Building on the McElmo—Utah.
RUINS ON THE McELMO.
Still further down the cañon, across the boundary line into Utah, ruins continue abundant. A red sandstone butte standing in the middle of the valley, one hundred feet high and three hundred long, has traces of masonry on its summit, apparently intended to form a level platform, and on one side, at mid-height, the structures shown in the cut. The upper wall is eighteen feet long and twelve feet high, and the blocks composing it are described as more regularly cut than any before seen. The only access to the summit of the butte was by climbing through the window of the building. Other remains, including many circular depressions of considerable depth, and a square tower with one round corner, are scattered about near the base of this butte, or cristone. The next cut shows one of the cave-dwellings near by, formed by walling up the front of a recess in the cliff.
Cave-Dwelling on the McElmo.
ABORIGINAL TRADITION
The tradition relating to the whole, and particularly to this locality, obtained by Capt. Moss from one of the old men among the Moquis, is rendered by Mr Ingersoll as follows:—"Formerly the aborigines inhabited all this country we had been over as far west as the head waters 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 upon the cliffs, where they could store food and hide away till 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 cliffs, 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 suffering of the sad fugitives.
"At the christone 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 protectors 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 into the cañon. It was such a victory as they could not afford to gain again, and they were glad when the long fight 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." One watch-tower in this region was built on a block of sandstone that had rolled down and lodged on the very brink of a precipice overlooking the whole valley.