CHAPTER VII.
IN the State of Chihuahua, Mexico, and in our Territories of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and the State of Colorado, a class of remains are found, wholly unlike those of the Mayas, Nahuas, or Mound-builders, though in some instances they are associated with earthworks resembling those of the latter race. The style of architecture is unlike that of any other people on either continent, and though varying considerably in its individual examples, still present certain marked and general features which leave little room for doubt that the peoples of the Pueblos and the Cliffs were the same. The earliest discovered of this class of remains are known as the Casas Grandes, situated at about half a mile from the modern town of the same name, in the fertile valley of the Casas Grandes or San Migual River in Northern Chihuahua. These ruins have often been described second-hand and their nature is well-known to persons interested in this field of inquiry. Of the above-named class of descriptions, the latest and best is by Mr. Bancroft, who has added a bibliographical apparatus to his account.[439] We will, therefore, confine our discussion of this group of remains to the essential facts as given by Mr. J. R. Bartlett, whose account of his researches is quite full and satisfactory.[440] These facts we will give as briefly as possible, preferring to devote our space to the new material composing the latter part of the chapter. Several of the early writers refer to the Casas Grandes as one of the Aztec stations; but a little intelligent study of the characteristics of the ruins, especially in the light of recent explorations in the Territories, is likely to dissipate such an opinion. The first examination of the ruins of which any reliable record is left, was by Sr. Escudero, in 1819, published in his Noticias Estadísticas del Estado de Chihuahua. A contributor to the Album Mexicano (tom. i, pp. 374–5) furnished a good account of the ruins as he found them in 1842. None of the hasty sketches subsequently made by several writers are worth a reference until we come to the excellent description written by Mr. Bartlett in 1851, while acting as United States Commissioner, in fixing the United States and Mexican boundary line. The Casas Grandes, according to Mr. Bartlett, are built of adobe or mud, in large quadrangular blocks measuring about twenty-two inches in thickness by three feet or more in length. The irregularity of the length of the blocks, however, seemed to indicate that they had been formed on the wall, in situ, by means of a box open at the ends, which, when the block dried, was moved along to mould a fresh block. The mud is filled with coarse gravel from the plateau, which gives greater hardness to the material. The Casas face the cardinal points and consist of erect and fallen walls, ranging from five to thirty feet in height. The accumulation of rubbish is, however, considerable, and if the highest standing walls rest upon a common level with the lowest, they will measure from forty to fifty feet in height. The edifice was discovered in ruins by the conquerors, and could not have been occupied for a century, at the least calculation, prior to its discovery. It is, therefore, reasonable to presume that all the walls now standing were originally much higher than at present. It appears that the outer portions of the edifices were the lowest, and not more than one story in height, while the central ones were from three to six stories. The central or inner walls are better preserved, partly by their greater thickness—five feet at the base—and partly by the heaps of ruined walls which have fallen around them. Once prostrate, the blocks absorb the water, and in a few years are reduced to a mass of mud and gravel. It was with difficulty that Mr. Bartlett traced all the outlines of the buildings; but close examination revealed the fact that three lofty edifices were connected into one by means of a low range of buildings, one storey high, which may have merely inclosed intervening courts. The total length of this continuous edifice was at least 800 feet by 250 feet wide. A regular and continuous wall was observed on the south side, while the eastern and western fronts, with their projecting walls, were very irregular. The question of the exact number of stories is not capable of solution, as no vestige of timbers or wood now remains. The explorer could not even detect a trace of any cavities where the floor-timbers had been inserted in the walls, so decayed and washed was their condition. Many doorways remained, but the lintels having decayed, the tops had fallen in. Clavigero states that the edifice had “three floors with a terrace above them and without any entrance to the under floor, so that a scaling ladder is necessary.” García Condé confirms this statement as to the three stories besides a roof,[441] while both authors consider this to have been a station on the Aztec migration. Certainly, no architectural analogies with the remains farther south justify this opinion. Mr. Bartlett was unable to obtain but a partial plan of the Casas Grandes. PART OF GROUND PLAN OF CASAS GRANDES CHIHUAHUA. One class of apartments, however, attracted his especial attention, from the fact that they were evidently designed for granaries. They were arranged along one of the main walls, and measured twenty feet in length by ten in breadth. They were connected by doorways “with a small inclosure or pen in one corner, three or four feet high.” Numerous long and narrow apartments, too contracted for sleeping or dwelling-rooms, lighted by circular apertures in the upper walls, are supposed to have been devoted to the same use. Large inclosures, too extensive in their dimensions ever to have been roofed, evidently were used as courts. Two hundred feet west of the Casas, on the plateau, are the remains of a building about 150 feet square, divided into compartments, as shown in the accompanying plan: GROUND PLAN OF ONE OF THE CASAS GRANDES AT CHIHUAHUA. Between this edifice and the main building, are three mounds of loose stones about fifteen feet high, which the explorers did not have time to open. For a distance of twenty leagues and covering an area of ten leagues wide along the Casas Grandes and Janos Rivers, according to García Condé, are ruins resembling small mounds, from which jars, pottery in various forms, painted with white, blue and scarlet colors, corn-grinders (metates), and stone-axes have been taken. If this region was ever occupied by the Aztecs, even temporarily, this latter class of remains might more properly be attributed to them, than the Casas Grandes. Innumerable fragments of pottery, superior to that now manufactured by the Mexicans, are strewn everywhere in the neighborhood of the Casas Grandes. The decoration is in black, red or brown, on a white or reddish ground. Several graceful and highly artistic vases have been collected about the ruins, and stone metates, nicely hewn, have been recovered in perfect condition. On the summit of the highest mountain, ten miles south-west of the ruins, stands an ancient fortress of stone, the walls of which are said by the writer in the Album Mexicano to have been from eighteen to twenty feet thick. The fort, which is attributed to the occupants of the Casas Grandes, was two or three stories, and in the centre had a high mound for the purposes of observation. Clavigero, who describes the fort and all of the ruins from hearsay, falls into the error of supposing the Casas to have also been constructed of stone. A short distance from the point where the 111° (meridian) of longitude crosses the Gila River, in Southern Arizona, in the valley occupied farther westward by the Pima villages, stands the most famous ruin of all the Western remains. The Casa Grande, otherwise named the Casa de Montezuma, has attracted the attention of and furnished a fruitful subject for most writers on Mexican antiquity, the majority of whom, however, have contributed nothing to our knowledge of the history or uses of the edifice. Of describers at second-hand, Mr. Bancroft has cited thirty-four authors, according to our reckoning, and to this number the reader must add that author’s account and ours. This fact is an admonition to us to confine ourselves to the briefest possible statement of facts, for certainly the thirty-sixth repetition of the accounts furnished by two or three original explorers would be altogether inexcusable, were it not for the inseparable relation of the Gila Casas to the remains to be described farther on. Mr. Bancroft has treated the bibliography of the subject in his usually comprehensive manner,[442] and it only remains for us to refer the reader to the original descriptions. The first of these was written by Padre Mange, the secretary of Padre Kino, on the latter’s tour of visitation to the missions of the region in 1697.[443] Lieutenant C. M. Bernal, of the same expedition, adds also a description.[444] Padre Sedelmair, who visited the ruin in 1744, copies literally Mange’s description in his account of the Casas.[445] Father Font, who, in company with Father Garcés, made an expedition conducted by Captain Anza to the Gila and the missions farther north, left a diary—now preserved in the original, in the archives at Guadalajara—from which Mr. Bartlett translated and published an extensive description of the Casas.[446] Of later writers, only four wrote from personal observation, namely, Emory[447] and Johnston,[448] of General Kearney’s Military Expedition to California in 1846; Bartlett[449] in 1852, and Ross Browne in 1863.[450] These are the only original sources of information on the Casa Grande of the Gila, of which Bartlett’s account may be said to be the best. However, Bancroft has contributed much to facilitate the study of the subject by his addition of a full literary apparatus.
From all of these we draw the facts without further citation. Two and a half miles south of the Gila, on a slightly elevated plateau, stands the remains of the Casa Grande surrounded with a growth of mesquite trees. The ascent from the river bottom is so slight and gradual that its former inhabitants had constructed acequias between the river and the buildings. Mr. Bartlett found three edifices within a space of one hundred and fifty yards. The larger one only was in a fair state of preservation. Its four outer walls and most of the inner ones were standing. Three storeys were plainly marked by the ends of the beams remaining in the walls or by the cavities which they once occupied. No doubt the building was one story, at least, higher than this indicated, as the upper walls have crumbled away considerably and filled the first story with disintegrated adobe and a mass of rubbish. The central portion or tower furthermore rises eight or ten feet higher than the outer walls, and may have formed another story above the main building. At their base, the walls are between four or five feet in thickness, rising perpendicular on the inside, but on the outside tapering towards the top in a curved line.
The material of the walls consists of blocks of adobe, prepared as in the Casas Grandes of Chihuahua, in position on the walls, probably in boxes two feet high and four feet long; after the mud had dried sufficiently, the box was moved further along the walls and refilled. Some difference of opinion has existed as to the color of the mud employed, though all admit it to be that of the surrounding valley. Mr. Bancroft gives some attention to this point, and observes that Bernal pronounced it “white clay,” and that according to Johnston it is also white with an admixture of lime from the vicinity. Mr. Hutton, a civil engineer who had thoroughly examined them, reported to Mr. Simpson that the surrounding earth was of a reddish color, but the admixture of pebbles with the mud gave the Casa a whitish appearance in certain reflections. Mr. Bancroft seeks by this argument to identify this building with Castañeda’s Chichilticale, which is described as having been built of red earth.[451] The outer sides of the walls were finished with a plaster similar to that which composed the blocks, but the inner side was covered with hard finish of such fine quality that when visited they still retained their polish after centuries of exposure. It is estimated that the edifice must have stood a hundred years at least prior to its discovery by the Spaniards. The inner walls are slightly thinner than the outer ones, and divide the building into five apartments, as shown in Mr. Bartlett’s ground plan. The building measures fifty feet in length by forty in width. Ground Plan. The three central rooms indicated are each about eight by fourteen feet, while those at each end of the edifice are ten by about thirty-two feet. The doorways indicated in the plan are three feet wide by five feet high, except that in the western façade, which is only two feet wide and seven or eight feet high. The main part of the edifice was probably thirty feet high, while the tower rose still ten feet higher. Padre Kino found a floor in an adjoining ruin still perfect, the supporting timbers of which were round and about five inches in diameter, while the floor proper was formed by placing cross-sticks on the joist and covering them with a layer of adobe. Mr. Browne observed the marks of a blunt axe still plainly visible in the timbers of cedar or sabine which had been thus employed, while their charred ends furnish the only clue to the cause of the ruin of the edifice, a fact suggestive of the ravages of the savage Apaches. No stairways or other means of ascent were discovered, and it is inferred that ladders were employed upon the outside as among the modern Pueblos. Near the main building, to the south-west, Mr. Bartlett discovered another Casa in ruins, and with difficulty traced its ground plan; while a third was so completely decayed as to leave no certain outline of its form. To the north-west about two hundred yards, was a circular embankment eighty or one hundred yards in circumference, which Mr. Bartlett supposes to have been used as a stock inclosure. A few yards farther north Mr. Johnston observed a terrace, two hundred by three hundred feet and five feet high, and having a summit platform seventy-two feet square, from which an excellent view of the valley is afforded. This monument is unlike any other found among the New Mexican remains. The entire valley is strewn with heaps of rubbish and ruined adobe edifices, which indicate that once the whole region was thickly populated by this remarkable people. Mr. Bartlett found broken metates (corn-grinders), and innumerable fragments of pottery painted tastefully with red, white, lead color, and black. The figures were geometrical, and many of the vessels had been decorated on the inside—a practice not in vogue with the modern peoples of the Gila Valley. The finish was also far superior to that of modern pottery. The Casa Grande, when last observed by Mr. Browne, was fast going to pieces, the moisture having undermined some parts of the outer walls, which were only kept erect by their great thickness. In 1873, Mr. Bancroft learned that the edifice was still standing, but it is evident that it must soon share the fate of its fallen neighbors. It is certain that this Pueblo civilization spread itself over a large tract of country north of the Gila Valley in the basin of the Rio Salado or Salinas, the principal tributary of the Gila. Numerous buildings similar to those previously described, have been noticed by different writers on the Rio Salado and its tributaries. The ruins of large edifices surrounded by smaller ones are described by Sedelmair (discovered in 1744) as standing between the Gila and Salado.[452]
Velarde has also cited the remains of similar structures at the junction of Salado and Verde and of the Salado and Gila.[453] We cannot refer to all of the remains reported in this region, especially since most of them are indescribable and shapeless heaps of ruins. One edifice, however, was observed by Mr. Bartlett, two hundred feet in length by sixty or eighty feet in width; and from the accumulation of debris, it is estimated that the edifice must have been three or four stories in height. This was but one of several similar heaps of ruins observed in the immediate vicinity. This locality, distant thirty-five miles from the river’s mouth, was evidently at one time the site of a populous city. The remains of numerous works, probably of a public character, such as irrigating canals—one of which is now more than twenty feet wide and four feet deep and several miles long, in the construction of which it was necessary to cut down the bank of the plateau—occur in considerable numbers. The whole region is strewn with fragments of broken pottery of fine workmanship.[454] M. Leroux, in 1854, discovered on the Rio Verde ruins of stone houses and regular fortifications which did not appear to have been occupied for centuries. The walls were of solid masonry of rectangular form, usually from twenty to thirty paces in length, and the style of architecture similar to that of the Casa Grande of the Gila. Still there was sufficient resemblance to the Pueblos of the Moquis to indicate a transition from the southern to the northern style of Pueblo dwelling. The sudden change in the material employed—that from adobe to stone in large blocks, well hewn—is rather remarkable. The ruins are found with more or less continuity between Fort McDowell and Prescott.[455] Mr. Bancroft, after citing the above, expresses regret at his inability to secure information in the possession of officers in the Arizona service.[456]
Lieutenant Whipple describes extensive ruins on the small streams forming the head-waters of the Rio Verde. Both stone and adobe structures were numerous, and the walls usually were found to be about five feet thick.[457] Emory has described some Pueblo buildings of singular structure on the upper Gila and its tributaries; most interesting of these is one with a labyrinthine plan of inner circular walls. The region also abounds in rock inscriptions of a rude though no doubt conventional character.[458] It is quite natural to suppose that remains of this ancient people would have been found extensively on the greatest river of the region—the Colorado. Mr. Bancroft passes the subject with the statement that “no relics of antiquity are reported by reliable authorities,” and fitly explains that it is unlikely, in view of the peculiarity of the region, that none will ever be found in the immediate vicinity of the river.[459] Whipple and his associates state that “upon the lower part of the Rio Colorado no traces of permanent dwellings have been discovered.”[460]
Since the publication of Mr. Bancroft’s fourth volume, the public has been made acquainted with the details of Major J. W. Powell’s exploration of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.[461] The descent of the river was accomplished by the Major and his companions in the summer of 1869, amid dangers so appalling and privations so distressing, that we need not hesitate in pronouncing it an exhibition of heroism having few parallels in the history of exploration. The Major has since repeated his perilous journey of which we have enjoyed the pleasure of a verbal description in part from the explorer himself. Groups of ruins were discovered in the gloomy depths of the Grand Cañon at three different points. In referring to them we will reverse the order in which they were discovered. A hundred or more miles (for we are unable to estimate the distance from the account) above the Virgen River, where the granite walls rise perpendicularly from the water’s edge thousands of feet, the cañon widened somewhat and a considerable group of ruined buildings were discovered on a terrace of trap. There had evidently been quite a village in that solitary spot, shut in by hundreds of miles of granite walls either up or down the river’s course. Mealing stones and fragments of broken pottery were scattered about the ruins, and so many beautiful flint chips that the discoverers conjectured that it might have been the home of an ancient arrow-maker. Major Powell found on a natural shelf in the rock, back of the ruin, a globular basket, badly broken, and so decayed that when taken up it fell to pieces.[462] Some distance farther up the river, the grim walls of more than a mile in height parted to admit the clear waters of a stream named by the explorers “Bright Angel River.” In a little gulch above the creek the foundations of two or three Pueblo houses were discovered. They were built of irregular cut stones, laid in mortar. An old, deeply-worn mealing stone and a great quantity of pottery were found, and old trails were observed worn into the rock.[463]
It cannot fail, however, to excite the wonder of the reader to learn that Major Powell found ruined pueblos hundreds of miles farther up that dismal, almost subterranean river. Not far below the foot of the Cataract Cañon, and a considerable distance above Escalante River, in Southern Utah, the explorers discovered on a wall two hundred feet above the river, but removed from the water by a narrow plain, an old stone house of good masonry. The stones were laid in mortar with much regularity. It had been a three-story building, the first of which still remained in good condition, the second being much broken, and but little being left of the third. Flint chips, beautiful arrow-heads and broken pottery abounded in the vicinity. The faces of the cliffs were also covered with etchings. Fifteen miles farther down the river another group was discovered, the principal building of which was in the shape of an L, with five rooms on the ground floor; one in the angle and two in each wing. In the centre of the angle there was a deep excavation, doubtless an underground chamber for religious services, known as an Estufa. Major Powell considers these remains the work of a branch of the people now occupying the province of Tusayan in northern Arizona. These Moqui peoples will be noticed farther on. In the neighborhood of the last-named ruin, the Major found a tall, pyramidal work of nature, formed by smooth rock-mounds, rising one above another. On climbing this he observed that this natural eminence had been used as an outlook by the people of the Pueblo. A stairway cut in the rock by human hands and an old ladder resting against a perpendicular rock were discovered.[464]
The Colorado Chiquito and its tributaries flows through the very heart of the Pueblo country. One hundred miles above its junction with the Rio Colorado, Whipple, Sitgreaves and others, found numerous ruins, crowning nearly every prominent point in the valley. The pottery of the region is unlike that usually met with, in that it is ornamented with impressions and raised work, instead of being painted.[465] Forty miles farther up the river colossal ruins were discovered standing on the summit of a sandstone bluff. The walls, such as remained standing, were ten feet thick, while the building measured 360 feet in length by 120 in width.[466] With the exception of the remains of stone-houses, at the junction of the Rio Puerco with the Colorado Chiquito, the only aboriginal remains reported are pottery, scattered arrow-heads and numerous rock inscriptions. The next tributary of the Colorado Chiquito—the Zuñi River—is celebrated because of its ancient and modern Pueblo structures. For fifty miles from the mouth of the Zuñi, the antiquarian who could, might read the history of this ancient people, spread out upon the imperishable cliffs—the parchment of Nature’s children. Within eight miles of the inhabited Pueblo towns, numerous ruins are encountered.[467] Here, within a few miles, the almost mythical “seven cities of Cibola,” described by Coronado in 1540, and by Marco de Niça the year previous, are demonstrated to have been situated.[468] Zuñi itself is the Granada of the devoted and romantic conquerors. In the centre of a plain upon a commanding eminence, stands the inhabited Pueblo of Zuñi. Its frontage is upon the river of the same name, while but a short distance in the background, the mesa terminates in tall cliffs of metamorphic rock several hundred feet high. The town is built in blocks, with terrace-shaped houses, usually three stories high, in which the lower stories do service as the platform for those immediately following them. Access is obtained by means of ladders reaching to the roof or terrace, formed upon the first story of each of the houses. The town is very compactly built, many of the streets passing under the upper stories of houses. The whole is divided into four squares, and the houses in each are continuously joined together. The building material employed is stone, plastered with mud.[469] A little more than two miles south-east of Zuñi, the ancient ruined Pueblo of the same name is situated on an elevated mesa of a mile in width, the precipitous descent from which, upon all sides, measures a thousand feet. The ruins of old Zuñi are surrounded with a growth of cedars, and cover several acres of ground. The walls, constructed of small sandstone blocks laid in mud-mortar, are only eighteen inches thick and are sadly dilapidated from age, only twelve feet marking their highest point of present elevation. Still, there is a deeper mystery about this antiquated ruin, for beneath the walls now standing, others are found of a more ancient city, whose walls were six feet thick, which perished either of age or by the hand of the destroyer, before the present was begun. The ascent to the ruin is a winding and difficult path, guarded with stone battlements at different points. At a sacred spring near Zuñi, Whipple found vases standing inverted upon an adobe wall. “Many of these were white, well-proportioned, and of elegant forms. Upon their inner and outward surfaces they were curiously painted to represent frogs, tadpoles, tortoises, butterflies, and rattlesnakes.” The tufted snakes on one of the vases are pronounced almost unique in America.[470] Twelve miles above Zuñi, at Ojo del Pescado, four or five ruined towns are found, but so badly decayed as to furnish little clue to their plan. Two of them, however, are constructed elliptically around a spring, and present a circumference of about 800 to 1000 feet. Two-thirds of a mile down the river, ruined pueblos in a fair state of preservation, with two stories standing, are described as covering an area of 150 by 200 yards. At the time of Möllhausen’s visit, the roofs and fire-places were in quite good condition.[471] A square estufa, still under roof, and numerous rock inscriptions, were observed. In this instance we are furnished with abundant evidence that the destruction of this people never was a wholesale one, but that gradually they are succumbing to their unpropitious surroundings—a land which is fast becoming a howling wilderness, with its scourging sands and roaming savage Bedouin—the Apaches. One more locality in this region merits attention. Eighteen miles south-east of the sources of the Zuñi River, stands a sandstone rock three hundred feet high, which at a distance resembles a Moorish fortress. The Spaniards named it El Moro. It is also known as “Inscription Rock,” because of the Spanish and Indian inscriptions which cover its smooth face. Simpson has copied some of them, which is quite fortunate, since later explorers have found many of them almost effaced. The ruins of two buildings are found on the summit, which is reached by a difficult path. The large group is in the form of a rectangle, measuring 307 by 206 feet. The walls, faced with sandstone blocks, remain standing to the height of six and eight feet. The other group is separated from the first by a deep ravine, and is found upon the very brink of the outer precipice. A circular estufa thirty-one feet in diameter was also noticed. Cedar timbers were found in the walls, and broken pottery in abundance.[472] About one hundred miles in a north north-easterly direction from Zuñi, in longitude 108° and latitude 36°, the most remarkable of the pueblo ruins are situated. These are on the north bank of the Chaco River, a tributary of the Rio San Juan, a stream the affluents of which are noted for a greater number of pueblo and cliff-dwellers’ ruins than are found elsewhere. Lieutenant Simpson has described the ruins of the Chaco, eleven in number, occurring within a distance of twenty-five miles. The first of these met with in coming from the south is called at present (we presume in the absence of the knowledge of the true name) the Pueblo Pintado. The most remarkable feature of this great structure is the beauty and precision of the masonry. The fine, hard gray sandstone blocks are quite uniformly three inches in thickness and are laid without mortar, always breaking joints. The crevices between the ends of the blocks are filled with very thin pieces of stone, not over a quarter of an inch thick. The walls of the pueblo now standing, are at their greatest height, thirty feet, and furnish evidence from the marks of the floor-timbers that the building was three stories. The walls are between two and three feet thick at the base, though this is diminished with each succeeding story by a jog of a few inches, upon which the flooring timbers rest. These are from six to eleven inches in diameter, always of uniform size in the same room. On these beams small round sticks are laid transversely, and these in turn covered with thin cedar strips, lying transversely of the round sticks. In some rooms the chinks in the floor were filled with small stones and the whole covered with a layer of mortar. One room, however, had a floor of smooth cedar boards, seven inches wide and three-quarters of an inch thick. The edges and ends were squarely cut, and their smooth surfaces indicate that they were polished by being rubbed with flat stones. The size of these ruins may be better understood when we state that five buildings measured in circumference respectively 872, 700, 1700, 1300 and 1300 feet; while the number of rooms, still well-defined on the ground floor of each, is 72, 99, 112, 124 and 139. Some of these buildings undoubtedly had as high as a thousand rooms, while the smallest of them probably contained half that number. The smallest apartments are five feet square, while the largest are eight by fourteen feet. The ground plan of the buildings of this valley have three tiers of rooms, while one building, the Pueblo Bonito, has four tiers of apartments. The usual form of the buildings corresponds to three sides of a rectangle, with the fourth (one of the long sides of the figure) left unbuilt (except that in some cases it was inclosed by a semicircular stone wall), thus affording a partially enclosed court of large dimensions. The exterior walls are in all cases perpendicular, thus differing from the pueblos farther south. The terracing in the Chaco structures is upon the inside (court side) of the buildings.
In some of the buildings, however, the angles of the quadrangle are rounded, and in one instance—that of the Peñasca Blanco—the structure is elliptical. From the nature of the plan of any of these buildings it is evident that many of the apartments on the ground floor were dark, and were probably used for granaries and store-rooms. There are no doors whatever in the outer walls, and no windows except in the upper stories. Windows and doors opening into the courts are, on the contrary, numerous in all the stories but the first. The doors are quite small, in many cases not exceeding two and a half feet square. The lintels of the doors and windows are in most cases stone slabs, but in some instances are small round timbers tied together with withes. A remarkable feature of the construction is the presence of the Yucatan arch formed of overlapping stones, illustrations of which may be seen in our next chapter. Dr. Hammond, a companion of Lieutenant Simpson, has minutely described a room of very perfect finish.[473] Each edifice was provided with the sacred estufa, and some of the houses had as many as seven, circular in form, excavated several feet deep in the earth and enclosed with circular walls. One in the Pueblo Bonito was of remarkable size, having been sixty feet in diameter, extending twelve feet below the surface and rising two or three stories high. Lieutenant Simpson found in close proximity to one of the ruins an excavation in the cliff which had been enclosed with a front wall of well-laid stone and mortar, thus associating one of the simplest of the cave-dwellings to which we shall refer presently, with one of the most extensive and perfect of the Pueblo buildings; a fact of no little value in identifying the architects of both as one and the same.[474] This introduces us to another class of ruins, which, with a couple of exceptions, were not discovered prior to the summer of 1874. We refer to the cliff-dwellings, the most remarkable habitations ever occupied by man. The descriptions of them seem more suitable to form parts of the most romantic works of fiction than of sober and scientific memoirs from the pens of government explorers. One hundred miles westward from the ruins of the Chaco lies the Chelly Valley or Cañon. The Chelly is one of the tributaries of the Rio San Juan from the south, having its source in the Navajo country. The Chelly Cañon is described as from one hundred and fifty to nine hundred feet wide, with perpendicular sides between three hundred and five hundred feet high. Simpson in 1849 found several caves built up in front with stone and mortar in a side cañon. About four miles from its foot or mouth he observed on a shelf fifty feet high, accessible only by ladders, a stone ruin, the plan of which resembles that of the Chaco Valley pueblos, except that it was constructed on a considerably smaller scale. Three miles further up the cañon a double ruin of an extraordinary nature was discovered. At the base of the cañon stood an ancient pueblo in ruins, but with parts of the first and second stories still erect. Fifty feet in a perpendicular line, above and immediately back of the first edifice, in a shelf, or in the mouth of a cavern in the cañon’s walls, stood another building constructed of sandstone and mortar, and measuring one hundred and forty-five by forty-five feet, with walls eighteen feet high still standing. Broken pottery was plentiful, as around all the ruins we have described. The building was lighted by square windows and provided with a circular estufa.[475]
The most surprising results in all the history of archæological exploration in this country were obtained in September, 1874, by a party connected with the United States Geological and Geographical Survey Corps. This party was composed of only three persons, Mr. W. H. Jackson and Mr. Ingersoll with their guide, Captain John Moss, a resident of La Plata, who possessed both a knowledge of the country and an acquaintance with the language of the Indians. In the south-western corner of Colorado, the cañons of two of the tributaries of the San Juan were examined, namely, the valleys of the Rivers Mancos and McElmo.[476] The former stream rises among the western foothills of the Sierra La Plata, and flows south-westerly through fertile valleys to a great table-land known as the “Mesa Verde,” thence to the San Juan near the crossing of the boundary lines of the four territories. In the upper valley of the Mancos, between the mountains and the mesa, groups of undistinguishable ruins were discovered in great numbers. An examination of the shapeless heaps revealed foundations composed of great square blocks of adobe. The great multitude of these heaps of masonry overgrown with pines indicates a general and unsparing destruction of the houses of the people who once inhabited the valley, at the hands of their enemies. The cañon through the Mesa Verde is quite uniformly two hundred yards wide, with perpendicular walls of grayish cretaceous sandstone ranging from six hundred to one thousand feet in height. Numbers of the mounds of ruined adobe were met with at each advance into the cañon, and upon promontories jutting out towards the stream, remains of stone walls were seen as high as fifty feet from the river’s bed. Every step revealed great quantities of broken pottery, and with this statement we will let the subject of these fragmentary relics of the by-gone civilization rest for the present.
One of the first cliff houses discovered by the explorers is a most interesting structure, the position of which, over six hundred feet from the bottom of the cañon in a niche of the wall, furnishes a significant commentary on the straits to which this sorely-pressed people were driven by their enemies. Five hundred feet of the ascent to this aërial dwelling was comparatively easy, but a hundred feet of almost perpendicular wall confronted the party, up which they could never have climbed but for the fact that they found a series of steps cut in the face of the rock leading up to the ledge upon which the house was built.
This ledge was ten feet wide by twenty feet in length, with a a vertical space between it and the overhanging rock of fifteen feet. The house occupied only half this space, the remainder having been used as an esplanade, and once was inclosed by a balustrade resting on abutments, built partly upon the sloping face of the precipice below. The house was but twelve feet high and two-storied. Though the walls did not reach up to the rock above, it is uncertain whether it ever had any other roof. The ground plan showed a front room of six by nine feet in dimensions, in the rear of which were two smaller rooms, each measuring five by seven feet. The left-hand room projected along the cliff, beyond the front room, in the form of an L. The rock of the cliff served as the rear wall of the house. The cedar beams upon which the upper floor had rested had nearly all disappeared. The door opening on the esplanade was but twenty by thirty inches in size, while a window in the same story was but twelve inches square. A window in the upper story, which commands an extended view down the cañon, corresponded in dimensions and position with the door below. The lintels of the window were small straight cedar sticks laid close together, upon which the stones rested. Opposite this window was another and smaller one, opening into a semicircular cistern, formed by a wall inclosing the angle formed by the side wall of the house against the rock, and holding about two and a half hogsheads. The bottom of the reservoir was reached by descending on a series of cedar pegs about one foot apart, and leading downward from the window. The workmanship of the structure was of a superior order; the perpendiculars were true ones and the angles carefully squared. The mortar used was of a grayish white color, very compact and adhesive. Some little taste was evinced by the occupants of this human swallow’s nest. The front rooms were plastered smoothly with a thin layer of firm adobe cement, colored a deep maroon, while a white band, eight inches wide, had been painted around the room at both floor and ceiling. An examination of the immediate vicinity revealed the ruins of half a dozen similar dwellings in the ledges of the cliffs, some of them occupying positions the inaccessibility of which must ever be a wonder, when considered as places of residence for human beings. Half-way down the cañon, one of Mr. Jackson’s party discovered a rather remarkable watch-tower, which, because of the accumulations of débris, he was not able to accurately measure, though approximate figures were given. Since his visit, the tower has been thoroughly examined by Mr. W. H. Holmes, to whose work in this field we will refer on a future page. Mr. Holmes’ measurements and ground-plan are, therefore, substituted for those of Mr. Jackson.
The diameter of the outer wall is forty-three feet, that of the inner, twenty-five feet. The outer wall is still standing to the height of twelve feet at one point, and is in a fair state of preservation, with a thickness of twenty-one inches, and has the stones dressed to the curve. The ring-shaped space between the inner and outer wall is estimated to have contained ten compartments, two of which at present have complete walls. No door or window was observed in the outer wall, and it is supposed that access was obtained by means of a ladder. Two nearly rectangular openings were found connecting the outer apartments with the central part of the tower, which no doubt was used as an estufa.[477] Mr. Jackson, after leaving the tower which Mr. Holmes has so fully described (of which the above is but a condensed account), saw similar towers on a somewhat smaller scale. His next discovery in the face of the vertical rock, which here ran up from the bottom of the cañon and at a height of from fifty to one hundred feet, were a number of nest-like habitations, one of which is figured in the cut.