No doubt a similar history could be written of many other ruins. “Our people,” said Hosta, “were a warlike race, and had many fights, not only with the Spaniards, but also with other Indian tribes the Navajos and Taos, for instance and were thus reduced to this pueblo of Jemez, which now forms the last remnant.” New Mexico is now becoming rapidly “Americanized,” and it will soon be brought to a test whether the Pueblo tribes can withstand this new influence and retain their peculiar civilization, or whether, like many other races, their life force is nearly spent, in which case they will live only in history.
We must not overlook the Moki Pueblos in Arizona. They are situated one hundred miles northwest of Zuñi. The Spaniards discovered them, and called their province Tusayan. They are much like the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico, only they have been much less disturbed by outside influence. There are a number of ruined towns in this vicinity. We wish to refer to them because of their intimate connection with the ruins to the North. Their houses are built of stone on precipitous mesas.
Lieut. Ives, who visited them in 1858, has left quite a full description of them. He states that “each pueblo is built around a rectangular court, in which, we suppose, are the springs that furnished 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 rooms are reached through trap-doors from the first landing. The houses are three rooms deep, and open upon the interior court.”16 He was much pleased with the manner in which they had terraced off the bluff of the mesas into little garden patches, irrigating them from the large reservoirs from the top.
There is one feature common to all the Pueblo tribes which is necessary to refer to here, from its connection with the ruined structures further north. In all of the inhabited pueblos there is a structure known as an Estafa, some pueblos having several. They are usually circular, but occasionally (as at Jemez) rectangular. They are generally subterranean, or mostly so. They are great institutions among the Pueblos. “In these subterranean temples the old men met in secret council, or assembled in worship of their gods. Here are held dances, festivities, and social intercourse.”
Another common feature, represented in this cut, is the watch-tower. It is either round, as in this case, or rectangular. It may be interesting to recall in this connection the signal mounds of the Mound Builders. They were not always in the immediate vicinity of other ruins. Neither can we state that there was a system in their arrangement, one answering to another at a distance, and yet it was noticed where the rains were numerous that several were in view from one point.17 In dimensions these towers range from ten to fifteen feet in diameter, and from five to fifteen feet in height, while the walls are from one to two feet thick. They are in many cases connected with structures rectangular in form.
We will now leave the inhabited pueblos and the ruins in their immediate vicinity and, going to the north, explore a section of country that shows every evidence of having sustained a considerable population some time in the past. To understand this fact clearly, it will be necessary to fix the location of the places named by means of the map. From time to time confused reports of the wonders to be seen in the San Juan section of Colorado had appeared in the East, but the first clear and satisfactory account is contained in the reports of Messrs. Jackson and Holmes, members of the U.S. Geographical and Geological survey of the territories under Dr. Hayden for 1874 and 1876.