Prehistoric villages, castles, and towers of southwestern Colorado

by Jesse Walter Fewkes

MINOR ANTIQUITIES

The preceding pages deal wholly with the immovable antiquities, as buildings, reservoirs, and the like. In addition to these evidences of a former population, there should be mentioned likewise the smaller antiquities, as pottery, stone objects, weapons, baskets, fabrics, bone and other implements. No excavation was attempted in the course of the reconnoissance, so that this chapter in the author’s report is naturally a very brief one. The few statements which follow are mainly based on local collections, one of which, owned by Mr. Williamson, of the First National Bank of Dolores, is comprehensive. The most suggestive of these minor antiquities are objects of burnt clay or pottery, which occur generally in piles of débris or accompany human burials. It was the custom of these people, like the cliff-dwellers, to deposit, near the dead, food in bowls and other household utensils, varying in shape, technique, decoration, and color. The most important fact regarding these ceramics is that they belong to the same archaic type as those from the ruins of the Mesa Verde. The predominating colors are white or gray with black figures, within and without, almost universally geometrical in form. There occurs also a relatively large number of corrugated vessels, and those made by using coils of clay, the figures on their exterior being indented with some implement, as a bone, stone, or even with the finger nail. While the majority belong to the black-and-white group, the red ware decorated with black figures is found but comparatively rarely, which is also true of the pottery of the cliff-dwellers. In the large variety of forms of burnt clay objects, the most remarkable in shape is a double water jar, connected by a transverse tube, the ends of which project beyond the opening into the jar, much in the form of an animal with a head at one end, body elongated, terminating in a short tail, the legs not being represented. While the number of unbroken mortuary bowls obtained from this region thus far known is comparatively small, we find in many places large quantities of broken fragments, all of which belong to the varieties of ware above enumerated.

None of the bowls, vases, dippers, or other ceramic objects from the region of the ruins described have that significant feature commonly called the “life line;” the encircling lines are continuous around the vessel, and not broken at one point. The broken line never occurs on archaic pottery like black-and-white ware, and we may accept the hypothesis that the conception which gave rise to it was foreign to the people of the Mesa Verde and adjacent areas. It would be instructive to map out the distribution of this custom which was so prevalent in pottery from the Gila and Little Colorado and its tributaries, and absent in that from ruins on the San Juan and Mimbres. It occurs in ware from certain Rio Grande prehistoric ruins, as if it were a connecting link with the ancient culture of the Little Colorado.

Of the stone implements found in this region the most characteristic is the celt called tcamahia which is not found in regions not affected by the San Juan culture. These objects are found from Mesa Verde to the Hopi pueblos.[54] A peculiar form of prehistoric chipped chert implement occurs at Mesa Verde and elsewhere in the area. A flint knife in the Williamson collection at Dolores was purchased from a Ute woman who said it was found on a ruin. She wore it attached to her belt by a buckskin thong fastened to a bead-worked cover.

Bone objects were mainly needles, dirks, and bodkins, presenting in the main no essential differences from those repeatedly described, especially by Nordenskiöld in his important memoir on the cliff-dwellers of the Mesa Verde. Objects made of marine shell are rare. The presence of flattened slabs of stone or metates showing on the surface evidences of grinding occur with human bones in many localities, indicating either that a custom still extant among the Pueblos of burying the metates with the dead was observed, or that the burials were made under floors of these long-abandoned houses. It would seem, on the former hypothesis, that these objects were buried with the women, but as the condition of the skeletal remains is poor the sex could not be determined by direct observation.

The unprotected nature of the sites and the condition of the ruins prevented the preservation of fragile articles like baskets and fabrics, which frequently occur in caves, in one or two instances buried under the floors. There is little doubt that excavations in cemeteries of the open-sky ruins would reveal considerable material of this nature, which would probably duplicate that which has been produced from the adjacent cliff-houses. Many parts of wooden beams, mainly the remains of flooring and roofs, were seen still in the walls, but these as a rule were fragmentary. The ends of the timbers still adhering to the walls show that they were cut into shape by stone implements, aided by live embers. They appear to have been split by means of wedges made of stone and often rubbed down smooth with polishing instruments of the same material. The majority of these wooden beams plainly show the action of fire, but no roof was intact. From the size of the logs shown in fragments of beams, it is evident that the roof supports had been brought there from some distance; trees of the magnitude they imply do not now grow in the neighborhood of some of the ruins where these beams occur.

HISTORIC REMAINS

The various objects found in the ruins or on the surface of the ground as a rule are characteristic of a people in the stone-age culture, ignorant of metals, and therefore prehistoric, but here and there on the surface have been picked up iron weapons which belonged to the historic period. The old “Spanish Trail” mentioned in preceding pages was the early highway from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Great Salt Lake, and followed approximately an old Indian trail that was probably used by the prehistoric inhabitants or the builders of the towers. Not far from the head of Yellow Jacket Canyon a ranchman discovered on his farm a few years ago the blades of two Spanish iron lance heads or knives, still well preserved, the hilts, however, being destroyed. These objects, now in Mr. Williamson’s collection at Dolores, may have belonged to a party of Spanish soldiers who explored this region, but their form, in addition to the material, is so characteristic that no one would assign them to aboriginal manufacture. Fragments of a stirrup of metal, parts of the harness or saddle, also belonging to the Spanish epoch, have also been found. The indications are that these objects are historic, but their owners may have been Indians who obtained them from Europeans. They probably do not antedate the middle of the eighteenth century, when two Catholic fathers, with an escort of soldiers, made their trip of discovery from Santa Fe into what is now Utah. They shed no light on the epoch of the aborigines who constructed the castles and towers considered in this paper.

CONCLUSIONS

In the preceding pages the author has considered several different types of buildings, which, notwithstanding their variety in forms, have much in common and can be interpreted as indicating an identical phase of pueblo development. A comparative study of their distribution shows us that they occur in a well-defined geographical area. In comparison with stone buildings in other parts of the Southwestern States, this phase shows superior masonry. It is considered as chronologically antedating the historic epoch and post-dating an earlier, and as yet not clearly defined, phase out of which it sprung in the natural evolution from simple to complex forms.