To describe the defensive ruins on Epsom Creek, Montezuma Creek, and the McElmo is simply to repeat descriptions already given. We meet with cave-houses, cliff-houses, and sentinel-towers in abundance. The whole section appears to have been thickly settled. Further explorations will doubtless make known many more ruins, but probably nothing differing in kind from what is already known. We think the defensive ruins belong to a later period of their existence than do the old and time-worn structures we have hitherto described along the river valleys and open plains, as at Aztec Springs. These structures plainly show that at the time they were built the people were subject to an invasion from a stronger foe, one before whose approach they had to fly for protection to the almost inaccessible cliffs.
They would obviously never have settled there had they always had to contend with these savage tribes. It needs no great skill to read the story of the dispersion of these old people from the ruins we have described; the many watch-towers, which were also used as fortresses or citadels in which to find protection, testifying to the need of increased watchfulness. The cave-houses and cliff-fortresses, cunningly hidden away to escape detection, or so placed as to defy the assault of their enemies, show to what desperate straits they were driven; and imagination only can picture the despair that must have filled their hearts when the hour of final defeat came, and they must have realized that even these shifts would not allow them to stay in the lands of their fathers.
That this is the explanation of these ruins, we will cite the legendary stories given by an old man among the Moquis concerning some ruins in the cañon of the McElmo, just over the line in Utah. At this point the cañon widens out considerably, and in the center of the valley is still standing a portion of the old mesa, once filling the entire valley. It is now a mass of dark red sandstone, about one hundred feet high, and three hundred feet around, seamed and cracked, and gradually disappearing, as the rock has gone all around it. The top of this rock is covered with the ruins of some building; there are also ruins at the base and all around the immediate vicinity. There were watch towers and estufas, showing that this was a place of great interest.
The story is as follows: “Formerly the aborigines inhabited all this country as far east as the headwaters of the San Juan, as far north as the Rio Dolores, west some distance into Utah, and south and south-west throughout Arizona, and on down into Mexico. They had lived there from time immemorial, since the earth was a small island, which augmented as its inhabitants multiplied. They cultivated the valley, fashioned whatever utensils and tools they needed very neatly and handsomely out of clay, and wood, and stone, not knowing any of the useful metals; built their homes and kept their flocks and herds in the fertile river bottoms, and worshiped the sun. They were an eminently peaceful and prosperous people, living by agriculture rather than by the chase. About a thousand years ago, however, they were visited by savage strangers from the north, whom they treated hospitably. Soon these visits became more frequent and annoying. Then their troublesome neighbors, ancestors of the present Utes, began to forage upon them, and at last to massacre them and devastate their farms. So, to save their lives at least, they built houses high up on the cliffs, where they could store food and hide away until the raiders left.
“But one Summer the invaders did not go back to their mountains, as the people expected, but brought their families with them and settled down. So, driven from their homes and lands, starving in their little niches on the high cites they could only steal away during the night and wander across the cheerless uplands. To one who has traveled these steppes such a flight seems terrible, and the mind hesitates to picture the sufferings of the sad fugitives. At the ‘Creston’ (name of the ruin) they halted, and probably found friends, for the rocks and caves are full of the nests of these human wrens and swallows. Here they collected, erected stone fortifications and watch-towers, dug reservoirs in the rocks to hold a supply of water, which in all cases is precarious in this latitude, and once more stood at bay. Their foes came, and for one long month fought, and were beaten back, and returned day after day to the attack as merciless and inevitable as the tide. Meanwhile the families of the defenders were evacuating and moving south, and bravely did their defenders shield them till they were all safely a hundred miles away.
“The besiegers were beaten back and went away. But the narrative tells us that the hollows of the rocks were filled to the brim with the mingled blood of conquerors and, conquered, and red veins of it ran down the cañon. It was such a victory as they could not afford to gain again, and they were glad, when the long flight was over, to follow their wives and little ones to the south. There, in the deserts of Arizona, on well-nigh unapproachable, isolated bluffs, they built new towns, and their few descendants, the Moquis, live in them to this day, preserving more carefully and purely the history and veneration of their forefathers than their skill or wisdom.”22
Mr. Jackson thinks this legend arises from the appearance of the rocks. The bare floor of nearly white sandstone, upon which the butte stands, is stained in gory streaks and blotches by the action of an iron constituent in the rocks of another portion of the adjoining bluffs. That may well be true, but we believe that there are germs of truth in the story. Driven from their homes, where did the fugitives go? Some of them may have gone east, but probably the body of the migration was to the south. It has been the tendency of all tribes, but especially of the sedentary tribes, to pass to the south and east, and this is also the traditions among the inhabitants of still existing pueblos.23 We find that every available portion of New Mexico and Arizona bears evidence of having been once populated by tribes of Indians, who built houses in all respects like those already described. In northern New Mexico, Prof. Cope has described a whole section of country as being at one time more densely populated than the thickly inhabited portions of the Eastern States. He says: “The number of buildings in a square mile of that region is equal to, if not greater than the number now existing in the more densely populated rural districts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.”24
In one location he found a village of thirty houses, built of stone, and all in ruins. He found, over a large extent of country, that every little conical hill and eminence was crowned with ruins of old houses. We, of course, can not say that these ruins are necessarily younger than those to the north of the San Juan, and yet we think from Prof. Cope’s description that they do not present such evidence of antiquity as do the crumbling ruins previously described. And then, besides, they were always located in easily defended positions.