The Rio Mancos is the next tributary of the Rio San Juan west of the Rio de la Plata. When, in 1874, I was a member of the photographic division of the United States Geological and Geographical Survey, one of the main objects of our trip was the exploration of this remote corner of the State, where we had vaguely heard of marvelous relics of a bygone civilization unequaled by anything short of the splendid ruins of Central America and the land of the Incas. After traversing the frightfully rugged trails of the San Juan and La Plata mountains, therefore, a portion of our party came out on the southern margin of the mountains, and, despite the smoldering hostility of the Indians, with which the region was filled, headed southward into the long deserted cañons. There were five of us, altogether,—Mr. W. H. Jackson (from whose skillful camera came many of the illustrations that grace my present text), the famous Captain John Moss, who went with us as “guide, philosopher and friend,” myself and two mule packers.
The trail led from Parrott City, then a nameless prospect camp, washing gold without a thought of the silver ledges to be developed later there, over to Merritt’s pleasant ranch on the upper Rio Mancos, then across rolling grass land and through groves of magnificent lumber pines, a distance of about fifteen miles. Spending one night at the ranch, sunrise the next morning found us eager to enter the portals of the cañon and the precincts of the area within which glorious discoveries in anthropology allured our imagination and made light the toil and privation of the undertaking.
ANIMAS CAÑON AND THE NEEDLES.
Not five hundred yards below the ranch we came upon our first find,—mounds of earth which had accumulated over fallen houses, and about which were strewn an abundance of fragments of pottery, variously painted in colors, often glazed within, and impressed in various designs. Later the perpendicular, buttress-like walls that hemmed in the valley began to contract, and that night we camped under some forlorn cedars, just beneath a bluff a thousand feet or so in height, which, for its upper half, was absolutely vertical. This was the edge of the green table-land, or mésa verde, which stretches over hundreds of square miles, and is cleft by these cracks or cañons, through which the drainage of the northern uplands finds its way into the Rio San Juan.
In wandering about after supper, something like a house was discerned away up on the face of this bluff, and two of us clambered over the talus of loose débris, across a great stratum of pure coal, and, by dint of much pushing and pulling, up to the ledge upon which it stood. We came down satisfied, and next morning Mr. Jackson carried up our photographic kit and got some superb negatives. There, seven hundred measured feet above the valley, perched on a little ledge only just large enough to hold it, was a two story house made of finely cut sandstone, each block about fourteen by six inches, accurately fitted and set in mortar now harder than the stone itself. The floor was the ledge upon which it rested, and the roof the overhanging rock. There were three rooms upon the ground floor, each one six by nine feet, with partition walls of faced stone. Between the stories was originally a wooden floor, traces of which still remained, as did also the cedar sticks set in the wall over the windows and door; but this was over the front room only, the height of the rocky roof behind not being sufficient to allow an attic there. Each of the stories was six feet in height, and all the rooms, upstairs and down, were nicely plastered and painted what now looks a dull brick red color, with a white band along the floor like a base-board. There was a low doorway from the ledge into the lower story, and another above, showing that the upper chamber was entered from without. The windows were square apertures, with no indication of any glazing or shutters. They commanded a view of the whole valley for many miles. Near the house several convenient little niches in the rock were built into better shape, as though they had been used as cupboards or caches; and behind it a semi-circular wall inclosing the angle of the house and cliff formed a water reservoir holding two and a half hogsheads. The water was taken out of this from a window of the upper room. In front of the house, which was the left side to one facing the bluff, an esplanade had been built to widen the narrow ledge and probably furnish a commodious place for a kitchen. The abutments which supported it were founded upon a smooth, steeply-inclined face of rock; yet so consummate was their skill in masonry that these abutments still stand, although it would seem that a pound’s weight might slide them off.
Searching further in this vicinity, we found remains of many houses on the same ledge, and some perfect ones above it quite inaccessible. The rocks also bore some inscriptions. Many edifices in the cliffs escaped our notice. The glare over everything, and the fact that the buildings, being formed of the rock on which they rested, were identical in color with it, increasing the difficulty made sufficiently great by their altitude.
Leaving here, we soon came upon traces of houses in the bottom of the valley, in the greatest profusion, nearly all of which were entirely destroyed, and broken pottery everywhere abounded. The majority of the buildings were square, but many round, and one sort of ruin always showed two square buildings with very deep cellars under them and a round tower between them, seemingly for watch and defense. In several cases a large part of this tower was still standing. The best example of this consisted of two perfectly circular walls of cut stone, one within the other. The diameter of the inner circle was twenty-two feet and of the outer thirty-three feet. The walls were thick and were perforated apparently by three equi-distant doorways. At that time we concluded this double-walled tower (later triple-walled structures of the same sort were met with) must have had a religious use; but since then I have wondered whether all of these round buildings above ground (save some which manifestly were watch towers) were not used as store-houses for snow. It was a country of long droughts and hot summers. The double or triple walls, with spaces of dead air between would make excellent refrigerators.