I will refer to subsequent pages to such articles of mechanical use and of wearing apparel which I was fortunate enough to meet. I shall also return hereafter to the almost omnipresent pieces of painted pottery, of two distinct kinds, and to the very numerous chips of obsidian, jet-black on the face, but transparent as smoky glass; of black lava; and to the flint, jasper, and moss-agates, broken mechanically by man, and scattered over the premises. These premises have been thoroughly ransacked by visitors, and every striking object has already been carried off. I had heard mentioned, among such samples, flint, agate, and obsidian arrow-heads, stone hatchets and hammers, and copper (not brass or iron) rings used for ornamental purposes,[113] but my luck it was not to find[p. 64] any. Therefore the harvest is perhaps slim in that respect. It is beyond all doubt that judicious digging among the lower stories of the structures will reveal treasures,—not money, as the tale current among the inhabitants has it, but things of archæological and ethnological value. For such an undertaking I was, as the Institute well knows, not prepared. I attempted to dig, indeed, though quite alone, but soon came to the conclusion that the time consumed in excavating one metre of decayed and crumbling stones and earth would be more satisfactorily employed in other directions; paving the way for the exhaustive labors of better situated archæologists.
I have been very lengthy in my exposé of facts and data regarding this particular house B, for the simple reason that, as far as the principles of architecture, based upon a knowledge and want of "how to live," are concerned, it is typical of the rest. Many details become therefore unnecessary in subsequent descriptions.
To return to the structure itself, its general plan and its mode of construction in detail more and more forcibly remind me of an extraordinarily large honeycomb. The various walls, a few of the outer walls excepted, have little strength in themselves (as the rapid decay shows), but combined altogether they oppose to any outside pressure an immense amount of "inertia." There is not in the whole building one single evidence of any great progress in mechanics. Everything done and built with[p. 65]in it can be built and made with the use of a good or fair eyesight only, and the implements and arts of what was formerly called the "stone age." This does not exclude the possibility that they had made a certain advance in mechanical agencies. They may have had the plummet, or even the square; but such expedients, applied to their system of building, might at most have hastened the rapidity of construction. Necessary they were not at all, still less indispensable. As the bee builds one cell alongside of the other and above the other,—the norm of one and the "habitat" impelling the norm of those above and alongside,—so the Indians of Pecos aggregated their cells according to their wants and the increase of their numbers; their inside accommodations, the wood-work, bearing the last trace of the frail "lodge" of a former shifting condition.
Leaving B for the present, I turn to the other ruins on the so-called "neck" of the mesilla.
4 m.—13 ft.—west of the N.W. corner of the northern annex, I struck stone foundations indicating a structure (whether enclosure or building I do not venture to tell) 10.21 m.—33 ft.—from E. to W., and 6.60 m.—22 ft.—from N. to S.[114], 49 m.—160 ft.—to the north-west of its north-easterly angle there is a mound about 2 m. or 6 ft. in diameter, thence 20 m.—65 ft.—further N.W. or N.N.W. the southern ruins of the east wing of A are reached.
Parallel to B, longitudinally, and at an average distance of 28 m.—90 ft—to the west from it, there is a row of detached buildings or structures, of which only the foundations and shapeless stone heaps indicating the corners remain. [Pl. I.], Fig. 8, conveys an idea of their position and size. The walls are reduced to mere foundations, or to heaps in the corners;[p. 66] but these remnants indicate that the rocks used were similar in kind and shape to those composing the walls of all the other kinds of construction in the mesilla north of the church.
For what purpose these buildings were erected, and in what relation they stood to B, I am unable to determine. Some of them appeared to have doors opening to the east.[115] Beyond f the ground rises suddenly. The floor of those structures is, in some instances, formed of a black or red loam. I excavated one of those, or, rather, dug into it, to the depth of one metre. The surface had shown traces of a fire built in the centre, and I found also, at the depth of nearly two feet, that the dark soil was traversed by a band of charcoal, fragments of burnt and blackened pottery, and some splinters of bone. Below it the soil was dark red. Whether there was a buried hearth at that depth, or whether the traces of fire were due to an original destruction of woodwork through combustion, the débris subsequently covering them with clay, I am unable to judge.[116] In all of them, of course, pottery and obsidian were found.
I have already stated that the mesilla dips to the south-west; that there is a depression along the northern end of its "neck;" and that from f the rocks bulge upwards again. All this contributes to concentrate the drainage of the entire cliff-top, as far north of the church as it was inhabited, in the hollow where the gate of the general enclosure is placed. This gate was therefore not only a passage-way, but also the water-gap or channel through which the mesilla was finally drained into the bottoms of the Arroyo de Pecos.
