HOMES OF CLIFF DWELLERS IN ARROYO DE LAS IGLESIAS.
Had I wanted to visit them directly in their homes I doubt very much if I could have reached them, for I am sorry to say I am not a sailor, a tight-rope performer, or an aëronaut. Beyond this place the people had fled to their houses, and could, by disarranging a single notched stick, have made our ascent impossible. This, I think, was one of the methods of defense adopted by ancient cliff dwellers of Arizona, as shown at least by some which I have seen and which now, with the logs rotted away, are unapproachable. It is even possible, as I have more than hinted before, that there is some closer affinity between the Arizona and Mexican cliff dwellers than this simple but suggestive one I have mentioned. It is certainly a question I would like to see some good archæologist struggle with for a year or two.
So steep are the walls of the Arroyo de las Iglesias in many places where we observed cliff dwellers that, had they thrown an object from the little portholelike window of their stone pens with ordinary strength, it would certainly have brought up in the cañon bottom probably two hundred or three hundred feet below. How they can rear little children on these cliffs without a loss of one hundred per cent. annually is to me one of the most mysterious things connected with these strange people.
They are worshipers of the sun, so good authorities say, and on the first day of a child's life they dedicate it to that great orb by placing it in his direct rays. In many other ways they show their devotion to that source which has been loved by so many primitive people. Their whole range of worship would certainly be interesting in the extreme. They have the greatest dread of the owl, which, as is known elsewhere as well as here, has some association or other of evil connected with it, from the slightest disaster to death. How many other things they fear no one knows, but they certainly are not afraid to climb cliffs and crags that would frighten the average white man half to death to even contemplate.
IN ARROYO DE LAS IGLESIAS, CLIFF DWELLINGS IN ROCKS.