On the San Juan, about ten miles above the mouth of the Mancos, is a significant combination of cave-dwellings and towers. In this case, about half-way up the cliff, which is not more than forty feet high, excavations had been made in a soft bed of shale. They are now quite shallow, but were probably once deeper and walled up in front. Directly above these cave-openings, on the very brink of the cliffs, were the remains of two circular towers, in each case double-walled, and probably divided by cross-walls into partitions. The towers were probably their council chambers and places of worship. The caves, directly below, down a steep bank, were their fortresses, whither in times of danger they could flee. The little community, by means of ladders, could freely pass from their cave resorts to the towers and back.
The San Juan River does not seem to be as rich in ruins as some of its tributaries. Yet near the mouth of the Montezuma we came upon a ruin which shows considerable analogy to the pueblos. Mr. Jackson says upon the top of the bench (fifty feet high) overlooking the river are the ruins of a quadrangular structure of a peculiar design. It is arranged very nearly at right angles to the river. We see from the plan that we have the ruins of a larger building arranged around an open court—at least, Mr. Jackson could detect no trace of a wall in front. We must notice the seven apartments, arranged in the form of a semicircle, back of the court. Extreme massiveness is indicated throughout the whole structure.
In the immediate vicinity of this ruin were found a number of little, cave-like dwellings. They were so small that doubts were raised as to whether they were suitable for human habitations, but the majority of them bore ample evidence in smoke-begrimed walls that such was their use. Twelve miles below the mouth of the Montezuma this group of ruins was discovered. These were situated in a cave that was almost exactly a hemisphere in shape. Where the curve of the roof met the curve from the bottom a little projecting bench had been utilized as a foundation for a row of houses.
The little community that built their houses here seem to have practised all the industries of a savage life. In one place there was evidence that on that spot had been carried on the manufacture of stone implements. At another place holes had been drilled, as if for a loom. In the main building there were fourteen rooms or apartments, ranging from sixteen to nine feet in width. “In the central room of the main building we found a circular, basin-like depression, that had served as a fireplace, being still filled with the ashes and cinders of aboriginal fires, the surrounding walls being blackened with smoke and soot. This room was undoubtedly the kitchen of the house. Some of the smaller rooms appear to have been used for the same purpose, the fires having been made in the corner against the back wall, the smoke escaping overhead. The masonry displayed in the construction of the walls is very creditable. A symmetrical curve is preserved throughout the whole line, and every portion perfectly plumb. The subdivisions are at right angles to the front. The whole appearance of the place and its surroundings indicate that the family or little community who inhabited it were in good circumstances, and the lords of the surrounding country. Looking out from one of their houses, with a great dome of solid rock overhead that echoed and re-echoed every word uttered with marvelous distinctness, and below them a steep descent of one hundred feet to the broad, fertile valley of the Rio San Juan, covered with waving fields of maize and scattered groves of majestic cotton-woods, these old people, whom even the imagination can hardly clothe with reality, must have felt a sense of security that even the incursions of their barbarian foes could hardly have disturbed.”21