Entering the cañon, Mr. Jackson continues: “Grouped along in clusters, and singly, were indications of former habitations, very nearly obliterated, and consisting mostly, in the first four or five miles, of the same mound-like forms noticed above, and accompanied always by the scattered, broken pottery. Among them we find one building of squared and carefully laid sandstone, one face only exposed of three or four courses, above the mass of debris which covered every thing. This building lay within a few yards of the banks of the stream, was apparently about ten feet by eight, the usual size, as near as we could determine, of nearly all the separate rooms or houses in the larger blocks, none larger, and many not more than five feet square. The stones exposed are each about seven by twelve inches square, and four inches thick, those in their original position retaining correct angles, but, when thrown down, worn away by attrition to shapeless bowlders.”
“As we progressed down the cañon the same general characteristics held good. The great majority of the ruins consisting of heaps of debris a central mass considerably higher and more massive than the surrounding lines of sub-divided squares. Small buildings, not more than eight feet square, were often found standing alone apparently, no trace of any other being detected in their immediate neighborhood.” We would call especial attention in this description to the character of the ruins, the central, higher mass surrounded by other ruins; also to the houses found occasionally standing alone. We notice they are of the same general character as the ruins at Aztec Springs.
We are finding abundant evidence that this section was once thickly settled. Going back to the triple-walled tower on the McElmo, Mr. Jackson says of the immediate vicinity: “On the mesa is group after group upon the same general plan, a great central tower and smaller surrounding buildings. They cover the whole breadth and length of the land, and, turn which way we would, we stumbled over the old mound and into the cellars, as we might call them, of these truly aborigines.” We believe, however, that no excavation for cellar purposes are found in the entire region covered by these ancient ruins.
“Starting down the cañon (the McElmo), which gradually deepened as the table-land rose above us, we found upon either hand very old and faint vestiges of the homes of a forgotten people, but could give them no more attention than merely noting their existence.”
Mr. Morgan has shown the existence of regular large houses in the valley of Aminas River, east of the Mancos;19 and he also speaks of the ruins at the commencement of McElmo cañon as being large communal buildings. We should judge from Mr. Jackson’s report just given that these ruins were rather small clusters of houses of the same design as the ruins at Apache Springs.
Near the Utah boundary line we notice the Hovenweep Creek joining the McElmo from the north. The mesa, narrowing to a point where the two cañons meet, is covered with ruins much like what we have described already. The Hovenweep is appropriately named, meaning “deserted valley.”
Further west still is the Montezuma Valley. Mr. Jackson’s party found the ruins so numerous as to excite surprise at the numbers this narrow valley must have supported. He says, “We camped at the intersection of a large cañon coming in from the west. . . . At this point the bottoms widen out to from two to three hundred yards in width, and are literally covered with ruins, evidently those of an extensive settlement or community, although at the present time water was so scarce (there not being a drop within a radius of six miles) that we were compelled to make a dry camp. The ruins consist evidently of great solid mounds of rock debris, piled up in rectangular masses, covered with earth and a brush growth, bearing every indication of extreme age—just how old is about as impossible to tell as to say how old the rocks of this cañon are. This group is a mile in length, in the middle of the valley space, and upon both sides of the wash. Each separate building would cover a space, generally, of one hundred feet square; they are seldom subdivided into more than two or four apartments. Relics were abundant, broken pottery and arrow-points being especially plenty. At one place, where the wash held partially undermined the foundation of ore of the large buildings, it exposed a wall of regularly laid masonry, extending down six feet beneath the superincumbent rubbish to the old floor-level, covered with ashes and the remains of half-charred sticks of juniper.”
Lower down, the valley was noted for little projecting tongues of rock extending out into the cañon, sometimes connected with the main walls of the cañon by narrow ledges of rock, and in cases even this had disappeared, leaving detached masses of rock standing quite alone. “Within a distance of fifteen miles there are some sixteen or eighteen of these promontories and isolated mesas of different height, every one of them covered with ruins of old and massive stone-built structures.”