Fig. 64—Rectangular single room.
The masonry is very rough and chinked only with large stones. The interior is roughly plastered in places, and small pieces of stone are stuck on flat. The corners are rounded. Externally the masonry has the appearance of stones laid without mortar, like a Navaho stone corral, and were it not for the occurrence of other similar remains, it might be regarded as of Navaho or white man's construction, as the size,
site, plan, and masonry are all anomalous. Figure 64 shows an example, however, closely resembling the one described in these features, and figure 65 shows another. Altogether there are four or five examples, distributed over a considerable area.
Somewhat similar wall remains are seen in places on the canyon bottom, where they are always of modern Navaho origin, and it is quite possible that the ruins above mentioned should be placed in the same category. It will be noticed that in the plan the doorway or entrance opening is on the eastern side—an invariable requirement of Navaho house constructions; but it is only within recent times that the Navaho have constructed permanent, rectangular abodes, and even now such houses are rarely built. It is difficult to understand, moreover, why recourse should be had to such inconvenient sites, if the structures are of Navaho origin, as these Indians always locate their hogans on the bottom lands, or on some slight rise overlooking them.
Distributed throughout the canyons, wherever a favorable situation could be found, there are a great number of sites resembling those of the cliff outlooks, but showing now no standing wall. There is always some evidence of human occupancy, often many pictographs on the back wall, as in an example in the lower part of the canyon shown in plate LV. This occurs at point [2] on the map, in a cove perhaps 100 feet across, with caves on the northern and southern sides.
Plate LV. Site Marked by Pictographs