About eighteen miles still farther to the east of San Francisco Mountain another ruined village was discovered, built about the crater of a volcanic cone. This volcanic peak is of much greater magnitude. The crater opens to the eastward. On the south many stone dwellings have been built of the basaltic and cinder-like rocks. Between the ridge on the south and another on the northwest there is a low saddle in which other buildings have been erected, and in which a great plaza was found, much like the one previously described. But the most interesting part of this village was on the cliff which rose on the northwest side of the crater. In this cliff are many natural caves, and the caves themselves were utilized as dwellings by inclosing them in front with walls made of volcanic rocks and cinders. These cliff dwellings are placed tier above tier, in a very irregular way. In many cases natural caves were thus utilized; in other cases cavate chambers were made; that is, chambers have been excavated in the friable cinders. On the very summit of the ridge stone buildings were erected, so that this village was in part a cliff village, in part cavate, and in part the ordinary stone pueblo. The valley below, especially to the southward, was probably occupied by their gardens. In the chambers among the overhanging cliffs a great many interesting relics were found, of stone, bone, and wood, and many potsherds.
About eight miles southeast of Flagstaff, a little town on the southern slope of San Francisco Mountain, Oak Creek enters a canyon, which runs to the eastward and then southward for a distance of about ten miles. The gorge is a precipitous box canyon for the greater part of this distance. It is cut through carboniferous rocks—sandstones and limestones—which are here nearly horizontal. The softer sandstones rapidly disintegrate, and the harder sandstones and limestones remain. Thus broad shelves are formed on the sides of the cliffs, and these shelves, or the deep recesses between them, were utilized, so that here is a village of cliff dwellings. There are several hundred rooms altogether. The rooms are of sandstone, pretty carefully worked and laid in mortar, and the interior of the rooms was plastered. The opening for the chimney was usually by the side of the entrance, and the ceilings of the rooms are still blackened with soot and smoke. Around this village, on the terrace of the canyon, great numbers of potsherds, stone implements, and implements of bone, horn, and wood were found; and here, as in all of the other ruins mentioned, corncobs in great abundance were discovered.
In addition to the four principal ruins thus described many others are found, most of them being of the ordinary pueblo type. From the evidence presented it would seem that they had all been occupied at a comparatively late date. They were certainly not abandoned more than three or four centuries ago.
Later in the season the Director visited the Supai Indians of Cataract Canyon, and was informed by them that their present home had been taken up not many generations ago, and that their ancestors occupied the ruins which have been described; and they gave such a circumstantial account of the occupation and of their expulsion by the Spaniards, that no doubt can be entertained of the truth of their traditions in this respect. The Indians of Cataract Canyon doubtless lived on the north, east, and south of San Francisco Mountain at the time this country was discovered by the Spaniards, and they subsequently left their cliff and cavate dwellings and moved into Cataract Canyon, where they now live. It is thus seen that these cliff and cavate dwellings are not of an ancient prehistoric time, but that they were occupied by a people still existing, who also built pueblos of the common type.
Later in the season the party visited the cavate ruins near Santa Clara, previously explored by Mr. Stevenson. Here, on the western side of the Rio Grande del Norte, was found a system of volcanic peaks, constituting what is known as the Valley Range. To the east of these peaks, stretching far beyond the present channel of the Rio Grande, there was once a great Tertiary lake, which was gradually filled with the sands washed into it on every hand and by the ashes blown out of the adjacent volcanoes. This great lake formation is in some places a thousand feet in thickness. When the lake was filled the Rio Grande cut its channel through the midst to a depth of many hundreds of feet. The volcanic mountains to the westward send to the Rio Grande a number of minor streams, which in a general way are parallel with one another. The Rio Grande itself, and all of these lateral streams, have cut deep gorges and canyons, so that there are long, irregular table-lands, or mesas, extending from the Rio Grande back to the Valley Mountains, each mesa being severed from the adjacent one by a canyon or canyon valley; and each of these long mesas rises with a precipitous cliff from the valley below. The cliffs themselves are built of volcanic sands and ashes, and many of the strata are exceedingly light and friable. The specific gravity of some of these rocks is so low that they will float on water. Into the faces of these cliffs, in the friable and easily worked rock, many chambers have been excavated; for mile after mile the cliffs are studded with them, so that altogether there are many thousands. Sometimes a chamber or series of chambers is entered from a terrace, but usually they were excavated many feet above any landing or terrace below, so that they could be reached only by ladders. In other places artificial terraces were built by constructing retaining walls and filling the interior next to the cliff with loose rock and sand. Very often steps were cut into the face of a cliff and a rude stairway formed by which chambers could be reached. The chambers were very irregularly arranged and very irregular in size and structure. In many cases there is a central chamber, which seems to have been a general living room for the people, back of which two, three, or more chambers somewhat smaller are found. The chambers occupied by one family are sometimes connected with those occupied by another family, so that two or three or four sets of chambers have interior communication. Usually, however, the communication from one system of chambers to another was by the outside. Many of the chambers had evidently been occupied as dwellings. They still contained fireplaces and evidences of fire; there were little caverns or shelves in which various vessels were placed, and many evidences of the handicraft of the people were left in stone, bone, horn, and wood, and in the chambers and about the sides of the cliffs potsherds are abundant. On more careful survey it was found that many chambers had been used as stables for asses, goats, and sheep. Sometimes they had been filled a few inches, or even two or three feet, with the excrement of these animals. Ears of corn and corncobs were also found in many places. Some of the chambers were evidently constructed to be used as storehouses or caches for grain. Altogether it is very evident that the cliff houses have been used in comparatively modern times; at any rate since the people owned asses, goats, and sheep. The rock is of such a friable nature that it will not stand atmospheric degradation very long, and there is abundant evidence of this character testifying to the recent occupancy of these cavate dwellings.
Above the cliffs, on the mesas, which have already been described, evidences of more ancient ruins were found. These were pueblos built of cut stone rudely dressed. Every mesa had at least one ancient pueblo upon it, evidently far more ancient than the cavate dwellings found in the face of the cliffs. It is, then, very plain that the cavate dwellings are not of great age; that they have been occupied since the advent of the white man, and that on the summit of the cliffs there are ruins of more ancient pueblos.
Now, the pottery of Santa Clara had been previously studied by Mr. Stevenson, who made a large collection there two or three years ago, and it was at once noticed that the potsherds of these cliff dwellings are, both in shape and material, like those now made by the Santa Clara Indians. The peculiar pottery of Santa Clara is readily distinguished, as may be seen by examining the collection now in the National Museum. While encamped in the valley below, the party met a Santa Clara Indian and engaged him in conversation. From him the history of the cliff dwellings was soon obtained. His statement was that originally his people lived in six pueblos, built of cut stone, upon the summit of the mesas; that there came a time when they were at war with the Apaches and Navajos, when they abandoned their stone pueblos above and for greater protection excavated the chambers in the cliffs below; that when this war ended part of them returned to the pueblos above, which were rebuilt; that there afterward came another war, with the Comanche Indians, and they once more resorted to cliff dwellings. At the close of this war they built a pueblo in the valley of the Rio Grande, but at the time of the invasion of the Spaniards their people refused to be baptized, and a Spanish army was sent against them, when they abandoned the valley below and once more inhabited the cliff dwellings above. Here they lived many years, until at last a wise and good priest brought them peace, and persuaded them to build the pueblo which they now occupy—the village of Santa Clara. The ruin of the pueblo which they occupied previous to the invasion of the Spaniards is still to be seen about a mile distant from the present pueblo.
The history thus briefly given was repeated by the governor and by other persons, all substantially to the same effect. It is therefore evident that the cavate dwellings of the Santa Clara region belong to a people still extant; that they are not of great antiquity, and do not give evidence of a prehistoric and now extinct race.
Plans and measurements were made of some of the villages with sufficient accuracy to prepare models. Photographic views and sketches were also procured with which to illustrate a detailed report of the subject to be published by the Bureau.