Near some of the larger buildings are smaller detached ruins, of which no particular description is given. In one place there is an excavation in the side of a cliff, enclosed by a front wall of stone and mortar. In another locality there is an isolated elliptical enclosure of stone and mortar, eight by sixteen feet, and divided into two compartments. Near one of the ruins, in the northern wall of the cañon, about twelve feet from the base, are three circular holes two feet in diameter, with smaller ones between them, all in a horizontal line, with a vertical line of still smaller holes leading up the cliff to one of the larger ones. Mr Simpson was unable to explore this singular excavation, and its use is unknown; it may be a room or fortress excavated from the solid rock. There are also some hieroglyphics on the face of the cliff under the holes. The quarries which furnished the stone for some of the buildings were found, but no description of them is given. Hieroglyphics on boulders were found at a few points. The pottery found among the Chaco ruins is illustrated by the cut. Black and red seem to be the only colors employed. The Chaco cañon, although wider than that of the Chelly, is bounded by precipitous sides, and the ruins are generally near the base of the cliff. The Pueblo Pintado is built on a knoll twenty or thirty feet high, about three hundred yards from the river. The buildings do not exactly face the cardinal points.[XI-51]
PUEBLO REMAINS ON THE RIO GRANDE.
I now come to the last division of the present group, the perpendicular of our triangle, the Rio Grande del Norte and its tributaries. This valley, the New Mexico proper of the Spaniards, when first visited in the sixteenth century, was thickly inhabited by an agricultural semi-civilized people, dwelling in towns of stone and mud houses several stories in height. Respecting the number, names, and exact locality of these towns the early accounts are somewhat vague, but many of them can be accurately traced by means of an examination of authorities which would be out of place here. From the first discovery by Cabeza de Vaca, Marco de Niza, and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, the general history of the country is clear; and we still find the same semi-civilized people living in similar towns under similar institutions, although they, like the towns in which they live, are greatly reduced in number. Some of the inhabited Pueblo towns are known by name, location, and history, to be identical with those which so excited the admiration of the Spaniards; and there is every reason to believe that all are so, except a few that may have been built during the Spanish domination. The inhabited Pueblo towns, or those inhabited during the nineteenth century, are about twenty in number, although authors disagree on this point, some calling Pueblos what others say are merely Mexican towns; but the distinction is not important for my present purpose.[XI-52] The important fact is, that the Spaniard found no race of people in New Mexico which has since become extinct, nor any class of towns or buildings that differed from the Pueblo towns still inhabited.
Besides the towns still inhabited there are many of precisely the same materials and architecture, which are in ruins. Such are Pecos, Quivira, Valverde, San Lázaro, San Marcos, San Cristóbal, Socorro, Senacu, Abó, Quarra, Rita, Poblazon, old San Felipe, and old Zuñi. Some of these were abandoned by the natives at a very recent date; some have ruined Spanish buildings among the aboriginal structures; some may be historically identified with the towns conquered by the first European visitors. These facts, together with the absence of any mention of ruins by the first explorers, and the well-known diminution of the Pueblos in numbers and power, make it perfectly safe to affirm that the ruins all belong to the same class, the same people, and about the same epoch as the inhabited towns. This conclusion is of some importance since it renders it useless to examine carefully each ruin, and the documents bearing on its individual history, and enables the reader to form a perfectly clear idea of all the many structures by carefully studying a few.
While the Pueblo towns cannot be regarded as objects of great mystery, as the work of a race that has disappeared, or as a station of the Aztecs while on their way southward, yet they are properly treated as antiquities, since they were doubtless built by the native races before they come in contact with the Spaniards. They occupy the same position with respect to the subject of this volume as the remains in Anáhuac, excepting perhaps Cholula and Teotihuacan; or rather they have the same importance that the city of Tlacopan would have, had the Spaniards permitted that city to stand in possession of its native inhabitants.
PUEBLO TOWNS OF NEW MEXICO.
An account of the Pueblo buildings has been given in another volume of this work,[XI-53] and I cannot do better here than to quote from good authorities a description of the principal towns, both inhabited and in ruins. Of Taos Mr Abert says, "One of the northern forks of the Taos river, on issuing from the mountains, forms a delightful nook, which the Indians early selected as a permanent residence. By gradual improvement, from year to year, it has finally become one of the most formidable of the artificial strongholds of New Mexico. On each side of the little mountain stream is one of those immense 'adobe' structures, which rises by successive steps until an irregular pyramidal building, seven stories high, presents an almost impregnable tower. These, with the church and some few scattering houses, make up the village. The whole is surrounded by an adobe wall, strengthened in some places by rough palisades, the different parts so arranged, for mutual defence, as to have elicited much admiration for the skill of the untaught engineers." Of the same town Davis says, "It is the best sample of the ancient mode of building. Here there are two large houses three hundred or four hundred feet in length, and about one hundred and fifty feet wide at the base. They are situated upon opposite sides of a small creek, and in ancient times are said to have been connected by a bridge. They are five and six stories high, each story receding from the one below it, and thus forming a structure terraced from top to bottom. Each story is divided into numerous little compartments, the outer tiers of rooms being lighted by small windows in the sides, while those in the interior of the building are dark, and are principally used as store-rooms.... The only means of entrance is through a trap-door in the roof, and you ascend, from story to story, by means of ladders upon the outside, which are drawn up at night." The same writer gives the following cut of Taos.[XI-54]
Pueblo of Taos.