each are continuously joined together. The building material employed is stone, plastered with mud.[469] A little more than two miles south-east of Zuñi, the ancient ruined Pueblo of the same name is situated on an elevated mesa of a mile in width, the precipitous descent from which, upon all sides, measures a thousand feet. The ruins of old Zuñi are surrounded with a growth of cedars, and cover several acres of ground. The walls, constructed of small sandstone blocks laid in mud-mortar, are only eighteen inches thick and are sadly dilapidated from age, only twelve feet marking their highest point of present elevation. Still, there is a deeper mystery about this antiquated ruin, for beneath the walls now standing, others are found of a more ancient city, whose walls were six feet thick, which perished either of age or by the hand of the destroyer, before the present was begun. The ascent to the ruin is a winding and difficult path, guarded with stone battlements at different points. At a sacred spring near Zuñi, Whipple found vases standing inverted upon an adobe wall. “Many of these were white, well-proportioned, and of elegant forms. Upon their inner and outward surfaces they were curiously painted to represent frogs, tadpoles, tortoises, butterflies, and rattlesnakes.” The tufted snakes on one of the vases are pronounced almost unique in America.[470] Twelve miles above Zuñi, at Ojo del Pescado, four or five ruined towns are found, but so badly decayed as to furnish little clue to their plan. Two of them, however, are constructed elliptically around a spring, and present a circumference of about 800 to 1000 feet. Two-thirds of a mile down the river, ruined pueblos in a fair state of preservation, with two stories standing, are described as covering an area of 150 by 200 yards. At the time of Möllhausen’s visit, the roofs and fire-places were in quite good condition.[471] A square estufa, still under roof, and numerous rock inscriptions, were observed. In this instance we are furnished with abundant evidence that the destruction of this people never was a wholesale one, but that gradually they are succumbing to their unpropitious surroundings—a land which is fast becoming a howling wilderness, with its scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin—the Apaches. One more locality in this region merits attention. Eighteen miles south-east of the sources of the Zuñi River, stands a sandstone rock three hundred feet high, which at a distance resembles a Moorish fortress. The Spaniards named it El Moro. It is also known as “Inscription Rock,” because of the Spanish and Indian inscriptions which cover its smooth face. Simpson has copied some of them, which is quite fortunate, since later explorers have found many of them almost effaced. The ruins of two buildings are found on the summit, which is reached by a difficult path. The large group is in the form of a rectangle, measuring 307 by 206 feet. The walls, faced with sandstone blocks, remain standing to the height of six and eight feet. The other group is separated from the first by a deep ravine, and is found upon the very brink of the outer precipice. A circular estufa thirty-one feet in diameter was also noticed. Cedar timbers were found in the walls, and broken pottery in abundance.[472] About one hundred miles in a north north-easterly direction from Zuñi, in longitude 108° and latitude 36°, the most remarkable of the pueblo ruins are situated. These are on the north bank of the Chaco River, a tributary of the Rio San Juan, a stream the affluents of which are noted for a greater number of pueblo and cliff-dwellers’ ruins than are found elsewhere. Lieutenant Simpson has described the ruins of the Chaco, eleven in number, occurring within a distance of twenty-five miles. The first of these met with in coming from the south is called at present (we presume in the absence of the knowledge of the true name) the Pueblo Pintado. The most remarkable feature of this great structure is the beauty and precision of the masonry. The fine, hard gray sandstone blocks are quite uniformly three inches in thickness and are laid without mortar, always breaking joints. The crevices between the ends of the blocks are filled with very thin pieces of stone, not over a quarter of an inch thick. The walls of the pueblo now standing, are at their greatest height, thirty feet, and furnish evidence from the marks of the floor-timbers that the building was three stories. The walls are between two and three feet thick at the base, though this is diminished with each succeeding story by a jog of a few inches, upon which the flooring timbers rest. These are from six to eleven inches in diameter, always of uniform size in the same room. On these beams small round sticks are laid transversely, and these in turn covered with thin cedar strips, lying transversely of the round sticks. In some rooms the chinks in the floor were filled with small stones and the whole covered with a layer of mortar. One room, however, had a floor of smooth cedar boards, seven inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick. The edges and ends were squarely cut, and their smooth surfaces indicate that they were polished by being rubbed with flat stones. The size of these ruins may be better understood when we state that five buildings measured in circumference respectively 872, 700, 1700, 1300 and 1300 feet; while the number of rooms, still well-defined on the ground floor of each, is 72, 99, 112, 124 and 139. Some of these buildings undoubtedly had as high as a thousand rooms, while the smallest of them probably contained half that number. The smallest apartments are five feet square, while the largest are eight by fourteen feet. The ground plan of the buildings of this valley have three tiers of rooms, while one building, the Pueblo Bonito, has four tiers of apartments. The usual form of the buildings corresponds to three sides of a rectangle, with the fourth (one of the long sides of the figure) left unbuilt (except that in some cases it was inclosed by a semicircular stone wall), thus affording a partially enclosed court of large dimensions. The exterior walls are in all cases perpendicular, thus differing from the pueblos farther south. The terracing in the Chaco structures is upon the inside (court side) of the buildings.

In some of the buildings, however, the angles of the quadrangle are rounded, and in one instance—that of the Peñasca Blanco—the structure is elliptical. From the nature of the plan of any of these buildings it is evident that many of the apartments on the ground floor were dark, and were probably used for granaries and store-rooms. There are no doors whatever in the outer walls, and no windows except in the upper stories. Windows and doors opening into the courts are, on the contrary, numerous in all the stories but the first. The doors are quite small, in many cases not exceeding two and a half feet square. The lintels of the doors and windows are in most cases stone slabs, but in some instances are small round timbers tied together with withes. A remarkable feature of the construction is the presence of the Yucatan arch formed of overlapping stones, illustrations of which may be seen in our next chapter. Dr. Hammond, a companion of Lieutenant Simpson, has minutely described a room of very perfect finish.[473] Each edifice was provided with the sacred estufa, and some of the houses had as many as seven, circular in form, excavated several feet deep in the earth and enclosed with circular walls. One in the Pueblo Bonito was of remarkable size, having been sixty feet in diameter, extending twelve feet below the surface and rising two or three stories high. Lieutenant Simpson found in close proximity to one of the ruins an excavation in the cliff which had been enclosed with a front wall of well-laid stone and mortar, thus associating one of the simplest of the cave-dwellings to which we shall refer presently, with one of the most extensive and perfect of the Pueblo buildings; a fact of no little value in identifying the architects of both as one and the same.[474] This introduces us to another class of ruins, which, with a couple of exceptions, were not discovered prior to the summer of 1874. We refer to the cliff-dwellings, the most remarkable habitations ever occupied by man. The descriptions of them seem more suitable to form parts of the most romantic works of fiction than of sober and scientific memoirs from the pens of government explorers. One hundred miles westward from the ruins of the Chaco lies the Chelly Valley or Cañon. The Chelly is one of the tributaries of the Rio San Juan from the south, having its source in the Navajo country. The Chelly Cañon is described as from one hundred and fifty to nine hundred feet wide, with perpendicular sides between three hundred and five hundred feet high. Simpson in 1849 found several caves built up in front with stone and mortar in a side cañon. About four miles from its foot or mouth he observed on a shelf fifty feet high, accessible only by ladders, a stone ruin, the plan of which resembles that of the Chaco Valley pueblos, except that it was constructed on a considerably smaller scale. Three miles further up the cañon a double ruin of an extraordinary nature was discovered. At the base of the cañon stood an ancient pueblo in ruins, but with parts of the first and second stories still erect. Fifty feet in a perpendicular line, above and immediately back of the first edifice, in a shelf, or in the mouth of a cavern in the cañon’s walls, stood another building constructed of sandstone and mortar, and measuring one hundred and forty-five by forty-five feet, with walls eighteen feet high still standing. Broken pottery was plentiful, as around all the ruins we have described. The building was lighted by square windows and provided with a circular estufa.[475]

The most surprising results in all the history of archæological exploration in this country were obtained in September, 1874, by a party connected with the United States Geological and Geographical Survey Corps. This party was composed of only three persons, Mr. W. H. Jackson and Mr. Ingersoll with their guide, Captain John Moss, a resident of La Plata, who possessed both a knowledge of the country and an acquaintance with the language of the Indians. In the south-western corner of Colorado, the cañons of two of the tributaries of the San Juan were examined, namely, the valleys of the Rivers Mancos and McElmo.[476] The former stream rises among the western foothills of the Sierra La Plata, and flows south-westerly through fertile valleys to a great table-land known as the “Mesa Verde,” thence to the San Juan near the crossing of the boundary lines of the four territories. In the upper valley of the Mancos, between the mountains and the mesa, groups of undistinguishable ruins were discovered in great numbers. An examination of the shapeless heaps revealed foundations composed of great square blocks of adobe. The great multitude of these heaps of masonry overgrown with pines indicates a general and unsparing destruction of the houses of the people who once inhabited the valley, at the hands of their enemies. The cañon through the Mesa Verde is quite uniformly two hundred yards wide, with perpendicular walls of grayish cretaceous sandstone ranging from six hundred to one thousand feet in height. Numbers of the mounds of ruined adobe were met with at each advance into the cañon, and upon promontories jutting out towards the stream, remains of stone walls were seen as high as fifty feet from the river’s bed. Every step revealed great quantities of broken pottery, and with this statement we will let the subject of these fragmentary relics of the by-gone civilization rest for the present.

One of the first cliff houses discovered by the explorers is a most interesting structure, the position of which, over six hundred feet from the bottom of the cañon in a niche of the wall, furnishes a significant commentary on the straits to which this sorely-pressed people were driven by their enemies. Five hundred feet of the ascent to this aërial dwelling was comparatively easy, but a hundred feet of almost perpendicular wall confronted the party, up which they could never have climbed but for the fact that they found a series of steps cut in the face of the rock leading up to the ledge upon which the house was built.

Cliff-House in the Cañon of the Mancos.

This ledge was ten feet wide by twenty feet in length, with a a vertical space between it and the overhanging rock of fifteen feet. The house occupied only half this space, the remainder having been used as an esplanade, and once was inclosed by a balustrade resting on abutments, built partly upon the sloping face of the precipice below. The house was but twelve feet high and two-storied. Though the walls did not reach up to the rock above, it is uncertain whether it ever had any other roof. The ground plan showed a front room of six by nine feet in dimensions, in the rear of which were two smaller rooms, each measuring five by seven feet. The left-hand room projected along the cliff, beyond the front room, in the form of an L. The rock of the cliff served as the rear wall of the house. The cedar beams upon which the upper floor had rested had nearly all disappeared. The door opening on the esplanade was but twenty by thirty inches in size, while a window in the same story was but twelve inches square. A window in the upper story, which commands an extended view down the cañon, corresponded in dimensions and position with the door below. The lintels of the window were small straight cedar sticks laid close together, upon which the stones rested. Opposite this window was another and smaller one, opening into a semicircular cistern, formed by a wall inclosing the angle formed by the side wall of the house against the rock, and holding about two and a half hogsheads. The bottom of the reservoir was reached by descending on a series of cedar pegs about one foot apart, and leading downward from the window. The workmanship of the structure was of a superior order; the perpendiculars were true ones and the angles carefully squared. The mortar used was of a grayish white color, very compact and adhesive. Some little taste was evinced by the occupants of this human swallow’s nest. The front rooms were plastered smoothly with a thin layer of firm adobe cement, colored a deep maroon, while a white band, eight inches wide, had been painted around the room at both floor and ceiling. An examination of the immediate vicinity revealed the ruins of half a dozen similar dwellings in the ledges of the cliffs, some of them occupying positions the inaccessibility of which must ever be a wonder, when considered as places of residence for human beings. Half-way down the cañon, one of Mr. Jackson’s party discovered a rather remarkable watch-tower, which, because of the accumulations of débris, he was not able to accurately measure, though approximate figures were given. Since his visit, the tower has been thoroughly examined by Mr. W. H. Holmes, to whose work in this field we will refer on a future page. Mr. Holmes’ measurements and ground-plan are, therefore, substituted for those of Mr. Jackson.

The diameter of the outer wall is forty-three feet, that of the inner, twenty-five feet. The outer wall is still standing to the height of twelve feet at one point, and is in a fair state of preservation, with a thickness of twenty-one inches, and has the stones dressed to the curve. The ring-shaped space between the inner and outer wall is estimated to have contained ten compartments, two of which at present have complete walls. No door or window was observed in the outer wall, and it is supposed that access was obtained by means of a ladder. Two nearly rectangular openings were found connecting the outer apartments with the central part of the tower, which no doubt was used as an estufa.[477] Mr. Jackson, after leaving the tower which Mr. Holmes has so fully described (of which the above is but a condensed account), saw similar towers on a somewhat smaller scale. His next discovery in the face of the vertical rock, which here ran up from the bottom of the cañon and at a height of from fifty to one hundred feet, were a number of nest-like habitations, one of which is figured in the cut.

Ground Plan of Tower in the Mancos Cañon.

Cliff-Dwelling of the Mancos Cañon.

The cliff-house in this case was reached by its occupants from the top of the cañon. The walls are pronounced as firm as the rock upon which they were built. The stones were very regular in size, and the chinking-in of small chips of stone rendered the surface of the wall remarkably smooth and well finished. The dwelling measured fifteen feet in length, five feet in width, and six feet in height. A short distance below this little dwelling, five or six cave-like crevices were found walled up in front with very perfect walls, rendered smooth by chinking. Three miles farther down the cañon, the party discovered at heights ranging from six hundred and eight hundred feet above their heads, some curious and unique little dwellings sandwiched in among the crevices of the horizontal strata of the rock of which the bluff was composed. Access to the summit of the bluff, a thousand feet high, was obtained by a circuitous path through a side cañon, and the houses themselves could only be reached at the utmost peril—of being precipitated to the bottom of the dizzy abyss—by crawling along a ledge twenty inches wide and only high enough for a man in a creeping position. This led to the wider shelf on which the houses rested. The perfection of the finish was especially noticeable in one of these houses, which was but fifteen feet long and seven feet high, with a side wall running back in a semicircular sweep. In every instance the party found the elevated cliff-houses situated on the western side of the cañon with their outlook toward the east, while the buildings at the bottom of the cañon were indiscriminately built on both sides of the river.

Cliff-Dwelling of the Mancos Cañon.

A circular watch-tower, which may be said to serve as a fair type of others met with at irregular intervals, is shown in the cut (p. 300). The tower remained standing to a height of twenty feet. Its diameter measured twelve feet and the thickness of the walls sixteen inches, the stones being of uniform size and smoothly dressed to the curve of the circle. A rectangular structure, divided into two apartments, each about fifteen feet square, once joined the tower, but now is in ruins, all but the foundation. It is supposed that this edifice was built over a large subterranean keep or place of defence. The exploring party here emerged from the cañon, and could discern, as they glanced down the valley of the Rio Mancos, which now turned towards the west, mounds of shapeless ruins at short distances from one another as far as the eye could reach.

Bearing around the Mesa to the west, the party encamped upon the site of the most extensive mass of ruins yet found in United States territory, “known as the Aztec Springs.” As Mr. Jackson’s description is but partial, we defer the treatment of this locality until we take up the explorations of Mr. Holmes, already mentioned. Four miles distant from “Aztec Springs,” the party reached a river-bed, dry during most of the year, and known as the McElmo, which, when it flows at all, empties into the San Juan farther to the west. On the mesa, above this river-bed, a tower resembling that first met in the Mancos was observed, but of much greater size, having a diameter of fifty feet. Adjoining the tower were the ruins of large subdivided buildings resembling the community dwellings of the Moquis and the old ruins of the Chaco. This group of ruins was very extensive and complicated, literally occupying all the available space in the vicinity.

Watch-Tower of the Cañon of the Mancos.

Half a dozen miles down the cañon of the McElmo, several of the little nest-like dwellings peculiar to the Mancos were seen perched forty or fifty feet above the valley. A couple of miles beyond these, the tower shown in the cut (p. 301) was discovered standing on the summit of a great block of sandstone forty feet high, and detached from the bluff back of it.

Square Tower on the McElmo.

The building which surmounts this rocky pedestal is square and about fifteen feet high at present. Windows open toward the north and east, the directions from which the enemies of this people, according to tradition, came down upon them. A wall at the base of the rock is mostly in ruins and covered with débris from the building above. Immediately beyond this point the boundary line into Utah was crossed, and two or three miles distant the party came upon a very interesting group, a historic spot in the career of this ancient race. In the centre of the widening valley stands a solitary butte of dark-red sandstone, upon a perfectly smooth floor of the same, dipping gently towards the centre of the valley. This butte or cristone is about one hundred feet high and three hundred feet in length, of irregular form. All around the rock are remains of stone walls which indicate an extensive structure and complicated system of walls and towers. At the back of the rock two remains attract special attention. One wall forming the corner of a building near the base of the rock, seems to have served as an approach to the larger house up in the side of the butte. This structure is about eighteen feet in length and twelve feet in height, nearly reaching to the top of the rock. Part of the walls have fallen, but those standing show a finish surpassing those of any structure previously discovered in the region. In front is a single aperture eighteen by twenty-four inches. On top of the rock are remains of masonry, but too badly ruined to indicate their original form. All the crevices and irregularities in the faces of the butte had been smoothly walled up; it is supposed, to make its ascent impossible. In the vicinity a tower with a rounded corner and twelve feet in diameter by twenty feet high stood in a dry creek bed.

Cliff House in the Cañon of the McElmo.

We remarked that this was a historic locality, as certainly it was if the legend obtained by Captain Moss from an old man among the Moquis is reliable. Mr. Ingersoll has rendered it in the New York Tribune for November 3d, 1874, as follows: “Formerly, the aborigines inhabited all this country we had been over as far west as the head-waters of the San Juan, as far north as the Rio Dolores, west some distance into Utah, and south and south-west throughout Arizona and on down into Mexico. They had lived there from time immemorial—since the earth was a small island, which augmented as its inhabitants multiplied. They cultivated the valley, fashioned whatever utensils and tools they needed very neatly and handsomely out of clay and wood and stone, not knowing any of the useful metals; built their homes and kept their flocks and herds in the fertile river-bottoms, and worshipped the sun. They were an eminently peaceful and prosperous people, living by agriculture rather than by the chase. About a thousand years ago, however, they were visited by savage strangers from the North, whom they treated hospitably. Soon these visits became more frequent and annoying. Then their troublesome neighbors—ancestors of the present Utes—began to forage upon them, and, at last, to massacre them and devastate their farms; so, to save their lives at least, they built houses high upon the cliffs where they could store food and hide away till the raiders left. But one summer the invaders did not go back to their mountains as the people expected, but brought their families with them and settled down. So, driven from their homes and lands, starving in their little niches on the high cliffs, they could only steal away during the night, and wander across the cheerless uplands. To one who has traveled these steppes, such a flight seems terrible, and the mind hesitates to picture the suffering of the sad fugitives. At the Cristone they halted and probably found friends, for the rocks and caves are full of the nests of these human wrens and swallows. Here they collected, erected stone fortifications and watch-towers, dug reservoirs in the rocks to hold a supply of water, which in all cases is precarious in this latitude, and once more stood at bay. Their foes came, and for one long month fought and were beaten back, and returned day after day to the attack as merciless and inevitable as the tide. Meanwhile, the families of the defenders were evacuating and moving south, and bravely did their protectors shield them till they were all safely a hundred miles away. The besiegers were beaten back and went away. But the narrative tells us that the hollows of the rocks were filled to the brim with the mingled blood of conquerors and conquered, and red veins of it ran down into the cañon. It was such a victory as they could not afford to gain again, and they were glad, when the long fight was over, to follow their wives and little ones to the south. There, in the deserts of Arizona, on well-nigh unapproachable isolated bluffs, they built new towns, and their few descendants, the Moquis, live in them to this day, preserving more carefully and purely the history and veneration of their forefathers than their skill or wisdom. It was from one of their old men that this traditional sketch was obtained.” In a side cañon, a tower eighteen feet high was seen perched on a huge block of sandstone which had fallen from the top of the mesa and lodged on a projecting shelf of rock, midway from top or bottom. Eight or ten miles westward of the McElmo, Mr. Jackson and his party discovered on a stream known as the Hovenweep, the ruins of a city. Mr. Jackson’s description is as follows: “The stream referred to sweeps the foot of a rocky sandstone ledge, some forty or fifty feet in height, upon which is built the highest and better-preserved portion of the settlement. Its semicircular sweep conforms to the ledge, each little house of the outer circle being built close upon its edge. Below the level of these upper houses some ten or twelve feet, and within the semicircular sweep, are seven distinctly marked depressions, each separated from the other by rocky débris, the lower or first series probably of small community houses. Upon either flank, and founded upon rocks, are buildings similar in size and in other respects to the large ones on the line above. As paced off, the upper or convex surface measured one hundred yards in length. Each little apartment is small and narrow, averaging six feet in width and eight feet in length, the walls being eighteen inches in thickness. The stones of which the entire group is built are dressed to nearly uniform size and laid in mortar. A peculiar feature here is in the round corners, one at least appearing upon nearly every little house. They are turned with considerable care and skill, being true curves solidly bound together.”

Ruins of the Hovenweep.

Niche Stairway of Chelly Cañon

Here the labors of Mr. Jackson’s party ended for the year 1874, but the work was again resumed in July of the following year with even richer results. Two parties were put in the field by the Government Surveying Corps, one headed by Mr. Jackson and the other by Mr. W. H. Holmes, geologists of the San Juan division of the survey for 1875. I am indebted to Prof. Hayden, United States geologist-in-charge, for the memoirs prepared by these gentlemen, with the accompanying illustrations.[478] The reader has already become acquainted with the general character of the remains of the cliff-dwellers, and it will not be necessary to repeat the descriptions of buildings or ruins similar to those already described in these pages. We shall therefore cite only the more remarkable ruins discovered by the above-named explorers. Mr. Jackson was accompanied on his second tour, by Mr. E. A. Barber, naturalist and correspondent of the New York Herald, with Harry Lee as guide and interpreter. The party resumed their labors in the arid, waterless region around the Hovenweep, and in fact the same barren characteristics are peculiar to the whole basin of the San Juan. The whole region is rapidly drying up and fast becoming a desert. Down the cañon from the pueblo of the Hovenweep, broken towers and rock shelters were passed in rapid succession. Seven miles distant from their starting-point, they found on the western side of the valley three elevated benches ranging one above another in the face of a jutting promontory, each of which contained houses (see illustration, [page 307]). The first bench was reached by climbing over a sloping mass of débris to a height of one hundred feet from the base of the cliff, while the upper benches were only accessible by means of a niche stairway similar to the one shown in the figure.

Cliff-House of the Hovenweep.

Ruins and masses of charcoal were found at the base of the rock. Numerous adobe foundations, probably of wooden buildings, always circular in form and ranging from fifteen to twenty-five feet in diameter, were met with a short distance down the cañon. Near the junction of the Hovenweep and McElmo cañons an inscription covers sixty feet of the face of a large rock. The figures are those of men, goats, lizards, and hieroglyphic signs. As the party proceeded in the cañon they met rock shelters and enclosures, the latter on the top of the mesa in which slabs of stone three by five feet in size were set on end. Mr. Jackson reports that a party connected with the survey corps discovered near the head of the Hovenweep, on a ledge three hundred feet long by fifty feet wide, one-third of the distance from the top of the cañon, some forty houses crowded along the shelf all in a row. On the San Juan west of the mouth of the Montezuma Cañon, upon a bench fifty feet high, Mr. Jackson found a quadrangular structure of peculiar design, as shown in the cut on [page 308].

“We see that it is arranged very nearly at right angles to the river, its greatest depth on the left, where it runs back one hundred and twenty feet; the front sweeps back in a diagonal line, so that the right-hand side is only thirty-two feet in depth. The back wall is one hundred and fifty-eight feet long, and at right angles to the two sides. In the centre of the building, looking out upon the river, is an open space seventy-five feet wide, and averaging forty feet in depth, its depressed centre divided nearly equally by a ridge running through it at right angles to the river. We judged it to have been an open court, because there was not the least vestige of a wall in front, or on the ridge through the centre, while upon the other three sides they were perfectly distinct; although it is difficult to explain why it should have been hollowed out in the manner shown in the plan. Back of this court is a series of seven apartments of equal size, springing in a perfect arch from the heavy wall facing the court, leaving a semicircular space in the centre, forty-five feet across its greatest diameter. Each one is fifteen feet in length, and the same in width across its centre, the walls somewhat irregular in thickness, but averaging twenty inches, compact, and well laid. On the left are three rooms extending across the whole width of the building, each averaging forty-five by forty feet square; on the right only one was discernible. Back of the circle, our impression was that the walls diverged in the manner shown in the plan, although there is so much confusion resulting from the heaping up of the débris that much must be left to conjecture. There is also a slight shadow of doubt in regard to the wall facing the river on the right; it is barely possible that it extended somewhat farther out, although there is here a steep inclination to the brink of the bluff, and that it has become entirely obliterated by its foundations giving way. The remains of the wall above, however, led us to believe that it had been originally built in the way it is shown in the plan. Extreme massiveness is indicated throughout the whole structure by the amount of débris about the line of the walls, forming long rounded mounds four to five feet high, with the stone-work cropping out, twenty to twenty-four inches in thickness.”

RUINS UPON THE RIO SAN JUAN

Rock-Shelters of the San Juan Cañon.

In the face of the bluff immediately under this ruin and upon a recessed bench three hundred feet long was a row of little rock-shelters, with just enough room on the ledge in front of them to admit of a promenade the entire length of the shelf. All down the valley of the San Juan, rock shelters and dwellings similar to the group shown in the cut, were met with.

In this instance the houses were situated sixty feet above the trail without any visible means of access. If ladders were used, they were made of timber taller than any of the trees now growing in the valley. Twelve miles below the Montezuma the party discovered really one of the most picturesque and wonderful of all the cliff-dwellings. On the opposite side of the river, where the bluff was two hundred feet high, near the top of the cliff, they observed a deeply receding cave with an opening nearly circular “two hundred feet in diameter, divided equally between the two kinds of rocks, reaching, within a few feet, the top of the bluff above and the level of the valley below. It runs back in a semicircular sweep to a depth of one hundred feet; the top is a perfect half dome, and the lower half only less so from the accumulation of débris and the thick brushy foliage, the cool dampness of its shadowed interior, where the sun never touches, favoring a luxuriant growth. A stratum of harder rock across the central line of the cave has left a bench running around its entire half circle, upon which is built the row of buildings which caught our attention half a mile away.”

Row of 11 Rooms, one story in height, from 4 to 10 feet in width, by 130 feet.

HORIZONTAL SECTION of the
GREAT ECHO CAVE
on the
RIO SAN JUAN

“It will be seen that the houses occupy the left-hand or eastern half of the cave, for the reason, probably, that the ledge was wider on that side, and the wall back of it receded in such a manner as to give considerable additional room for the second floor, or for the upper part of the one-story rooms. It is about fifty feet from the outer edge in to the first building, a small structure sixteen feet long, three feet wide at the outer end, and four at the opposite end; the walls, standing only four feet on the highest remaining corner, were nearly all tumbled in. Then came an open space eleven feet wide and nine deep, that served probably as a sort of workshop. Four holes were drilled into the smooth rock floor, about six feet equidistantly apart, each from six to ten inches deep and five in diameter, as perfectly round as though drilled by machinery. We can reasonably assume that these people were familiar with the art of weaving, and that it was here they worked at the loom, the drilled holes supporting its posts. At b, in this open space, are a number of grooves worn into the rock in various places, caused by the artificers of the little town in shaping and polishing their stone implements. The main building comes next, occupying the widest portion of the ledge, which gives an average width of ten feet inside; it is forty-eight feet long outside, and twelve high, divided inside into three rooms, the first two thirteen and a half feet each in length, and the third sixteen feet, divided into two stories, the lower and upper five feet in height. The joist holes did not penetrate through the walls, being inserted about six inches, half the thickness. The beams rested upon the sloping back-wall, which receded far enough to make the upper rooms about square. Window-like apertures afforded communication between each room, all through the second story, excepting that which opened out to the back of the cave. There was also one window in each lower room, about twelve inches square, looking out toward the open country, and in the upper rooms several small apertures not more than three inches wide were pierced through the wall, hardly more than peep-holes. The walls of the large building continued back in an unbroken line one hundred and thirty feet farther, with an average height of eight feet, and divided into eleven apartments, with communicating apertures through all. The first room was nine and a half feet wide, the others dwindling down gradually to only four feet in width at the other extremity. The rooms were of unequal length, the following being their inside measurements, commencing from the outer end, viz.: 12½, 9½, 8, 7½, 9, 10, 8, 7, 7, 8, 31 feet; the ledge then runs along, gradually narrowing, fifty feet farther, where another wall occurs across it, after which it soon merges into the smooth wall of the cave. The first of these rooms had an aperture leading outward large enough to crawl through; the wall around it had been broken away so that its exact size could not be determined; all the others, of which there were about two to each room, were mere peep-holes, about three inches in diameter, and generally pierced through the wall at a downward angle.” The apartments were well plastered, and in one or two places even the delicate lines on the thumbs and fingers of the plasterers had been plainly retained. At one point an entire hand had left its impress in the cement.

Great Echo Cave.

All these marks indicated that the hands of these people were much smaller than those of the explorers, and it is supposed that they were those of women and children. A circular hollow place, all begrimed and blackened by smoke, seemed to indicate the locality of a common kitchen. The surroundings of this little community of that ancient people indicated that they were well-to-do, and were probably the lords of the neighboring country. From their home in this elevated gallery, under nature’s arching roof of rock, they were in a position to give defiance to their enemies and enjoy the pursuit of their pastoral occupations. This unique residence was named by the explorers the Casa del Eco. Over the plateau westward, the remains of this ancient people were numerous and of the same general character as already described. The party after reaching the Cañon of the Chelly (the stream flowing, as already stated, into the San Juan from the south) found several circular caves averaging about one hundred feet in diameter and containing the ruins of old houses.

Cave-Village in the Valley of the Rio Chelly.

About five miles southward from the San Juan, and in a valley of the Chelly, a cave-village of considerable extent was discovered, perched upon a recessed bench about seventy feet above the valley, and overhung by a solid wall of massive sandstone, extending up over two hundred feet farther. Mr. Jackson describes it in detail as follows: “The left-hand side of the bench supporting the buildings sweeps back in a sharp curve about eighty feet under the bluff, and then gradually comes to the front again until, on the extreme right hand, the buildings are built upon a mass of débris, but partially protected overhead. The total length over the solidly built portion of the town is five hundred and forty-five feet, with a greater width in no place of more than forty feet. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-five rooms upon the ground-plan, with some uncertainty existing as to many of the subdivisions on the right; but in the cave-built portion every apartment was distinctly marked. Midway in the town is a circular room of heavily and solidly built masonry, that was probably meant for an estufa or council-hall; that is, if we can reasonably assume any similarity in the methods of building or worship to those of the pueblos of New Mexico. Starting from this estufa is a narrow passage running back of the line of houses on the left to a two-story group, where it ends abruptly, further access being had through the back row of rooms, or over the roofs of the lower front row, probably the latter, for it is likely that these roofs served as a platform from which to enter the rooms back of it. At the extreme end a still higher ledge occurs, with the overhanging wall coming down close over it, its outer edge enclosed by a wall, and a little store-room in its farther corner; it was reserved, probably, as an out-door working-room. All the buildings of this half are of one story, with the exception of one group, the residence probably of the chief or of some other important family in the community. The rooms just back of it are the store-rooms of the family, where the corn and squashes were put away for the winter’s consumption. Near these store-rooms, there are two half-round enclosures of stone-work, that are very likely the remains of small reservoirs or springs. The rock back of them is dug out beneath, and had, even in the dry season, when we were there, a damp appearance, as though water was not far removed, and might easily be coaxed to the surface. The front line of wall of this left side of the town is built upon a steep angle of smooth rock, with the interior of the apartments filled up with earth so as to make their floors level, bringing them a little below the passage-way. In two or three instances the front wall has given way, precipitating all but the back wall to the bottom of the cliffs. Holes have been drilled into the rock in a few places beneath the walls, evidently to assist in retaining them in their places. The whole front of this portion of the town is without an aperture, save very small windows, and is perfectly inaccessible, both from the solidity of the wall and the precipitous nature of the foundation-rock beneath it. Admittance was probably gained from near the circular building in the centre, by ladders or any other well-guarded approach over the rocks.”

Two miles down the Cañon of the Chelly, below the mouth of the fertile Cañon Bonito Chiquito, the house figured on [page 306] was found with its niched stairway cut in the face of the rock. The house is two-storied, twenty feet in height, the lower story of which is eighteen by ten feet square, divided into two rooms. A natural reservoir of water was found in the rock only twenty rods distant. Eight miles up the Chelly they came to the cave Pueblo, seen by Simpson and mentioned on [page 293]. From this point it was but forty miles to the inhabited Moquis town Tegua. The explorers after visiting that interesting place returned northward again to the San Juan, reaching Epsom Creek, a tributary of the same from the north, a short distance from the mouth of the Chelly Cañon. Among a number of remains found in the Cañon of Epsom Creek, one in particular is of interest; this was the remnant of a square tower, of most perfect masonry, built upon a point of rock entirely inaccessible to the explorers.

Elevated Tower on Epsom Creek.

A few miles farther up the Epsom Valley, the ruins of quite a town were discovered. “It lay upon both sides of a small, dry ravine, some twenty or thirty rods back from the bed of the creek, and consisted of a main rectangular mass sixty by one hundred feet, occupying quite an elevation, dominating all the others. Just below it and close upon the edge of the ravine, was a round tower, twenty-five feet in diameter; and seventy-five below that, and also close to the ravine, was a square building, twenty-feet across, nearly obscured by a thicket of piñon-trees, growing about it. On the opposite bank were two small round towers, each fifteen feet in diameter, with two oblong structures between, twelve by fifteen feet square; at right angles to these four, which were arranged in a straight line, another square building occurred, the same size as the one just opposite on the other bank.” The surroundings of this ancient village are described as truly picturesque and the valley fertile, contrasting considerably with the Chelly Cañon. The exploring party followed the Epsom to a point thirty miles above the San Juan, and in the head cañons between it and the Montezuma found themselves in the midst of ruins which mark the former presence of a dense population. No ruins were found near the Sierra Abajo nor in the great basin lying between it and the Sierra La Sal. In the deep cañon of the Montezuma (fifteen hundred feet deep), cliff-dwellings and other remains were found in great numbers. Cave-shelters, with the orifice of the oval and circular crevices in the rocks walled up with neat masonry and accessible by means of niche-steps for the hands and feet, leading up the perpendicular cliff to the little nest-like houses above, were especially numerous. In one of these a skeleton was found, but examination proved it to be that of a Navajo, and quite certainly not that of one of the ancient residents. At different points midway down the cañon, narrow promontories jut out into the valley a hundred yards or more, ranging from twenty to one hundred feet in height. Within a distance of sixteen miles, eighteen of these were observed, covered with ruins of massive stone-built structures. They were rectangular in form, ranging from one hundred by two hundred feet, down to thirty by forty feet in size. We cannot devote further attention to the vast number of ruins found by Mr. Jackson and party in the Montezuma Valley, except to note the curious little house shown in the cut.

Cave-Dwelling in the Montezuma Valley.

Among a colony of these cave-dwellings, occurring at the first bend of the West Montezuma, a dozen miles above its junction with the east fork, this one commands attention as much for the neatness and perfection of its masonry as for the snug little cave in which its architect lodged it. A block of sandstone resting on the edge of the mesa bench fifty feet above the valley, had a deep oval hole worn in it by the winds and sands. This was occupied by the little house, ten feet long, six feet high and five feet deep; a space, however, was reserved at one end to serve as a platform from which to enter.

In addition to the explorations of Mr. Jackson and party, Mr. W. H. Holmes of the Geological and Geographical Survey, was also assigned the duty of examining ancient remains in the valley of the Upper San Juan, during the summer of 1875.[479] Mr. Holmes and party examined an area of nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly in Colorado on the San Juan and its tributaries. Most of the ruins met with were of the same general character and description as those examined by Mr. Jackson, and to repeat in detail the majority of descriptions contained in Mr. Holmes’ memoir, would be to weary the reader with repetitions without affording additional advantage. However, a few remarkable ruins described by Mr. Holmes command our attention. The first of these which may be pronounced unique in this section of the country, and quite unlike anything met with thus far in the exploration, is situated on the Rio La Plata, about twenty-five miles above its junction with the San Juan. The remains of an extensive village with structures of various forms, are scattered upon a terrace some twenty feet above the river-bed. The distribution of the works viewed in connection with plans upon which they were constructed are suggestive of the remains of the mound-builders of the Ohio valley. The forms are chiefly rectangular and circular, one or two seem to have been elliptical while a number have consisted of irregular groups of apartments. All now lie in ruins with their outlines marked by ridges of débris composed of earth, water-worn pebbles, and small fragments of sandstone. The walls of the main structure are still prominently defined, while those of a circular enclosure, used probably as an estufa, are standing to the height of four feet. Three hundred feet directly north of this enclosure is a truncated rectangular mound nine feet high, measuring fifty by eighty feet. In one of the angles of the east end are the remains of what may have been a tower rising above the platform of the mound. One hundred feet north of this mound is a rectangular enclosure measuring sixty by one hundred feet. Its wall ranges from four to six feet in height. The ruins of a wall extending between the mound and the enclosure, indicate that they were once connected. A system of works joined these to a range of low hills, lying to the north. Southward from the large central circle are earthworks and ruins covering an area of fifteen thousand square feet. A large number of small circles and mounds occupy the southern extremity of the terrace. It is impossible to account for the sudden change in the plan of works so contiguous to those of a well-marked pueblo origin. On the San Juan River, thirty-five miles below the mouth of the La Plata and ten miles above the Mancos, Mr. Holmes observed an interesting combination of cave-shelters and towers united in a system for giving signals upon the approach of the enemy. In the face of a vertical bluff thirty-five feet high and about half way from the trail below, caves had been quarried or weathered in considerable numbers in the shales which constitute one of the strata in the bluff. A hard platform of rock formed the floor, and afforded sufficient protection for a narrow platform in front of these openings. Immediately above these caves upon the summit of the bluffs, a system of ruined circular towers, enclosed by semicircular walls with the open side of the semicircle facing the precipice, was observed. The caves were accessible from the valley below only by means of ladders, and the towers in turn only by ladders from the caves through the open side of their semicircular enclosures. The walls of these enclosures presented no openings to the plateau above, and it is inferred that the towers which they enclosed served as outlooks from which the sentinel could signal the people who were engaged in tilling the valley below to flee to their cave-shelters at the approach of the enemy, and when too closely pressed by an enemy upon the plateau the sentinel himself could make his retreat by means of his ladder to the caves beneath.

The most remarkable cliff-dwellings, discovered by Mr. Holmes, are shown in the cut.

Cave-Fortresses of the Rio Mancos.

These extraordinary fortresses, lodged in caves eight hundred feet above the level of the valley, are situated in the cañon of the Mancos, a few miles from its mouth. The first five hundred feet of the ascent from the level of the stream, is over a rough cliff-broken slope, the remainder of massive sandstone, full of niches and caves. The upper house is situated in a deep cavern with overhanging roof about one hundred feet from the cliff’s top. The front wall of the house is built upon the very edge of the giddy precipice. The larger house is lodged in a niche or cave thirty feet below. The lower house was easily accessible. The wall was built flush with the precipice and remained standing to a height of fourteen feet at the highest point, though other portions had crumbled away considerably. The house occupied the entire floor of the niche, which measures sixty feet long by fifteen feet wide. Mr. Holmes described these structures as follows; of the first he says:

“The arrangement of the apartments is quite complicated and curious, and will be more readily understood by a reference to the ground-plan (figure 1). The precipice line or front edge of the niche-floor, extends from a to b. From this the broken cliffs and slopes reach down to the trail and river, as shown in the accompanying profile (figure 3). The line b c d represents the deepest part of the recess, against which the walls are built. To the right of b, the shelf ceases, and the vertical face of rock is unbroken. At the left, beyond a, the edge is not so abrupt, and the cliffs below are so broken that one can ascend with ease. Above, the roof comes forward and curves upward, as seen in the profile.

FIG. 1. FIG. 3. FIG. 2.

“The most striking feature of this structure is the round-room, which occurs about the middle of the ruin and inside of a large rectangular apartment. * * * Its walls are not high and not entirely regular, and the inside is curiously fashioned with offsets and box-like projections. It is plastered smoothly, and bears considerable evidence of having been used, although I observed no traces of fire. The entrance to this chamber is rather extraordinary, and further attests the peculiar importance attached to it by the builders, and their evident desire to secure it from all possibility of intrusion. A walled and covered passage-way, f, f, of solid masonry, ten feet of which is still intact, leads from an outer chamber through the small intervening apartments into the circular one. It is possible that this originally extended to the outer wall, and was entered from the outside. If so, the person desiring to visit the estufa would have to enter an aperture about twenty-two inches high by thirty wide, and crawl, in the most abject manner possible, through a tube-like passage-way nearly twenty-feet in length. My first impression was that this peculiarly-constructed doorway was a precaution against enemies, and that it was probably the only means of entrance to the interior of the house; but I am now inclined to think this hardly probable, and conclude that it was rather designed to render a sacred chamber as free as possible from profane intrusion. The apartments l, k, m, n, do not require any especial description, as they are quite plain and almost empty. The partition walls have never been built up to the ceiling of the niche, and the inmates, in passing from one apartment to another, have climbed over. The row of apertures indicated in the main front wall are about five feet from the floor, and were doubtless entered for the insertion of beams, although there is no evidence that a second floor has at any time existed. In that part of the ruin about the covered passage-way, the walls are complicated, and the plan can hardly be made out, while the curved wall enclosing the apartment e is totally overthrown. * * * * The rock-face between this ruin and the one above is smooth and vertical, but by passing along the ledge a few yards to the left a sloping face was found, up which a stairway of small niches had been cut; by means of these, an active person, unincumbered, could ascend with safety. On reaching the top, one finds himself in the very doorway of the upper house (a, figure 2) without standing-room outside of the wall, and one can imagine that an enemy would stand but little chance of reaching and entering such a fortress if defended, even by women and children alone. The position of this ruin is one of unparalleled security, both from enemies and from the elements. The almost vertical cliff descends abruptly from the front wall, and the immense arched roof of solid stone projects forward fifteen or twenty feet beyond the house (see section, figure 3). At the right the ledge ceases, and at the left stops short against a massive vertical wall. The niche-stairway affords the only possible means of approach.

“The house occupies the entire floor of the niche, which is about one hundred and twenty feet long by ten in depth at the deepest part. The front wall to the right and left of the doorway is quite low, portions having doubtless fallen off. The higher wall f g is about thirty feet long, and from ten to twelve feet high, while a very low rude wall extends along the more inaccessible part of the ledge, and terminates at the extreme right in a small enclosure, as seen in the plan at c.

“In the first apartment entered, there were evidences of fire, the walls and ceiling being blackened with smoke. In the second, a member of the party, by digging in the rubbish, obtained a quantity of beans, and in the third a number of grains of corn; hence the names given. There are two small windows in the front wall, and doorways communicate between rooms separated by high partitions.

“The walls of these houses are built in the usual manner, and average about a foot in thickness.

“The upper house seems to be in a rather unfinished state, looking as if stone and mortar had run short. And when one considers that these materials must have been brought from far below by means of ropes, or carried in small quantities up the dangerous stairway, the only wonder is that it was ever brought to its present degree of finish.”

Triple-Walled Tower on the McElmo.

The ruins of a triple-walled tower with fourteen sectional apartments between the outer and second walls were examined near the McElmo. One of these sectional apartments was still standing to the height of twelve feet.

We have already referred to the group of ruins at Aztec Springs near the divide between the McElmo and the lower Mancos tributaries. “These ruins,” says Mr. Holmes, “form the most imposing pile of masonry yet found in Colorado. The whole group covers an area of about four hundred and eighty thousand square feet, and has an average depth of from three to four feet.” The accompanying plan, with the measurements and dimensions indicated upon it, precludes the necessity of a detailed description.

RUINS at
AZTEC SPRING
SOUTH WEST COLORADO
W. H. Holmes

The walls are twenty-six inches thick, and in some cases are built double. The whole resembles in plan one of the ruined pueblos of the Chaco, with the addition that it was designed to be an impregnable fortress.

The plate from Mr. Jackson’s memoir shows specimens of pottery collected during his explorations among the cliff-dwellings. The pieces a and b are of modern make, and were obtained among the Moquis of Tegua. The ware and finish of both these vessels are far inferior as compared with the ancient fragments.

We have quoted on a previous page Mr. Ingersoll’s rendering of the romantic legend which tells in few words the sad history of the ancient architects of these aërial abodes. We have observed that, according to this account, the remnant of this people who escaped the destruction visited upon the cliff-dwellers by the warlike Utes fled to the South—to the deserts of Arizona—and built the present Moqui towns. We have already stated that Mr. Jackson’s party found it necessary to travel forty miles due southward from the ruins of the Chaco Cañon in order to reach Tegua, the nearest of the Moqui settlements.

It may be a matter of some interest to the reader, after having studied the cliff architecture, to be introduced into one of the habitations now occupied by the descendants of that remarkable people. Lieutenant Ives, who visited the Moqui towns in 1858, has furnished an interesting account of their general characteristics, from which we take condensed extracts: “As the sun went down,” says Lieutenant Ives, “and the confused glare and mirage disappeared, I discovered with the spy-glass two of the Moqui towns eight or ten miles distant, upon the edge of a high bluff overhanging the opposite side of the valley. They were built close to the edge of the precipice. The outlines of the closely-packed structures looked in the distance like the towers and battlements of a castle, and their commanding position enhanced the picturesque effect.” “The face of the bluff, on the summit of which the town was perched, was cut up and irregular. We were led through a passage that wound among some low hillocks of sand and rock that extended half-way to the top. It did not seem possible, while ascending through the sand-hills, that a spring could be found in such a dry-looking place; but presently a crowd was seen collecting upon a mound before a small plateau, in the centre of which was a circular reservoir fifty feet in diameter, lined with masonry and filled with pure cold water. The basin was fed by a pipe connecting with some source of supply upon the summit of the mesa. Continuing to ascend, we came to another reservoir, smaller, but of more elaborate construction and finish. From this the guide said they got their drinking water, the other reservoir being intended for animals. Between the two the face of the bluff had been ingeniously converted into terraces. These were faced with neat masonry, and contained gardens, each surrounded with a raised edge so as to retain water upon the surface. Pipes from the reservoir permitted them at any time to be irrigated. Peach trees were growing upon the terraces and in the hollow below. A long flight of stone steps with sharp turns that could be easily defended was built into the face of the precipice, and led from the upper reservoir to the foot of the town. The scene, rendered animated by the throngs of Indians in their gayly-colored dresses, was one of the most remarkable I had ever witnessed.” “Without giving us time to admire the scene, the Indians led us to a ladder planted against the centre of the front face of the pueblo. The town is nearly square and surrounded by a stone wall fifteen feet high, the top of which forms a landing extending around the whole. Flights of stone steps led from the first to a second landing, upon which the doors of the houses open. Mounting the stairway opposite to the ladder, the chief crossed to the nearest door and ushered us into a low apartment, from which two or three others opened towards the interior of the dwelling.” “The room was fifteen feet by ten; the walls were made of adobes; the partitions of substantial beams, the floor laid with clay. In one corner were a fireplace and a chimney. Everything was clean and tidy.

Skins, bows and arrows, quivers, antlers, blankets, articles of clothing and ornament, were hanging from the walls or arranged upon shelves. Vases, flat dishes, and gourds filled with meal or water, were standing along on one side of the room. At the other end was a trough divided into compartments, in each of which was a sloping stone slab two or three feet square, for grinding corn upon. In a recess of an inner room was piled a goodly store of corn in the ear. I noticed, among other things, a reed musical instrument with a bell-shaped end like a clarionet and a pair of painted drum-sticks tipped with gaudy feathers.”

Cliff and Moqui Pottery.

“We learned that there were seven towns; that the name of that which we were visiting was Mooshahneh. A second smaller town was half a mile distant; two miles distant was a third. * * * Five or six miles to the north-east a bluff was pointed out as the location of three others; and we were informed that the last of the seven, Oraybe, was still further distant on the trail towards the great river.”

Moqui (Wolpi), one of the Seven Pueblos. (From a photo taken by the U. S. exploring party in 1875.)

“Each pueblo is built around a rectangular court, in which we suppose are the springs that furnish the supply to the reservoirs. The exterior walls, which are of stone, have no openings, and would have to be scaled or battered down before access could be gained to the interior. The successive stories are set back one behind the other. The lower ones are reached through trap-doors from the first landing. The houses are three rooms deep, and open upon the interior court. The arrangement is as strong and compact as well could be devised, but as the court is common and the landings are separated by no partitions, it involves a certain community of residence.”

In describing the gardens of Oraybe, distant eight or nine miles, he remarks:

“At the foot [of the bluff] was a reservoir and a broad road winding up the steep ascent. On either side the bluffs were cut into terraces, and laid out into gardens similar to those seen at Mooshahneh, and like them irrigated from an upper reservoir. The whole reflected great credit upon Moqui ingenuity and skill in the department of engineering. The walls of the terraces and reservoirs were of partly-dressed stone, well and strongly built, and the irrigating pipes conveniently arranged. The little gardens were neatly laid out. * * * The walls of the terraces and the gardens themselves are kept in good order and preservation. The stone and earth for construction and repairs they carry in blankets upon their shoulders from the valley below.”[480]

Mr. Bancroft has furnished the reader descriptions of several of the New Mexican group of pueblos, which he has extracted from the reports of various travelers. We do not consider it necessary to repeat accounts so generally accessible.[481] The New Mexican group, situated on the Rio Grande del Norte and its tributaries, is the most numerous in inhabited pueblos, but as they differ little if at all from those of the Moquis, further treatment of them is unnecessary. The pueblos which are and have been inhabited during the nineteenth century number about twenty, some of which are well known to have been occupied by the ancestors of their present inhabitants when first visited by the Spaniards. The best specimen of inhabited pueblos is that of Taos, situated on one of the northern forks of the river which gives it its name. There are two large houses, each between three and four hundred feet long by one hundred and fifty wide, situated on opposite sides of a small creek, and tradition states that formerly they were connected by a bridge. They are five and six stories high.

Besides the inhabited towns there are a number now unoccupied and fast going to decay. The names of these are given with slight variations by different writers; the following, however, are generally agreed upon: Pecos, Quivira, Valverda, San Lázaro, San Marcos, San Cristóbal, Socorro, Senacu, Abó, Quarra, Rita, Poblazon, old San Filipe, and old Zuñi.[482] The most important of all these ruins is Pecos, one of the sacred cities of the pueblos. Here the everlasting fire dedicated to their god Montezuma was kept burning from time immemorial down to the abandonment of the town, which occurred some time during the second quarter of the present century. The reader will remember, however, that the culture-god of the Pueblos and the Aztec monarch are in no sense to be associated with each other, since it is quite certain that they were not confounded in the mythology of the worshippers of the deity. Whether the Pueblos, Cliff-dwellers, etc., were ever in any way related to the Aztecs or any Nahua people is difficult to determine. Certainly there is no architectural nor traditional evidence that they were. When the Spaniards under Coronado traversed the region in 1540 A. D., no reports of inter-communication between the two peoples seem to have been current. Father Escalante, who in 1776 visited many of the pueblos, and mentions many ruins not since located, as well as many inhabited towns now in ruins, found nothing to really substantiate the “Aztec theory.”[483] On the contrary, substantial arguments can be presented for the intimate relationship of the Nahuas and some of the Pueblos.

In the tenth chapter of this work will be found the basis of linguistic affinities between the Nahua and Moqui languages, though none is claimed between the Nahua and New Mexican Pueblos. Mr. Becker, in his memoir addressed to the Congrès des Américanistes at Luxembourg, refers to Camergo’s account of the migration of the Teo-Chichimecs, the allies of the Toltecs, and to his statement that they came from Amaquetepic (“the mountains of the Amaques”), and expresses the belief that the words Amaques and Moquis are identical. Mr. Becker considers the “A” prefix of the former to be an abbreviation of the Nahua “atl” water, and Amaqui would mean the Maqui or Moqui living by the water, just as Acolhuas means Culhuas near the water and Anahuac, the Nahua land on the water. The tradition of the Moquis distinctly states that they formerly lived on the river at the north-east of their present home. The reader will remember that the Quichés called the Nahuas Yaqui, the name of a river of Sinaloa and Sonora where marked traces of the Nahua language are found, and the supposed locality of the first Toltec station. Is it not possible that Yaqui is a dialectic modification of Maqui or Moqui? It has been observed in the pages of this chapter that in more than one instance ruined pueblos were composed of either red adobe or had been painted, a circumstance which had won for them such a designation as “Red-house” or “Pueblo-pintado,” etc. Furthermore, the red glare of the desert north of the Moqui settlements has received the name of the “Painted desert.” The fact that Hue hue Tlapalan signifies “old red land” is suggestive that this locality may have been the mysterious rendezvous of the Toltecs. The Moquis like the Nahuas are sun-worshippers, though the ceremonial of both people differ considerably.

Besides the mound-works observed on the upper San Juan by Mr. Holmes associated with the work of the Cliff-dwellers, recent exploration has shown that combinations of mound and pueblo features of architecture exist in Utah. Dr. C. C. Parry found in a mound on the St. Clara River in Southern Utah very fine specimens of Pueblo pottery, and other articles which clearly identify its architects with the people of the cliffs or with the village builders at the South.[484] The recent exploration of several mounds in southern Utah by Dr. Edward Palmer fully confirms this conclusion. In Kane County, Utah, the same explorer discovered among a number of articles of apparent Moqui make in a cave-shelter, a shovel of horn having a blade fourteen inches long by five inches wide. Among the articles was a pair of shoes made of the fibre of the Yucca, which in style, shape, manner of braiding, etc., closely resemble shoes made of the leaves of the Typa found by Prof. F. W. Putnam in a cave in Kentucky.[485]

The mound examined by Mr. Barrand on the west fork of the Little Sioux of Dakota, and found to contain a large interior circular chamber, probably was the work of the ancestors of this western branch of the mound-building people.[486] The circular chamber was much like an estufa.

The many-sided culture-hero of the Pueblos, Montezuma, is the centre of a group of the most poetic myths found in Ancient American Mythology. The Pueblos believed in a supreme being, a good spirit, so exalted and worthy of reverence that his name was considered too sacred to mention, as, with the ancient Hebrews, Jehovah’s was the “unmentionable name.” Nevertheless Montezuma was the equal of this great spirit, and was often considered identical with the sun. The variety of aspects in which Montezuma is presented to us is due to the fact that each tribe of Pueblos had its particular legends concerning his birth and achievements. Many places in New Mexico claim the honor of his nativity at a period long before those village builders were acquainted with the arts of architecture, which have since given them their distinguishing name. In fact, this culture-god was none other than the genius who introduced the knowledge of building among them.[487] Some traditions, however, make him the ancestor and even the creator of the race; others, its prophet, leader and lawgiver. Mr. Bancroft says, “Under restrictions, we may fairly regard him as the Melchizedek, the Moses, and the Messiah of these Pueblo-desert wanderers from an Egypt that history is ignorant of, and whose name even tradition whispers not. He taught his people how to build cities with tall houses, to construct Estufas, or semi-sacred sweat-houses, and to kindle and guard the sacred fire.” It has been aptly remarked by Mr. Tyler, that Montezuma was the great “somebody” of the tribe to whom the qualities and achievements of every other were attributed.

Fremont gives an account of the birth of the hero, in which his mother is declared to have been a woman of exquisite beauty, admired and sought for by all men. She was the recipient of rich presents of corn and skins from her admirers, yet she refused the hands of all her suitors. A famine soon occurred, and great distress followed. Now the fastidious beauty showed herself to be a lady of charitable spirit and tender heart. She opened her granaries, in which all her presents had been stored, and out of their abundance relieved the wants of the poor. The offerings of love were made to perform their mission a second time. At last, when the pure and plenteous rains again brought fertility to the earth, the summer shower fell upon the Pueblo goddess, and she gave birth to a son, the immortal Montezuma. The intelligent chief of the Papagoes, whose people occupy the territory between the Santa Cruz River and the Gulf of California, related a legend of the origin and offices of Montezuma, which, while it surprises the reader with its close resemblances to some leading points in the Hebrew and Chaldean genesis and deluge accounts, still is conspicuous for its inconsistencies, and in its closing statements for the absence of any knowledge of time or order.[488]

In substance it is as follows: The Great Spirit, having made all things—sky, earth, and the living creatures which inhabit it—descended into the earth for the purpose of creating man also. Digging in the earth, he found clay, such as a potter uses; this he carried back with him to his celestial abode, and dropped it again from the sky into the pit from which he had dug it. Instantly Montezuma, the genius of life, sprang from the pit, and became a partner in the creation of other men. The Apaches were the next formed, and were so wild that they severally ran away as fast as created. Those were golden days which followed the birth of the race; the sun was very much nearer the earth than now, and his grateful presence rendered clothing useless. A common language between all men, shared even by beasts, was one of the strongest possible bonds of peace.

But at last this paradisiacal age was ended by a great deluge in which all men and living creatures perished. Only Montezuma and his friend, the coyote—a prairie-wolf—escaped. This wonderful animal, with semi-divine attributes, plays a remarkable part in the religion of many of the Pacific tribes, and furnishes us a parallel in our Occidental mythology with the half-human, half-brute combinations of Greco-Roman mythology. The coyote, gifted with prophetic powers, had foretold the approach of this great calamity, and Montezuma, heeding the warning, had built him a boat, which he kept in readiness on the summit of Santa Rosa. His sagacious friend, the coyote, also escaped in an ark made from a gigantic cane which grew by a river’s side; having gnawed it down and crawled into it, he stopped up the ends with gum, and escaped. When the waters subsided, the two met again on dry ground. Montezuma then employed the coyote on several wearisome excursions in order to discover the extent of the land, which developed the fact that upon the east and south and west the water yet remained. Only on the north was there land.

The Great Spirit and Montezuma again created men and animals, and the former committed to his partner in the work the duties of governing the new race. These were, however, neglected by Montezuma, who became puffed up with pride, and permitted all manner of wickedness to prevail. The Great Spirit remonstrated with him, even descending to the earth for the purpose of moving his faithless and haughty vicegerent to restore order, but with no avail. Then, returning to his abode in heaven, he pushed the sun back to a remote part of the sky as a punishment on the race. At this, Montezuma became enraged, collected the tribes around him, and set about the construction of a house which should reach heaven. The builders had already completed several apartments, lined with gold and silver and precious stones, and progressed to a point which encouraged all to believe that their defiant purpose would be accomplished, when the Great Spirit smote it to the earth amid the crash of his thunder. Here the account becomes very confused—a great leap is made from Montezuma the culture-hero to Montezuma the emperor, and the two become confounded.

The legend states that upon the defeat of his rebellious scheme, Montezuma still hardened his heart, and caused the sacred images to be dragged through the streets for the derision of the villagers; the temples were desecrated, and defiance to the Supreme declared. As a punishment, the Great Spirit caused an insect to fly toward the east to an unknown land, to bring the Spaniards, who utterly destroyed him.

The post-diluvian part of this story presents the hero in quite another light than that generally accepted by most of the Pueblo tribes, in which he is represented as having been the very model of goodness and beneficence—the founder of their cities, of which Acoma was the first and Pecos the second. Before taking his departure from his people, he prophesied that they should suffer from drought and from the oppressions of a strange nation, but promised them to return as their deliverer. He then planted a tree upside down, and bade them preserve the sacred fire notwithstanding their misfortunes, until the tree fell, at which time he would return with a white race, who would destroy all their enemies and bring back the fertile showers.

It is said that this tree fell from its place as the American army entered Santa Fé, in 1846. In the cramped, subterranean estufa, the Pueblo fed the sacred fire burning in the basin of a small altar. It was a warrior’s vigil, for by turns their heroes descended into its suffocating atmosphere, thick with smoke, and charged with carbonic acid, to wait often for two successive days and nights without refreshment, often even until death relieved the guard.[489]

For generations these strange architects and faithful priests have waited for the return of their god—looked for him to come with the sun, and descend by the column of smoke which rose from the sacred fire. As of old the Israelitish watcher upon Mount Seir replied to the inquiry, “What of the night?” “The morning cometh,” so the Pueblo sentinel mounts the house-top at Pecos, and gazes wistfully into the east for the golden appearance, for the rapturous vision of his redeemer, for Montezuma’s return; and, though no ray of light meets his watching eye, his never-failing faith, with cruel deception, replies, “The morning cometh.”[490]

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Explorations among the Pueblos.—In the summer of 1879 the Smithsonian Institution undertook a thorough and extensive examination of the Pueblo civilization of New Mexico and Arizona. Major Powell sent an expedition to New Mexico in charge of Mr. James Stevenson, and a large collection illustrative of the manners and customs of the Pueblos was made. Mr. F. H. Cushing was especially fortunate in obtaining minute information concerning their traditions, rites, and ceremonies. The work of investigation is still in progress, and at this writing (September, 1881) an expedition is in the field. A full report will ultimately be published. During the latter half of the year 1880 Mr. Baudelier, the eminent Mexican scholar, visited Taos, and prepared a paper on that interesting locality for the Archæological Institute of America, under whose patronage his exploration was conducted. During a residence of two months in the Pueblo of Cochití, occupied by a branch of the Queres tribe, Mr. Baudelier made a thorough study of the institutions of that interesting people. See Second Ann. Report of Arch. Inst. of Amer.

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