During the summer of 1885 the Director, accompanied by Mr. James
Stevenson, revisited portions of Arizona and New Mexico in which many
structures are found which have greatly interested travelers and
anthropologists, and about which various theories have grown. The
results of the investigation have been so much more distinct and
comprehensive than any before obtained that they require to be reported
with some detail.
On the plain to the west of the Little Colorado River and north of the
San Francisco Mountain there are many scattered ruins, usually having
one, two, or three rooms each, all of which are built of basaltic
cinders and blocks. Through the plain a valley runs to the north, and
then east to the Little Colorado. Down the midst of the valley there is
a wash, through which, in seasons of great rainfall, a stream courses.
Along this stream there are extensive ruins built of sandstone and
limestone. At one place a village site was discovered, in which several
hundred people once found shelter. To the north of this and about
twenty-five miles from the summit of San Francisco Peak there is a
volcanic cone of cinder and basalt. This small cone had been used as the
site of a village, a pueblo having been built around the crater. The
materials of construction were derived from a great sandstone quarry
near by, and the pit from which they were taken was many feet in depth
and extended over two or three acres of ground. The cone rises on the
west in a precipitous cliff from the valley of an intermittent creek.
The pueblo was built on that side at the summit of the cliff, and
extending on the north and south sides along the summit of steep slopes,
was inclosed on the east, so that the plaza was entered by a covered
way. The court, or plaza, was about one-third of an acre in area. The
little pueblo contained perhaps sixty or seventy rooms. Southward of San
Francisco Mountain many other ruins were found.
East of the San Francisco Peak, at a distance of about twelve miles,
another cinder cone was found. Here the cinders are soft and friable,
and the cone is a prettily shaped dome. On the southern slope there are
excavations into the indurated and coherent cinder mass, constituting
chambers, often ten or twelve feet in diameter and six to ten feet in
height. The chambers are of irregular shape, and occasionally a larger
central chamber forms a kind of vestibule to several smaller ones
gathered about it. The smaller chambers are sometimes at the same
altitude as the central or principal one, and sometimes at a lower
altitude. About one hundred and fifty of these chambers have been
excavated. Most of them are now partly filled by the caving in of the
walls and ceilings, but some of them are yet in a good state of
preservation. In these chambers, and about them on the summit and sides
of the cinder cone, many stone implements were found, especially
metates. Some bone implements also were discovered. At the very summit
of the little cone there is a plaza, inclosed by a rude wall made of
volcanic cinders, the floor of which was carefully leveled. The plaza is
about forty-five by seventy-five feet in area. Here the people lived in
underground houses--chambers hewn from the friable volcanic cinders.
Before them, to the south, west, and north, stretched beautiful valleys,
beyond which volcanic cones are seen rising amid pine forests. The
people probably cultivated patches of ground in the low valleys.
About eighteen miles still farther to the east of San Francisco Mountain
another ruined village was discovered, built about the crater of a
volcanic cone. This volcanic peak is of much greater magnitude. The
crater opens to the eastward. On the south many stone dwellings have
been built of the basaltic and cinder-like rocks. Between the ridge on
the south and another on the northwest there is a low saddle in which
other buildings have been erected, and in which a great plaza was found,
much like the one previously described. But the most interesting part of
this village was on the cliff which rose on the northwest side of the
crater. In this cliff are many natural caves, and the caves themselves
were utilized as dwellings by inclosing them in front with walls made of
volcanic rocks and cinders. These cliff dwellings are placed tier above
tier, in a very irregular way. In many cases natural caves were thus
utilized; in other cases cavate chambers were made; that is, chambers
have been excavated in the friable cinders. On the very summit of the
ridge stone buildings were erected, so that this village was in part a
cliff village, in part cavate, and in part the ordinary stone pueblo.
The valley below, especially to the southward, was probably occupied by
their gardens. In the chambers among the overhanging cliffs a great many
interesting relics were found, of stone, bone, and wood, and many
potsherds.
About eight miles southeast of Flagstaff, a little town on the southern
slope of San Francisco Mountain, Oak Creek enters a canyon, which runs
to the eastward and then southward for a distance of about ten miles.
The gorge is a precipitous box canyon for the greater part of this
distance. It is cut through carboniferous rocks--sandstones and
limestones--which are here nearly horizontal. The softer sandstones
rapidly disintegrate, and the harder sandstones and limestones remain.
Thus broad shelves are formed on the sides of the cliffs, and these
shelves, or the deep recesses between them, were utilized, so that here
is a village of cliff dwellings. There are several hundred rooms
altogether. The rooms are of sandstone, pretty carefully worked and laid
in mortar, and the interior of the rooms was plastered. The opening for
the chimney was usually by the side of the entrance, and the ceilings of
the rooms are still blackened with soot and smoke. Around this village,
on the terrace of the canyon, great numbers of potsherds, stone
implements, and implements of bone, horn, and wood were found; and here,
as in all of the other ruins mentioned, corncobs in great abundance were
discovered.
In addition to the four principal ruins thus described many others are
found, most of them being of the ordinary pueblo type. From the evidence
presented it would seem that they had all been occupied at a
comparatively late date. They were certainly not abandoned more than
three or four centuries ago.
Later in the season the Director visited the Supai Indians of Cataract
Canyon, and was informed by them that their present home had been taken
up not many generations ago, and that their ancestors occupied the ruins
which have been described; and they gave such a circumstantial account
of the occupation and of their expulsion by the Spaniards, that no doubt
can be entertained of the truth of their traditions in this respect. The
Indians of Cataract Canyon doubtless lived on the north, east, and south
of San Francisco Mountain at the time this country was discovered by the
Spaniards, and they subsequently left their cliff and cavate dwellings
and moved into Cataract Canyon, where they now live. It is thus seen
that these cliff and cavate dwellings are not of an ancient prehistoric
time, but that they were occupied by a people still existing, who also
built pueblos of the common type.
Later in the season the party visited the cavate ruins near Santa Clara,
previously explored by Mr. Stevenson. Here, on the western side of the
Rio Grande del Norte, was found a system of volcanic peaks, constituting
what is known as the Valley Range. To the east of these peaks,
stretching far beyond the present channel of the Rio Grande, there was
once a great Tertiary lake, which was gradually filled with the sands
washed into it on every hand and by the ashes blown out of the adjacent
volcanoes. This great lake formation is in some places a thousand feet
in thickness. When the lake was filled the Rio Grande cut its channel
through the midst to a depth of many hundreds of feet. The volcanic
mountains to the westward send to the Rio Grande a number of minor
streams, which in a general way are parallel with one another. The Rio
Grande itself, and all of these lateral streams, have cut deep gorges
and canyons, so that there are long, irregular table-lands, or mesas,
extending from the Rio Grande back to the Valley Mountains, each mesa
being severed from the adjacent one by a canyon or canyon valley; and
each of these long mesas rises with a precipitous cliff from the valley
below. The cliffs themselves are built of volcanic sands and ashes, and
many of the strata are exceedingly light and friable. The specific
gravity of some of these rocks is so low that they will float on water.
Into the faces of these cliffs, in the friable and easily worked rock,
many chambers have been excavated; for mile after mile the cliffs are
studded with them, so that altogether there are many thousands.
Sometimes a chamber or series of chambers is entered from a terrace, but
usually they were excavated many feet above any landing or terrace
below, so that they could be reached only by ladders. In other places
artificial terraces were built by constructing retaining walls and
filling the interior next to the cliff with loose rock and sand. Very
often steps were cut into the face of a cliff and a rude stairway formed
by which chambers could be reached. The chambers were very irregularly
arranged and very irregular in size and structure. In many cases there
is a central chamber, which seems to have been a general living room for
the people, back of which two, three, or more chambers somewhat smaller
are found. The chambers occupied by one family are sometimes connected
with those occupied by another family, so that two or three or four sets
of chambers have interior communication. Usually, however, the
communication from one system of chambers to another was by the outside.
Many of the chambers had evidently been occupied as dwellings. They
still contained fireplaces and evidences of fire; there were little
caverns or shelves in which various vessels were placed, and many
evidences of the handicraft of the people were left in stone, bone,
horn, and wood, and in the chambers and about the sides of the cliffs
potsherds are abundant. On more careful survey it was found that many
chambers had been used as stables for asses, goats, and sheep. Sometimes
they had been filled a few inches, or even two or three feet, with the
excrement of these animals. Ears of corn and corncobs were also found in
many places. Some of the chambers were evidently constructed to be used
as storehouses or caches for grain. Altogether it is very evident that
the cliff houses have been used in comparatively modern times; at any
rate since the people owned asses, goats, and sheep. The rock is of such
a friable nature that it will not stand atmospheric degradation very
long, and there is abundant evidence of this character testifying to the
recent occupancy of these cavate dwellings.
Above the cliffs, on the mesas, which have already been described,
evidences of more ancient ruins were found. These were pueblos built of
cut stone rudely dressed. Every mesa had at least one ancient pueblo
upon it, evidently far more ancient than the cavate dwellings found in
the face of the cliffs. It is, then, very plain that the cavate
dwellings are not of great age; that they have been occupied since the
advent of the white man, and that on the summit of the cliffs there are
ruins of more ancient pueblos.
Now, the pottery of Santa Clara had been previously studied by Mr.
Stevenson, who made a large collection there two or three years ago, and
it was at once noticed that the potsherds of these cliff dwellings are,
both in shape and material, like those now made by the Santa Clara
Indians. The peculiar pottery of Santa Clara is readily distinguished,
as may be seen by examining the collection now in the National Museum.
While encamped in the valley below, the party met a Santa Clara Indian
and engaged him in conversation. From him the history of the cliff
dwellings was soon obtained. His statement was that originally his
people lived in six pueblos, built of cut stone, upon the summit of the
mesas; that there came a time when they were at war with the Apaches and
Navajos, when they abandoned their stone pueblos above and for greater
protection excavated the chambers in the cliffs below; that when this
war ended part of them returned to the pueblos above, which were
rebuilt; that there afterward came another war, with the Comanche
Indians, and they once more resorted to cliff dwellings. At the close of
this war they built a pueblo in the valley of the Rio Grande, but at the
time of the invasion of the Spaniards their people refused to be
baptized, and a Spanish army was sent against them, when they abandoned
the valley below and once more inhabited the cliff dwellings above. Here
they lived many years, until at last a wise and good priest brought them
peace, and persuaded them to build the pueblo which they now occupy--the
village of Santa Clara. The ruin of the pueblo which they occupied
previous to the invasion of the Spaniards is still to be seen about a
mile distant from the present pueblo.
The history thus briefly given was repeated by the governor and by other
persons, all substantially to the same effect. It is therefore evident
that the cavate dwellings of the Santa Clara region belong to a people
still extant; that they are not of great antiquity, and do not give
evidence of a prehistoric and now extinct race.
Plans and measurements were made of some of the villages with sufficient
accuracy to prepare models. Photographic views and sketches were also
procured with which to illustrate a detailed report of the subject to be
published by the Bureau.