With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 2

by Unknown

As the cañon widens with the descent of the stream, the ruins in the western wall increase in number. One fearful cliff a thousand feet in height is chinked all over its face with tiny houses of one room each, but only a few of them can be detected with the naked eye. One, which was reached by an explorer at the peril of his life, stands intact: ceiling and floor are of the natural rock, and the wall is built in a neat curve conforming to the shape of the ledge.

A mile farther down the stream there is a most interesting group of houses. Eight hundred feet above the valley there is a shelf in the cliff sixty feet in length that is quite covered by a house. The building contains four large rooms, a circular sacred apartment and smaller rooms of irregular shape. It was called by its discoverers “The House of the Sixteen Windows.” Behind this house the cliff-side rises smooth and perpendicular thirty feet, but it can be scaled by an ancient stairway cut into it which ascends to a still higher ledge. The stairs lead to the very door of another house filling a niche a hundred and twenty feet long. A great canopy of solid rock overarches the little fortress, reaching far forward beyond the front wall, while from below it is absolutely unapproachable except by the one difficult stairway of niches cut in the rock. In time of war it must have been impregnable. These dwellings have given more ideas about their interior furnishing than any of the others. Among the accumulated rubbish were found corn and beans stored away. In the lower house were two large water-jars of corrugated pottery standing on a floor covered with neatly-woven rush matting. In a house not far above were found a bin of charred corn, and a polished hatchet of stone made with remarkable skill.

From this point onward both the valley and the cliffs are filled with the traces of a numerous population, every mile of travel bringing many fresh ones into sight. Among the cliff-houses there is of necessity a variety in form and size as great as the differences of the caves and crevices that hold them; but among the buildings of the low ground there is more uniformity, not only in this cañon, but in all the valleys of the region. Most of them may be classed as aggregated dwellings or pueblos with rectangular rooms, round watch-towers and large circular buildings. To these must be added a few which seem to have been built only for defence. The straight walls have generally fallen, except the parts supported by an angle of a building; but, as usual in old masonry, the circular walls have much better resisted decay.

About midway down the cañon the curved wall of a large ruin rises above the thicket. It is a building of very curious design. The outer wall was an exact circle of heavy masonry a hundred and thirty feet in circumference. Within, there is another circular wall, concentric with the outer, enclosing one round room with a diameter of twenty feet. The annular space between the two walls was divided by partitions into ten small apartments. Other buildings of the same type occur in this region, some of much larger size and with triple walls. Even in this one, which is comparatively well preserved, the original height is uncertain, though the ruin still stands about fifteen feet high.

The vast quantity of débris about some of them indicates that they were of no insignificant height, and their perfect symmetry of form, the careful finish of the masonry, the large dimensions and great solidity, made them the most imposing architectural works of that ancient people. I find no reason to doubt that they were their temples, and the presumption is very strong that they were temples for sun-worship. The occurrence of a circular room in connection with nearly every group of buildings is of special interest, as seeming to link the Cliff-dwellers to the modern Pueblo tribes in their religious customs.

Most striking and picturesque of all the ruins are the round watch-towers. On commanding points in the valley, and on the highest pinnacles of the cliffs overlooking the surface of the mesa, they occur with a frequency which is almost pathetic as an indication of the life of eternal vigilance which was led by that old race through the years, perhaps centuries, of exterminating warfare which the savage red men from the North waged upon them. To us the suffering of frontier families at the hands of the same blood-thirsty savages is heart-rending. What was it to those who saw year by year their whole race’s life withering away, crushed by those wild tribes?

Near the lower end of the cañon stands one of the most perfect of these towers, rising sixteen feet above the mound on which it is built. It was once attached to an oblong stone building which seems to have been a strongly-fortified house. The rectangular walls, as usual, are prostrate, and have left the tower standing as solitary and picturesque and as full of mystery as the round towers of Ireland....

In the Montezuma Cañon, just beyond the Colorado State border, there are some remains built after an unusual manner with stones of great size. One building of many rooms, nearly covering a little solitary mesa, is constructed of huge stone blocks not unlike the prehistoric masonry of Southern Europe. In the same district there is a ruined line of fortification from which the smaller stones have fallen away and are crumbling to dust, leaving only certain enormous upright stones standing. They rise to a height of seven feet above the soil, and the lower part is buried to a considerable depth. Their resemblance to the hoary Druidical stones of Carnac and Stonehenge is striking, and there is nothing in their appearance to indicate that they belong to a much later age than those primeval monuments of Europe.

All the certain knowledge that we have of the history and manners of the Cliff-dwellers may be very briefly told, for there is no written record of their existence, except their own rude picture-writing, cut or painted on the cañon walls, and it is not likely that those hieroglyphics will ever be deciphered. But much may be inferred from their evident kinship to the Moquis of our time; and the resemblance of the ancient architecture and ceramics to the arts as they are still practised in the degenerate pueblos of Arizona gives us many intimations in regard to the habits of the Cliff-dwellers.