THE COUNTRY OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS.
ALFRED TERRY BACON.
[Ruskin, among his reasons for not visiting the United States, declared that it would be impossible for him to exist, even for a short interval, in a country that had no old castles. Had he known it, he might have found here old castles in abundance, older perhaps, and grander in situation, than any to be found in his own land. These are the ruined dwellings of the ancient inhabitants of the western cañons and of the pueblo-builders of Arizona and New Mexico. We give a traveller’s account of the Cliff-dwellers’ habitations.]
The attraction which drew the conquerors of Mexico forty-five days’ journey away into the North was the fame which had reached them of the Seven Cities of Cibola (the buffalo), great in wealth and population, lying in the valley of the Rio de Zuñi. To the grief of the invaders, they found not cities, but rather villages of peaceful agricultural people dwelling in great pueblos three and four stories high, and they searched in vain for the rumored stores of gold. At that time the pueblos held a large population skilled in many arts of civilization. They cultivated large tracts of ground, wove fabrics of cotton, and produced ornate pottery. Their stone-masonry was admirable. But even three hundred years ago it seems that the people were but a remnant of what they had once been. Even then the conquerors wondered at the many ruins which indicated a decline from former greatness. The people have not now the same degree of skill in their native arts which the race once had, and it is probable that when the Spaniards came and found them declining in numbers the old handicrafts were already on the wane.
In a remote age the ancestors of these Pueblo tribes, or a race of kindred habits, filled most of that vast region which is drained by the Colorado River and its affluents, and spread beyond into the valley of the Rio Grande. The explorers of a great extent of country in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado have found everywhere evidences of the wide distribution and wonderful industry of that ancient people. On the low land which they used to till lie the remains of their villages,—rectangular buildings of enormous dimensions and large circular estufas, or halls for council and worship. On the sides of the savage cliffs that wall in or overarch the cañons are scattered in every crevice and wrinkle those strange and picturesque ruins which give us the name “Cliff-dwellers” to distinguish this long-forgotten people. And on commanding points, seen far away down the cañons or across the mesas, stand the solitary watch-towers where sentinels might signal to the villagers below on the approach of Northern barbarians....
There is no other district which embraces in so small a compass so great a number and variety of the Cliff-dwellers’ ruined works as the cañon of the Little Rio Mancos in Southwestern Colorado. The stream rises in a spur of the San Juan Mountains, near the remote mining-camp called Parrott City. Flowing southward for a few miles through an open valley, it is soon enclosed between the walls of a profound cañon which cuts for nearly thirty miles through a table-land called the Mesa Verde. The cañon is wide enough to have permitted the old inhabitants to plant their crops along the stream, and the cliffs rising on either side to a height of two thousand feet are so curiously broken and grooved and shelving, from the decay of the soft horizontal strata and the projection of the harder, as to offer remarkable facilities for building fortified houses hard of approach and easy of defence. Therefore the whole length of the cañon is filled with ruins, and for fifteen miles beyond it to the borders of New Mexico, where the river meets the Rio San Juan, the valley bears many traces of the ancient occupation.
The scenery of the cañon is wild and imposing in the highest degree. In the dry Colorado air there are few lichens or weather-stains to dull the brightness of the strata to the universal hoariness of moister climates: the vertical cliffs, standing above long slopes of débris, are colored with the brilliant tints of freshly-quarried stone. A gay ribbon of green follows the course of the rivulet winding down through the cañon till it is lost to sight in the vista of crags. The utter silence and solitude of the wilderness reigns through the valley. It is not occupied by any savage tribe, and only a few white men within the last few years have passed through it and told of its wonders; and yet its whole length is but one series of houses and temples that were forsaken centuries ago. I can hardly imagine a more exciting tour of exploration than that which Mr. Jackson’s party made on first entering this cañon in 1874.
Above the entrance of the cañon the evidences of prehistoric life begin. On the bottom-land, concealed by shrubbery, are the half-obliterated outlines of square and circular buildings. The houses were of large size, and were plainly no temporary dwelling-places, for an accumulation of decorated pottery fills the ground about them, indicating long occupation. No doubt they were built of adobe,—masses of hard clay dried in the sun,—which the wear of ages has reduced to smoothly-rounded mounds. For some miles down the cañon remains of this sort occur at short intervals, and at one point there stands a wall built of squared sandstone blocks. Along the ledges of the cliffs on the right bits of ruinous masonry are detected here and there, but for a time there is nothing to excite close attention. At last a watchful eye is arrested by a more interesting object perched at a tremendous height on the western wall of the cañon. It is a house built upon a shelf of rock between the precipices, but, standing seven hundred feet above the stream and differing not at all in color from the crags about it, only the sharpest eyesight can detect the unusual form of the building and the windows marking the two stories.
The climb up to the house-platform is slow and fatiguing, but the trouble is repaid by a sight of one of the most curious ruins on this continent. Before the door of the house, part of the ledge has been reserved for a little esplanade, and to make it broader three small abutments of stone, which once supported a floor, are built on the sloping edge of the rock. Beyond this the house is entered by a small aperture which served as a door. It is the best specimen of a Cliff-dweller’s house that remains to our time. The walls are admirably built of squared stones laid in a hard white mortar. The house is divided into two stories of three rooms each. Behind it a semicircular cistern nearly as high as the house is built against the side of it, and a ladder is arranged for descending from an upper window to the water-level. The floor of the second story was supported by substantial cedar timbers, but only fragments of them remain. The roof, too, has entirely disappeared, but the canopy of natural rock overhanging serves to keep out the weather. The front rooms in both stories are the largest and are most carefully finished. Perhaps they were the parlor and “best bedroom” of some prehistoric housewife. They are plastered throughout with fine smooth mortar, and even in that remote age the mania for household decoration had a beginning: floor, walls, and ceiling were colored a deep red, surrounded by a broad border of white.
The same cliff on which this house stands has on its side many other ruins; some half destroyed by gradual decay, some crushed by falling rocks, none so perfect as the one described; but all are crowded into the strangest unapproachable crevices of the cañon-wall, like the crannies which swallows choose to hold their nests, far removed from the possibility of depredation. Some are so utterly inaccessible that the explorers, with all their enthusiasm and activity, have never been able to reach them. How any beings not endowed with wings could live at such points it is hard to conceive: it makes one suspicious that the Cliff-dwellers had not quite outgrown the habits of monkey ancestors.