^^^'V'^V' '^^^1 ^^ -,-.*<>. .K-. ,, ^^.^A-, w,^ \7 ^\ 'V ^ ^\: 'M u THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY 9 13. 7 rjf- V .T* jrr:r r- ^PT, ^15 ^im ->•• '-mm>4 (\'-T - :. Vi.'t^t.S ^4m-- A">' 'V '^^,W^ fcifi^' Iprebistovic Hmerica. «o1. III. * « J.^_^*^^.*^^.*^-^J^^M■*^^■*■M•*^H•***-M-*■M-1=-M^■M-=f:^-+H:•M-*■M■*■^ I Ube /IDounC) BuilDers. | Bnimal Etttates- f i * I xrbe Cltff H)weller9. | i /ID^tbs an^ Symbols. | t Hrcba^oloaical IReltcs. f I BeoinninGS of Brcbitecture. | t i * t UBKAIiY OF THE THE CLIFF DWELLERS AND PUEBLOS BY Rev. STEPHEN DENISON PEET. Ph. D., Member of A7nerican Aiitiqttariati Society; Americati Historical Society , New Englatid Historical and Gctiealogical Society; Fellow American Association Ad. of Science ; Cor. Me7nber Americatt Oriental Society ; Numismatic Society of New York; Victoria Institute; Society Biblical Archceology ; Davenport Academy of Science ; also, Editor of American Afttiquarian and Oriental fournal. ILLUSTRATED. CHICAGO: OFFICE OF THK AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN. Ib99. COPYRIGHTED BY STEPHEN D. PEET. 1899. CJ DEDICATED TO William H. Holmes, IN HONOR OF HIS WONDERFUL SKILL IN DESCRIBING AND DEPICTING THE CLIFF-DWELLINGS OF THE MANCOS CANYON, AND AS A TOKEN OF RESPECT FOR HIS UNIFORM COURTESY AND KINDNESS. BY HIS SINCERE FRIEND, STEPHEN D. PEET. ^S PREFACE. ^PHAT mysterious people called the Cliff-Dwellers, have been for many years the objects of much curiosity, and are still regarded with great interest. Various parties have entered the region where their works and relics were discov- •ered; some of whom have written interesting accounts of their own explorations, and two or three have published books upon the fubject. As a result, the mystery surrounding them, has been to some degree dispelled; so that they can no longer be regarded as so obscure and strange a people, as they once were. The most of the parties who have entered the field have come to the conclusion, that they were the same people as those who are known under the name of the Pueblos, and that they practiced a very similar architecture; the main difference between them, consisting in the fact, that they were situated upon the borders of the Pueblo territory and were here subject to the attacks of the Wild Tribes, which have so long infested the region. The author of this book, who is the editor of the American Antiquarian, has taken this as his clew, and so has used a double title. He has given descriptions, not merely of the cliff-dwellings and their local surroundings and history, but of their distribution and varied relations. His position is, that the cliff-dwellings were permanent abodes, but were built at different periods; some of them at a very ancient date; others at a period which was not very long before the discover)' of America. The development of the Pueblo art and architecture was entirely in the prehistoric period, and represents the progress X. PREFACE. which was made during that period, especially in that part of it which was called the Stone Age The influence of environment is recognized, but as attended by the influence of an ethnic origin, which at present is some- what uncertain. The subject of languages is not entered upon; even their myths and symbols have been left to another work. The author has given several years of close study to the book, and has written the chapters at intervals. By this means he has been able to keep pace with the progress of discover)-, and to give the results of the latest explorations. In present- ing the volume to the public, he would make acknowledgment of the assistance which he has derived from reading the reports of ad of the parties who have ever entered the field, beginning first with the early Spanish explorers; taking next the early American explorers, and continuing to draw from the reports and descriptions which have been written by every party which has ever visited the region, including those who have written for the popular magazines and for the newspapers. The names of the writers are given in the book, and a few, who have never written anything for publication, have been mentioned, especi- ally those who are dwelling in the region and are familiar with the works and ruins in their own locality. Thanks are due to Mr. W. H. Holmes and Mr. F. H. Chapin; to the Chief of the Ethnological Bureau, the Superintendent of the Santa F6 Rail- road, and to Flood & Vincent, for the use of cuts; and, also, to- Mr. Lewis W, Gunckel, for the use of photographs. ^^^^ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. J The Great Plateau and Its Inhabitants i CHAPTER II. The Age of the Cliff-Dwellers 15 CHAPTER III. The Home OF THE Cliff-Dwellers 31 CHAPTER IV. The Discovery of the Pueblos 47 CHAPTER V. Spanish and American Occupation 63 CHAPTER \T. High Houses and Ruined Towers 81 CHAPTER VII. The Cliff-Palace and Its Surroundings 97 CHAPTER VIII. Distribution of Cliff-Villages and Cave-Towns 113 CHAPTER IX. The Cliff-Dwellings of the Canyons of the Mesa Verde. 133 CHAPTER X. The History and Architecture of the Pueblos i4q CHAPTER y..— Continued. Ancient and Modern Pueblos Compared 169 CHAPTER XI. Cliff- Fortresses — 203 CHAPTER XII. Great Houses and Fortresses 221 CHAPTER XIII. Religious Life and Works of the Cliff-Dwellers 245 CHAPTER XIV. Social and Domestic Life of the Cliff-Dwellers 269 CHAPTER XV. [^ ( Relics of the Cliff-Dwellers 293 \ CHAP1ER XVI. ■^Agriculture Among the Pueblos and Cliff-Dwellers 317 / CHAPTER X\TI. I Prehistoric Irrigation 341 CHAPTER XVIII. The Beginnings of Pueblo Architecture 363 CHAPTER XIX. The Cliff-Dwellers and the Wild-Tribes 375 ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER I. PAGE. Ruins on a Mesa, ------ 2 Foot Trail, .._--- 3 Kiva and Pueblo, ------ 3 Mesa and Pueblo at Shupaulavi, . . - 4 Mesa Cliff Side, ------ 6 Sand Rocks, ------ 6 Cloud Effects, - - - - - - 10 Mountain and Cloud, - - - - 10 Mesa Verde, - - - - - - 12 Geological Relief of the Great Plateau, - - 15 CHAPTER II. The Echo Cave on the San Juan, - - - - 17 Hohlefels Cave at Wurtenberg, - - - 20 Bone Cave at Gailenreuth, Bavaria, - - - 20 Tower in Sardinia, - - - - - 21 Ancient Wall on the Mesa, - - ■ - - 23 Scenery on the Mancos, . _ - - 26 Bad Lands in Utah, - - - - - 26 CHAPTER III. Ruins at the Head of McElmo Canon, - - 36 Cliff near Fort Wingate, - - - - - 44 Tojalone Cliff, near Zuni. . - - - 44 CHAPTER IV. Zuni with Ta-ai-ya-la-na in the Distance, - - - 59 CHAPTER V Mountain of the Holy Cross, - - - - 64 Hungo Pavie Restored, - - - - - 79 ILLUSTRATIONS. xiu. CHAPTER VI. PAGE. The First High Cliff-House Discovered, - - 82 Black Tower on the Mancos, - - - - 84 Sixteen-Windowed High House, - - - 91 Section and Ground Plan of the High Houses, - - 92 Ruined Tower on the Mancos, - - - - 9^ Cliff with High Houses, - - - - - 93 View of Cliffs on the Mancos, - - - - 94 Square Tower on the Mancos, - - - '95 CHAPTER Vn. Toltec Gorge, ------ 98 Scenery in Marshall Pas-, - - - - - 99 Cliff Palace, Front View, - - - - lOO Cliff Palace, Side View, -_ - - • " " lOi Lookout in the Acowitz Canon, - - - 102 Estufa with Air P"lue, - - - - - 103 Square Tower in the Cliff Palace, - - - 107 Portion of the Cliff Palace. - - - -107 CHAPTER Vni. Cave Houses and Storage Cist, - - - 123 Cavate House and F'ireplace, . - - - 124 Storage Cists, ----"" ^^5 Two-Story Cliff House— Ground Plan— Doorway, - 126 Echo Cave on the San Juan, - - - - 128 Cliff Village in Cold Spring Cave, - - - 130 CHAPTER IX. Ruined Pueblo, - - - - - - ^39 Tower for Defense, ----- 140 Estufa with Air Flue, - - - - - 141 Remnants of Potterv, ----- 142 Cliff-Dwellers' Sandals, - - - " - 144 CHAPTER X. 166 Church at Tabira, - - - - - View of Mashognavi and Shupaulavi, - - - 174 Ancient Ruins on the Animas, - - - - 176 View of Casa Grande, - - - - - ^77 East Wall of North Room, - - - - 178 North Wall of North Room, - - - - 1/9 South Wall of North Room, " " " ' ^^° Cave Houses and Ruined Towers, - - - - 183 Ancient Pueblos and Ruined Towers on the McElmo, 184 Battle Rock near the McElmo, - - - ' ^?| Ruins on the McElmo, ----- 186 xiv. ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTKR X.— Continued. PAGE. Ancient Wall near Montezuma Canon, - - - i88 Ancient Graves on the Montezuma Canon, - - i88 Ruins in Montezuma Canon, - - - - 103 Ruins upon the San Juan, - - . . jq^ Two-Story Cliff House, - - - . . ig^ Pueblo on the Animas, ----- Ig^ Air Passage for Estufa, - - - - - 198 CHAPTER XF. Isolated Cliff near Plagstpff, - - . . 208 Cave Fortress near San Francisco Mountain, - 209 Isolated Fortress, - - - _ . 212 Ruined Pueblo on a Mesa, with Outlook, - - - 213 Tower on the San Juan, - - . . 216 CHAPTER XII. A Typical Great House at Zuni, - - - _ 222 A Typical Solitary House, - - . . 223 Plat of Ruins of Casas Grandes, - - _ . 229 Ruins of Casas Grandes, - - - - 230 Fortified Pueblo with Outer Wall and Interior Court, - 231 Fortified Pueblo with Diained Court — Reservoir Outside, 232 Gateway to the Court at Pecos, - . . . 233 Manner of Constructing Pueblo Roofs, - - 234 Ruined Pueblo on the Chaco, - - - . 235 Map of a Portion of Chaco Canon, - - - 237 Specimens of Masonry on Chaco Canon, - - - 240 Balconies and Doors, ----- 241 Doorways of a Cliff Dwelling, - . - . 242 CHAPTER XIII. Montezuma, ----- 246 Transformed Youths, - - - . . 247 Emblems of the Mamzrau Society, - - - 249 Estufa with Piers in Acowitz Canon, - - - 252 Round House in Acowitz Canon, - - - 253 Plan of P"irst Cliff Dwelling in Mancos Canon, - - 254 Cliff Village with P^stufa and Spring in a Cave, - 255 Cliff Village without Estufa, . - . . 255 Floor of the Kiva, ----- 237 Opening to the Kiva, - . . . . 258 Ta-ai-ya-la-na, the Sacred Mountain of the Zunis, - 260 A Navajo God, -.--.. 261 A Zuni Sky God, ..... 262 Zuni Symbols, ...... 263 Zuni Cloud Basket, ..... 263 ILLUSTRATIONS. xv. CHAPTER XIII— Continued. PAGE. Cliff-Dwellers' Symbols, - - - - - 264 Rock Inscription in Arizona, . - - - 265 Shrine and Sun Symbols near Zuni, - - - 267 CHAPTER XIV. -Sichaumavi, one of the Seven Modern Tusayan Villages, 271 Court at Hano, showing Terraced Houses, etc., - - 271 Monarch's Cave, . - . . - 274 Towers on Cliff near Butler's Wa>h, - - - 276 Doors and Windows, Spruce Palace, - - - 278 Plastered Pillars in Cliff Palace, - - - - 279 Decorated Wall in Cliff Palace, - - - 281 Cliff Dwelling in Mummy Cave, - - - - 282 Canon del Muerto, ----- 283 White House in the Cafion de Chelly, - - - 284 Ruined Cliff House in the Mancos Canon, - - 285 Ruined House in Chaco Canon, - . - - 285 Indian Corn Carrier, - , - - - - 286 T-shaped Door, ..-.-. 286 Making Bread, ------ 291 CHAPTER XV. Stone Axes of the Pueblos, . . . - 295 Stone Fetiches of the Pueblos, - - - 296 Region Where Cliff Dwellings were first Discovered, - 298 Pueblo at Epsom Creek, . - . - ^00 Vase from the Tusayan Pueblos, - - - - 302 Water Jar, - - - - - • - 303 Metate from the Zuni Pueblo, .... 304 Axe, ------- 305 Axes of the Cliff-Dwellers, .... 306 Mortar and Pestle, ----- 307 Arrow Heads, Fleshers and Grinder from Mancos Canon, 308 Wooden Shovel, ----- 309 Rattle and Clapper, - - - - - 310 Drill and Bow, - - - - - - 311 Pottery De.'^cribed by W. H. Holmes, - - - 312 Pottery Described by W. H. Jackson, - - - 313 Jug Made from Coiled Ware, .... 314 Pueblo Woman with Pottery Jar, - - - 315 CHAPTER XVI. Storage Cist, ...... 327 Cliff Village on Del Muerto. - - - - 328 Shrine in Shape of Human Skull, - - - - 330 Toad Stool Shrine, . . . . . 331 xvi. ILLUSTRATIONS. CHAPTER X.W\.— Continued. page; Montezuma Castle, ------ 332 The Snake Dance at Oraibi, . - - - 335 The Snake Dance at Walpi, . . - . 335 The Snake Dance, ----- 338 The Snake Dance, ------ 339 Carrier, Hugger, and Gatherer, - - - 340 CHAPTER XVn. Pueblo at Oraibi, - - - - - - 344 Storage Cist in Canon del Muerto, - - - 345 Ruined Pueblo on the McElmo, - - - . 346 Casas Grandes, Sonora, - - - - 347 Gymnasium at Chichen Itza, Guatemala, - - - 348 Sacred Spring at Zuni, ----- 350 Reservoirs at Quivira, . - - . . 352 Irrigating Ditch on the Rio Verde, - - - 355 Map of Ancient Ditch, ----- 360 Section of the Ditch, - - • - - - 360 CHAPTER XVni. Storage Cist, ..---. 368 Cave Front, ------ 368 Cavate Lodges on the Rio Verde, - - - - 373 CHAPTER XIX. A Navajo Hogan, showing Posts, Walls, and Fire-bed, 376 Map of the Pueblo Tribes and Location ot the Pueblos, 377 Modern Pueblo Pottery, - - - - ^^j^ Modern Pueblo Pottery, ----- 379 Belts Woven by the Tarahumaris, - - - 380 Loom Used by the Tarahumaris, - - - - 381 Conical Tents and Walled Pueblo, - - - 386 Indian Portraits— Sioux, Navajos, and Utes, . - - 387 Twin Tower in Ruin Canon, - - - - 389 Square Tower in Ruin Canon, - - . - 389 Map of Ruin Canon, ----- 390 A Mashongnavi Woman and Mashongnavi Girl, - 391 Navajo Priest, ------ 392 Apache Runners, ------ 393 ILLUSTRATIONS. xvii. FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. Grand Canon of the Colorado. Frontispiece, Trail Up the Canyon. Grand Canyon at the Foot of the Toroweap. Pink Cliffs, Paunsagunt Plateau. Vermillion Cliffs at Kanab. • Colorado River. The Brink of the Inner Gorge. Key to the Panorama from Point Sublime. Mukuntuweap Caiion. The Great Plateau, looking East. Scenery on the Mancos. Bad Lands in Utah. .Valley of the Rio Grande. Hohlefels Cave at Wurtenberg. Bone Cave at Gailenreuth, Bavaria. Tower in Sardinia. Brock of Mousa, Shetland. Cliff Houses at Walpi. Cliff Dwellings on the San Juan. Cave Holises in the Shufinne. Cliff Dwellings on the Rio de Chelly. Cliff P^ortresses on the Rio Verde. View From Mt. Taylor. The Village of Walpi. MogoUon Escarpment. Mashangnavi with Shupaulavi in the Distance. Pa-run-u-weap Canon. • Cliff near Fort VVingate. Toyalone Cliff, near Zuni. Map of New Spain, after Mercator, 1569. Ortelius' Map of the New World, 1579. Map of the Pueblo Region. Scenery in the Cheyenne Canon and the Rio Grande. Casa Grande Ruin, from the East. Zuni with Taaiyalana in the Distance. The Grand Canon of the Colorado. Sierra Blanca Mountain. The Ruins of Pecos. Pueblo Bonito Restored. Ruined Church at Pecos. Church and Pueblo on the Rock of Acoma. Ruined Pueblo on the Chaco. Ruined Pueblo at Pecos— Court, Reservoir and Gateway. The Estufa at Taos. Scene on the Rio de Chelly. Pueblo at Taos— North Building. Pueblo at Taos— South Building. .Solitary House on McElmo Canon. Ruined Towers on the La Plata, Mancos, and McElmo xviii. ILLUSTRATIONS. Royal Gorge at Toltec Pass. View Down the Cliff Canon. Cliff Palace — Front View. Square Tower in the Cliff Palace. Ruined Rooms of the Cliff Palace. Cliff Palace^Showing Terraces and Foundations. Ruined Tower on the Colorado River, Ruined Village on the San Juan. Casa Grande in Chihuahua. Ancient Ruins at Chichen Itza, Guatemala. Cliff-Dwellers' Village in Canon de Chelly. Cliff Town on the Rio de Chelly. Casa Blanca— Cliff Town in Canon de Chelly. Pictographs on Rocks in a Cliff-Outlook. Cliff Village in Sierra Madre, Mexico. Bailoon-Shaped Storage Cist. Sand-Stone Columns at Walpi. Trail Up the Mesa at Walpi. Taos— Showing Wail, Balconies, Terraces, and Roof. Hano — One of the Tusayan Pueblos. Interior of a Modern Tusayan Room. Interior of a Modern Zuni Room. Modern Form of Roofs or Terraces at Oraibi. . A Tusayan Pueblo — Showing Modern Style of Wall, Pictographs in Shelter Caves and on the Rocks. Pictographs in Arizona. San Francisco Mountain. Scene in the Grand Canon. The Hidden Trail Among the Mountains, Cliff House in Walnut Cafion. Houses of the California Indians. Houses of the Mandans. Modern Pueblo with Terraces and Ladders. Modern Pueblo with Covered Passage-ways. Gardens and Farms of the Zuni's. Corral in Pescado. Buffaloes — Portrayed by DeBry. Sichumovi — One of the Tusayan Villages. Court at Hano. House Interior at Pueblo Bonito. Reservoir in Cailon de Chelly. The Modern Pueblo at Jemez. Old Irrigation Ditch near Verde — Looking Westward, Old Irrigation Ditch near Verde — Looking Eastward, Ruined Village on the Rio Verde. Boulder Sites on the Rio Verde. TRAIL ALONG THE CANYON. i ■' MgWl' :^^^ ^*^ ^-.3'J. .1 mn IS* ^.■^trfS^l-— ^-^"^^ ^ Wis ;r!'i*nL'j; rl^M If i!i.''i. T'lll i«/'. THE CLIFF DWELLERS CHAPTER I. THE GREAT PLATEAU AND ITS INHABITANTS. There is a rt-gioii in the deep interior of the American con- tinent, to which the name Great Plateau has been given. The name expresses its geological character. It is, however, a region which furnishes a wonderful field to archaeology, and deserves careful study on this account. There is no part of our great continent where more interesting problems are pre- sented than by this. These problems relate not merely to the physical and natural history, but to human history as well. In fact, it is the human history which gives the chief interest to it, as that history is totally unlike any other on the face of the globe. It appears that a portion of the human race found lodgment in the midst of these grand scenes of nature, but became iso- lated by reason of their situation. Here, they developed a form of society which was largely the result of the environ- ment, but which culminated in a type of art and architecture which was most peculiar. There has been a great deal of mys- tery thrown around the people, and a name has been given to them which starts a thousand fancies — the name Cliff- Dwellers. The charm of this name does not come merely from the fact that the people dwelt so high up among the cliffs, as from the fact, that the)' developed so high a civiliza- tion in the midst of the cliffs. The inquiry naturally arises, whether this civilization was altogether the result of environment, or was owing to some other influence. There are differences of opinion on this point, as some maintain that the Cliff-Dwellers and the Pueblo tribes were like a molten mass, which was thrown into this gigantic mould, and came out bearing the stamp, as thoroughly as a casting does that which is found in any ordinary furnace. Others, however, ascribe the condition of the Cliff-Dwellers to their remarkable intelligence, combined with the influence of inheritance and employment. It is probable that all these had their effect, but as the first (scenery) has been made so promi- nent, we shall give our thoughts to this, thus making it a back- ground to the picture which we hope to draw in this volume. We do not believe that the background is the picture, but it is essential to it, and is always designed to set forth the picture more clearly. PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. We propose in this chapter to furnish descriptions of the Great Plateau, including the Grand Canon of the Colorado, and other features; but, in doing so, shall draw largely from the writings of those who have spent time in exploring and surveying, but whose descriptions are buried in the midst of voluminous reports and are likely to be forgotten. It has long been our conviction that these ought to be brought to light. I. We shall begin with a description of the topography of the entire region, and shall quote largely from the report of Mr. C. E. Dutton, which is contained in the Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey. He says: For convenience of geological discussion, Major Powell has divided that belt of country which lies between the meridian of Denver, Colorado, and the Pacific into provinces, each of which possesses topographical features RUINS ON A MESA.* which distinguish it from the others. The easternmost, he has named the Park Province. It is situated in the central and western parts of Colorado and extends north of that State into Wyoming, and south of it into New Mexico. It is pre-eminently a mountain region, having several long ranges of mountains. The structure and forms of these mountains are not exactly similar to those of any other region, but possess some resemblance to the Alps. As we pass westward of these ranges we enter a region having a very different topography. The mountains disappear and in their stead we find platforms and terraces, nearly or quite horizontal on their summits or floors and abruptly terminated by long lines of cliffs. They lie at greatly vary- ing altitudes, some as high as n,ooo feet above the sea, others no higher than 5,000, and with still others occupying intermediate levels. Seldom does the surface of the land rise into conical peaks, or into long, narrow- crested ridges; but the profiles are long, horizontal lines, suddenly dropping down many hundreds, or even two thousand, feet upon another flat plain •We are indebted to the courtesy of the Santa Fe Railroad Company for many of the cuts used to illustrate this chapter. THE GREAT PLATEAU AND ITS INHABITANTS. below. This region has been very appropriately named by Major Powell, the Plateau Province. It occupies a narrow strip of western New Mexico, a large part of southern Wyoming, and rather more than half of Utah and Arizona. West of the Plateau Province is the Great Basin, so named by Fremont because it has no drainage to the ocean. Its topo- graphy is wholly peculiar and bears no resemblance to either of the two just alluded to. It contains a large number of ranges, all of which are very narrow and short, and separated from each other by wide intervals of smooth, barren plains. The mountains are of a low order of magnitude for the most part, though some of the ranges and peaks attain considerable dimensions. Their ap- pearance is strikingly different from the noble and picturesque outlines displayed in Colorado. They are jagged, wild, and un- graceful in their aspect, and, whether viewed from far or near, repel rather than invite the t^-f \l imagination. * '*- The Grand Canyon District is a part of the Plateau Province, and to this as a whole we call attention. As already indicated, it lies between the Park and Basin Provinces, and its topography differs in the extreme from those found on either side of it. It is the land of tables and terraces, of buttes and mesas, of cliffs and canyons. Standing upon any elevated spot where the radius of vision reaches out fifty or a hundred miles, the observer beholds a strange spectacle. The most conspicuous objects are the lofty and brilliantly-colored cliffs. They stretch their tortuous courses across the land in all directions, yet not without system; here throwing out a great promontory, there receding in a a deep bay, and continuing on and on until they sink below the horizon, or swing behind some loftier mass, or fade out in the distant haze. Each clif? marks the boundary of a geographi- cal terrace and marks, also, the ter- mination of some geological series of strata, the edges of which are ex- posed, like courses of masonry, in the scarp-walls of the palisades. In the distance may be seen the spec- tacle of cliff rising above and beyond cliff, like a colossal stairway leadnig from the torrid plains below to the domain of the clouds above. Very wonderful at times is the sculpture of these majestic walls. There is an architectural style about it, which must be seen to be appreciated. The resemblances to architecture are not fanciful or metaphorical, but are real and vivid; so much so that the unac- customed tourist often feels a vague skepticism whether these are truly the works of the blind forces of nature, or some intelligence akin to human, but far mightier; and even the experienced explorer is sometimes brought to a sudden halt and filled with amazement by the apparition of forms as definite and eloquent as those of art. Each geological formation FOOT TRAIL. KIVA AND PUEBLO. PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. exhibits in its cliffs a distinct style of architecture, which is not reproduced among the cliffs of other formations, and these several styles differ as much as those which are cultivated by different races of men. The character which appeals most strongly to the eye is the coloring. The gentle tints of an eastern landscape, the pale blue of distant moun- tains, the green of vernal or summer vegetation, the subdued colors of hillside and meadow, are whollv wanting here, and in their place we behold belts of brilliant red, yellow, and white, which are intensihed rather than alleviated by alternating belts of gray. Like the architecture, the colors are characteristic of the geological formations, each series having its own group and range of colors. The Plateau country is also the land of canyons, m the strictest mean- ing of that term. Gorges, ravines, and canadas are found, and are more or less impressive in every high region; and in the vernacular of the West all such features are termed canyons, indiscriminately. But those long, narrow, profound trenches in the rocks, with inaccessible wails, to which the early Spaniards gave the name cayon, or canyon, are seldom found outside the plateaus. There they are innumerable and the almost universal form of drainage channels. Large areas of Plateau country are jo minutely dis- sected by them, that they are almost inaccessible, and some limited, though considerable, tracts seem wholly so. Almost everywhere the drainage channels are cut from 500 to 3,000 feet below the general platform of the immediate country. They are abundantly ramified and every branch is a MESA AND PUEBLO AT SHUPAULAVI. canyon. The explorer on the mesas above must take heed to his course in such a place, for once caught in the labyrinth of interlacing side-gorges, he must possess rare craft and self-control to extricate himself. All these drainage channels lead down to one great trunk channel, cleft through the heart of the Plateau Province for eight hundred miles— the chasm of the Colorado, and the canyons of its principal fork, the Green River. By far the greater part of these tributaries are dry during most of the vear. and carry water only at the melting of the snow, and during the brief periods of the autumnal and vernal rains. A very few hold small, perennial streams, coming from the highlands around the borders of the province, and swell- ing to mad torrents in times of spasmodic floods. The region is, for the most part, a desert of the barrenest kind. At levels below 7,000 feet the heat is intense and the air is dry in the extreme. The vegetation is very scanty, and even the ubiquitous sage (Artcmesia tri(fe}ttata)\%SY)3.Tse and stunted. Here and there the cedar [Juniperus occidentalu) is seen, the hardest of arborescent plants, but it is dwarfed and sickly and seeks the shadiest nooks. At higher levels the vegetation becomes more abundant and varied. Above 8,000 feet the plateaus are forest-clad and the ground is carpeted with rank grass and an exuberant growth of beautiful summer flowers. The summers there are cool and moist; the winters severe and attended with heavy showfall. The Plateau Province is naturally divided into two portions, a northern and a southern. The dividing barrier is the Uinta range. This fine moun- n r 1) y > c z > o z r > M > C :3 < o a; c o z o X I < <: < b fa J U z o J s THE GREAT PLATEAU AND ITS INHABITANTS. 5 tain platform is, in one respect, an anomaly among western mountain ranges. It is the only important one which trends east and west. Starting trom the eastern flank of the Wasatch, the Uintas project eastward more than 150 miles, and nearly join perpendicularly the Park ranges of Colorado. Of the two portions into which the Plateau Province is thus divided, the southern is much larger. Both have in common the plateau features; their topographies, climates, and physical features in general, are of similar types, and their geological features and history appear to be closely related; out each has, also, its peculiarities. The northern portion is an interesting and already celebrated field for the study of Cretaceous strata and the Tertiary lacustrine beds. The sul:)jects which it presents to the geologist are most notably those which are embraced under the department of strati- graphy—the study of the succession of strata and co-related succession of organic life. Otherwise the region is tame, monotonous, and unattractive. The southern portion, while presenting an abundance of material for stratigraphical study, and in this respect fully rivalling, and, perhaps, sur- passing, the northern portion, also abounds in the grandest and most fascinating themes for the student of physical geography. The northern portion is almost trivial as to the scenery, while the southern is the sublimest on the continent. With the former we shall have little to do; it is the latter which claims here our exclusive attention. The southern part of the Plateau Province may be regarded as a vast basin everywhere bounded by highlands, except at the southwest, where it opens wide and passes suddenly into a region having all the characteristics of the Great Basin of Nevada'. The northern half of its eastern rim con- sists of the Park ranges of Colorado. Its northern rim lies upon the slopes of the Uintas. At the point where the Uinfas join the Wasatch, the bound- ary turns sharply to the south, and for 200 miles the High Plateaus of Utah constitute the elevated western margin of the province. The Gr.ind Canyon District— the region draining into the Grand and Marble Canyons is the westernmost division of the Plateau Province. Nearly four-fifths of its area are situated in northern Arizona. The remaining fifth is situated in southern Utah. Let us turn our attention for a moment to the portion situated in Utah. It consists of a series of ter- races (juite similar to those we have already seen descending from the sum- mit of the Wasatch Plateau to the San Rafael Swell, like a colossal stair- way. At the top of the stairs are the broad and lofty platforms of the High Plateaus of Utah; at the bottom is the inner expanse of the Grand Canyon District. The summits of the High Plateau are beds of the Lower Eocene Age. Descending southward, we cross, step by step, the terminal edges of the entire Mesozoic system and the Permian, and when we reach the inner floor of the Grand Canyon District we find that it consists of the summit beds of the carboniferous series, patched here and there with fad- ing remnants of the Permian. Thus we may note that the northern and eastern boundaries of the Grand Canyon District are cliff-bound terraces. Crossing the district, either longitudinally from north to south, or transversely from east to west, we find as we approach the southern or western border, that the carbonifer- ous platform ascends very gradually, and at last it terminates in a j^iant wall, plunging down thousands of feet to the platform of a country quite similar to the Great Basin of Nevada. All the features are repeated and the desolation intensified in the dreadful region which is west and south of the Grand Canyon region. Here, then, we have a birds-eye view of the topography of this region, written by one who is familiar with ever)' part of it. We can see from the description that the Great Plateau was isolated from every other part of the continent. It was surrounded by higher mountains, and beyond the mountains by wide valleys — the Great Mississippi Valley on the east, the valley of the Snake River on the north, the valley, which is PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. called the Great Basin, on the west, and the valley of the Lower Colorado on the south. Dana, the celebrated geologist, says that a continent is characterized by a great valley situated between two or more ranges of mountains. According to this definition we may conclude that the Great Plateau is a continent above a continent, and may well be called the Air Continent; for it is lifted high up in the air, but is at the same time surrounded by higher peaks, and beyond the peaks are the great depths of air, which surround it as thoroughly as did once the rolling depths of water, which laved the shore in the ancient period when the mountains were new. -"S^ II. We turn, then, , ,, ' ^l MESA CLlFF-SllJi:. to the scenery. Of this we have some very graphic descriptions. These show the impressions which are made upon educated minds, but at the same time illustrate the necessity of coming into sympathy with the scene by long dwell- ing amid it, and becoming familiar with its changes. The following description is from Mr. C. E. Button's report: The Grand Canyon of the Colorado is a great innovation in modern ideas of scenery, and in our conceptions of the grandeur, beauty, and power of nature. As with all great innovations, it is not to be comprehended in a day or a week, nor even in a month. It must be dwelt upon and studied, and the study must comprise the slow ac(]uisition of the meaning and spirit ot that marvelous scenery which characterizes the Plateau country, and of which the great chasm is the superlative manifesta- tion. The study and mastery of the influences of that class of scenery and its appreciation, is a culture, requiring time, patience, and long familiarity, lor its consummation. The lover of nature, whose perceptions have been trained in the Alps, in Italy, Germany, or New England; in the Appalach- ians or Cordilleras, in Scotland or Colorado, would enter this strange region with a shock, and dwell there for a time with a sense of oppression, and, perhaps with horror. Whatsoever things he had learned to regard as IvOCKS. t?5^-#^ll#^fi iff/; ^ / « ^:'' ^. ^' #^^^^^ ..?yf/ a K H Z O < O z «; Oh M S H O H THE GREAT PLATEAU AND ITS INHABITANTS. 7 beautiful and noble, he would seldom or never see, and whatsoever he might see would appear to him as anything but beautiful and noble. Whatsoever might be bold and striking, would at first seem only grotesque. The colors would be the very ones he had learned to shun, as tawdy and bizarre. The tones and shades modest and tender, subdued yet rich, in which his fancy had always taken special delight, would be the ones which are conspicuously absent. But time would bring a gradual change. Some day he would suddenly become conscious that outlines, which at first seemed harsh and trivial, have grace and meaning; that forms, which seemed gro- tesque, are full of dignity; that magnitudes, which had added enormity to coarseness, have become replete with strength and even majesty; that colors, which had been esteemed unrefined, mimodest, and glarmg, are as expressive, tender changeful, and capacious of efifects as any others. Those who have long and carefully studied the Grand Canyon of the Colorado do not hesitate for a moment to pronounce it by far the most sub- lime of all earthly spectacles. If its sublimity consisted only in its dim n- sions, it could be sufficiently set forth in a single sentence. It is more than 200 miles long, from five to twelve miles wide, and from 5,000 to 6,000 feet deep. There are in the world valleys which are longer, and a few which are deeper. There are valleys flanked by summits loftier than the palisades ot the Kaibab. Still, the Grand Canyon is the sublimest thing on earth. The Plateau country abounds in close resemblances to natural carving of human architecture, and nowhere are these more conspicuous or more perfect than in the scarps which terminate the summits of the Markagunt and Paunsagunt Plateaus. Their color varies with the light and atmo- sphere. It IS a pale red under ordinary lights, but as the sun sinks towards the horizon, it deepens into a rich rose color, which is seen in no other rocks and is beautiful beyond description. The cliffs are of the Lower Eocene Age, consisting of lake marls very uniformly bedded. At the base of this series the beds are coarser, and contain well-marked, brackish-water fossils; but as we ascend to the higher beds we find the great mass of the Eocene to consist of fresh-water deposits. The Trias is in most places separated from the Jura by a purely pro- visional horizon, which marks a change in the lithological aspect of the strata, and in the grouping and habit of the series. Sometimes the passage from one to the other is obscured, but more frequently it is abrupt. The Jurassic sandstone is without a likeness in any other formation and the sandstone of the Trias can ordinarily be distinguished from it miles away. One of the most conspicuous distinctions is the color, and it is a never- failing distinction. The Jurassic is white; the Trias is flaming red. Superlative cloud effects, common enough in other countries, are lamentably infrequent here; but when they do come, their value is beyond measure. During the long, hot summer days, when the sun is high, the phenomenal features of the scenery are robbed of most of their grandeur, and can not, or do not, wholly reveal to the observer the realities which render them so instructive and interesting. There are few middle tones of light and shade. The effects of foreshortening are excessive, almost beyond belief, and produce the strangest deceptions. Masses which are widely separated seem to be superposed or continuous. Lines and surfaces, which extend towards us at an acute angle with the radius of vision, are warped around until they seem to cross it at a right angle. Grand fronts, which ought to show depth and varying distance, become flat and are troubled with false perspectives. Proportions which are full of grace and meaning are distorted and belied. During the midday hours the cliffs seem to wilt and droop, as if retracting their grandeur to hide it from the merciless radiance of the sun, whose every effulgence flouts them. Even the colors are ruined. The glaring face of the wall, where the light falls upon it, wears a scorched, over-baked, discharged look; and where the dense black shadows are thrown — for there are no middle shades the magical haze of the desert shines forth with a weird, metallic glow, which has no color in it. But, as the sun declines, there comes a revival. The half-tones at length appear, bringing into relief the component masses; the amphitheatres recede into suggestive distances; the salients silently 8 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. CLOUU EFFECTS. advance towards us; the distorted lines range themselves into true perspec- tive; the delormed curves come back to their proper sweep; the angles grow clean and sharp; and the whole cliff arouses from lethargy and erects itself in grandeur and power, as if conscious of its own majesty. Back, also, come the colors, and as the sun is about to sink they glow with an in- tense orange-vermillion. that seems to be an intrinsic lustre emanating from the rocks themselves. But the great gala-days of the cliffs are those when sunshine and storm are waging an even battle; when the massive b.inks of clouds send their white diffuse lights into the dark places and tone down the intense glare of the direct rays; when they roll over the summits in stately procession, wrap- ping them in vapor and re- vea'ing cloud-girt masses here and there through wide rifts. Then the truth appears and all decep tions are exposed. Their real grandeur, their true forms, and a just sense of their relations are at last fairly presented, so that the mind can grasp them. And they are very grand — even sublime. There is no need, as we look upon them, of fancy to heighten the picture, nor of metaphor to present it. The simple truth is quite enough. I never before had a realiz- ing sense of a cliff i,8oo to 2,000 feet high. I think I have a definite and abiding one at present. But though the inherent colors are less intense than some others, yet, under the quickening influence of the atmosphere, they produce effects to which all others are far inferior. And here language fails and description becomes impossible. Not only are their qualities exceedingly subtle, but they have little counter- part in common experi- ence. If such are pre- sented elsewhere, they are presented so feebly and obscurely that only the most discriminating and closest observers of nature ever seize them, and they so imperfectly that their ideas of them are vague and but half real. There are no concrete notions furnished in experience, upon which a conception of these color effects and optical delusions can be constructed and made intelligible. A perpetual glamour envelopes the landscape. Things are not what they seem, and the perceptions can not tell us what they are. It is not probable that these effects are different in kind in the Grand Canyon from what they are in other portions of the Plateau country. But the difference in degree is immense, and being greatly magnified and intensified, many characteristics become palpable which elsewhere elude the closest observation. In truth, the tone and temper of the landscape is constantly varying, and the changes in its aspect are very great. It is never the same, even MOUNTAIN .■VND CLOUD THE GREAT PLATEAU AND ITS INHABITANTS. 9 from day to day, or even from hour to hour. In the early morning its mood and subjective influences are usually calmer and more full of repose than at other times, but as the sun rises higher the whole scene is so changed that we cannot recall our Hrst impressions. Every passing cloud, every change in the position of the sun, recasts the whole. At sunset the pasfeant closes am.d splendors that seem more than earthly. The direction ot the full sunlight, the massing of the shadows, the manner in which the side lights are thrown in from the clouds determine these modulations, and the sensitiveness of the picture to the slightest variations is very wonderful. The rocks which are so strikinLj in their form and size, and which bear so important a part in the scenery, are not all. There are colors in the rocks and shadows in the air which are as important as these. The}' arc less substantial, but they add to the impression. We seem to be in dreamland when we look upon this atmospheric sea. The billows roll, perhaps, at our feet, but they rise also above our heads. We are like the one who sails through the air in his dreams and puts forth his hand to catch the sun. Clouds al)ove and clouds below, one hardly realizes that his feet are upon substantial rocks. The effect of the cloud scenery, and of the color, upon the mind is certainly very great. Of this Mr. Dutton also speaks, as follows: Those who are familiar with western scenery have, no doubt, been im- pressed with the pecul'ar character of the haze, or atmosphere in the artistic sense of the word, and have noted its more prominent qualities. When the air is free from common smoke it has a pale blue color, which is cjuite unlike the neutral gray of the East. It is always apparently more dense when we look towards the sun, than when we look away from it, and this differ- ence in the two directions, respectively, is a maximum near sunrise and sunset. This property is universal, but its peculiarities in the Plateau Province become conspicuous when the strong, rich colors of the rocks are seen through it. The very air is then visible. We see it palpablv. as a tenuous fluid, and the rocks beyond it do not appear to be colored blue, as tliey do in other regions, but reveal themselves clothed in colors ot their own. The Grand Canyon is ever full of this haze. It fills it to the brim. Its apparent density, as elsewhere, is varied according to the direction in which It is viewed and the position of the sun; but it seems also to be denser and more concentrated than elsewhere. This is reallv a delusion, arising from ihe fact that the enormous magnitude of the chasm and its component tissue's dwarf the distances; we are really looking through miles of atmo- sphere under the impression that they are only so many furlongs. This ap- parent concentration of haze, however, greatly intensities all the beautiful or mysterious optical effects which are dependent upon the interven':ion of the atmosphere. Whenever the brink of the chasm is reached, the chances are that the sun is high and these abnormal effects in full force. The canyon is asleep; or it is under a spell of enchantment which gives its bewildering ranges an aspect still more bewildering. Throughout the long summer forenoon the charm which l)inds it grows in potency. At midday the clouds begin to gather, first in fleecv flecks, then in cumuli, and throw their shadows into the gulf. At once the scene changes. The slumber of the chasm is dis- turbed. The ten.ples and cloisters seem to raise themselves half awake to greet the passing shadow. Their wilted, drooping, flattened faces expand into relief. The long promontories reach out from the distant wall, as if to catch a moment's refreshment from the shade. The colors begin to glow; the haze loses its opaque densitv and becomes more tenuous. The shadows p^ss. and the chasm relapses into its dull sleep again. Thus through the midday hours it lies in fitful slumber, overcome by the blinding glare and lO PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. withering heat, yet responsive to every fluctuation of light and shadow* like a delicate organism. Throughout the afternoon the prospect has been gradually growing clearer. The haze has relaxed its steely glare and has changed to a veil of transparent blue. Slowly myriads of details have come out and the walls are tleckcd with lines of minute tracery, forming a drapery of light and shade. Stronger and sharper becomes the relief of each projection. The promon- tories come forth from the opposite wall. The sinuous lines of stratitication which once seemed meaningless, distorted, and even chaotic, now range themselves into a true perspective of graceful curves, threading the scal- lop edges of the strata. The colossal buttes expand in every dimension: their long, narrow wings, which once were folded together and flattened against each other, open out, disclosing between them vast alcoves illumi- nated with Rembrault lights tinged with the pale, refined blue of the ever present haze. A thousand forms, hitherto unseen or obscure, start up within the abyss, and stand forth in strength and animation. All things seem to grow in beauty, power, and dimensions. What was grand before has be- come majestic, the majestic becomes sublime, and, ever expanding and developing, the sublime passes beyond the reach of our faculties and be- comes transcendent. The colors have come back. Inherently rich and strong, though not superlative under ordinary lights, they now begin to dis- play an adventitious brilliancy. The western sky is all aflame. The scat tered banks of cloud and wavy cirrus have caught the waning splendor, MESA VERDE. and shine with orange and crimson. Broad slant beams of yellow light, shot through the glory rifts, fall on turret and tower, on pinnacled crest and winding ledge, suffusing them with a radiance less fulsome, but akin to that which flames in the western clouds. The summit band is brilliant yellow; the next below is a pale rose. But the grand expanse within is a deep, luminou'', resplendent red. The climax has now come. The bla/e of sun- light poured over an illimitable surface of glowing red is flung back into the gulf, and, commencing with the blue haze, turns it into a sea of purple of most imperial hue -so rich, so strong, so pure that it makes the heart ache and the throat tighten. However vast the magnitudes, however ma- jestic the forms or sumptuous the decoration, it is in these kingly colors that the highest glory of the Grand Canyon is revealed. III. This leads us to the relation of the Great Plateau to its inhabitants. We have spoken of the effect of the environ- ment upon human society, but the question is whether the effect here is commensurate to the scenery. Ordinarily we mi^ht expect that the people who dwelt amid such ^randeur would unconsciously be influenced by it, and reach a hii^her grade of character than others. We do not find this to be the case, except in their mythology and in their view of the super- natural. In this, however, we find a most remarkable series of THE GREAT PLATEAU AND ITS INHABITANTS. ii myths and legends in which all of the prominent features of the landscape are embodied. In them the mountain peaks, the deep gorges, the vast streams, the distant ocean, the many- colored rocks, the fleecy clouds, the glaring sunlight, the fierce storms, and the forked lightning figure conspicuously. The very things which wt regard as the forces of nature, with them were supernatural beings and the divinities, whom they worship- ped. They clothed them with different colors and gave them names, and seemed to be familiar with their history. These supernatural beings were their benefactors, and were always present. They dwelt within the rocks and had their furnished houses there. Some of them were born upon the tops of the mountains where the clouds meet, and continued to dwell there. The nature powers were all personified, and the divinities were clothed and active. The lightnings were the arrows of a chief, who wore the clouds for his feathers, and ruled the storm at his will. There wore sunbeam rafts, which floated in the sky, on which the divinities calmlj' sailed. There were caves beneath the earth in which their ancestors dwelt, but the divinities lightened these caves, and brought them out. There were floods which covered the valleys, but there were rainbow arches stretched above the floods, and the land became dr\' and was fitted for the abode of men. There were sacred lakes be- neath which the spirits of the children, who had died, dwelt, but from their many-terraced homes, they sent their messen- gers to attend the sacred feast and to t<.'ach the people about the secret powers of nature. All these are contained in their mythologies, and will be found described in our book on " Myths and Symbols." But the question which most interests us is that which relates to the character of the people. Was this affected by the scenery, or did it remain untouched and asleep? We con- clude, as we study the people as they are, and were, that they partook far more of the quietude of the scene, than they did of its grandeur. This seems strange to the transient visitor, and especially to the uneducated mind, for it is probable that there are many visitors from civilized and advanced circles of society, who stand in the midst of these scenes and are as un- moved as the natives themselves. At least they fail to see its hidden significance. Of course there is an inspiration which can be drawn from communings with nature, when she reaches such grandeur as exists here, provided one is equal to the effort of interpreting her mystic language. Sublimity is far more difficult to interpret than is ordinary beauty. One may commune with the delicate flower which grows in the crack and cranny of the rock, and feel the stirring of emotion at once; for it is like looking upon the face of a little child, the smile is involuntary, but sweeps over the face unconsciouslv. It is easy to catch the mood of nature and to feel th*e touch of tenderness, but where nature is 12 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. so silent and yet so grand, the response is longer delayed. It is like looking at the silent Sphinx, which is half hidden in the sands of the desert, and is the companion of the Pyramids, which are as silent. These distant regions, hidden so far away in the deep interior of the American Continent, have no associations to stir one's memories. Lofty as the peaks are which surround the Great PUteau, they are silent; often covered with the white shrouds which have fallen upon them from the skies, hut oftener draped in that hazy blue atmosphere which makes them so distant to the vision. They seem to belong to another world than ours. Thi- colors v\hich come from the varying tinges of the rocks are, indeed, very striking, and so arc the jagged rocks which project from the sides of the mountains, but they always cause us to feel that some one is hidden beyond those shadows and that humanity has d A^elt even in this great wilderness. The outlines of the rocks may reseml)lc ancient castles, and we ma)^ imagine many things, but the impression is greatly heightened when we discover that there are actual ruins upon the rocks, and that those ruins were once inhabited and were used as castles by the ancient people, ana a feeling of companionship is awakened. The enquiry at once arises: how long have these regions been occupied, who were the people who dwelt in these ruined structures, whence did thev come, how long were they here, what was their life, where did they get their subsistence, whither have they gone, what was their history, and have they left an)' record? The scene is not merely one of nature's handiwork, wrought in grandeur, and left without inhabitants; nor is it one in which the past is entirely covered with shadows. There must be a reality bick of this scene; a substance amid these shadows. We might imagine many things, and be filled with a strange rhapsody as we think of the unreal world. We might picture the unseen spirits as having dwelt here, and shadowy ghosts as flitting from peak to peak. This might increase our wonder and fill us with awe, resembling that which the untrained minds of the natives have often felt as they have looked upon the scene; for with them the natural and supernatural are one. In that case, everything would be as weird and wild as a dream, as unreal as an\' picture which poet could draw. There might arise a sense of fear, and superstition might be aroused, and we find ourselves in the same mood as were the wild men, who were here before us. But this does not (]uite satisfy, we want to know about the people who formerly dwelt here. I'Vom these very heights we have gained glimpses of ruins which are as real as the rocks upon which they rest. These ruins stir our minds with new sensations, as they have, the mindsof others, who have looked upon the same scenes. We are familiar with the people who dwell here now, but we want to know about the people who dwelt here in the long ago. THE GREAT PLATEAU AND ITS INHABITANTS. 13 We know, also, many things about the history of the Creation as it is written in the rocks, for the txcologists have read this clearly for us. But wc want to read the history of the people as well. The process has been a very slow one, and centuries have passed; but there must have been also a process by which the scene was peopletl. We want to place the two records to- gether and solve the mystery. The history of the Creation is a marvellous one, and must have taken many thousands of years to accomplish. This history, the geologist is able to read and point out its periods and processes. As President Jordan has said, the earth's crust has been making history and scenery, with all the earth-moulding forces steadily at work, and has rested in the sun for ten thousand centuriis. Mountains were folding, continents were taking form, while this land of patience lay benea'h a warm and shallow sea, as the centuries piled up la)er upon layer of sand and rock. At last the uplift of the Sierras changed the sands to dry land and by the forces of erosion the sands were torn away VenallloQ CltOk. ony Cliffs. PnrU rutcaii UniKl Wa-^li<1)ff>. Humcain-nirTs, T-irowc»pClitri^ \ Kjut Knnub PUiU>»u. ' Miirbk (.'mo ShlwlU riAUttu. I'lukun-t PUl»tu. KftDBli i'«ii)on. KiiihAh PlHt^nu. West Kanab Plateau. w.^i Kalttul. 1 WITx. Kast Kall^abnifr... GEOLOGICAL RELIEF OF THE GREAT I'LATEAU. by slow process, until a mile or more of vertical depth had been stripped from tlu- whole surface, leaving only flat-topped buttes here and there to testify to the depth of the ancient strata; if tht; swift river from the glacial mountains had done its work and narrowed its bounds, cutting its path through the flinty stone and dropped swiftl)- from level to level, until it reached the granite core of earth at the bottom, and a view from the canyon rim, shows at a glance how it all was done, we wonder that we cannot tell more about the people who came upon the scene, and the time at which they came. This is the scientists' interpretation, and brings to view the processes of nature; but what shall we say about the people who have dwelt amid this scene? What is their history, and what was the date of their advent? From what country did they come? 1o what race and stock did they belong? What were the channels, by which they reached these distant regions? Access to this isolated plateau was originally gained by means of great streams, the .most of which are difficult of navigation, but they never-the-less open a channel in different directions, as all of them ultimately reach the sea. There are mountain passes by which wandering tribes, who were accus- tomed to follow the paths wherever they lead, could reach it. 14 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. These different means of access have been employed by the different peoples who have entered the mysterious province. The first white man to enter it, was a lone traveller, who was ship-wrecked upon the eastern coast, and passing from tribe to tribe wandered at length into the Great Staked Plain and made his way along the southern border, then passed on to the far west, and there made his report of the marvellous things which he had seen. Atter which a little band of Spanish cavaliers passed up from the south and traversed the valleys, and finally reached the Great Plateaus, and visited the pueblos which were scattered here and there, and at last passed over the mountains to the east^vard and then continued their long wanderings in search of the fabulous land which they called Quivira. After the Spaniards, the Americans fitted out vessels and sailed around the continent, entered the mouth of the Colorado River, and finally reached the region by this means. The problem now before us does not refer to the means of access, nor to the conveniences of travelling by which we may reach the distant region; but it does relate to the period when this mysterious locality was first peopled, and to the direction which was taken by those who first reached it. This is difficult to solve, though many theories are held in reference to it. Some would place it as far back in a geological age as the time when this great air continent was, like other continents, surrounded by water, and raised but little above it. At that time the valleys, which are now so wide, were filled with seas, which have long since disappeared. Others, however, would date the peopling of this mysterious continent at a very recent period. Judging from the language which has been used by some, one might think that it was but a short time before the discovery by Columbus. The true date is between these two °xtremes; but it can not be definitely fixed until more facts are secured. SCENERY OX THE MANGOS. HAD LANDS IX UTAH. For de>cription Courtesy of Chicago hchool Supply House SCEXKRV ON THE RIO GRANDE. CHAPTER IL "THE AGE" OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. We have in a preceding chapter described the cave dwellings of Europe, and have there considered them as the representa- tives of the earliest abodes of primitive man. We are to de- vote this chapter to the cliff-dwellings but shall first draw the comparison between them and the ancient caves for by that means we shall be able to decide as to the age and social status of the people who inhabited the former. It is understood that the cliff-dwellers were the inhabitants of the great plateau of the West, and for aught we know, were the earliest inhabitants. The date of their appearance and of their disappearance is very uncertain, for there is an air of mystery about the people which is difficult to dispel, The most that we know of them is that at some indefinite time in the past they came into this region and THE ECHO CAVE ON THE SAN JUAN. amid the deep canyons and on the high mesas made their homes, drawing their subsistence mainly from the valleys though occas- ionally they followed the chase, and fed upon the wild ani- mals which lived in the forest and roamed over the mountains. They seem to have been influenced largely by their surround- ings, for in their art they used the material which abounded, and in their architecture imitated the shapes of the cliffs. They are unknown to us except by their works and relics, but from these we learn that they were considerably advanced in the scale of human progress and furnish in this respect a strong con- trast to the cave-dwellers of Europe. They were likewise advanced beyond the ordinary savage and hunter tribes, and in their social status represented the middle stage of barbarism, rather than any of the stages of savagery. They were a seden- tary people given largely to agriculture but cultivated the soil by means of irrigation. They were organized into clans and i6 PRIMITI\E ARCHITECTURE. tribes, and at first built their houses on the mesas and in the valleys. They seem to have been surrounded by wild tribes, who compelled them to find refuge in the sides of the cliffs, from which they were finally driven and then disappeared. Their history is unknown for there are no records left and very few traditions that can be relied upon. The pictographs which are found inscribed upon the rocks furnish some hints as to their religious notions, customs and myths, but they give very little information as to their history and their migrations. It is to the architectural structures and the relics that we look as our chief sources of information and especially the structures. These vary in character, but as a general thing they show the influence of the surroundings, for their form, shape, grouping and general character always conform to the situation in which they are found. The people were long enough in the country to have developed a state of society and a mode of life which were pe- culiar, and they adopted a style of architecture which has not been found anywhere else on the globe. This is best known under the term Pueblo style but the Pueblos and cliff- dwellings are so similar that both may be classed under the same head. The cliff-dwellings differ from the Pueblos only in the fact that they were erected in the side of the cliffs instead of in the val- leys Of upon the mesas. We propose to make these archi- tectural works and the relics and tokens found around them and within them, the object of our study, and shall hope to ascertain the social condition, and the domestic life, of the people as well as their progress. I The first question will be with regard to the age which they represent. The term age needs to be defined. Generally it means period which may be reckoned by years beginning with some fixed date. This is the use which is made of it in history, as the different nations have different eras which consti- tute the beginning of their history. The Greeks date theirs from the first celebration of the Olympian games, the Romans from the building of the city, the Hebrews from the exodus from Egypt, the Egyptians from the days of Menes their first King, the Persians from the birth of Zoroaster their great hero and re- ligious founder, the Chinese from the birth of Confucius.the Turks and other Mohammedans from the birth of Mohammed, all Christian nations from the birth of Christ. There is also a u^e of the word which is peculiar to literature, for we have the Homeric age, the age of the poets and philosophers, the age of Demosthenes. Later on we come to the age of the Eddas and the Minnesingers, the age of the Schoolmen and the Eliza- bethan age. In art also we have the age of the Greek art, the Roman art, mediaeval art, also the age of the renaissance, in art. In archaeology, however, the term signifies soniething quite "THE AGE" OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 17 different, for it is made to express the social condition, and grade of progress which existed during prehistoric times, as the sup- position is that these grades and stages followed one another in a regular order of succession and the index of the grades is found in the material of which the relics were composed, while the architectural structures are subordinate to the relics. Such was the case in Europe. In America it is different. We have here the same variety cf relics, some of them rude, some of them finely wrought but they rarely furnish any clue as to the time in which they were used or the age to which they belonged, as many of them were contemporaneous and belonged to the same period. There are to be sure in America certain geographical districts which contain a preponderence of rude relics, and others which present those which are highly finished. The archaeologi- cal map when properly made may be said to represent the differ- ent stages of progress and grades of society, which in Europe have been ascribed to the different ages, the lines here being horizontal and covering the surface of the continent, which in Europe are perpendicular and constitute an archaeological column. According to this system of classification we should place the cliff- dwellings high up in the scale and make the geographical district in which they are found represent the last age, which in Europe borders close upon the historic period, for the structures correspond to those which there immediately preceded history, though the relics present a lower grade, and would be ascribed to an earlier age. It is probable if the monumental history of the world were written we should find that the order of suc- cession would be about as follows : i. The Cave-Dwellings which may be divided into different classes according to the relics and remains which are found within them.* 2. The kitchen middens in which are found the debris of camps and the remains of animals on which people fed. 3. The barrows and tumuli which show the burial customs of the ancient people. 4. The dolmens, and chambered tombs. 5. The lake- dwellings which are so common in Switzerland and "crannogs" common in Ireland and " terramares " in the north of Italy. 6 The burghs, towers, § nirhags which are found in Scotland, Ire- ♦The caves can be divided into three '-lasses the earliest containing the bones of extinct animals such as the rhinoceros, hippopotamus, the elephas, primigenius, cave bear, hyena etc., the second by the bones of the rein-deer and other arctic animals, with occasional carv- ings and relics which show the presence of man, the last of the cave-dwellers presenting the bones of the horse, the aurochs, the bos-priscos or ancient ox and other animals which became domesticated. §Perrott & Chipiez, say: "The architecture of the Aborigines of Sardinia exhibits a degree of originality witnessed nowhere else save in the Talagats of the Balearic Islands and the mega- lithic monuments of North Africa. Notwithstanding their rough and archaic character, both classes of structures, torribs and nirhags, show a distir.ct individuality. We are inclined to be- lieve that Sardinia was occupied by two distinct people, differing from and at war with each other. The older inhabitants were those tribes respecting, whom we know nothing except that they were uncivilized and lived in rocky caverns. The latter were the builders of the nirhags, and may be called the nirhag people. These owing to the superiority of their arms and the solidity of their towers, were able to possess themselves of the more fruitful portions of the country i the early inhabitants gradually falling backward toward the centre without being pursued, for «8 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. land and in some cases in Sardinia. 7. The structures which are known to history, among which are the huts similar to the one occupied by Romulus and Remus and such tombs as have been found at Mycenae and Tiryns. In America we find a series which resembles these in the char- acter ot their architecture, but all of them contemporaneous. The main resemblance between them and the monuments of Europe consists in the grades of progress exhibited. The series would be as follows : i. The ice-huts and Eskimo houses, also the shell heaps found on the north Atlantic coast. 2. The Ancient village sites, and ash heaps which are scattered over the forests of Canada. 3. The long houses and ancient villages of the Iroquois and the hunter-tribes of the great lakes. 4. The mounds and earth- works of the Mississippi Valley, the Ohio river and the Gulf States. 5. The wooden houses and ancient villages of the Indians of the North-west coast, including the highly wrought and grotesque- ly carved totem poles. 6. The cliff-dwellings and Pueblos scat- tered through the great plateau. 7. The ruins of the ancient cities of Mexico and Central America in which are found the pyramids and temples which were erected by the civilized tribes. If we compare the two lists we shall find that the cliff-dwell- ings correspond to the towers and burghs of Europe, the pyra- mids in America, which are supposed to be the last of the pre- historic series correspond to the pyramids and temples of Egypt which are supposed to be the first of the historic series. Such is the schedule which may be laid out by the study of the monuments as well as the study of the relics. It prepares the way for the consideration of the '"ages,"* The division of the prehistoric period into three distinct ages is confirmed. There were "successive periods of development " in both continents though the " chronological horizons " which have been recog- nized in Europe are lacking in America.f II. The next inquiry will be in reference to the cliff-dwellings and their position among the prehistoric monuments. Our first they left all that was worth having in their rear. The position was changed when the nirhag builders were invaded by the Carthaginians, A theory might be formed that the nirhags were placed to defend the people, but the probability is that they became absorbed with the C'artha- gmians. The Sardinians were at that stage when the means of defense were deemed of greater importance than the creature comforts, or the amenities of life. The tenor of life of this illiterate people was of as rude a •Jescription as well can be imagined. Cities they had none. The bare miserable huts which formed their villages were arranged in serrated files around the nirhags! A saw, a horn, a comb a bone represent the whole of theirdomestic implements for personal use. The population consisted mainly of hunters and soldiers. Their aptitude in using lead, copper and bronze in making their arms and implements, when compared with pottery, attest this Had the Phccnicians never visited Sardinia the use of tin and bronze would have been unknown to the inhabitants." •We have already seen that the prehistoric works in Europe were to be divided into several classes belonging to different ages, and that taking them together they constitute a series in which the advancement of art and architecture can be recognized. The structures of the bronze age are as follows: (a) the palafittes or lake-dwellings which are situated in deep water and contain relics of an advanced type (b) the ancient fortifications (c) circular towers enclosures, etc. tThe parts of the European series which are lacking in .America are as follows: i. The chambered tombs and dolmens. 2. The cromlechs standing stones and alignments. 3. The lake dxyellings, though the last seem to have their correlatives in the sea-girt villages which have been discovered off the coast of Florida. V^j^5^-i r^>»^g BitJ4 ' 5iTjt^ ^; g^. ? r^M if.:jS^ .'s*X.:-^>*v-J™saiij5ijisi!fc,aL.,';' N -J HOHLEFELS CAVE AT WURTENBERG. BONE CAVE AT GAILENREUTH, BAVARIA. ^^■^4 TOWER IN SARDINIA. BROCH OF MOUS^, f HETLAND, '•THE AGE" OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 19 thought is that they are in great contrast to the caves of Europe, which are the only cliff-dwelhngs found there, but they corres- pond to the cavate houses which are very numerous in the Pueb- lo territory and represent the same stage of architecture. The cliff- dwellings belong to a series which in Europe would be placed under the bronze age, but as no bronze was introduced into America they must be ascribed in common with the other monuments to the stone age. They, however, represent an ad- vanced part of the stone age and so are in contrast with the cave- dwellings in Europe. In fact we are obliged to place the caves of Europe at one extreme and the cliff-dwellings at the opposite extreme, and are led to believe that the whole history of human progress, which took place during prehistoric times, is recorded in the structures which were erected between these two ages.* There is another important point to be mentioned here. In Europe the monuments and relics seem to follow one another in the order of time, and exhibit different periods or ages. In Ameriea each series begins abruptly without any preceding stage. In fact the civilization of America, whatever it was, seems to have sprung, like Athene, from the head of Jupiter, fully armed. This has been noticed by others, as the following extract from Sir \Vm. Dawson will show : "The abrupt appearance of man on this continent, his association with animals which beloug to the most recent quarternary period, and the en- tire lack of evidence that he ever associated with any of the extinct ani- mals, makes the contrast between the two very great. His introduction into Europe was at the close of the great ice age and yet mysterious revo- lutions of the earih occurred in that age. The continual oscillation rnay have gone on at intervals for many thousands of years ; but the last period of the elevation is the equivalent of the early appearance of man and joiris upon the Paleolithic age. The contrast between America and Europe is that the Paleolithic age is left out and the geological time joins hard upon historic times. The real interest in the prehistoric people here, such as the mound-builders and cliff-dwellers, is not in their antiquity but in the fact that they reproduce a condition of society which immediately preceded history. They show to us that condition of society on which history was built which existed in the East two or three thousand years before the Christian era and perhaps five thousand years before the Discovery. Some •All caves in P.elgium, France, England, etc., which were easily accessible, and provided with a sufficient opening, weie inhabited. In the middle was the hearth, paved with sand-stone or slate, and around this the family gathered during the season of intense cold. 'I here were caves also, which being too much exposed to the weather, served only as a dwelling in summer. Such occur in the south of France, and are destitute of any traces of a hearth, though otherwise aflord- ing the clearest evidence of having been inhabited by men. 'I'he caves in Europe which give the mo St evidence of having been occupied are three grottos of I.es Eyzies, Laugerie, Basse and L:i '^'adelaine, in the department of Dordogne. 'rhe first of these is high and wide enough to en:^ble the light to penetrate throughout being 12 meters deep, 16 broad, and 6 meters high; it appears to have been used in the middle ages as a stable for hor.ses; When I.artet and Christie began their explorations, the grotto had been considerably enlarged and deepened by earlier oc- cupants, though the e.vplorers found at the bottom a compact, floor, from which projected masses of blackish stalagmite, flint instruments, stones and pieces of bone; this bone breccia lay im- mediately on the rock floor of the cave, and showed a thickness of one of three decemeters. Large pieces were broken loose, which were sent partly io dilTerent museums, but in greater quantities to Paris, with a view to more e.xact examination. The station of Laugerie-Basse is partly in the hollow of a rock, whose face is 100 feet tiigh, while a part of the formation, on which appeared traces of an open fire place, e.xtended outwardly in front of the cavern. 20 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. imagine that this continent was inhabited by the Aborigines long before the beginning of history else-where, but for the present we have no evidence to prove it. This is not denying that there may have been a paleolithic age in America, yet so far the e\ idence is unsatisfactory— lor all the relics w-hich in Europe are ascribed to the three age, are here crowded into the single one, the Neolithic— the cliff-dwellings representing the last part." III. This leads u.sto consider the relative age of thecliff-dwell- ings and caves. On this there seems to be a difference of opinion, some think the cliff-dwellings as ancient as the caves of Europe and ascribe to them a marvellous antiquity, while others think they were very modern, and were perhaps occupied after the ad- vent of the white men, though no relics have been discovered in them which would show contact with the whites, the truth lies probably between these two classes, for there is evidence that the chff-dwellings were occupied at different periods, some of them very early, earlier than any of th'=! Pueblos, others quite late. We shall quote from both classes. The following is from Mr. W. H. Holmes, who visited and described the group of cave-dwellings and towers on the Rio San Juan, and furnished a drawing of the cliffs and of the towers above the cliffs.'^ "On examination I found them to have been shaped by the hand of man, but so weathered out and changed by the slow process of atmospher- ic erosion that the evidences of art were almost obliterated. "The openings are arched irregularly above, and generally quite shal- low, being governed very much in contour and depth by the quality of the rock. '■ The work of excavation has not been an extremely difficult one even with the imperfect implements that must have been used as the shale is for the most part soft and frialile. " It is also extremely probable that they were walled up in front and furnished with doors and windows, yet no fragment of wall has been pre- served. Indeed so great has been the erosion that many of the caves have been almost obliterated, and are now not deep enough to give shelter to a bird or bat. This circumstance should be considered in reference to its bearing upon its antiquity. If we suppose the recess to be destroyed as six feet deep, the entire cliff must recede that number of feet in order to accom- plish it. If the rock were all of the friable quality of the middle part, this would indeed be a matter of a very few decades ; but it should be remem- bered that the upper third of the cliff face is composed of beds of compara- tively hard rocks, sandstones and indurated shales. It should also be noted still further that at the base of the cliff there is an almost total absence of debris or fallen rock, or even of an ordinary talus of earth, so that the period that has elapsed since these houses were deserted must equal the time taken to undermine and break down the six feet of rock, plus the time required to reduce this mass of rock to dust; considering also that the erosive agents are here unusually weak, the resulting period would certainly not be in- considerable."i? The view given by Prof. Cope is the same as that given b\' by Mr. Holme.=; he formed his opinion as to the antiquity of the ♦See Hayden's report for 1876, Bulletin Vol. i, No. i. .§" Figure 7 gives a fair representation of their present appearance of these dwellings, while their relations to ihe groups of ruins above will be understood by refeien :e to page 183. These ruins are three in number — one rectangular and two circular. The rectangjlar one, as indicated in the plan C, is placed on the edge of the mesa, over the more northern gro.ip of cave-dwellings; it is not of great importance, being only 34x40 feet, and scarcely 2 feet" high; the walls are one and one-halffeet thick and built of stone." "THE AGE" OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 21 ruins from the erosion vvhich'vvas manifest, and from the evidences of the change of climate. This has been controverted, it is now held b\- many that the climate is exactly the same when the ruins and the caves were inhabited as now, but the reservoirs and means of storing up water, near the Pueblos, have been de- stroyed. The following is his language : "In traversing the high and dry Eocene plateau west of the bad land bluffs, I noticed the occurrence of crockery on the denuded hills for a dis- tance of many miles. Some of these localities are fifteen and twenty miles from the edge of the plateau, aud at least twenty-five miles from the edge of the Gallinas Creek, the nearest permanent water. In some of these lo- calities ihe summits of the hills had been corroded to a narrow keel, de- stroying the foundations of the former buildings. In one locality I ob- served inscriptions on the rocks, and other objects, which were probably the work of the builders of these stone towns; I give a copy of figures which I found on the side of a ravine near to Abiquiu on the river Chama, They are cut in jurrassic sandstone of medium hardness, and are quite worn and overgrown with the small lichen which is abundent on the face of the rock. I know nothing respectiiig their origin. It is evident that the region of the Gallinas was once as thickly inhabited as are now the more densely pojiulated portions of the Eastern states. The number of buildings in a square mile in that region is equ; 1 to, if not greater than, the number now existing in the more densely populated rural districts of Pennsylvania and Xew Jersey. Nevertheless if we yield to the supposition that during the period of residence of the ancient inhabitants the water supply from rains was greater than now, what evidence do we possess which bears on the age of that period ? There is no difference between the vegetation found growing in these buildings and that of the surrounding hills and valleys; the pines, oaks and sage brush are of the same size, and to all appearances of the same age. I should suppose them to be contemporary in every re- spect. In the next place the bad lands have undergone a definite amount of atmospheric erosion since the occupancy of the houses which stand on their summits. The rate of this erosion under present atmospheric influ- ence, is undoubtedly very slow. The only means which suggested itself, at the time, as available for estimating this rate was the calculation of the age of the pine trees growing near the edge of the bluffs." Such was the view of the early explorers. Others, however, ha\'e noticed the different periods of occupation. These are indicated by the relics and remains as well as the structures. Among the relics the pottery is the most suggestive. It appears there were several kinds of pottery, white decorated with black lines, red with black geometrical designs, corrugated, indented plain red and plai.i black coarsely glazed. Of these the white with black lines is regarded as the most ancient as it is found with the most ancient remains. Many specimens of this kind of pottery are found in various localities, among the cliff-dwellings of the San Juan among the ancient ruins west of the Rio Grande, and among the Portreros in South Eastern New Mexico and a few specimens in Arizona in the Valley of the Gila. It is found oftener in the ruins of small houses and near the ancient caves or cavate houses, than among the Pueblos, thus showing that the caves were first occupied and preceded the Pueblos. In the northern section of this Pueblo territory the class of pottery is 22 PRIMITI\E ARCHITECTURE. found which in Utah and New Mexico is charav:teristic of the small houses, but here appears associated with all kinds of ruins, detached family dwellings, round towers, cliff-houses, villages built in caves and "rock-shelters." In the cliff-houses and cave- dwellings which line the walls of Canyon de Chelley, the black and white, the corrugated, the indented ware, is found, and with it some quite handsomely decorated, thus showing that even in this region there was a succession. Mr. Nordenskjold noticed that among the cliff-dwellings on the San Juan, the black and white was associated with the oldest and rudest ruins and this with the rude character of the foundation walls as well as the human remains discovered led him to believe that among the cliff dwellers there were different periods of occupation and pos- sibly different tribes. A similar succession has been recognized in other parts of the Pueblo territory. Mr. Bandelier found cave- dwellings at the west of the Rio Grande and among the Por- treros, which contained many specimens of pottery of the ancient types, namely black and white, which show that here at least, there were people who made permanent homes, and that the small houses were not mere temporary refuges or resorts. He says: "The Potrero Chata represent two varieties of ancient architecture each accompanied by a distinct type of pottery. The small house ruins, of which the potsherds belong to the ancient kind, cannot have been mere summer ranches, for it is not presumable that the Indians would use one class of earthenware for winter and another kind in summer. Hence I consider my- self justified in concluding that there were two distinct epochs of occupa- tion. Wherever the caves stand without Pueblo rums, in the immediate vicinity, they show almost exclusively the old kinds of potsherds, the black and white or grav and the corrugated. This would indicate that the artific- ial caves and the small houses belong to the same period, anterior to the many storied Pueblos. This is confirmed by another fact. While the buildings in this vicinitv, whether large or small, are made of blocks of tufa, the walls of the Pueblos seem well preserved but the small houses are reduced to the foundation rubbish." The same author speaks of the ruins of Portrero de Las Vecas and of the stone idols found near them. The name applied to the locality signified "where the panthers lie extended." He re- fers to the life size images of panthers which lie a few hundred yards west of the ruins in low woods near the foot of the cliffs. The age and object of the images is unknown, but the fact that pottery of a coarsely glazed and black and white as well as cor- rugated type abound near the ruins would show that they are ancient. They possibly were the totems of an ancient tribe though they have been ascribed to the Queres — a tribe still dwelling in the region. Mr. Bandelier speaks of two other images of panthers which were situated on a mesa which rises above the Canada 304 feet in height. They are situated in the open space, but are in better "THE AGE" OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 23 condition than those on the Pvitrero de las Vecas as the rock on which they were carved is much harder, and has consequently resisted atmospheric erosion far better. There is a tradition among the Cochitis that they were made by their ancestors, who were the inhabitants of Kuapa, an ancient vlUa^je situated about a mile away. They were probably the shrines of a people who worshiped the panthers as one of their prey Gods, very much as the Zunis did before the advent of the whites, and do even at the present day. Mr. W. H. Jackson also speaks of ancient cave-dwellings walled up circular orifices in the rock generally inaccessible, but approached by steps or small holes cut in the rock though the steps are now so worn down by the disintegrating influences of time that they are hardly perceptible. He speaks also of another locality ANCIENT "Where the ruins consist entirely of great mounds of rocky debris piled up in rectangular masses cover- ed with earth and a brush growth bearing every in- dication of extreme age, just how old it is about as impossible to tell as to say how old the rocks of this canyon are. Each seperate building would cover generally a space of about 100 feet square, they are generally subdivided into two or four apartments. There were no cave-dwellings' in the neigh- borhood of this group, but two or three miles below several occurred one of which is built in a huge niche in the solid wall of canyon with its floor level with the valley." "Among the ruins on the Epsom Creek within a distance of fifteen miles there are some sixteen or eighteen promontories and isolated mesas 24 PRiMiTn-E architecturp:. every one of them covered with ruins of old and massive stone built struc- tures. They average in size one huntlred by two hundred feet square, down to thirty by fifty feet, always in a solid block, and, with one exception, so nearly similar that a description of one will fiirly represent all. The pe- culiarity here consists principally in the size and shape of the stones em- ployed as well as in the design of its ground plan. The ruin occupies one of the small isolated mesas, whose floor is composed of a distinctly lamin- ated sandstone, breaking into regular slabs from eighteen inches to twenty- four inches in thickness; these have been broken again into long blocks and then placed in the wall upright, the largest stanaing five feet above the soil m which they are planted. Very nearly the entire length of this wall is made up of the large upright blocks of even thickness, fitting close together, with only occasional spaces filled up with smaller rocks. In one place the long blocks have been pushed outward bv the weight of the debris back of it. One side of the large square apartment in the rear is made of the same kind of rocks, standing in a solid row. The walls throughout the rest of the building are composed of ordinary sized rocks, with an occasional large upright one. Judging from the debris, the walls could not have been more than eight or ten feet in height. The foundation line was well preserved, enabling us to measure accurately its dimensions. The large square room was depressed in the centre, and its three outside walls contained les5 material than in the rest of the building. No sign of any aperture, either of window or door, could be detected. The more numerous class of ruins occupying the mesas and the promontory points consists of a solid mass of small rectangular rooms arranged without ap- pearance of order, conforming to the irregularities of the surface upon which they are built, and covering usually all the available space chosen for their site. All are e.vtremely old and tumbled into indefinite ridges five or six feet high with the stones partially covered with sage brush, grease, wood and junipers. They occupied every commanding point of the mes-as- usually so placed in the bends as to afford a clear outlook for considerable distances up and down the canyon. They resemble in this respect the sites chosen by the Moquis in building their villages ; but we were not able to trace the resemblance further, from the extremely aged and ruinos state in which these remains are found," IV. The relative age of the " cavate lodges " and the " cliff- dwellings" may well be considered in this connection. On general principles we might consider that the caves were the older, for they are ruder, and the scenery wilder yet the cliff-dwellings themselves were strangely enough, sometimes placed at almost incredible heights, and amid the wildest scenes of nature. There is an unwritten history in these varied structures, and there is a temptation oftentimes to read into them, a fabulous antiquity. We judge from these ruined walls and their proximity to the caves, as well as the character of the caves themselves, that the cliff-dwellers were much farther advanced than the cave-dwellers of Europe. Even the caves which seem to be very old have ruined towers connected with them, which show much skill in architecture. The age of the caves is ot course unknown, but it seems to be very considerable. There is another side to this subject. The caves and dwellings discovered by these gentlemen undoubtedly belong to an early period of the Pueblo's and cliff dweller's history, but there are also caves which were occupied at a much later date and it will therefore be well to examine them before we draw conclusions in THE AGE" OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 25 reference to the relative age of the caves and the cliff-dwellings. These are situated in the midst of the very plateau where the cliff-dwellings are found and probably belonged to the same peo- ple, and to the same age. They differ in nearly all respects from the caves of Europe, for they evidently belong to the neolithic age, and the same part of the age to which the cliff-dwellings be- long, but they illustrate a fact which is as common in modern as in ancient times. The people may have reached the same grade of civilization, and have followed about the same kind of life, using the same kind of tools, implements, utensils, and yet be living in very different kind of houses, inasmuch as their circum- stances and resources differed. In this respect prehistoric people were not different from historic people. It is then no evidence of very great age if it is proved that people lived in caves, for there are caves in Europe which are occupied even to this day, and it is supposed by many of the explorers that some of these caves of the far west were occupied after the cliff-dwellings. Such seems to be the opinion of Maj. J. W. Powell, Mr. Ad. F. Ban- delier, Mr. Cosmos Mendeliff and others. Mr. Bandelier says : "Cavate lodg^es. cave-dwellings and cliff-dwellings are only different phases of the same thing. There are but three regions in the I'nited States in which cavate lodges are known to occur inconsiderable numbers, viz.: on San Juan river, near its mouth, on the western side of the Rio Grande, near the Pueblo of Santa Clara; and on the eastern slope of the San Francisco mountain, near Flag-staff, .\rizona. To these may now be added the Rio Verde region. Cave villages of the kind described are numerous, occupying an area of about three thousand scjuare miles. They are merely a local feature to which the Indian was induced to resort by the nature of the prevailing geological formation.'' It may be well then to study the different localities in which the so called cavate lodges are found and compare them with those where the cliff-dwellings abound. It will be seen that these caves or cavate lodges like the caves of Europe are in the midst of wild and mountainous regions, but in regions in which volcanic rocks are friable and so caves are easily excavated. The most interesting locality is that west of Santa Clara. Here there are two high cliffs which are visible for thirty miles ; their white ash-colored stone making them very conspicuous. One of them is called the Shufinne. A view of this rock with the caves dug out of it may be seen in the cut. Mr. Bandelier describes it in the following words : "Twelve miles from the Rio Grande the light colored pumice-stone and volcanic ashes of which the mesas are mostly formed rise in abrupt heights. On the north side a castle-like mesa of limited extent, detaches itself from the foot of the Pelado. The Tehuas call it the Shu-hnne, and I have seen it distinctly from a distance of thirty miles. It is not the absolute height of the rock (I should estimate it at not over 150 feet above the mesa,) but the almost perfect whiteness of its precipitous sides and lower slopes against the dark mass of mountains that makes it so conspicuous. The perimeter of the Shu-hnne is not very large, and its base is surrounded by cedar and 26 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE, juniper bushes with a sprinkling of low pinon trees. Two-thirds of the elevation of this rock consist of a steep slope covered with debris of pumice and volcanic tufa. Along the base of the vertical upper rinn small openings are visible which are the doorways of artificial caves. The Shu-finne con- tains a complete cave-village, burrowed out of the soft rock by the aid of stone miplements." The Pu-ye lies lower than the Shu-finne and, as seen from it, the latter looms up conspicuously in the north, like a bold white castle. The caves extend at irregular intervals in a line nearly a mile long, sometimes in two, and occasionally three rows. They must hav^ been capable ot harboring at least 1000 people. In some places beams protrude from the rock, showing that houses have been built against it, along side of cave-dwellings. See plate. South of the Pu-ye extends a level space whose soil appears to be quite loamy and fertile, and on this level are traces of garden spots. There is little pottery about the ruins. In some of the enclosed spaces or garden plots, trees have grown up. The ruins, as well as the almost obliterated artificial caves at the baseof the mountain, seem to be much older than cave-villages of the Shu-finne and Pu-ye, as some of the caves show the front completely worn away, leaving only arched indentations in the rock. There seem to be vestiges of two distinct epochs marked by two different architectural types, artificial caves and communal Pueblos built in the open air. "The ascent to the caves is tedious, for the slope is steep, and it is tire- some to clamber over the fragments of pumice and tufa that cover it. Once above we find ourselves before small doorways, both low and narrovy, mostly irregularlv oval. I measured a number of the cells and found their height to vary from i .47 (4 feet 10 inches) to 2.03 m. (6 feet 8 inches.) Most (if them, however, were over 5 feet high. The outer wall was usually 0.30m. thick like most of the Pueblo walls. I noticed little air-holes and also loop-holes in the outer walls, but no tire-places, although as Mr. Stevenson aso observed, the evidences of fire are plain in almost every room. 1 here is another locality of artificial cave-dwellings only three miles distant from Shu-finne called Pu-ye. It is also a mesa of pumice rock, and rows of p ne partly cover the summit, and quite a large Pueblo ruin whose walls of pumice rise to a height of two stories and cover the top of the cliff. There was also a level platform all along the base of the vertical declivity, wide enough at one time to aff(jrd room for at least one cell if the rock were used as a rear wall. This rock is soft and friable, and can easily be dug into by means of sharp and hard substances, such as obsidian and flinc. The vol- canic formation of the mountain affords sufficient quantities cf both materi- als, but chiefly of obsidian. Basalt chisels rudely made have also been found in connection with the caves. That the caves are wholly artificial admits of no doubt, and it was in fact easier for the Indian to scrape out his dw^ellings than to build the Pueblo whose ruins crown the summit of the cliff. Since Mr. J. Stevenson examined the Puye, in 1880. the locality has been frequently visited and but few specimeiis of broken objects are ob- tainab e. I refer to the catalogue published by the Bureau of Ethnology for a description of the collections made on the spot by Mr. Stevenson in 18S0. Mr. Eldodt has in his possession several valuable specimens from the Pu- ye. These relics have nothing to distinguish th^^m from those found in Pueblo ruins in general, but the potterv is not so well decorated as that of Ojo Caliente ani Rito C'->!oradn. Fragments of a coirsely glazed variety are verv abundant, and I know of but one specimen of incised ware found CLIFF-HOUSES AT WALPI. These houses are comparatively modern but illustrate the development of architecture ; First, Cave-Houses ; Second, Cliff-Dwellings ; Third, Pueblos. CLIFF-HOUSES ON THE SAN JUAN. These houses were discovered by Mr. W. H. Holmes, in the San Juan Valley. They filled the niches in the rock but connected with one another and constituted an abode for a family or a clan. THE AGE OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 27 at or about the artificial caves. The vertical wall in which the caves have been excavated varies in height. In places it might be only six meters (twenty-five feet); in others it attains as manv as sixteen (fifty feet.) The incline on the other hand is twenty meters (sixty-five feet), on the western and as many as fiftv meters (one hundred and sixty feet) on the eastern end. As the denuded faces of the cliff are those of the south and east, it follows that the caves extend around it from the southwestern to the north- eastern corner, forming a row of openings along the base of the vertical wall. On the whole, the interior of these cells resembles that of a Pueblo room now of ancient type. There are even the holes where poles were fastened, on which hides, articles of dress, or dance ornaments were hung, as is still the custom of the Pueblo Indians. In one room I noticed what may have been a stone frame for the metates. The interior chambers may have been used for store-rooms, or the largest of them may have also served as dormitories. Every feature of a Pueblo household is found in connection with these caves. They form a pueblo in the rock, and there are also a number of estufas. The cave-nouses and the highest Pueblo appear to have been in days long previous to the coming of the Europeans the homes of a portion of the Tehua tribe whose remnants now inhabit the village of Santa Clara. The country south of this interesting spot abounds in artificial caves. In nearly every gorge the cliffs show traces of such abodes. The country west of the Rio Grande in the vicinity of the Rito de los Frijoles abounds with caves which were abandoned at the time of the Spanish invasion. The cave dwellings of the Rito are very much like those already described. The caves themselves are poor in relics except those of the upper tiers. It appears that where the cliffs rise vertically, terraced houses were built using the rock for the rear wall.* These are one, two and even three stories high and leaned against the cliff. Sometimes the upper story consisted of a cave and the lower of a building." The country west of the Rio Granule, in the vicinity of the Rito de los Frijoles is wild, with deep canyons traversing it like gashes cut parallel to each other from west to east. They are mostly several hundred feet in depth, and in places ap- proaching a thousand. On the northern walls, facing the south or east, caves, usually much ruined are met with, in al- most every one of them. There are also several pueblo ruins on the mesas, about which I have only learned from the Indians that they were Tehua villages, and that their construction, oc- cupation and abandonment antedate perhaps by many centuries the times of Spanish colonization. Another locality is mentioned by Mr. Bandelier and is il- lustrated by the plate. Almost opposite San Idlefonso begins the deep and pictur- esque cleft through which the Rio Grande has forced its way. It is called "Canyon Blanco," "Canyon del Norte," or "White Rock Canyon." Towering masses of lava, basalt and trap form its eastern walls; while on the west these formations are cap- ped, a short distance from the river, by soft pumice and tufa. Major Powell also speaks of cave-houses which were con- structed in the midst of the extinct craters of San Francisco mountain. He says: "In the walls of this crater many caves are found, and here again a vil- lage was established, the caves in the scoria being utilized as habitations of •The plate opposite page 30 accompanying this chapter illustrates the point. The Caves at Shufinne and the Cliff-Houses at Rio de Chelly have houses leaning against tbe Cliff. 28 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. men. These little caves were fashioned into rooms of more symmetry and convenience than originally found, and the openings of the caves were walled. Nor did these people neglect the gods, for in canvon and craters of this plateau were utilized in like manner as homes fur tribal people, and in one cave far to the south a fine collection of several hundred pieces of pottery has been made," Major Powell speaks of Indians who built pueblos some- times of the red sandstones in canyons and oftener of blocks of tufa. He says this material can be worked with great ease and with crude tools. Of the harder lava they cut out blocks and built pueblos two and three stories high. The blocks are usually 20 inches in length, 8 inches in width and 6 inches in thickness. These Indians left their pueblos on the plateau where the Navajo invasion came, and constructed cavate homes for themselves — that is they excavated chambers on the cliffs which were cotnposed of tufa. On the face of the cliff hundreds of feet high and even miles in length, they dug out chambers with their stone tools, these chambers being little rooms eight or ten feet in diameter. Sometimes two or more such chambers connected. Then they constructed stairways in the soft rock, by which their cavate houses were reached; and in these rock shelters they lived during times of war. Mr. Mendeliff speaks of caves and cavate lodges which are near boulder sites, and old irrigating ditches on the Rio Verde and Limestone Creek. Here the almost entire absence of cliff-dwellings and the great abundance of cavate lodges is noticeable ; the geogra;hical formation being favorable to caves and unfavorable" to cliff- dwellings, whereas on the Canyon de Chelly there are hundreds of cliff-dwellings and no cave-lodges. This is accounted for as an accident of environment where the conditions are reversed. He says : "The relation of these lodges to the village ruins and the character of the sites occupied by them, supports the conclusion that they were farming out-posts, probably occupied only during the farming season according to the methods followed by many of the Pueblos today, and that the defensive motive had little or no influence on the selection of the site or the character of the structures. The boulder-marked sites and the small single-room re- mains illustrate other phases of the same horticultural methods, methods somewhat resembling the "intensive culture," of modern agriculture, but re- quiring further a close supervision or watching of the crop during the peri- od of ripening. As the area of tillable land in the Pueblo region, especially in its western part is limited, these requirements have developed a class of temporary structures, occupied only during the farming season. In Tusay- an, where the most primitive architecture of the Pueblo tvpe is found, these structures are generally of brush; in Canon de Chelly they are cliff -dwell- ings; on the Rio Verde they are cavate lodges, boulder-niarked sites and single house remains; but at Zuni they have reached their highest develop- ment in the three summer villages of Ojo Caliente, Nutria and Pescado." Mr. Brandelier speaks of caves and cavate houses on the upper Gila and of others in Chihuahua. In both of these localities the region is wild and mountainous, just such as we would naturally expect to find occupied by cave-dwellers. > <: > H H X C G z 1-3 E R I ' tr> X C z n r 13 < M r r Z o z X W c R n a; p) r r r» • ,- r ^. ^S^^'^''^'^ FORTRESS OX THE RIO VERDE. Description of this Clitf-Fortress is given on page 220. "THE AGE" OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 29 They resembled in this respect the home of the Troglodgjtes in Europe. Sacrificial caves, and spots sacred as shrines are quite nu- merous on, and about, Thunder Mountain, and a host of legends and folk tales cluster around the towering Table Rock. There are also pictographs and symbols near the cav'es and cliff- dwellings of the San Juan and the west of the Rio Grande; but these cave-lodges seem to be destitute of them, showing that they were only temporary places of refuge. Concealment was one object. The following is the description of the cavate houses on the Upper Gila: "These buildings occupy four caverns, the second of which towards the east is ten meters high. The western cave communicates with the oth( rs only from the outside, while the three eastern ones are separated by huge pillars behind which are natural passages from one cave to the other. The height of the floor above the bed of the creek is fifty five meters, and the ascent is steep, in some places barely passable. To one coming from the mouth of the cliff the caves become visible only after he has passed them, so that they are well concealed. Higher up the several branches through whose union the Gila River is formed, cave-houses and cave-villages are not uncommon. Mr. Henshaw has published the description of one situ- ated on Diamond Creek, to which description I refer. As the gorges become wilder and the expanses of t-.llable land disappear, the rocks and cliffs weie resorted to as retreats and refuges. Whether the cave-dwellings and cliff- houses were occupied previous to the open-air villages along the Mimbres, or whether they were the last refuges of tribes driven from their homes in valley, it is of course not possible to surmise." According to Mr. Bandelier the cave-dwellings are to be found as far south as the Casas Grandes in Chihuahua. There seems to have been a variety of structures, some of them very elaborate and bearing the type of architecture which is com- mon in Mexico, others very rude, scarcely any better than that which the wild Indians would construct. The region is moun- tainous and so was occupied by different tribes, the Apaches having made it a resort. The following is a description of the locality: "The so-called Puerto de San Diego, a very picturesque mountain pass, ascends steadily for a distance of five or six miles. On its northern tide rise towering slopes, the crests of which are overgrown with pines. In the south a ridge of great elevation terminates in crags and pinnacles. The tra'l winds upward in a cleft, and is bordered by thickets consisting of oak, smaller pines, cedars, mezcalagava and tall yucca. As we rise the view spreads out towards the southeast and east, and fiom the crest the plain below and the valley of Casas Grandes, with bald mountains beyond, appear like atopographical map. Turning to the west, a few steps carry us into lofty pine woods, where the view is shut in by stately trees surrounding us on all sides. The air is cool; deep silence re gns; we are in the solitudes of the eastern Sierra Madre. These mountains fastnesses are well adapted to the residence of small clusters of agricultural Indians seeking for security. I therefore neither saw nor heard of ruins of larger villages, but cave- dwellings were frequently spoken of. Some very remarkable ones are said to exist near the Piedras \'erdes, about two day's journeying from Casas Grandes. I saw only the cave-dwellings on the Arroyo del Nombre de Dios, not far from its junction with the Arroyo de los Pilares. They lie about thirty-five to forty miles southwest of Casas-Grandes. The arroyo flows through a pretty vale lined on its south side by stately pines, behind 30 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE, which picturesque rocks rise in pillars, crags and towers. The rock is a reddish breccia or conglomerate. Many caves, large and small, though mostly small, open in the walls of these cliffs, which are not high, measur- ing nowhere over two hundred feet above the level of the valley. The dwellings are contained in the most spacious of these cavities, which lie about two miles from the outlet of the arroyo. They are so well concealed that, along the banks of the stream, it is easy to pass by without seeing them. The point which we make is this, that while the cliff-dwell- ings differ from the cavate lodges in many respects yet they are in the strongest contrast with the European caves while they belong to the same age with the lake-dwellings and the towers and nirhages,and show about the same style of architec- ture, and exhibit the same grade of advancement and prove the position which was taken at the outset, that the cliff-dwellers marked one extreme of social progress and the cave-dwellers or troglodytes of Europe marked the other, and the whole series of prehistoric structures and relics may be embraced be- tween them. We see from this that the caves and cave-houses and cliff- dwellings were widely distributed and numerous, but they dif- fer very materially from the caves of Europe. If there were no other proof of this it would be enough to examine the cut which represent the cliff-dwellings situated in the Canyon de Chelley, and compare it with the cuts which represent the caves of Europe. This cliff-dwelling was first discovered by Lieut J. H. Simpson in 1849 ^"<^ has been often visited and described by other explorers. It well represents its class. If we take the series of cuts given with this paper and compare the caves of Europe on one side with the cavate lodges and the cliff-dwell- ings on the other, we shall find the difference between the European caves and the cliff-dwelings in America. MUKUNTUWEAP CANYON. HIGH HOUSE IN THE CLIFFS, THE HOME OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS 31 CHAPTER III. THE HOME OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS.^ There are two distinct portions ot the basin of the Colorado, a desert portion below and a plateau above. The lower third, or desert portion of the basin, is but little- above the level of the sea, though here and there, ranges of mountains rise to an altitude of from 3,006 to 6,000 feet. This part of the valley is bounded on the northeast by a line of cliffs which present a bold, often vertical step, hundreds or thousands of teet, to the table lands above. On the California side a vast desert stretches westward, past the head of the Gulf of California, nearly to the shore of the Pacific. Between the desert and the sea a narrow belt of valley, hill, and mountain of wonderful beauty is found. Over this coastal zone there falls a balm distilled from the great ocean, as gentle showers and refreshing dews bathe the land. When rains come the emerald hills laugh with delight as bourgeoning bloom is spread in the sunlight. When the rains have ceased all the verdure turns to gold. Then slowly the hills are brinded until the rains come again, when verdure and bloom again peer through the tawny wreck of last years's greenery. North of the Gulf of California the desert is known as "Coahuila Valley," the most desolate region on the continent. On the Arizona side of the river, desert plains are interrupted by desert mountains. Far to the eastward the country rises until the Sierra Madre are reached in New Mexico, where these mountains divide the waters of the Colorado from the Rio Grande del Norte. Here in New Mexico the Gila River has its source. Some of its tributaries rise in the mountains to the south, in the territory belonging to the Republic of Mexico; but the Gila gathers the greater part of its waters from a great plateau on the northeast. Its sources are everywhere in pine-clad mountains and plateaus, but all of the affluents quickly descend into the desert valley below, through which the Gila winds its way westward to the Colorado. In times of continued drought the bed of the Gila is dry, but the region is subject to great and violent storms, and floods roll down from the heights with marvelous precipitation, carrying devastation on their way. Where the Colorado River forms the boundary between Califor- nia and Arizona it cuts through a number of volcan-ic rocks by black, yawning cafions. Between these caiions the river has a *This chapter was wr tten by Major J. W. Powell, and first printed in the Canyons ... theUolorhdo. 32 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. low but rather narrow flood plain, with cottonwood groves scat- tered here and there, and a chaparral of mesquite, bearing beans and thorns. The region of country lying on either side of the Colorado for 600 miles of its course above the gulf, stretching to Coahuila Valley below on the west, and to the highlands, where the Gila heads, on the east, is one of singular characteristics. The plains and valleys are low, arid, hot, and naked, and the volcanic mountains scattered here and there are lone and desolate. During the long months the sun pours its heat upon the rocks and sands, untempered by clouds above or forest shades beneath. The springs are so few in number that their names are house- hold words in every Indian rancheria, and every settler's home; as there are no brooks, no creeks, and no rivers but the trunk of the Colorado and the trunk of the Gila. The desert valley of the Colorado, which has been described as distinct from the plateau region above, is the home of many Indian tribes. Away up at the sources of the Gila, where the pines and cedars stand, and where creeks and valleys are found, is a part of the Apache land. These tribes extend far south into the Republic of Mexico. The Apaches are intruders in this country, having at some time, perhaps many centuries ago, migrated from British America. They speak the Athapascan language. The Apaches and Navajos are the American Bedouins. On their way from the far north they left several colonies in Washington, Oregon, and California. They came to the country on foot, but since the Spanish invasion they have become skilled horsemen. They are wily warriors and implacable enemies, feared by all other tribes. They are hunters, warriors, and priests, these professions not yet being differentiated. The cliffs of the region have many caves, in which these people perform their religious rites. The Sierra Madre formerly supported abundant game, and the little Sonora deer v/as common. Bears and mountain lions were once found in great numbers, and they put the courage and prowess of the Apaches to a severe test. Huge rattlesnakes are common, and the rattlesnake god is one of the deities of the tribes. The low deserc, with its desolate mountains, which has thus been described, is plainly separated from the upper region of plateau by the Mogollon Escarpment, which, beginning in the Sierre Madre of New Mexico, extend northwestward across the Colorado far into Utah, where it ends on the margin of the great basin. See Plate. The rise by this escarpment varies from 3,000 to more than 4,000 feet. The step from the lowlands to the highlands, which is here called the Mogollon Escarpment, is not a simple line of cliffs, but is a complicated and irregular facade presented to the southwest. Its different portions have been named by the iiiiisiiiiiw ,,„„ jiiii ir !1 i!i' iliiiill .ll!!l «WM\ THE HOME OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 35 people living below, as distinct mountains, as Shiwits Mountains, Mogollon Mountains, Pinal Mountains, Sierra Calitro, etc., but they all rise to the summit of the same great plateau region. This high region on the east, north and west, is set with ranges of snow-clad mountains attaining an altitude above the sea varying from 8,000 to 14,000 feet. All winter long snow falls on its moun- tain-crested rim, filling the gorges, half burying the forests, and covering the crags and peaks with a mantle woven by the winds from the waves of the sea. When the summer sun comes this snow melts and tumbles down the mountain sides in millions of cascades. A million cascade brooks unite to form a thousand torrent creeks; a thousand torrent creeks unite to form half a hun- dred rivers beset with cataracts; halt a hundred roaring rivers unite to form the Colorado, which rolls, a mad, turbid stream, into the Gulf of California. Consider the action of one of these streams. Its source is in the mountains, where the snow falls; its course through the arid plains. Now, if at the river's flood, storms were falling on the plains, its channel would be cut but little faster than the adjacent country would be washed, and the general level would thus be preserved; but under the conditions here mentioned the river continually deepens its beds; so all the streams cut deeper and still deeper, until their banks are towermg cliffs of solid rock. These deep, narrow gorges are called canons. For more than a thousand miles along its course the Colorado has cut for itself such a caiion; but at some few points, where lateral streams join it, the cafion is broken and these narrow, transverse valleys divide into a series of caiions. The Virgen, Kanab, Paria, Escalante, Fre- mont, San Rafael, Price and Uinta on the west, the Grand, White, Yampa. San Juan and Colorado Chiquito on the east, have also cut for themselves such narrow, winding gorges, or deep caiions. Every river entering these has cut another canyon; every lateral creek has cut a caiion; every brook runs in a cafion; every rill born of shower and born again of a shower and living only during these showers, has cut for itself a canon; so that the whole upper portion of the basin of the Colorado is traversed by a labyrinth of these deep gorges. After the canons, the most remarkable features of the country are the long lines of clifYs. These are bold escarpments scores or hundreds of miles in length, — great geographic steps, often hundreds or thousands of feet in altitude, presenting steep faces of rock, often vertical. Having climbed one of these steps, you may descend by a gentle, sometimes imperceptible, slope to the foot of another. They thus present a series of ter- races, the steps of which are well defined escarpments of rock. The lateral extension of such a line of clifTs is usually very irregular; sharp salients are projected on the plains below, and deep recesses are cut into the terraces above. Intermittent streams coming down the cliffs have cut many caiions or caiion 36 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. villages, by which the traveler may pass from the plain below to the terrace above. By these gigantic stairways he may ascend to high plateaus, covered with forests of pine and fir. From the Grand Cafion ot the Colorado a great plateau extends southeastward through Arizona nearly to the line of New Mexico, where this elevated land merges into the Sierra Madre. The general surface of this plateau is from 6,000 to 8,000 feet above the level of the sea. Various tributaries of the Gila have their sources in this escarpment, and before entering the desolate valley below they run in beautiful canons which they have carved for themselves in the margin of the plateau. Some- times these canons are in the sandstones and limestones, which Jiuiiis at the Bead of McElmo Canyon. constitute the platform of the great elevated region called the San Francisco Plateau. The escarpment is caused by a fault, the great block of the upper side being lifted several thousand feet above the valley region. Through the fissure lavas poured out, and in many places the escarpment is concealed by sheets of lava. The canons in these lava beds are often of great interest. On the plateau a number of volcanic mountains are found, and black cinder cones are scattered in profusion. Through the forest lands are many beautiful prairies and glades that in midsummer are decked with gorgeous wild flowers. The rains of the region give source to few perennial streams, but intermittent streams have carved deep gorges in the plateau, so that it is divided into many blocks. The upper surface, although forest clad and covered with beautiful grasses, is almost destitute of water. A few springs are found; but they are far apart, and some of the volcanic craters hold lakelets. The limestone and THE HOME OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 37 basaltic rocks sometimes hold pools of water; and where the basins are deep the waters are perennial. Such pools are known as "water pockets." This is the great timber region of Arizona. Not many years ago it was a vast park for elk, deer, antelope and bears, and mountain lions were abundant. This is the last home of the wild turkey in the United States, for they are still found here in great numbers. San Francisco Peak is the highest of these vol- canic mountains, and about it are grouped in an irregular way many volcanic cones, one of which presents some remarkable characteristics. A portion of the cone is of bright reddish cin- ders, while the adjacent rocks are of black basalt. The contrast in the colors is so great that on viewing the mountain from a distance the red cinders seem to be on fire. From this circum- stance the cone has been named Sunset Peak. When distant from it ten or twenty miles it is hard to believe that the effect is pro- duced by contrasting colors, for the peak seems to glow with a light of its own. A few miles south of San Francisco Peak there is an intermittent stream known as Walnut Creek. This stream runs in a deep gorge, 6oo to 800 feet below the general surface. The stream has cut its way through the limestone and through a series of sandstones, and bold walls of rock are pre- sented on either side. East of San Francisco Peak there is another low volcanic cone, composed of ashes which have been slightly cemented by the processes of time, but which can be worked with great ease. On this cone another tribe of Indians made its village. For the purpose they sunk shafts into the easily worked, but partially consolidated ashes, and after pene- trating from the surface three or four feet they enlarged the chambers so as to make them ten or twelve feet in diameter. In such a chamber they made a little fire-place, its chimney running up on one side of the well-hole by which the chamber was entered. Often they excavated smaller chambers connected with the larger, so that sometimes two, three, four or even five smaller connecting chambers are grouped about a large central room. The arts of these people resembled those of the people who dwelt in Walnut canon. One thing more is worthy of special notice. On the very top of the cone they cleared off a space for a court-yard, or assembly square, and about it they erected booths, and within the square a space of ground was prepared with a smooth floor, on which they performed the ceremonies of their religion and danced to the gods in prayer and praise. The Little Colorado is a marvelous river. In seasons of great rains it is a broad but shallow torrent of mud; in seasons of drought it dwindles, and sometimes entirely disappears along portions of its course. The upper tributaries usually run in beautiful box cafions. Then the river flows through a low, des- olate, bad-land valley, and the river of mud is broad but shallow, 38 PKCMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. except in seasons of great floods. But fifty miles or more above the junction of this stream with the Colorado River proper, it plunges into a cafion with limestone walls, and steadily this canon increases in depth, until, at the mouth of the stream, it has walls more than 4,000 feet in height. This valley of the Little Colorado is also the site of many ruins, and the villages or towns found in such profusion were of much larger size than those on the San Francisco Plateau. Some of the pueblo-build- ing peoples still remain. The Zuni Indians still occupy their homes, and they prove to be a most interesting people. They have cultivated the soil from time immemorial, They build their houses of stone, and line them with plaster; and they have many interesting arts, being skilled potters and deft weavers. The seasons are about equally divided between labor, worship, and play. A hundred miles to the northwest of the Zuni pueblo are the seven pueblos of Tusayan : Oraibi, Shumopavi, Shupaulovi, Mashongnavi, Sichumovi, Walpi, and Hano. These towns are built on high cliffs. The people speak a language radically different from that of the Zuni, but, with the exception of that ot the inhabitants of Hano, closely allied to that of the Utes. The people of Hano are Tewans, whose ancestors moved trom the Rio Grande to Tusayan during the great Pueblo revolt against Spanish authority in 1680-96. In these mountains, plateaux, mesas, and cafions, the Navajo Indians have their home. The Navajos are intruders in this country. They belong to the Athapascan stock of British America and speak an Athapascan language, like the Apaches of the Sierra Madre country. They are a stately, athletic, and bold people. While yet this country was a part of Mexico they acquired great herds of horses and flocks of sheep, and lived in opulence compared with many ot the other tribes of North America. Perhaps the most interesting ruins of America are found in this region. The ancient pueblos found here are of superior structure, but they were all built by a people whom the Navajos displaced when they migrated from the far north. Wherever there is water, near by an ancient ruin may be found, and these ruins are gathered about centers, the centers being larger pueb- los and the scattered ruins representing single houses. The ancient people lived in villages, or pueblos, but during the grow- ing season they scattered about by the springs and streams to cultivate the soil by irrigation, and wherever there was a little farm or garden patch, there was built a summer house of stone. When times of war came, especially when they were invaded by the Navajos, these ancient people left their homes in the pueblos and by the streams, and constructed temporary homes in the cliffs and canon walls. Such cliff ruins are abundant through- out the region. Ultimately the ancient pueblo peoples sue- LU o z < I- co Q > I Ui I- I- > < < a. X. CO I I- > < z o z < I CO < THE HOME OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 41 cumbed to the prowess of the Navajos and were driven out. A part joined related tribes in the valley of the Rio Grande; others joined the Zuni and the people of Tusayan ; and still others pushed on beyond the Little Colorado to the San Francisco Plateau and far down into the valley of the Gila. Farther to the east, on the border of the region which we have described, beyond the drainage of the Little Colorado and San Juan and within the drainage of the Rio Grande, there lies an interesting plateau region, which forms a part of the Plateau Province and which is worthy of description. This is the great Tewan Plateau, which carries several groups of mountains. The plateau itself is intersected with many deep, narrow caiions, having walls of lava, volcanic dust, or tufa, and red sandstone. It is a beautiful region. The low mesas on every side are almost treeless and are everywhere deserts, but the great Tewan Plateau is booned with abundant rains, and it is thus a region of forests and meadows, divided into blocks by deep and precipitous canyons and crowned with cones that rise to an altitude of from 10,000 to 12,000 feet. P'or many centuries the Tewan Plateau, with its cafions below and its meadows and forests above, has been the home of tribes of Tewan Indians, who built pueblos, sometimes of red sandstones, in the cafions, but often of blocks of tufa, or volcanic dust. This light material can be worked with great ease, and with crude tools of the harder lavas they cut oat blocks of the tufa and with them built pueblos two or three stories high. The blocks are usually about twenty inches in length, eight inches in width and six inches in thickness, though they vary somewhat in size. On the volcanic cones which dominate the country these people built shrines and wor- shiped their gods with offerings of meal and water and with prayer and symbols made of the plumage of the birds of the air. When the Navajo invasion was long past, civilized men, as Spanish invaders, entered this country from Mexico, and again the Tewan people left their homes on the mesas and by the canons to find safety in the cavate dwellings of the clififs; and now the archaeologist in the study of this country discovers these two periods of construction and occupation of the cave dwellings of the Tewan Indians. To the east of this plateau region, with its mesas and buttes and its volcanic mountains, stand the southern Rocky Mountains, or Park Mountains, a system of north and south ranges. These ranges are huge billows in the crust of the earth, out of which mountains have been carved. The parks of Colorado are great valley basins enclosed by these ranges and over their surfaces moss agates are scattered. The mountains are covered with dense forests and are rugged and wild. The higher peaks rise above the timber line and are naked gorges of rocks. In them the Platte and Arkansas rivers head and flow eastward to join 42 PRIMinVE ARCHITECTURE. the Missouri river. Here also heads the Rio Grande del Norte, which flows southward into the Gulf of Mexico, and still to the west head many streams which pour into the Colorado waters, destined to the Gulf of California. Throughout all this region drained by the Grand, White, and Yampa rivers, there are many beautiful parks. The great mountain slopes are still covered with primeval forests. Springs, brooks, rivers, and lakes abound, and the waters are filled with trout. Not many years ago the hills wefe covered with game — elks on the mountains, deer on the plateaus, antelope in the valleys, and beavers building their cities on the streams. The plateaus are covered with low, dwarf oaks and many shrubs bearing berries, and in the chap- arral of this region cinnamon bears are still abundant. From time immemorial the region drained by the Grand, White and Yampa rivers has been the home of Ute tribes of the Shoshonean family of Indians. These Indians built their shelters of boughs and bark, and to some extent lived in tents made of the skins of animals. They never cultivated the soil, but gathered wild seeds and roots and were famous hunters and fishermen. As the region abounds in game, these tribes have always been well clad in skins and furs. The men wore blouses, loincloth, leggins and moccasins, and the women dressed in short kilts. It is curious to notice the effect which the contact of civilization has had upon these women's dress. Even twenty years ago they had lengthened their skirts, and dresses made of buckskin, fringed with furs and beaded with elk teeth were worn so long that they trailed on the ground. Neither men nor women wore any head dress except on festival occasions for decorations, then the women wore little basket bonnets deco- rated with feathers, and the men wore headdresses made of the skins of ducks, geese, eagles, and other large birds. Sometimes they would prepare the skin of the head of the elk or deer, or of a bear or mountain lion or wolf, for a head dress. For very cold weather both men and women were provided with togas for their protection. Sometimes the men would have a bearskin or elk- skin for a toga; more often they made their togas by piecing together the skins of wolves, mountain lions, wolverines, wild cats, beavers and otters. The women sometimes made theirs of fawnskins, but rabbitskin robes were far more common. These rabbitskins were tanned with the fur on and cut into strips, then cords were made of the fiber of wild flax or yucca plants and round these cords the strips of rabbitskin were rolled so that they made long ropes of rabbitskin coils with a central cord of vegetal fiber. The Ute Indians, like the Indians of North America, have a wealth of mythic stories. The heroes of these stories are the beasts, birds and reptiles of the region, and the themes of the stories are the doings of these mythic beasts — the ancients from PA-RUN-U-WEAP CANYON. From "Canyons of the Colorado:' Flood &• Vincent, Meadvide, Fa. CLIFF NEAR FORT WINGATE. TOYALONE CLIFF, NEAR ZUNL THE HOME OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS. 45 whom the present animals have descended and degenerated. The primeval animals were wonderfnl beings, as related in the the lore of the Utes. They were the creators and controllers of all the phenomena of nature known to these simple-minded peo- ple. The Utes were zootheists. Each little tribe has its Sha- man, or medicine man, who is the historian, priest and doctor. The lore of this Shaman is composed of mythic tales of ancient animals. The Indians are skillful actors and they represent the parts of beasts or reptiles, wearing masks and imitating the ancient zoic gods. In temples walled with gloom of night and illumed by torch fires the people gather about their Shaman, who tells and acts the stories of creation recorded in their traditional bible. When fever prostrates one of the tribe the Shaman gathers the actors about the striken man and with wierd dancing, wild ululation and ectatic exhortation the evil spirit is driven from the body. Then they have their ceremonies to pray for the forest fruits, for abundant game, for successful hunting and for prosperity in war. The stupendous cliffs by which the plateaus are bounded are are of indescribable grandeaur and beauty. The cliffs bound- ing the Kaibab plateau descend on either side and this is the cultimating portion of the region. All the other plateaus are terraces, with cliffs ascending on the one side and descending on the other. Some of the tables carry dead volcanoes on their backs that are towering mountains, and all of them are dissected by canyons that are gorges of profound depth. But every one of these plateaus has characteristics peculiar to itself and is worthy of its own chapter. On the north there is a pair of plateaus, twins in age but very distinct in development, the Paunsagunt and Markagunt. They are separated by the Sevier river, which flows northward. On the terraced plateaus three tribes of Indians are found : The Shiwits ("the people of the springs"), the Uinkarets ("peo- ple of the pine mountains"), and the Unkakaniguts ("people of the red lands, who dwell along the Vermilion cliffs"). They are all Utes, and belong to a confederacy with other tribes living farther to the north, in Utah. These people live in shelters made of boughs piled up in circles and covered with juniper bark, supported by poles. These little houses are only large enough for half a dozen persons huddling together in sleep. Their aboriginal clothing was very scant, the most important being wild cat skin and wolf skin robes for the men, and rabbit skin for the women, though for occasions of festival they had clothing of tanned deer and antelope skins, often decorated with fantastic ornaments of snake skins, feathers, and the tails of squirrels and chipmunks. A great variety ot seeds and roots furnish their food, and on higher plateaus there is much game, especially deer and 46 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE antelQpe/ But the whole country abounds with rabbits, which are often killed with arrows and caught in snares. Every year they have great hunts, when scores of rabbits are killed in a single day. It is managed in this way : They make nets of the fiber of the wild flax and of some other plant, the meshes of which are about an inch across. These nets are about three and one-half feet in width and hundreds of yards in length. The Kanab River, heading in the pine cliffs, runs directly southward and joins the Colorado in the heart of the Grande Canon. Its way is through a series of canons. From one of these it emerges at the foot of the Vermilion cliffs, and here stood one extensive ruin not many years ago. Some portions of the pueblo were three stories high. The structure was one of the best found in this land of ruins. The Mormon people settling here have used the stones of the old pueblo in building their homes, and now no vestiges of the ancient structure remain. A few miles below the town other ruins were found. They were scattered to Pipe's Springs, a point twenty miles to the westward. Ruins were also discovered up the stream as far as the Pink cliffs, and eastward along the Vermilion cliffs nearly to the Colorado River, and out on the margin of the Kanab plateau. These were all ruins of outstanding habitations belonging to the Kanab pueblo. From the study of the existing pueblos found elsewhere, and from extensive study of the ruins, it seems that everywhere tribal pueblos were built of considerable dimensions, usually to give shelter to several hundred people. > z o n > z k: o z > O < o z H THE DISCOVERY OF THE PUEBLOS. 47 CHAPTER IV. THE DISCOVERY OF THE PUEBLOS. In writing the history of the explorations which led to the discovery of the pueblos and cliff- dwellings, we shall have to go back to the time when Narvaez was wrecked upon the Florida coast. This occurred in the year 1528, near Tampa Bay. Those of the party who were not drowned remained on an island or on the mainland for six years, and endured from the Indians the greatest indignities. At length, four of them — three Spaniards and a negro — under the lead of Cabeca de Vaca, escaped, and took their flight towards the mountains of Northern Alabama.* Thence their course was westerly across the Mississippi, "the great river coming from the north," across the Arkansas River to the headwaters of the Canadian, and thence southwesterly through New Mexico and Arizona to Culiacan, or Sonora, which they reached in the spring of 1 5 36. Culiacan was a province which had been visited by the Spaniards under Nuno de Guz- man, and a colony settled there. f When these fugitives arrived at Culiacan they told marvelous stories concerning the things which they had seen and heard ; and, among other things, they mentioned the great and powerful cities, which contained houses of four and five stories, thus confirming the report of the Indian slave. When these tales were communicated to the new gov- ernor, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, in his home in Mexico, he set out with haste to the province of Culiacan, taking with him three Franci.'can friars, J whom he dispatched with the negro Estevanico on a journey of discovery, with orders to return and report to him all they could ascertain about the "seven celebrated cities." The monks, when they came near the province, sent the negro in advance The negro, however, as soon as he reached the country of the " seven cities of Cibola," demanded not only their wealth, but their women. The inhabitants, not relishing this, killed him and sent back all those who had accom- panied him.§ This disheartened the monks, and they returned *The names of the Spariards were Alv^r Nunez, Cabeca de Vaca, Andres Dorantfs and Alonzo del Castillo \ialdonado. and that of the negro was Estevanico 'Stephen). t "The occasion of visiting this pri)vince was the rep rt which was brought by an Indian, a slave, that there were somewhere north of Mexico, cities, seven in number, as large as the I ity of Mexico itself, whose streets were exclusively occupied by workers in gold and silver; and to reach them a journcv of forty days through a des^t was required." The towns of ComposteHa, Culiacan, Cinaloa, and Sonora are laid down on the mili- tary map of the United States and as given in i lie map by General Simpson, are placed along the east c^ast of the Gulf of California. t The name of one of the priests was Marcos de Nica, commonly called Friar Marcos. Castaneda's Relations are the sources of information about the journey. §The place which the monks visited and where the negro was killed has been identified by F. W. Hodge. See American Anthropologist. 8 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. to Culiacan; but in their report to Coronado they gave a glowing description of all that had been discovered of the seven cities, as well as of the " islands filled with treasure, which they were assured existed in the Southern Sea." Arriving at Mexico, the friars proclaimed, through their pul- pits, the marvelous discoveries, and Coronado busied himself with preparing an expedition to the region. Many gentlemen of good family were enlisted, and probably there had not been an expedition in which there was such a large proportion of persons of noble birth. It was also arranged that two vessels should take supplies and follow the army along the coast of the "South- ern Sea." The army reached Culiacan, which was the last town inhabited by the Spaniards, and was two hundred and ten leagues from the City of Mexico. After resting a couple of weeks, Coronado led the advance of his army, consisting of fifty cavaliers, a few infantry, his particular friends and the monks, leaving the rest of the army to follow two weeks after. Passing out of the inhabited region, he came at the edge of a great desert, to a place called Chichilticale, and could not suppress his sadness at what he saw. The place of which so much had been boasted was only a ruined, and roofless house, which at one time seemed to have been fortified and was built of red earth.* In this connection it may be interesting to give an account of the discovery of the Rio Colorado. It will be remembered that the vessels were ordered to follow the march of the army along the coast of the Southern Sea. The vessels put to sea from La Nativitad on May 9, 1540. They put into the ports of Xalisco and Culiacan, but findmg Coronado and his army gone, they sailed northwardly until they entered the Gulf of California, which they experienced great diflficulty in navigating. After in- credible hardships they managed to get the vessels to the end of the gulf, where they found "a very great river, and the current of which was so rapid that they could scarcely stem it." Taking two shallops with some guns they commenced the ascent of the river by hauling the boats with ropes.f ♦This was the work of civilized people whohad"come from afar." Ithas been thought by some to be Casa Grande on the Gila— a building which is far famed because it represents one class of structures which was common in this region and was supposed to have belonged to the ancient Pima Indians, who formerly built pueblos, but of a different type from those which were inhabited by the Moquis and Zunis. Mr. A. F. Bandelier thinks that the red house may possibly have been Casa Grande, though the ruin is perfectly white at present. He says that this kind of village includes a much larger and more substantial structure. It grows more conspicuous as we ascend the course of the Otonto Creek. It consists of a central building, into which, in some cases, all the buildings are merged; sometimes en- closed by broad quadrangular walls, while transverse walls connect the enclosure with a central hill. In some cases there are indications that the house was erected on an artificial platform. He says that the Pimas claim all the ruins north of the Gila to the "Superstition Range" as those of their own people. jThe region at the mouth of the Colorado is a flat expanse of mud, and the channels at the entrance from the gulf are shifting and changeable. The navigation is rendered periodically dangerous by the strength of the spring tides. Fort Yuma is 150 miles from the mouth, and to this point the principle obstructions are sand bars, .^bove Fort Yuma for 180 miles the river passes through a chain of hills and mountains, forming gorges and canons. There are many swift rapids and dangerous sunken rocks. The BlacTc Canon is twenty-five miles long. THE DISCOVERY OF THE PUEBLOS. 49 The general, Fernando Alarcon, reached a point on the river as far north as about the 34°, where he planted a cross and de- posited letters at the foot of a tree, which were afterwards found by Melchior Diaz.* This discovery of the Gulf of California and the Colorado River is important, for it is connected closely with the discovery of "the seven cities." The same river was reached by a party consisting of twelve men, under Don Garci Lopez, who were sent out by Coronado after his return to Cibola. Alter a journey of twenty days through the desert they reached the river, whose banks were so high "'they thought themselves elevated three or four leagues in the air." " Their eftorts to descend were all made in vain." On quitting the Gila they entered the desert and at the end of fifteen days came within eight leagues of Cibola. There the first Indians of the country were discovered. On the following day they entered the inhabited country, but as the army came in sight of the village they broke forth into maledictions. The following is Castaneda's description of the place: Cibola is built on a rock and this villao^e is so small that in truth there are many farms in New Spain that make a better appearance. It may con- tain two hundred warriors. The houses are built in three or four stories; they are small, not spacious and have no courts, as a single court serves for a whole quarter. The inhabitants of the province were united there. It is composed of seven towns, some of which are larger and better fortified than Cibola. These Indians, ranged in good order, awaited us at some dis- tance from the village. They were very loth to accept peace: when they were required to do so by our interpreters, they menaced us by their gestures. Shouting our war cry of Sant lago, we charged upon and quickly caused them to fly. Nevertheless, it was necessary to get possession of Cibola, which was no easy achievement, for the road leading to it was both narrow and winding. The general was knocked down by the blow of a stone as he mounted in the assault, and he would have been slain had it not been for Garci Lopez de Cardenas and Hernando d'Alvarado, who threw themselves before him and received the blows of the stones which were designed for him and fell in large numbers; nevertheless, as it was impossible to resist the first impetuous charge of Spaniards, the village was gained in less than an hour. It was found filled with provisions, which were much needed, and, in a short time, the whole province was forced to accept peace." From Cibola the general sent out Alvarado with twenty men, who, "five days after, arrived at a village named Acuco." "This village was strongly posted, inasmuch as it was reached by only one path, and was built upon a rock precipitous on all its other sides, and at such a hei^^ht that the ball from an arquebuse could scarcely reach its summit. It was entered by a stairway cut bv the hand of man, which began at the bottom of the declivitous rock 'and led up to the village. This stair- way was of suitable width for the first two hundred steps, but after these there were a hundred more much narrower, and when the top was finally to ♦.Melchior Diaz, who had been left at Sonora. placed himself at the head of twenty-five men, under the lead of guides, and followed up the coast one hundred and fifty leagues, until he arrived at the river called Rio del Tizon, whose mouth was two leagues wide. He reached the spot fifteen leagues from its mouth and found the tree marked by Alarcon, dug and found the letters. The party crossed the Rio del Tizon on rafts and turned toward t fie southeast, thus going around the Gulf of California. No ruins were discovered by this party. The spot which this party reached was much nearer Us source than where Melchior Diaz had crossed, though the Indians were the same which Diaz had seen. 50 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. be reached it was necessary to scramble up the three last steps by placing the feet in holes scraped in the rock, and as the ascender could scarcely make the pomt of his toe enter them he was forced to cling to the precipice with his hands. On the summit there was a great arsenal of huge stones, which the defenders, without exposing themselves, could roll down on the assailants, so that no army, no matter what its strength might be, could force this passage. There was on the top a sufficient space of ground to cultivate and store a large supply of co.-n, as well as cisterns to contain water and snov\'." Three days' journey thence Alvarado reached a province called Tiguex, where he was received very kindly, and was so well pleased that he sent a messenger to Coronado inviting him to winter there. Five days' journey thence Alvarado reached Cicuye (Pecos), a village very strongly fortified, whose houses had four stories. "Here he fell in with an Indian slave, who was a native of the country adjacent to Florida, the interior of which Ferdinan de Soto had lately explored." The Indian, whom they called the Turk, spoke of certain large towns and of large stores of gold and silver in his country and also the country of the bisons. Alvarado took him as a guide to the bison country, and after he had seen a few of them he returned to Tiguex, the Rio Grande, to give an account of the news to Coronado. While the discoveries above mentioned were being made, some Indians, living seventy leagues toward the east arrived at Cibola. They offered gifts of tanned skins, shields and helmets, and spoke of the cows whose skins were covered with a frizzled hair resembling wool, showing they were buffaloes. Coronado, who had remained at Cibola, hearing of a province composed of eight towns, took with him thirty of the most hardy of his men and set out to visit it on his way to Tiguex or Rio Grande. In eight or eleven days he reached the province called Tutahaco. which appears to have been situated below the city of Tiguex. The eight villages comprising this province were not like those of Cibola, built of stone, bat of earth. He learned of other villages still further down the river. In the meantime the army moved from Cibola toward Tiguex. The first day they reached the handsomest and largest village in the province, where they lodged. "There they found houses of seven stories, which were seen nowhere else. These belonged to private individuals and served as fortresses. They rise so far above the others that they have the appearance of towers. There are embrasures and loop-holes from which lances may be thrown and the place defended. As all these villages have no streets, all the roofs are flat and common for all the inhabitants; it is therefore necessary first of all to take possession of those houses which serve as defenses." The army passed near the Great Rock of Acuco (Acoma), already described, where they were well received by the inhabit- ants of the city perched on its summit. Finally it reached THE DISCOVERY OF THE PUEBLOS. 51 Tiguex, where it was well recieved and lodged. It was found, however, that the whole province was in open revolt, and the army was obliged to lay siege to the city and capture it anew. After the siege the general dispatched the captain to Cia, which was a large and populous village four leagues west of the Rio Grande. Six other Spaniards went to Quirix, a province com- posed of seven villages All these villages were at length tranquilized by the assiduous efforts of the Spaniards. The army spent the winter here, but earlv' in the next season. May, 1 541, they took up the march to Quivira in search of the gold and silver which the Turk said could be found there. The route was via Cicuye (Pecos), twenty-five leagues distant. After leaving Cicuye (Pecos) and crossing some mountains they reached a large and deep river which passed near to Cicuye, and was therefore called the Rio de Cicuye (Pecos). Here they were de- layed four days to build a bridge. Ten days after, on their march, they discovered some tents of tanned buffalo skins inhabited by Indians who were called Querechaos. Continuing their march in a northeasterly direction they came to a village which Cabeca de Vaca had passed on his way from Florida to Mexico. The army met with and killed an incredible number of buffaloes ; but reached a point 850 miles from Tiguex. Here, the provisions giving out, Coronado with thirty horsemen and six foot soldiers continued his march in search of Quivira. while the rest of the army returned. The guides conducted the general to Quivira in forty-eight days. Here they found neither gold nor silver, though the Cacique wore on his breast a copper plate, of which he made a great parade. The army, on its re- turn from the prairies, came to four large villages and reached a place where the river plunged beneath the ground. In the beginning of 1542 Coronado returned by the way of Cibola and Chichilticale to Culiacan, and finally reached the City of Mexico. Thus ended the great expedition which for extent and distance traveled, duration in time (more than two years) and for the multitude of its discoveries, and the many branch explorations, excelled any land expedition that has been undertaken in modern times. It was the first expedition which was ever led into the south- west interior, but did more to bring to light the wonderful vil- lages or pueblos located there than any other that has ever taken place. To us the narrative of the expedition is of very great value, for it reveals the exact condition of the country as it v/as three hundred and fifty years ago. It is to be remembered that this expedition took place less than fifty years after the discovery and only fifteen years after the expedition by Ferdinan de Soto, and eighty years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. It resulted in disappointment to the leaders, for they had expected to find cities filled with gold, similar to those which had been 52 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. discovered by Cortez in Mexico and by Pizarro in Peru; but, instead, they found solitary buildings in ruins, and such villages as were inhabited were situated on barren rocks, and were per- fectly destitute of gold or silver or the precious metals. The region which they went so far to reach was inhabited by wild tribes, who dwelt in huts or wigwams, and chased the buffalo for subsistence. There were two motives which ruled the Spaniards wherever they went — the thirst for gold and the conversion of the natives. The thirst for gold was not satisfied, but the opportunity for christianizing the Indians was great. So the country continued to be occupied by the Spanish missionaries. From this time on, the history is one of missions rather than of discovery or con- quest, though there were various military expeditions and many fierce battles. The revolts of the natives against the dominion of the priests required the presence of armed hosts, and only ended with the subjugation of the people by military force. New Mexico was brought altogether under Spanish rule by Juan de Onate in 1595. In 1680 the natives threw off the yoke, but were again subdued fifteen years later. The archives of the missions were destroyed in the revolt, and the history previous to that date is only known in outline. The diaries kept after this date show that the authors visited many of the ruins which have attracted the attention of later explorers, and also that they found many of the towns inhabited which now exist only as ruins. We shall not dwell further upon the history of the region, nor shall we at the present time speak of the discoveries which have taken place since the region came into the possession of the United States government; but shall proceed at once to the question whether these various localities visited by the Spaniards under Coronado can be identified. This is an important ques- tion, for it brings out the changes which have occurred in three hundred and fifty years, and at the same time throws light upon the relative age of the different ruins. I.' We shall first speak of the distribution of the pueblos. On this point we shall quote the words of Dr. Washington Matthews, who long resided at P^ort Wingate, and is familiar with the whole region. He says: "Along the great Cordillera of the American Continent, on both sides of the equator, from Wyoming to Chili extends a land abounding in ancient ruins. A large part of this land lies in the boundary of the United States. It contains the Territory of Arizona, most of Utah, more than half of New Mexico, extensive parts of the states of Colo- rado and Nevada, with small {..ortions of Texas and California. The great rivers which drain it into the ocean are the Colorado on the west, and the Rio Grande on the east; the former flowing toward the Pacific, the latter toward the Atlantic. It is an arid region, but not an absolute desert, for there is no part of it on THE DISCOVERY OF THE PUEBLOS. 53 which rain does not fall some time during every year, but it is on the high mountains only that it descends abundantly, while on the lower levels the moisture is scanty, and irrigation is nec- essary to successful agriculture. The ruins have been known to the world for three centuries and a half; they have been in the possession of the United States for over forty years. Yet it is only within the past few years that any attempt at systematic exploration or excavation has been made among them.* A. F. Bandelier says : "The northern limits of the House-build- ers remains yet to be definitely established. Taos seems to be the northernmost Pueblo. The eastern limits seem to be the meridian of the Pecos River; the western, the great Colorado, and the dismal shores of the Gulf of California ; the southern limits, the ruins found in southern Colorado and in southern Utah. Within the area thus defined the villages were scattered very irregularly, and in fact their inhabitants occupied and used but a small quantity of the ground. Extensive desert tracks often separated the groups and these spaces were open to the roving Indians, who prowled in and about the settlements much to the detriment ot the inhabitants. Thus, Acoma, is separated from the Zuni group by at last seventy miles of waste, and the Navajos raided over this space at will, endangering conmiunica- tions from the Tehuas, while both tribes were some distance away from the Rio Grande and the side valley. From Acoma to the Rio Grande another forty miles of desert intervened. Be- tween the latter and Tiguex the uninhabited region is from thirty to forty miles, and here the Apaches could lurk and assault at any time. A desert stretch of twenty miles separated the pueblo of Picuries from the Tahuas ; and a stretch of thirty miles separated them from Taos. Twenty-seven miles to the southwest of Santa Fe is Cochiti, and three miles east of the stream is the old pueblo of Santa Domingo; on the same side but directly on the river bank stood Katishtya. the antecessor of the present Felipe. Farther west on the Jemez River the Queres inhabited several sites. Here was a cluster of the Cia towns, and northwest of Cia began the range of the Jemez who inhabited a number of pueblos along the Jemez River.f The Pueblos, far from being masters of New Tviexico previous to the coming of the Spaniards, were hemmed in and hampered on all s'des by tribes which were swift in their movements, and had a great advantage over the Pueblos in number. It must not be supposed that the area indicated is uniformly covered, for there are many districts utterly devoid of ruins. *See Seventh Memoir National Academy of Science. N'ol. VI, Human Bonew mountains, seven: Kimena. three; Chia. one; SiUa (Lia), Hemes, Jemmes, Aeuas Calientes, the ruins which I have seen at Ojos Calienus, twelve miles above the Hemes' on the Rio de Hemts and Braba Taos. The last town on the Rio, Tiguex. was built on the two banks ol a stream, which was crossed by bridges built of nicely squared pine timber.) ,1 > ^ '? V \ ' ■; I a \mJlf^ -a z u < S3 'iiillilllllli'iliiilliiilBiilliill«fa CHAPTER V. SPANISH AND AMERICAN OCCUPATION. The geological history of the great plateau of the west is so closely connected with the history of the people that it seems ab- solutely necessary that we should get a correct idea of it before we proceed. The following from the pen of Dr. J. S. Newberry will be appropriate.* He says : "To what cause is due the mesa, or table land plateau of the country? This much we can fairly infer from the observations already made; that the outlines of the North American continent were approximately marked out from the earliest palaeozoic times. Many thousand feet of sedi- mentary strata were converted into dry land, by the gradual up- heaval of the plutonic rocks, upon which they were deposited. Gradually they were raised, without much disturbance, to their unequal positions, though lines of more powerful upheavals can be traced m the increased heights of the table lands, while here and there volcanic forces have thrust up huge masses of igueous rock through the sedimentary crust, forming mountains more or less isolated and of great beauty, which contrast strongly with the eroded mesa lands, among which they rise. "The plateau of the Colorado itself has been raised to an av- erage of 7,000 feet. It extends in a north-northwest direction from a point southeast from San Francisco mountain across the Little Colorado into Utah, and includes the country traversed by Grand and Green river, as well as a more considerable part of that crossed by the Colorado, Chiquito and the San Juan. "From their source onward these two rivers and their tribu- taries, in their passage over the table lands of the great central plateau, have cut their way in channels which deepen continu- ally as they advance, and also present fewer and fewer open val- leys as they progress, to break the narrow, sunless perpendicular- ity of their gigantic walls. "In the case of the Colorado, this penetrative tendency cul- minated in a canyon 3,000 to 6,000 feet deep. Over the plateau the Colorado river flowed for at least 300 miles of its course, but in the lapse ol ages its rapid current has cut its bed through all the sedimentary strata, and several hun Jred feet into the granite base on which they rest, "For three hundred miles the cut edges of the mesas rise up *Dr. Newberrj-, who accompanied Lieut. Joseph C. Ives on his exploration of the Rio Color- ado, on the (iulf of California, was one of the first geologists who ever wrote a description of the Grand Canyon. His description is graphic, and at the same time is full of the geological facts which came from his general knowlddge of geology. We, therefore, quote from it extensively. 64 rRIMITl\K ARCHITECTURE. abruptly, often perpendicularly, forming walls 3,000 feet to over a mile in heij^ht. This is the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, the most magnificent geological section, of which we have any knowledge. "The plateau itself, as well as the great canyon, belongs to a vast system of erosion and is wholly due to the action of water. Probably no wherein the world has the action of this agent pro- duced results so surprising as regards their magnitude and peculiar character. \ I "By a glance at the map it will be seen that this great water shed made up of the San Francisco group, the Mogollon.and the spurs of the Rocky Mountains which throw the water into the Colorado from the south, southeast and east, forms a .semi-circle M f '' MOUNT.MN OF THK HOLY CROSS. imperfectly parallel with the course of the Colorado." Dr. Newberry thus speaks of the Moqui country and the dis- trict beyond : The mesa is geologically and physically the highest which we actually passed over on our route. We seemed to be rising step upon step and mesa upon mesa, until we reached this plateau. At the Moqui villages the strata forming great table lands began to rise toward the east. Near Fort Defiance, the summit has an altitude of 8,000 feet. Here they show the disturbing influence of a more westerly axis of elevation, namely that of the Rocky mountains. In the interval between Fort Defiance and the Rio (irande, the great volcanic mountain, Mount Taylor, like San Francisco mountain, has broken through the crust of the sedimentary rocks and poured their floods of lava over the surface. Beyond this is the valley of the Rio Grande, which runs in a deep gorge between the folds of the mesa, the tributaries to which have cut deep seams, leaving many abrupt tongues of land high peaks, which are called "portreros," among which the Cave- dwellers made their homes. To the east of the Rio Grande rises another p'ateau which is creased by the wearing of the Pecos river, then come the foothills of the Rocky mountains. It was across this great plateau that the Spaniards made their way in 1540, and discovered the Grand Canyon. Professor Winthrop has translated the reports which were made of this expedition by Castaneda, also a letter from Men- SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. 65 doza to the King, and from Coronado to Mendoza. all in the year 1540;* he has also furnishtd a description of the appearance of the cavalcade. The following is the description : It was a splendid airav as it passed in review before Mendoza on Sun- dav morniniT, February, 1540. The >oung cavaliers curbed the picked hofses from "the large stock farms of the viceroy, each resplendent in long blankets flowing to the ground. Each rider held his lance erect while his sword and other weapons hung in their proper places at his side. Some were arrayed in coats of-mail, polished to shine like that of their general, whose gilded armor, with its brilliant trappings was to bring him many hard blows a few months later. Others wore iron helmets, or visored head pieces, of the tough bull hide for which the country has ever been famous. The footmen carried crossbows and harquebuses, while some of them were armed with bow and shield. Looking on, at these white men, with then- weapons of f-Airopean warfare, was the crowd of native allies, in their paint and holiday attire, armed with the bow and club of the Indian warrior. When all of these started off the next morning, in duly ordered companies, with their banners flying. Ujjwards of a thousand servants and followers, black men, red men, went with them, leading the spare horsas and driving the pack animals bearing the e.\tra baggage of their masters, or herding the large droves of "big and little cattle," of oxen and cows and sheep, and maybe swine, which had been selected by the viceroy to assure fresh food for the army on its march. There were more than a thousand horses in the train of the force, besides mules loaded with camp supplies and ptovisions and carrying half a dozen pieces of lij,ht artillery- the pedreros or swivel guns of the period. 1 ■ 1 Coronado entered the wilderness on St. John's eve, and in the quaint language of Hakluvfs translation of the general's letter, "to refresh our former traveiles, the first days we found no grasse but worser vay of moun- tains and badde passages." the first few days of the march were very try- ing; the discouragements of the men increased with the difficulties of the way, but they proceeded until they came in sight of the Seven Cities. 1 he inhabitants had assembled in a great crowd in front of the place, awaiting the approach of the strangers, Coronado prepared for an assault on the city. The natives showered arrows against the advancing foes, and as the Spaniards approached the walls, stones of all sizes were thrown upon them. The courage and military skill of the white men proved too much for the Indians. They were driven from the main portion of the town, l-ood, which they needed a great deal more than gold and silver, was found in the rooms, During the night the Indians packed up what goods they could and left the Spaniards'in undisputed possession. The first expedition toward the east was sent out .-\ugust 29th, in charge of Alvarado, who reached the river Tiguex (the Rio Grande), September 7. and spent some time in visiting the villages, making headquarters at Tiguex. near the site of the present town of Hernalillo. Alvarado sent to the general the names o eighty villages, which he had learned ij'om the natives, and reported that these eightv villages were the best that had yet been found. He then proceeded to Cicuye, or Pecos, the most eastern of the walled villages. The first winter spent in the pueblos of New .Mex- ico was a severe one, but the strangers were comfortably domiciled in the best houses of the country, in which the owners left a plentiful supply ot food. The natives assumed a hostife attitude, and were subdued only alter a protracted stuggle. The army started on its return from I iguex to Ci- bola, Culiacan and Mexico in the spring of 1542. Coronado found no gold in the land ot the ".seven cities" or in Ouivira. Though his search added much to the geographical knowledge of the country, and resulted in the discovery of one ♦See XlVth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology; 66 PRIMI ri\ K ARCHITECTURE. of the i^randest and most stupendous objects on the American continent, and, in fact, on the globe, namely, the Canyon of the Colorado. He fell under the displea<=;ure of the viceroy and sank into (-bscuritx'. Owing to these discouraging experiences, the Spaniards for many years paid little attention to New Mexico. *"When ill reports of Coronado hadbeen forgotten, there began another Spanish movement into New Me.xico and Arizona. In 1581 three Spanish missionaries started from Santa Barbara in Mexico, with an escort of n'ne Spanish soldiers under command of Francisco Sanchez Chomuscado. They passed up the Rio Grande to where lieinallilo now is, and there the mis- sionaries remained until assassinated by their treacherous flock. "In the following year Antonio do Espejo, a wealthy native of Cordova, started also from Santa Barbara with fourteen men, to face the deserts and the savages of New Mexico. He marched up the Rio Grande to a point above where Alberciuercjue now stands. He visited the cities of Sia, Jemez, lofty Acoma Zuni, and the far off Moqui towns, and traveled a long way into northern Arizona, Returning to the Rio Grande, he visited the pueblo of Pecos, which was then inhabited, went down the Pecos river into Texas, and thence crossed back to Santa Barbara. "In 1590 Gasper Castano de Losa, lieutenant-governor of New Leon, made an expedition into New Mexico, but without the consent of the viceroy. He came up the Rio Grande, but at the pueblo of Santa Domin- go was arrested, and was carried home in irons. "In 1595 Juan de Onate, who may be called the colonizer of New Mex- ico, and who was a native of Zacetacas, Mexico, and owned rich mines in that region, made a contract with the viceroy of New Spain to colonize New Mexico at his own expense. He made all preparations, and fitted out his costly expedition which had cost him the equivalent of a million of dollars. He took with him four hundred colonists, including two hundred soldiers, with women and children, and herds of sheep and cattle. Taking formal possession of the country, he moved up the Rio Grande to where the ham- let of Chomito now is, and founded San Gabriel, the second town in the United States. He was successful in putting down a revolt at Acoma, and in 1604 marched with thirty men from San Gabriel across the desert to the Gulf of California. In 1605 he founded Santa Fe, the city of the Holy Faith of St. Frances; and in 1606 he made an expedition to the far north- east. "New Mexico at the beginning of the seventeenth century, after the Spaniards had spent a hundred years of ceaseless exploration and con- quest, had hundreds of towns which Spanish missionaries were attempt- ing to civilize. "The Rio Grande valley, in New Mexico, was beaded with Spanish settlements, from Santa Cruz to below Socorro, 200 miles; and there were also colonies in Taos, in the extreme north of the territory. There had been expeditions, which had penetrated the staked plain, Llano Estacado, to the southeast and others to the far northwest." It is supposed that the region of the Cliff-dwellers was reached. "There were then 1300 Spaniards on the Rio Grande, all living in Santa Fe or in scattered farm settlements. The life of the colonists was a daily battle with nature, for New Mexico was ever a semi-arid land. They were surrounded with danger, for ,there were frequent incursions of the cruel Apaches, and there was no rest from the attempts of the Pueblos at insur- rection. "In 1080 the great revolt of the Pueblo tribes occurred. Thirty-four Pueblo towns were engaged in it. It was led by a dangerous Tehua Indian named Pope. Secret rumors had gone from pueblo to pueblo, and the murderous blow fell upon the whole territory simultaneously. Over 400 Spaniards were assassinated, including 21 of the missionaries. Antonio de Otermin was governor of New Mexico. He was attacked in his capital of •These quotations are from "The Spanish Pioneers," by Charles F. Lummis. •A q 2 SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. (i^ Santa Fe, and 120 Spanish soldiers soon found themselves unable to hold it against their swarming besiegers. After a week's desperate defense, they fled, taking their women and children with them. Thev retreated down the Rio Grande, and reached the pueblo Isleta in safety, butthe vil- lage was deserted. The Spaniards were obliged to continue their flight to El Paso, Texas, which was then a Spanish mission.* "For ten years New Mexico was deserted by the Spaniards, though fre- quent invasions were made fjom El Paso. In 1692 Diego de Vargas marched to Santa Fe and thence to Moqui with only 89 men. He visited every pueblo in the province, meeting no opposition, but when he under- took to colonize, the Indians gave him the bloodiest reception. Then be- gan the siege of the black mesa of San Ildefonso. De Vargas also stormed the impregnable citadel of the Potrero \"iego and the beetling cliff of San Diego de Jemez. These costly lessons kepc the Indians quiet until 1696, when they broke out again in revolt, but were soon subdued. Then came a dismal hundred years of ceaseless harassment by the Apaches, Navajos and Comanches, and occasionally by the Utes, The Indian wars were constant, but the explorations by the Spaniards were frequent. They extended into Texas and settlement soon followed. The Spanish colonization of Colorado was slow, and they had no towns north of the Arkansas river. In Arizona, a Jesuit mission was established and continued from 1689 to 1717. Father Franciscus Eusebius Kuehne made four journeys on foot from .Sonora to the Gila, and descended that stream to its junction with the Colorado.'" The Spaniards, notwithstanding their long residence and extensive acquaintance with the Pueblo territory, never discov- ered the cliff dwellings, or if they did, they never made a record of them. There was an expedition towards the north- ern part of the territory and beyond, which led very near to them, but did not result in their discovery. It was conducted by two Franciscan Friars, Dominquez and Escalante, who in 1776 started out from Santa Fe for the purpose of discovering the route to Monterey, and to California and the sea. The party consisted of the two priests and five soldiers They took the road to Abiquieu and the Rio Chama, and reach ed a point called Nueves on the San Juan, three leagues belcw the junction of the Navajo. They crossed the San Juan, passed down the north bank, north of the Colorado line, and found themselves on a branch of the San Juan some distance north of the Mancos canyon, and on the 12th day of May encamp- ed on the Dolores. This part of their route was in the neigh- Dorhood of the cliff dwellings, but they did not seem to have gained any knowledge of them. The beginning of their route was the same as the old Spanish trail from .Santa Fe to Los Angeles. They afterward took a route which was about the same as the .Spanish trail from .Santa Fe to the Salt Lake, — the same trail that Captain Macomb followed in his survey. On the 23rd of May they left the San Pedro and passed north- *The revolt of 1680 seems to have resulted in the temporary abandonment of the countrj- by the Spaniards but was followed by a great reduction of the native population in the entire aban- donment of many of their pueblos. Nearly all the Queres villages below San Felipe were aban- doned, and new villages were erected below El Paso which bear the same name as the old. At the present there is but a single village at Jemez, that on the rock which was so long beseiged by the Spaniards. There were at Tiguex, in Coronado's time, eleven villages; at present Bemallillo is the only town. It lies 5,084 feet above the sea, but trie Sandia Mountain, five miles west, is 10,069 feet high and descends almost perpendicularly. 68 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. eest to the Rio San Francisco, and camped in a rancheria of Utes, and sought to secure a guide to the Lagunas, or Timpa- nagos, where they had been told to look for Pueblo towns. Pursuing a northwest course they crossed the San Raphael, or Colorado, where were signs of buffalo. They crossed the San Benaventura, which was the boundary between the Utes and the Comanches, at a place called Santa Cruz. From this point they went westward and came in sight of the Lake of the Tim- panagos, now named Utah Lake. There were here no town builders like the Moquis and Zunis, as the priests had been told, but there were many wild Indians. These Indians gave the priests a kind of heiroglyphic paintings on deer skin to show them their desire to adopt the christian faith. The Utes dwelt in huts made of osiers. They mad'e their utensils of the same material. The Comanches lived in huts made from grass and earth,— the latter of which forms the roof. The Utes wear clothes made from the skins of bears and antelopes. The party abandoned the hope of reaching the sea, and they turned southwest and reached the Beaver river, which is now^ called P^scalante river. They returned by way of the Moqui villages and reached Santa Fe after an absence of about four months. These various explorations by the Spaniards, bring to view theterritorywhich was occupied by the pueblos; a territory which is now divided up into four states, New Mexico, Arizona, Col- orado and Utah, and is traversed by two great rivers, the Rio Grande on the ea.st and the Colorado and its branches on the west, and in a general way is bounded by four others: Pecos on the east, Dolores on the north, Colorado on the west, and the Gila on the south. The Rio Grande was the river on which the largest number of inhabited pueblos were found, as it was the river on which the largest number of Spanish missions were established. These missions resulted in the erection of large churches in all the prominent places, many of which are still standing, though in ruins, and are often mistaken by tourists and travellers for prehistoric structures. The history of these churches will be appropriate here. Mr. C. F. Lummis has written a chapter on church builders. The following are extracts from his very interesting book, "The Spanish Pioneers:" The first church in New Mexico, at .San Gabriel, was founded in Sep- tember 1598, by the ten missionaries who accompanied Juan de Onate. In 1608 a church was erected at Santa Fe. In 1617, three years before Plymouth Rock, there were already eleven churches in use in New Mexico, viz: at the dangerous Indian pueblos Pecos and Galisteo, on the east; one in the far north at Taos, two at Jemez, one hundred miles west of Santa Fe in an appalling wilderness, and others at nearly all of the large towns. It was a wonderful achievement, for each lonely missionary so soon to have mduced his barbarous flock to build a big stone church and worship there the new white God. The churches in the two Jemez pueblos had to be abandoned about 1622 ' on account of the harassment by the Navajos, but were occupied again iu 1626. At Zuni, far west of the river and three hundred miles from Santa SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. 69 Fe, the missionaries had established themselves as early as 1629, and in the same period they built three churches among the wonderful cliff towns of Moqui. Down the Rio Grande there was a similar activity. At the ancient pueblo of San Antonio a church was founded in 1629, and another at the pueblo Nuestea Senora, now Soccorro. The church in the pueblo of Picures, in the northern mountains, was built before 1632. and the one at Isleta,in the center of New Mexico, was built before 1635; one at Nambe in 1642. In 1662 a church was built at El Paso del Norte, a dangerous frontier mission, hundreds of miles from Spanish settlements in Old and New Mexico. One can see from the windows of the train on the Santa Fe route, a large adobe ruin. It is the old churchof the pueblo of Pecos,* whose walls were reared 275 years ago. The pueblo was the largest in New Mexico, but was deserted in 1840. Its great quadrangle of many storied Indian houses is in utter ruin, but above their gray mounds still tower the walls of the old church. The missionaries also crossed the mountains east of the Rio Grande and established missions among the Pueblos who dwelt on the edge of the Great Plains-. The churches atCuarai, Abo and Tabira are the grandest ruins in the Inited States, and were built between 1660 and 1670, and about the same time as the churches at Tajique and Chilili. Besides all these the pueblos of Zia, Santa Ana, Tsuque, Projoaque, San Juan, San Marcos, San Lazaro, San Cristobal, Alameda, Santa Cruz, and Cochiti, had each a church by 1680. A century before our nation was born, the Spanish had built, in one of our territories, half a hundred permanent churches, nearly all of stone and some of them of immense proportions. This great zeal in building churches, taken in connection with the oppressions of the Spanish, resulted in the frequent murdering of the mis- sionaries, and finally in the revolt of 1680. It was almost a habit with the natives to kill the missionaries. It was not the sin of one or two towns but nearlv all, for twenty different towns, at one time or another, murdered their respective missionaries. Some towns repeated the crime several times. Up to the year 1700, forty of these quiet heroes in. gray had been slain in New Mexico,— two by the Apaches, but the rest by their own flock. This plan of building massive churches and bringing the natives, who had been for centuries accustomed to the wor- ship of the "rain god" in their estufas or subterranean chamb- ers, to the severe tasks of erecting and supporting them, was in violation to the traditions of the people and contrary to all their habits. The celebrated Dr. Flinders W. Petrie has said: The civilization of any race is not a system which can be changed at will. To alter such a system, apart from its conditions, is impossibe. Every civilization is the growing product of a very complex set of condi- tions, depending on race and character, on climate, on trade, and every minutia of the circumstances. Whenever a total change is made in govern- ment it breaks down altogether, and a resort to a despotism of one man is the result. We may despotically force a bold and senseless imitation of our way on another people, but we should only destroy their light without implanting any vitality in its place. No change is beneficial to the real •We have given a plate which illustrates the size and shape of the church which remains in ruins at Pecos, of which Mr. Lummis has given a description. It has been kindly loaned to us by Messrs. A.C.McClurg&Co. , . The Rock of Acoma, which is also represented in the plate, is surmounted by an ancient pueblo, in the midst of which is another massive church building which rises above the walls of the pueblo and is the most prominent object in the landscape. r t. u v Mr. C.F. Lummis, in his volume "Poco Tempo," has given several cuts of the churches at Tabira, .\bo and C'uarai. 70 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. character of a pet)ple except what flows from conviction, and a natural growth of the mind. Such a system, the product of such extreme conditions, we attempt to force on the least developed races and expect from them an implicit subser- vience to our illogical law, and our inconsistent morality,— the result is death: we make a dead house and call it civilization. Scarcely a s-ingie race can bare the contact and the burdens, and then we talk complacently about the continued decay of savages before white men. It was inevitable that frequent revolts should occur, and that full submission to the dominion of the Spanish should never take place, though there was an ostensible practice of the religious rites and ceremonies, yet the old pagan or abor- iginal system continued and survives to the present day. It is a singular fact that, notwithstanding the efforts of Spanish missionaries to civilize and christianize the natives, there was a very rapid decline in the population and a decrease in the number of the inhabited pueblos. This has been accounted for, in part, by the incursions of the savage tribes who dwelt upon the borders of the pueblo territory, — the Nav- ajos, the Apaches, the Utes and the Comanches, — offshoots of the Athapascan and Shoshonian stock, which originally came from the north. These tribes had beset the region, especially the western and northern part, before the arrival of the Span- iards, and had compelled the people who were dwelling in the pueblos and were cultivating the soil in the valleys of the San Tuan and elsewhere, to build their houses in the cliffs as a mat- ter of defense. They afterward drove them from their retreats and compelled them to find refuge among the tribes farther south. The date of this migration of the Cliff-dwellers is un- known, but it was probably before the arrival of the Spaniards. The attack of these wild tribes was so persistent that all the north and western part of the Pueblo territory had been aban- doned, and the great villages which were situated in the valley of the Gila, as well as the cliff dwellings on the San Juan, the Rio de Chelly and the Rio Verde, as well as the pueblos on the Chaco, were in ruins. The Spanish writers make no mention of villages situated in these valleys, nor did they send any missionaries there or build any churches. It seems that only a very small portion of the pueblo territory was occupied at the time of the arrival of the Spanish, and even that became decimated and some of it depopulated while the Spaniards were occupying it. It has been questioned whether there was a decrease in the pop- ulation, but we have evidence furnished by the Spanish explorers themselves. In 1582 Antonio de Espejo ma.de his expedition up the Rio Grande. In his report he gives the list of villages reached and the population of each. The population of these towns was very much over estimat- ed by Espejo, but the number of inhabited pueblos*was in great •The sixty inhabited pueblos which were discovered by Coronado were reduced to about thirty. SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. 71 contrast with those mentioned by the American explorers.* Not one of these villages probably contained over 1,000 people. The population, estimated by the Spaniards at from 25,000 to 250,000, is not now over 10,000. The following table, kindly furnished by Mr. F. VV. Hodge, shows the population after the Americans had occupied the country: PUEBLOS. Reli- I Reli- able. I able. 1850 1864 Cen- sus. i88q PUEBLOS. Reli- able. 1850 Reli- able. 1864 Cen- 1889 Acoma. Cochiti. Isleta. . Jemez I 365 Laguna Nambe Pecos* Picuris Pajoaque Sandia 350 491 2S4 229 7=51 786 .36s 346 749 988 III 94 222 122 48 29 241 197 582 San Felipe I 800' 4-^7 300 San Ildefonso. ... I 500 | 161 1037 San Juan i 568 I 385 474 Santa Ana 399 I 298 970 Santa Clara 279 I 144 81 Santo Domingo,.. , 666 i 604 ' Sia 124 j 103 1 20 Taos I 361 ; 361 18 Tesuque ' 119 I loi 150II Zunit I ? I ? 501 189 373 264 187 9.30 "3 324 94 1547 •Moved to Jemez 1840 Later figures from Census Report — including Moki. fPopulation 1,470 in 1805. There was nothing in the Spanish regime which secured de- fense to the people against their enemies. Only when there was a revolt among the Pueblo tribes themselves, did they bring in the force of arms to protect themselves. The people had learned to economize in wood and water, and had ways of erecting their own buildings and irrigating their own villages, which were well adapted to a semi-arid region. They gather- ed the rain water which fell upon the surface into reservoirs, led it through the center of the villages, afterwards conducted it through the gateways into other reservoirs, and there used it to irrigate their fields. f They sometimes built their houses on mesas, which were reached by smgle pathways, as may be seen in the village of Acoma, which, with Isleta and Oraibe, are the oldest pueblos in the region and the only ones that remain in the same sites as they did when discovered by Coronado. They were thus able to endure the attacks of the savages, though ♦Bandelier says: "The villages of that time (first half of the sixteenth century) were on an average much smaller than those of to-day inhabited by Pueblo Indians, but there was a greater number of them. The aggregate population of the Pueblos in the si.xteenth and seventeenth cen- turies did not exceed 25,000 souls." Mr. Cushing says: ".\t the time of the Spanish conquest the Pueblo Indians numberetl, all told, more than 30,000. . . . The total population of the modern towns is about 10,000. '" Not one of these villages contained over 1,000 people. Mr. M. L. Miller says: "The population of Taos in 1864 was 361. The number of the Pueblo Indians at the time of their discovery has been variously estimated. The largest estimate is that of Antonio de Espejo, whose total figures for all the Pueblos would give about 25o,ixx3." From this number the estimates run all the way down to 23,000. Vetancurt gives the figures for the year 1660 at a little over 23,000. fThe ruins of Pecos which are presented in the two plates illustrate this, as do the inhabited villages of Taos. 72 PR1M[T1\'K ARCHITECTURE. they allowed tribes, such as the Oueres* and Navajos.to drift in from the outside regions, who adopted the Pueblo s.tyle of building and conformed to the common mode of life. The Pueblos had a system of worship which was peculiar to the region. They worshipped the nature powers and the "rain god"t under the symbol of the serpent, and had many ceremo- nies which were founded upon this system. Every part of their domain, including the rocks, the springs, the mountains and lakes, were sacred to their divinities. Even their method of reckoning time was by watching the sun in its course, and noticing its position over certain heights. It was not strange that the people revolted. They were obliged to carry heavy timbers long distances to put into the massive churches erected in every village where there was a mission. The difficulty of this task can be imagined when we look at the picture of the great church which overshadows, by its height, the pueblo on the summit of Acoma. J The old clan life, and the rule of the Caciques, was interfered with. Time honored institutions and customs were broken up. The rule of the priests was substituted for that of the hereditary chiefs and "medicine men." It was not altogether owing to the attack of the savages that the pueblos were deserted; but to the oppressions of the Spaniards, which continued for three hundred years, the only relief to which was the Mexican war in 1846 and their transfer to the American power. To this the Pueblo tribes gave their adherence at the first, and have ever since manifested the most friendly feeling. When the Americans began their explorations there was very little of the territory inhabited. ' All this is, how- ever, in great contrast to that which has occurred since the Americans began to occupy the country. The American exploration may be divided into a number of periods which followed one another, according to succession or order of time; each of which has produced important results. The first series began with the capture of General Pike and his trip across the country to Mexico, and ended with the trading expeditions of J. W. Gregg. § *The Queres, according to Mr. C. F. Lumniis, made their homes among the potreros west of the Rio Grande, and were the cave-dwellers of this region. They are said to have erected the stone effigies, which were probably their totems, thus showing that they were originally totemis- tic animal worshippers and not sun worshippers like the Pueblos. One branch of them built the village on the summit of the rock Acoma. Another branch occupied Santa Ana, Santo Domingo San Felipe and Cochiti on the Rio Grande. tSee book on Myths and Symbols. tSee Plate. |]Acoma, Laguna, Zuni and the Moqui pueblos were about all the villages west of the Rio Grande which were inhabited. §From "Pike's Narrative" we learn that James Pursley fell in with some Indians on the Platte river and passed over to the Grand river and descended, in 1S05, to Santa Fe. In 1812 an expedition under McKnight, Beard and Chambers succeeded in reaching Santa Fe. In 1821 t'apt. Beckwell, with four trusty companions, went to Santa Fe. In 1822 Santa Fe trade began; Col. Majmaduke, Lieut.-Governor of Missouri, made one of a party who went with twenty-five wheel- ed carriages to Santa Fe. r. n «M;%:,..^P^^, .^._ 5\ - i^-'> ../cT? X i^^iS HVINED PUElil.o AT PECOS. SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. 73 The second began with the expedition sent out by the gov- ernment under the charge of Colonel Washington and Lieuten- ant Simpson, ^'^ to examine into the condition of the Navajo In- dians, but included the expedition under General Sitgrea\ cs and Lieutenant Ives, who were to report on the navigability of the Colorado river, but ended with the preliminary survey of the Pacific railroad under Major Whipple. The third series began with the organization of the Geolog- ical surveys under Prof. F. V. Haj'den and Major Wheeler, and included the explorationsf by W. H Holmes, W'. H. Jackson, Oscar Loew, Prof. E. D. Cope and Dr. W. H. Hoffman. This exploration resulted in the discovery of the cliff dwellings in the Moucos canyon, the shelter caves, the Montezuma canyon, ancient pueblos on the McLlmo and the remarkable fortress called Montezuma Castle. The fourth series began with the organization of the Ethno- logical bureau, J and includes the expeditions sent out under the auspices of the Arch;eological Listitute of America, con- ducted by A. F. Bandelier, the Hemenway expedition, and the reports made by F. H. Cashing. J. Walter Fewkes and Dr. Washington Mathews. The fifth series consisted of explorations of private individ- uals who have visited the regions of the Cliff-dwellers, among whom are F. H. Chapin, Dr. Beardsall, L. F. Bickford, Mr. Nordenskjold, C. F. Lummis, W. K. Moorhead and Lewis W. Gunckel. Each one of these expeditions marks an era in the history of •This brought to light the wonderful ruins in the valley of the Chaco and the Rio de Chelly, the Rock Inscriptions at Zuni, and furnished an account of the inhabited pueblos of Zuni, Laguna and the villages on the Rio Grande. The expedition under Captain Macomb was attended by Prof. J. S. Newberr>', They passed up the Colorado river, reached the Grand Canyon, crossed the plateau to the ^loqui villages, and from there to the Dolores and to the river Chama, but did not reach the ruins in the valley of the Chaco. Major Whipple traversed the same route which had been previously followed by J.W.Gregg, by way of the Canadian river and the Shawnee set- tlements, Walnut Creek to Albuquerque and from thence to Laguna, Zuni, Rio Pascado, Rio Verde, Aztec Pass, Bill Williams' Forks to the Colorado river. A special report was made by Lieutenant Abert, which gave the names of the Indian tribes and their number. ■|The results of this exploration were very remarkable and should be mentioned ■^eriatin'- [i.] The Cliff Dwellings, situated high up on the sides of the cliffs of the Mancos canyon, were discovered by W. H. Jackson. 'I he cliff villages, such as Echo Cave on the Mancos, on the Rio deChelley, on the San Juan, were described by W.H.Holmes. [2.] The ruined pueblos situated on the McElmo, the Dolores and the Hovenwep, the most of which were of the honey-comb pat- tern. [3.] The cavate houses, with towers above them and walled up caves, which were used for caches or store rooms for grain. [4.] The cliff fortresses, called Montezuma Castle and that of Montezuma Wells, discovered by Dr. W. H. Hoffman. [5.] 'Ihe single houses situated at a dis- tance from water, discovered by Prof. E. D. Cope. [6.] The ruins of pueblos on the Animas, described by Lieut. Rogers Birnie. [7.I The Rock Inscriptions which were discovered in the Shelter caves. [8.] The potteiy and other relics, described by E. A. Barber and W.H.Holmes. [9]The revisiting of the ruins of Chaco canyon by W.H.Jackson. [10.] Ihe accountofthe Pueblo languages by A. S. Gatschet, and the classification of the trtbes according to languages, by Oscar Loew. JThis bureau was established in 1879 after the famous exploration of the Grand Canyon of Colorado by Maj. J. W. Powell. The general review of the field explored has been published by Major Powell in various magazines, and in a recent book called the Canyon of Colorado, publish- ed by Ford & Vincent. ||Mr. L. F. Bickford has described the ruins on the Chaco and on the Rio Verde in the Cen- tury magazine for October 1890. Dr. Mearns, surgeon United States army, described the ruins on the Rio Verde and the fortress called Casa Blanco in the Popular Science Monthly for •'^'■tobe.' 1890. Dr. J. F. Beardsall describes the cliff dwellings in Mancos canyon in the Bulletin of Geographial Society, republished in the American Antiquarian. Messrs. Moorhead and Gunckel furnish descriptions of the shelter caves and cave villages in the Butlers-wash and other canyons in the Illustrated American, also in The American .Xntiqu.^rl^n. 74 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. the pueblo region since the time of American occupation, which is distinguished not so much for the changes among the pueblos themselves, as by the progress of the country in all that makes for peace and prosperity. Very little was known at the outset about the country except that it was overrun by savages. It was only the regions beyond and the gold mines of California that at first interested the people, but it was afterward found that the country was rich in minerals and only needed enterprise and en- ergy to bring out its resources. There was great danger in travel- ing and it was not safe for Americans to settle there. It was not long before the government subdued the hostiles and brought the whole country under the strong power of law. Interest was awakened when it was discovered that there were so many ruins hid away in the valleys and the deep canyons, and America began to appear like an ancient country. A vast amount of information concerning the Indian tribes, and especi- ally the Pueblos, began to come in, and the Indians instead of proving to be mere vagrants hardly worthy of notice and only to be exterminated as soon as possible, were shown to have had a remarkable system of government, a wonderful amount of my- thology and folklore, and also elaborate ceremonial and religious rites, which were worthy of the closest attention. The study ol the architecture, languages and the customs of the Pueblo Indians, were owing to the personal interest in arch- aeology which some of the explorers felt, and the reports were altogether voluntary, but the contributions have increased in number and value as time has passed on. It is with this point in view that we shall quote freely from the reports of the differ- ent explorers, taking those which were early and late and arrang- ing them so as to bring out the facts in reference to particular localities. The various parties which explored the region began at the east side and went westward in the opposite direction from that taken by the Spaniards. They r(?ached first the inhabited pueb- los situated upon the Rio Grande, and only came upon the ruins as ithey approached the western borders. Some of the expedi- tions took the central route and followed the old trail which was the continuation of the Santa Fe trail ; consequently they came first to the pueblos which were already known, such as San Domingo, Acoma and Zuni. Still some ot the earlier explor- ers were able to reach the ruined pueblos and cliff dwellings which were totally unknown, and made reports which were very startling.* •Sitgreaves came upon ruins of stone houses which he says were evidently remains of a large town, as they lecur at intervals for an extent of eight or nine miles, — but probably the same as vis- ited by Gushing, Walter Fewkes and others, — situated upon the Rio Gila, and his guide Lereux passed from the Gila over to the Rio Verde and discovered some of the cliff dwellings which have so recently been described by Mr. Mindeliff. H X M M V) H C > > C SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. 75 The descriptions furnished by the different exploring^ par- ties form a most suggestive series of discoveries. I. We begin with the easternmost district, namely, that on the Rio Grande; a district in whicli there were many inhabited pueblos. These have furnished the chief data for reconstruct- ing the pueblos farther west, which are in ruins, and for decid- ing as to the state of society which formerl}- existed through- out the entire region. The American explorers have done far more in this direction than the Spaniards did, notwithstanding their excellent opportunities, and the information as to the inner systems and hidden rites which were practiced in the estufas, and many other things, is constantly being secured. The first one to describe the pueblos of this region was Mr. Josiah Gregg, who visited the pueblos of Taos, Pecos, Isleta, San Domingo and Felipe and described their peculiarities. After speaking of the villages and their acequias, or irrigating ditches, and the population in the villages, and the ancient mines, and ruined cities called La gran Ouivira, and the traditions concerning them, he describes particular places. He says: Ancient ruins are now to be seen scattered in every quarter of the terri- tory. Of some, entire stone walls are yet standing, while others are nearly obliterated. Each pueblo is under the control of a cacique, chosen from among theirown sages and commissioned by the governor of New Mexico. The cacique, when any public business is transacted, collects together the principal chiefs of the pueblo in an estufa and laying before them the sub- ject of debate, which is generally settled by a majority. The Pueblo villages are generally built with more regularity than those of the Mexican, and are constructed of the same materials as were used by them in the most primitive ages. A very curious feature in these buildings is, that there is most generally no direct communication between the street and the lower rooms, into which they descend by a trap-door from the upper story, the latter being accessible by means of ladders. Even the entrance to the upper stories is frequently at the roof. Though this was their most usual style of architecture, there still exists the pueblo of Taos, comjiosed for the most part, of but two edifices of very singular structure one on each side of a creek, and formerly communicat- ing by a bridge. The base story is a mass of near four hundred feet long, a hundred and fifty wide, and divided into numerous apartments, upon which other tiers of rooms are built, one above another, drawn in by regu- lar grades, forming a pyramidal pile fiifty or sixty feet high, and compris- ing some six or eight stories. The outer rooms only seem to be used for dwellings, and are lighted by little windows in the sides, but are entered through trap-doors in the roofs. Most of the inner apartments are em- ployed as granaries and store-rooms, but a spacious hall in the centre of the mass, known as the estufa, is reserved for their secret councils. These two buildings afford habitations, as is said, for over six hundred souls. There is likewise an edifice iii the pueblo of Picuries of the same class, and some of those of Moqui are also said to be similar. Some of these villages were built upon rocky eminences deemed al- most inaccessible; witness, for instance, the ruins of the ancient pueblo of Sail Felipe, which may be seen towering upon the very verge of a preci- pice several hundred feet high, whose base is washed by the swift current of the Rio del Norte. The still existing pueblo of Acoma also stands upon an isolated mound, whose whole area is occupied by the village, being fringed all around by a precipitous cliff. 76 PRIMITI\E ARCHITECrURE. Several gentlemen have visited this pueblo ( Taos) since the time that Mr. Gregg made his expeditions, and have given de- scriptions of it. The best description is given by Mr. L. II. Morgan. He says: The two structures stand about twenty-hve rods apart on opposite sides of the stream and facing each other. That upon tlie north side is about 250 feet long and 130 feet deep and five stories high; that on the south side is shorter and deeper and six stories high. The present population is about 400, divided between the two houses. Upon tlie east side there is an adobe wall connecting the two buildings and protecting the open space. The creek is bordered on both sides by ample fields and gardens, which are irri- gated by canals drawing water from the stream. The first stories are built up solid; those above are built in a terraced form; several stories are reach- ed by ladders, the rooms are entered by trap-doors. The lower rooms are used for storage and granaries, and the upper for living rooms, the families living above owning and controlling the rooms below. Several rooms were measured, and found to be in feet 14x18, 20x22 and 24x27, the height of the ceiling from 7 to 8 feet. In the second story they measured 14x23,12x20 and 15x20. The back rooms have usually one or more round holes made through the walls, from six to eight inches in diameter, these furnish the apartment with a scanty supply of light and air. The ground rooms are usually without doors or windows, their only entrance being tlirough the scuttle-holes which are in the rooms comprising the story above. The rooms located in the front part of the house receive the light from the doors and windows; the back rooms have no other light than that which goes through the scuttle-holes or holes in the wall, and they are always gloomy. The representation of a room in this pueblo is from a sketch by Mr.Gal- braith, who accompanied Major Powell's party. There are fire-places in thisjroom, a modern invention. [See plate.] I TD There is room in each of the two buildings to accommodate 500 people. They were occupied in 1864 by 361 Taos Indians. From the best informa- tion attainable, the original buildings were not erected all at one time, but added to from time to time. The description which is furnished by Mr. M. L. Miller, who has spent a summer at Taos, is especially worthy of notice. He says: The question of location is, apart from another question, whether the people are to-day living in the same buildings which the Spaniards saw. Mr. Bandelier positively states that, 'with the exception of Acoma, there is not a single pueblo standing where it was at the time of Coronado, <>r even sixty years later, when Juan de Onate accomplished the peaceful reduction of the New Mexican Village Indians.' Taos appears several times prominently in opposition to the Spaniards; the last time when the people gave any trouble was at the time of the Taos rebellion in 1847. The ruins of the church in which the people made their last stand against the whites are still at Taos. There are also ruins near Taos which indicate that there has been a rebuilding of the pueblos even here. Of the high houses at Taos there are two, the north house is five stories high and the south but four stories. [See plates.] The two main houses sheltered the entire tribe originally, but later small groups of buildings have been built within the old wall and outside. Mr. Lummis speaks of the houses as pryamids, and so they appear, for they recede by four or five great steps to the top. The ground floor covers, according to Mr. Davis, about three or four hundred feet by one hundred and fifty feet for each building. In ancient times the larger door-ways of the upper terraces were probably never closed except by means of blankets or rabbit skin robes hung over them in cold weather. Examples have been seen where a slight SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. n pole of the same kind as those used in the lintels is built into the masonry of the jambs. One of the most curious, and at the same time most charatteristic fea- tures of an Indian pueblo, is its ki\ a or estufa. At Taos they are circular structures built almost wholly underground and entered by a single open- ing in the roof. There is no other opening in the room save a small hole at one side to secure a draft for the tire. The subterranean position of these rooms is significant. .Mr. Gushing says: 'When the ancestors to the people were living in the caves and cliffs, the women built the houses for the protection of themselves and their children, but the men built sleeping pJHces outside of the ca\es in front of the houses. The semi-rircular form of the villages, to be seen in several of the ruined towns, has not continued in any of the existing pueblos, but the kivasare still subterranean. 'At Taos there are seven kivas, four on the south side of the creek and three on the north side. Some of these are on the outside of the old town wall and others are within the wall. The kivas outside the town wall have the openings surrounded by a wail of adobe about two feet high; one de- scends by a ladder, the nvo poles of which extend high up in the air.' There are many pueblos in the valley of the Rio Grande which, like Taos, have continued to be inhabited. These were visited by the early explorers, General Simpson, Major Whip- ple and Dr. Oscar Loew, their situation noticed, their popu- lation given, and their peculiarities described. Major Whipple secured a map from an Indian on which the pueblos were locat- ed, and which represents their mythical home or " place of emergence." The most remarkable pueblo is that of Pecos,* situated on the Pecos river. This was inhabited at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards and continued to be inhabited until the year 1840, though its population decreased until only twelve were left; these abandoned the site and went to live at Jemez. The best description of Pecos is given by Mr. A. F. Bandelier; the points which he makes are as follows: I. It was admirablv situated, had an extensive view over the surround- ing country. 2. The buildings which surmounted the mesas served as a defense, as the walls formed an obstruction to a storming foe and a perma- nent abode for the defenders. 3. The inclosure surrounded by the build- ings served as a reservoir and held the water precipitated on the mesas, which could be conducted to the fields below and made useful for irrigat- ing. 4, The different parts of the house were conformed to the configura- tion of the rocks, but were all connected so as to be occupied bv the differ- ent families and clans, and serve as a joint tenement house. 5. Ingress and egress must have taken place, not horizontally "in and out." but vertically "up and down." 6. The surmise is that the family apartments were arrang- etl not longitudinal or in transverse rows but vertically; the rooms of each story communicning with those above and below by means of trap-doors and ladders,- the stores for each family being in the lower story. 7. Ac- cording to the ground plan and sections it appears that the east wing had five stories, the no-th two, the west three, and the south four. 8. It was the largest aboriginal structure of stone within the United States, and would even bear comparison with anv of the aboriginal ruins of Mexico and Cen- tral America. There seems to have been a wall of circumvallation with a total length of 3,220 feet, and about six feet and six inches high on an aver- age. Q. There'is but one entrance to it visible, on the west side at its low- est level, where the depression runs down the slope making the bed of a *Of the two plates which illustrate the ruins, one has been kindly loaned by Mr. C. F. Lum- mis, the other is reproduced from Handelier's report to the Archaiological Institute. These ruins have been described by Tosiah W. ( .regg and Mr. W.W. H.Davis. 78 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. rock streamlet. Here the wall thickens to a round tower built with stones, leaving a gateway thirteen feet wide. lo. There is not in the whole build- ing one single evidence of any great progress in mechanics. Everythmg done and built within it can be made with the use of a good fair eyesight only, and the implements and arts of what was formerly called the "stone age." This does not exclude the possibility that they had made a certam advance in the mechanical agencies. They may have had the plummet or even the square, but these were not necessary, ii The structure itself, in its«Teneral plan and mode of construction, reminds one of an unusually larSe honey-comb. 12. Not a vestige of the former cultivation is left, but the^platform with a pond in the center explains their mode of securing the water for irrigation, and gives a forcible illustration of the communal living. The Pecos Indians not only lived together, built their houses together, but raised their crops in one common field, irrigated from one common water source which fir^t gathered its contents within the inhabiieii surface of the grounds, led into a resorvoir below and so distributed to the fields. 13. The aboriginal ruins in the valley of the Pecos indicates three epochs, succes- sive probably in time. Some of the manufactured ware seemed to have been made by people distinct from the Pecos tribe, though it is similar to that which is met with in the cliff dwellings of Mancos canyon. ORNAMENTAL WALL AT PENASCA BLANCA. II. The region in which the most interesting ruins are found is that which is situated beyond the water-shed at the head- waters of the streams which flow into the Colorado, and so to the Pacific. It may be divided into four or five separate dis- tricts, each of which is drained by a different river, and pre- sents a different class of ruins. Into this region the American explorers entered at an early date and discovered the most re- inarkable prehistoric structures in the United States; the most of them in ruins, but a few still inhabited. The inhabited pueb- los had been visited frequently by the Spaniards, but the ruins do not seem to have attracted' their attention, at least they are not described. In this we see the contrast between the two classes of explorers. The Spaniards, true to their antecedents, sought first for gold, next for religious propogandism. The Americans sought for information and for the improvement of the country. The result is that we have from the Americans a most remarkable series of reports. H > u SPANISH AND AMERICAN EXPLORATIONS. 79 It is our purpose to give an account of these discoveries, tak- ing the districts in the order of their discovery as well as that of geoL^raphical location; giving credit to each exploring par- ty, — making a special mention of the first discoverers. We shall confine ourselves at the present to the ruins found on the Chaco river. This region was visited by Lieutenant Simpson in 1S49, ^^ • H- Jackson in i»74, and J. T. Bickford in 1890, and described by each in turn. The following is Lieutenant Simp- son's description of the ruins, beginning with those of Pintado, the easternmost of the group: We tound them to more than answer our e.xpectations, forming one structure and built of tabular pieces of hard, fine-grained, compact, gray sand-stone (a material unknown in the present architecture of New Mexico), to which the atmosphere has imparted a reddish tinge, the layers or beds HUNGO P.WIE RKSTOKED. being not thicker than three inches, and sometimes as thin as one-fourth of an inch, it discovers in the masonry a combination of science and art which can only be referred to a higher stage of civilization and refinement than is discovered in the works of Mexicans or Pueblos of the present day. Indeed, so beautifully diminutive and true are the details of the structure as to cause it, at a little distance, to have all the appearance of a magnificent piece of mosaic work. [.See v. 78.) On the ground floor, exclusive of the out-buildings, are fifty-four apart- ments, some of them as small as five feet square, and the largest about 12x6 feet. These rooms communicate with each other by very small doors, some of them as contracted as two and a half by two and a half feet; and in the case of the inner suite the doors communicating with the interior court are as small as two and a half by three feet. The principal rooms, or the most in use, on account of their having larger doors and windows, were those of the second story. The system of flooring seems to have been large trans- verse, unhewn beams six inches in diameter, laid transversely from wall to wall, and then a number of smaller ones, about three inches in diameter, laid longitudinally uj)on them. On these was placed brush which was cov- ered with a layer ol mud and mortar. Tlie beams show no signs of the saw or axe. ( )n the contrary, they appear to have been hacked off by some very imperfect instrument. .A.t different points about the premises were three circular apartments, sunk in the ground, called estufas, where the people held their religious and political meetings. 8o PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. Thirteen miles from our last camp we came to another old ruin called Pueblo Weje-^'i. Further down the canyon we came to another pueblo in ruins, called Hungo l'a\ ie. These rums show the same nicety in the details of their masonry as those already described. The ^^round plan shows an extent of exterior development of 1,872 feet, and a number of rooms upon the g'ound floor equal to 72 feet. The structure shows but oi.e circular estufa, and this is placed in the body of the north portion of the building, midway from either extremity. This estufa differs from others, having a number of in- terior (7V/;/Av'/('/'A. The main walls of the building are, at the base, two and three-fourths fett through, and at this time show a height of about thirty feet. The ends of the floor beams, still visible, show- that there was, originally, at least, a vertical series of four floors. The floor beams, which are round, in transverse section, and eleven inches in diameter, as well as the windows, which are as small as 12x13 inches, have been arranged horizon- tally, with great precission and regularity. Continuing down the canyon one and three quarter miles further, we came to another structure in ruins, the name of which, accord ng to the guide, IS Pueblo Chettro Kettle, or, as he interprets it, the "Rain Pueblo." These ruins have an extent of exterior circuit, inclusive of the court, of about 1,300 feet. The material of which the structure has been made, as also the style of the masonry, is the same as that of the ruined pueblos already described, the stone a sandstone, the beams pine and cedar, and the number of stories at present discoverable is four, there having been originally a series of windows (four and a half by three and a half feet) in the first story, which are now walled up. The number of rooms on the first floor, most all of which were distinguishable, must have been as many as 124. The circular estufas, of which there are six, have a greater depth than any we have seen, and differ from them also in exhibiting more stories, one of them showing certainlv two and possibly three, the lowest one appearing to be almost covered up with debris. In the northwest coiner of this ruin is found a room in almost a perfect slate of preservation. Two or three hundred yards down the canyon we met another old pueb- lo in ruins, called Pueble Bonito. The circuit of its walls is about 1.300 feet. Its present elevation shows that it had at least four stories of apait- ments. The number of estufas is four, the largest being sixty feet in diam- eter, showing two stories in height, and having a present depth of twelve feet. All these estufas are, as in the case of the others 1 have seen, cylindrical in shape and nicely walled up with thin tabular stone. Among the ruins are several rooms in a very good state of preservation, one of them being wall- ed up with alternate beds of large and small stones, the regularity of the combination producing a very pleasing effect. The ceiling of this room is also more tasteful than any we have seen, the transverse beams being smaller and more numeious, and the longitudinal pieces which rest upon them only about an inch in diameter and beautifully regular. Two miles further down the canyon, but on its left or south bank, we came to another pueblo in ruins, called bv the guide Pueblo de Penasca Blanca, the circuit of which, approximates, 1,700 feet. This is the largest pueblo, in plan, we have seen, and differs from others in the arrangement of the stones composing its walls. The walls of the other pueblos were all of one uniform character in the several beds composing it; but in this tht re is a regular alternation of large and small stones, the effect of which is both unique and beautiful. The largest stones, which are about one foot in length and one-half foot in thickness, forms but a single bed, and then, alternating with these, are three or four beds of very small stones, each about an inch in thickness. Thegeneral plan of the structure also differs from the others in approximating the form of the circle. The number of rooms at present discoverable on the first floor is 112, and the existing walls show that there have been at least three stories of apartments. The num- ber of circular estufas we counted was seven. MAP-SHOWING DIFFERENT PUEBLO DISTRICTS. The following;' map shows the distiicts represented in the territory visited by the American explorers. They are as follows: I. The first includes the district on the Kio Gr.inde. II. The second is situated upon the Chaco, where are the remarkable ruins represented in the cuts, and which are described in this book by Lieutenant Simpson, W. H. Jackson, J.T. Bickford and otheri. HI. The third is in the valley of San Juan, the McElmo, the Hovenweep, the Mancos, the Monte7un)a and other streams, and is characterized by the ruins of the cliff dwellings. IV. The fourth is situated upon the Rio de Chelly, where are the remains of ancient pueblos, cliff fortresses and cliff villages whicn resemble those on the Mancos and San Juan. It includes the district drained by the Rio Verde on which are the remajkable series of cavate houses, irrigat- ing ditches, ancient boulder cites, stone pueblos and the two cliff' dwellings called ''Montezuma Castle'' and "Montezuma Wells." It includes also the cavate houses and pueblos found in the ancient cones about the San Francisco Mountains. \'. The tlfth district is situated upon the Gila Ki\er and its tributaries, and includes the ancient ruins of Ca>a Grande and the scattered villages and irrigating ditches which have been described by Mr. F. H. Cashing and others of the Hemingway sxpedition. \'I. The sixth district is situated upon the southern borders of the pueblo territory and em- braces the cavate houses among the potreros west of the Rio Grande, also the ancient ruins of the deserted villages and ancient Spanish settlements along the northern borders of i'exas. VII. There is one other district not represented on the map which is situated in Sonora, Mexico, and contain.- the ancient ruins of the CasasGrandes described by Mr. Bartlett and others. INDIAN MAP OF THE RIO GRANDE. The following map is the one which was secured by Major Whipple from an Indian. It represents the inhabited pueblos on the Rio Grande, which have l)een described by Mr. Bandelier as follows : •'Acoma is a regular three-storied village since every one of its long buildings contains three floors, of which only the upper two are inhabited; but Isleta has lost the pueblo character completely. As to the plan of the villages it \aries according to topography and surroundings. .San Ilde- fonso forms a hollow cjradrilateral; Jemez, Santa Clara and San Felipe are each a double quadrangle with two squares; .Santa Domingo. San Juan, S Oavs .VA/rcM i HersmHenro NOIirM«rTAOt { /M /MblAn rXAUIT/OH icon BtKTW^LACi. »p Mom TMxutj •^ jPueblot 3njiil;edtJin» are oecupiedTiY Xii/ixex Jjulieuit Santa Ana and Aconia, consist of several parallel rows of houses, and have from one to three streets. Zuni is one gigantic building very irregularly disposed, traversed by alleys caLed streets, and interspersed with several interior squares. Taos has two tall houses facing each other, one on each side of a little stream and communicating across it by means of a wooden footbridge. The same is the plan of the houses of Pecos. The material of which the houses are constructed varies Acoma is of stone and rubble; Islela, San Domingo and Cochiti are of adobe. \'ery of, en one of the same pueblo will display both kinds of material. There are still occasional traces of the ancient custom by which the women were required to rear and plaster the w^lls, while the men were to attend to the wood-work, the cut- ting of the beams and poles." ORTELIUS' MAP OF TH'E NEW WOULD. MERCATOR S MAP OF AMERICA. MAP OF THE PUEBLO REGION. MAP OF THE CLIFF-DWELLERS TERRITORY CHAPTER VI. HIGH HOUSES AND RUINED TOWERS. The discovery of the Chff-dvvelh'ngs was a startling event. It occurred in 1874, in connection with the work of Hayden's Geo- logical Survey, An account of it was published in the Annual Report of 1875-6, and excited at the time very general interest. No archa2ological discovery has ever awakened more attention and excited more curiosity than this. Many ruined dwellings had, indeed, been discovered by the various parties that had traversed the Great Plateau, and descriptions of them had been published, but they were ordinary pueblos, with which the public had become somewhat familiar, while these presented a style of aboriginal dwellings which was not known to exist elsewhere. The first consisted of a large number of apartments and consti- tuted a village, while these were solitary and isolated dwellings, suitable only for the home of a single family. The pueblos were situated in the valleys of the streams or upon the mesas, and ac- cess to them was comparatively easy, but cliff-dwellings were in the sides of the cliffs, and at such marvelous heights as to be almost inaccessible. The pueblos were generally in plain sight, and along the ordinary familiar routes, while these were in a re- mote district, amid wild and lonely caiions, and so hidden as to escape common observation. The pueblos were inhabited, and the people gave the discoverers a welcome, but the cliff-dwellings were lonely and uninhabited. No one knew the history of those who had dwelt in them, or could tell the fate of those who had left them. It is not then strange that great interest was awakened, and much speculation and startling theories were advanced con- cerning them. We may say, however, that the interest has not ceased, nor has the mystery which enveloped this subject entirely disappeared. Though scientific students have entered into the midst of them, and studied the details of their structure, and so accumulated facts, that our knowledge has become more ac- curate and speculation less fanciful ; yet the history of the people is wanting, and there is no reliable tradition concerning them. It is not our purpose to furnish a history of the Cliff-dwellers, nor to advance any theory concerning their age or final destiny, but we shall take up the narrative which was given by the discoverers, and examine the facts brought out by them, and endeavor, if possible, to define the character of the culture, and describe the life of the people. 82 PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE. I. Let us consider the geographical locality in which the cliff-dwellings were situated. On this we shall find much aid from the study of the map as well as the narrative. We notice that the pueblos and a certain class of cave'-dwell- ings are scattered all over the region embraced in the bounds of the four great states of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah ; but there is a district lying close about the meeting place of the four states in which not only the pre-historic ruins of the plateaus and the valleys are found, but also many cliff-dwellings built into the dizzy recesses of the canon walls, imposing in their position and structure. Probably there is no other district in this once widely-inhabited region richer in these high clift- FiG. 1. THE FIRST HIGH CLIFF-HOUSE DISCOVERED. dwellings than this Great Plateau, 30 miles long and 15 wide, called the " Mesa Verde." This great timbered plateau rises in rough, forbidding cliffs from 1,500 or 2,000 feet above the valley of the stream which passes through it, making a series of deep canons which are dis- tinguished for their remarkable scenery, isolation, and wildness. In the walls of these arid carions and in the midst of the high mountains the Cliff-men built some of their most elaborate and imposing fortresses, but wrung a meagre subsistence from the valleys below, fighting, meanwhile, for even this scanty foot- hold in the wilderness against the attack of a lurking, but a constantly-increasing savage foe. It will be seen from the following descriptions that this is one of the- most singular regions of the entire country. It forms an HIGH HOUSES AND RUINED TOWERS. 83 isolated area, which was filled with an extensive population in pre-historic times, and was undoubtedly connected with the other areas to the south-east and south-west. It was, apparently, a most secure retreat from the attacks of the wild tribes which were constantly hovering about the edges of the Great Plateau region, and were frequently besieging the Pueblos in their homes. It was, however, a mountainous region, apparently destitute of resources for subsistence, and might be regarded as a poor place for permanent occupation. The question arises : " What kind of a life did the Cliff-dwellers lead in this region ? how did they secure a subsistence for themselves and their families?" On this point there have been various theories, for some have main- tained that they were wild hunters, others that they were agri- culturists. We maintain, however, that they were mountaineers, and in proof would call attention to the following extracts : Mr. W. H. Holmes says : The Rio San Juan drains a great basin, covering over 20,000 square miles, as well as several great mountain masses bordering it. The tribu- taries to it head in the southern face of the Sierra Abajo, which is one of the highest peaks. The view