It needs but a glance to satisfy any one that only dire necessity would have driven a people to such resorts. When we consider how much labor it must have required to convey the materials to the almost inaccessible place, the many inconveniences the people must have been put to when they were occupied, we may imagine how the people clung to their old home. It is altogether likely that such resorts would be only used now and then. During seasons of war and invasion probably the women and old the men, with the little ones, went thither for protection.
Mr. Holmes calls attention to one point bearing on the antiquity of this ruin. The buttresses, which probably support a balustrade, noticed in the figure on the house, were built on the sloping surface of the rock. It would take but very little weathering of the rocks to throw them to the bottom of the cañon; and, furthermore, the rock is a rough sandstone, and hence easily crumbles; and it is not well protected by the overhanging cliff; but no perceptible change has taken place since the buttresses were first built. The thickness of a sheet of paper has hardly been washed from the surface, and the mortar, almost as hard as the rock itself, lies upon it as if placed there within a dozen years. This structure is, evidently, not as old as the low mounds of crumbling ruins we have heretofore described. It is more than probable that such retreats as this were not provided until near the close of their stay in the country.
A ruin further down the cañon, described by Mr. Holmes, is of great interest, as it shows how necessary the people considered it to be to construct an estufa. It will be observed that there are two houses. So nicely are these hidden away that Mr. Holmes had almost completed a sketch of the upper house before he noticed the lower one. They are both overhung by the rocks above so as to be protected from the weather. The upper house can only be approached by means of steps cut in the rock. It appears to be in an unfinished state, and, when we consider the great labor required for its construction, we can not wonder that they grew tired before its completion.
The lower house is some eight hundred feet above the bottom of the cañon, but is comparatively easy of approach. The interesting feature about it is the estufa. It was situated near the center of the main portion of the house. The entrance to this chamber shows the peculiar importance attached to it by the builders. Mr. Holmes says: “A walled and covered passage-way 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 the aperture about twenty-two inches high by thirty wide, and crawl, in the the most abject manner possible, through a tube-like passage-way nearly twenty feet in length.”
“My first impression was that this peculiarly constructed way 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 is hardly probable, and conclude that this was rather designed to render a sacred chamber as free as possible from profane intrusion.” This illustrates the peculiar regard in which it was held. Even when sore pressed by their enemies, and obliged to flee to inaccessible heights, they still constructed their sacred place.
These cliff-houses, of which we give illustrations, are quite common in the Mancos. Our frontispiece shows an interesting group, about ten miles from the foot of the cañon. These are situated only about forty feet above the bed of the creek, but still in a secure position. Here a bed of shale had been weathered out of the sandstone, leaving a sort of horizontal groove four feet high and from four to six feet deep. In this a row of minute houses had been built. They had been made to occupy the full height and depth of the crevice, so that when one reaches it at the only accessible point he is between two houses, and must pass through these to get at the others.
Besides the cliff-houses, the explorers found that these people had made use of little cave-like openings in the cliffs, and, by walling up the openings, had converted them into houses. These were very common in the Mancos, and of all sizes. Some were evidently merely little hiding places, in which to store away provisions or other articles. In some places the cliffs were literally honey-combed with these little habitations. Sometimes the walls were quite well preserved and new-looking, while all about were others in all stages of decay.
“In one place in particular a picturesque outstanding promontory has been full of dwellings. . . . As one from below views the ragged, window-pierced crags, he is unconsciously led to wonder if they are not the ruins of some ancient castle, behind whose mouldering walls are hidden the dread secrets of a long-forgotten people; but a nearer approach quickly dispels such fancies, for the windows prove to be only the doorways to shallow and irregular apartments hardly sufficiently commodious for a race of pigmies. Neither the outer openings nor the apertures that communicate between the caves are large enough to allow a person of large stature to pass, and one is led to suspect that these nests were not the dwellings proper of these people, but occasional resorts for women and children, and that the somewhat extensive ruins of the valley below were their ordinary dwelling places.”20