Half a dozen miles down the cañon of the McElmo, several of the little nest-like dwellings peculiar to the Mancos were seen perched forty or fifty feet above the valley. A couple of miles beyond these, the tower shown in the cut (p. 301) was discovered standing on the summit of a great block of sandstone forty feet high, and detached from the bluff back of it.
Square Tower on the McElmo.
The building which surmounts this rocky pedestal is square and about fifteen feet high at present. Windows open toward the north and east, the directions from which the enemies of this people, according to tradition, came down upon them. A wall at the base of the rock is mostly in ruins and covered with débris from the building above. Immediately beyond this point the boundary line into Utah was crossed, and two or three miles distant the party came upon a very interesting group, a historic spot in the career of this ancient race. In the centre of the widening valley stands a solitary butte of dark-red sandstone, upon a perfectly smooth floor of the same, dipping gently towards the centre of the valley. This butte or cristone is about one hundred feet high and three hundred feet in length, of irregular form. All around the rock are remains of stone walls which indicate an extensive structure and complicated system of walls and towers. At the back of the rock two remains attract special attention. One wall forming the corner of a building near the base of the rock, seems to have served as an approach to the larger house up in the side of the butte. This structure is about eighteen feet in length and twelve feet in height, nearly reaching to the top of the rock. Part of the walls have fallen, but those standing show a finish surpassing those of any structure previously discovered in the region. In front is a single aperture eighteen by twenty-four inches. On top of the rock are remains of masonry, but too badly ruined to indicate their original form. All the crevices and irregularities in the faces of the butte had been smoothly walled up; it is supposed, to make its ascent impossible. In the vicinity a tower with a rounded corner and twelve feet in diameter by twenty feet high stood in a dry creek bed.
Cliff House in the Cañon of the McElmo.
We remarked that this was a historic locality, as certainly it was if the legend obtained by Captain Moss from an old man among the Moquis is reliable. Mr. Ingersoll has rendered it in the New York Tribune for November 3d, 1874, 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 worshipped 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 Cristone 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. It was from one of their old men that this traditional sketch was obtained.” In a side cañon, a tower eighteen feet high was seen perched on a huge block of sandstone which had fallen from the top of the mesa and lodged on a projecting shelf of rock, midway from top or bottom. Eight or ten miles westward of the McElmo, Mr. Jackson and his party discovered on a stream known as the Hovenweep, the ruins of a city. Mr. Jackson’s description is as follows: “The stream referred to sweeps the foot of a rocky sandstone ledge, some forty or fifty feet in height, upon which is built the highest and better-preserved portion of the settlement. Its semicircular sweep conforms to the ledge, each little house of the outer circle being built close upon its edge. Below the level of these upper houses some ten or twelve feet, and within the semicircular sweep, are seven distinctly marked depressions, each separated from the other by rocky débris, the lower or first series probably of small community houses. Upon either flank, and founded upon rocks, are buildings similar in size and in other respects to the large ones on the line above. As paced off, the upper or convex surface measured one hundred yards in length. Each little apartment is small and narrow, averaging six feet in width and eight feet in length, the walls being eighteen inches in thickness. The stones of which the entire group is built are dressed to nearly uniform size and laid in mortar. A peculiar feature here is in the round corners, one at least appearing upon nearly every little house. They are turned with considerable care and skill, being true curves solidly bound together.”
Ruins of the Hovenweep.
