RUINS OF HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF THE SAN JUAN RIVER
AND ITS TRIBUTARIES--CONTINUED.
About sixty miles north of the pueblos on the Chaco, and in the
valley of the Animas River, is a cluster of stone pueblos, very
similar to the former. These I visited in 1878. The valley is broad
at this point, and for some miles above and below to its mouth. At
the time of our visit (July 22) the river was a broad stream,
carrying a large volume of water. We followed down the river from
the point of its rise in the dividing range, where it was a mere
brook, nearly the whole distance through Silverton to Animas City.
The constant accession of mountain streams, and the rapid descent of
its bed, soon changed it into a noisy and dashing stream. About
twenty miles above Animas City we were compelled to ascend to the
top of the bordering mountains to avoid the narrow canyon below,
which was impassable; and in descending from Animas City to visit
these pueblos we crossed over to the La Plata Valley, and after
passing through this valley we recrossed to the Animas Valley to
avoid similar canyons also impassable. The supply of water for
irrigation at the pueblo was abundant. [Footnote: The engravings of
Figs. 40, 41 and 41a were kindly loaned by Mr. F. W. Putnam of the
Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass.]
The pueblo of which the ground plan is shown, Fig. 40, is one of
four situated within the extent of one mile on the west side of the
Animas River in New Mexico, about twelve miles above its mouth.
Besides these four, there are five other smaller ruins of inferior
structures within the same area. This pueblo was five or perhaps six
stories high, consisting of a main building three hundred and
sixty-eight feet long, and two wings two hundred and seventy feet
long, measured along the external wall on the right and left sides,
and one hundred and ninety-nine feet measured along the inside from
the end back to the main building.
[Illustration: Fig. 40--Ground plan of Pueblo on Animas River, N.
M.]
A fourth structure crosses from the end of one wing to the end of
the other, thus inclosing an open court. It was of the width of one
and perhaps two rows of apartments, and slightly convex outward,
which enlarged somewhat the size of the court. The main building and
the wings were built in the so-called terraced form; that is to say,
the first row of apartments in the main building and in each wing on
the court side were but one story high. The second row back of these
were carried up two stories high, the third row three stories, and
so on to the number of five stories for the main building and four
for each wing. The external wall rose forty or fifty feet where the
structure was five stories high and but ten feet on the court side,
including a low parapet wall, where the structure was but one story
high. There was no entrance to these great structures in the ground
story. After getting admission within the court, they ascended to
the roof of the first row of apartments by means of ladders, and in
the same way, by ladders, to each successive story. As the second
story receded from the first, the third from the second, and so on,
each successive story made a great step ten feet high. The
apartments were entered through trap-doors in the roof of each story,
the descent being by ladders inside. In some places, without doubt,
the upper stories were entered by doorways from the roof of the
story in front.
The two wings are a mass of ruins. Pit-holes along the summit show
the forms of the rooms, with plain traces of the original walls here
and there, and excavations, made by curious settlers, have opened a
number of rooms in the ground story of one of the wings. These we
entered and measured. Some of the rooms were faced with stone, i.e.,
we found a stone wall regularly laid up, like the one in the main
building, as will elsewhere be shown. Some of the walls in these
rooms were of cobblestone and adobe; others were of stone with
natural faces and cobblestone intermixed. We saw no wall of adobe
brick alone. The fallen walls formed a mass about twelve feet deep
over the site of the wings, being the deepest on the outside and
thinning out on the court side.
The mass of material used in the construction of these edifices was
very great and surprises the beholder. It is explained in part by
the thickness of the walls. We measured a number of them. They were
two feet four inches, two feet six inches, two feet nine inches,
three feet, and in rare cases three feet six inches thick. None
measured less than two feet.
The main building was originally the best constructed part of the
edifice, it may be supposed, because a part of it now remains
standing. The walls of the first story, of some part of the second,
and, in some places, of a part of the third story, forming the
second row of apartments from the outside, are still standing, and
rise about twenty five feet from the ground. The measurements of the
second row of apartments, as shown in the diagram were from the
standing walls, and were made in the second story.
The first or basement story is filled up with the rubbish of the
fallen walls, ceilings, and floors, in the second row of apartments
named. In some cases they are full above the line of the original
ceilings; in others nearly up to them. The main ceiling beams were
of yellow cedar from eight to twelve inches in diameter, usually
three and four in number, and were placed across the narrow way of
the room. Stubs of these beams still remain in the walls parallel
with the court. Just above the line of these beams in the other two
walls were the ends of a row of poles about four inches in diameter,
which passed transversely across the cedar beams Stubs of these poles,
broken off short at the line of the walls, still remain in place.
Upon these poles were originally thin pieces of split cedar limbs,
and then the floor of adobe mortar, four or five inches thick. We
thus get the position and height of the floor of the first and
second stories, which were about nine feet six inches for the ground
story, and nine feet for the second story.
The external wall of the main building has fallen the entire length
of the structure. As these ruins are resorted to by the few settlers
in the valley as a stone quarry to obtain stone for foundations to
their houses and barns, and for stoning up their wells, the loose
material is being gradually removed, and when the standing walls are
more convenient to take they will be removed also. One farmer told
me he thought that one quarter of the accessible material of this
and the adjacent stone pueblo had already been removed. It is to be
hoped that the number of these settlers inclined to Vandalism will
not increase.
A part of the partition walls which connected the outside wall with
the next parallel wall is still standing where the wall last named
rises above the second story. They stand out for three or four feet
like buttresses against the wall, and show that the masonry of the
parallel and transverse walls was articulated, that the partition
walls were continuous from front to rear, and that the walls of the
several stories rested upon each other. All this is seen by a bare
inspection of the walls as they now stand.
The masonry itself is the chief matter of interest in these
structures. Every room in the main building was faced with stone on
the four sides, having an adobe floor and a wooden ceiling. Each
room had, as far as walls now remain to show, two doorways through
the walls parallel with the court, and four openings about twelve
inches square, two on the side of each doorway, near the ceiling.
These openings were for light and ventilation. In a limited sense it
may be said that the stones were dressed, and also that they were
laid in courses, but, in the high and strict meaning of these terms,
neither is true. The stones used were small and of different sizes.
Sometimes they were nearly square, from six to eight inches on a side;
sometimes a foot long by six inches wide. The latter is the size of
the stones used at Uxmal and Chichen Itza, according to Norman. In
some cases longer and thicker stones were used without any attempt
to square the ends. In some instances thin pieces of stone were
employed with parallel faces. In all cases the stone was a sandstone,
now of a reddish brown color. It is the prevailing stone in the
bluffs of the Animas River, and of all the rivers parallel with it
running into the San Juan, as far as personal observation enabled me
to judge. It is a soft rather than a hard stone, usually of a buff
color when first quarried, and some of it has decayed in the using.
The wasted and weatherworn appearance of some of these stones would
otherwise indicate a very great age for the structure. With stone of
the size used a good face can be formed by simple fracture, and a
joint sufficiently close may be made by a few strokes with a stone
maul. If finer work was aimed at, it must have been accomplished by
rubbing the stones to a face. But this work is sufficiently
explained by the former processes. In the row of apartments and
stories named, both faces of each wall were of stone, so that all of
the apartments were of stone on the inside. They were fair walls,
both in masonry and workmanship, and creditable to the builders.
There was an attempt to lay up these walls in courses of uniform
thickness, but each course differing from the one above and below it.
The attempt was only partially successful. They did not hesitate to
break in upon the regularity of the courses. Some of the standing
walls are now sprung; but most of them are straight, and fairly
vertical, the adobe mortar being sound and the bond unbroken.
The Indian had a string from time immemorial. With it he could
strike a circle, and lay out the four sides of a quadrangular
structure with tolerable correctness. It is not too much to assume
that with a string and sinker attached the Village Indian had the
plumb-line, and could prove his wall as well as we can. At all events,
the eye still proves the general correctness of their work.
The adobe mortar of the Pueblo Indians is something more than mud
mortar, although far below a mortar of lime and sand. Adobe is a
kind of finely pulverized clay with a bond of considerable strength
by mechanical cohesion. In Southern Colorado, in Arizona, and New
Mexico, there are immense tracts covered with what is called adobe
soil. It varies somewhat in the degree of its excellence. The kind
of which they make their pottery has the largest per cent of alumina,
and its presence is indicated by the salt weed which grows in this
particular soil. This kind also makes the best adobe mortar. The
Indians use it freely in laying their walls, as freely as our masons
use lime mortar; and although it never acquires the hardness of
cement, it disintegrates slowly. The mortar in these walls is still
sound, so that it requires some effort of strength to loosen a stone
from the wall and remove it. But this adobe mortar is adapted only
to the dry climate of Southern Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico,
where the precipitation is less than five inches per annum. The
rains and frosts of a northern climate would speedily destroy it. To
the presence of this adobe soil, found in such abundance in the
regions named, and to the sandstone of the bluffs, where masses are
often found in fragments, we must attribute the great progress made
by these Indians in house-building.
The exclusive presence of this adobe mortar in all New Mexican
structures of the aboriginal period shows that the tribes of New
Mexico were then ignorant of a mortar of lime and sand. And here a
digression may be allowed to consider whether a cement of this grade
was known to the aborigines. Theoretically, the use of a mortar
composed of quick-lime and sand, which gives a cement chemically
united, would not be expected of the Indian tribes either in North
or South America. There is no sufficient proof that they ever
produced a cement of this high grade. It requires a kiln,
artificially constructed, and a concentrated heat to burn limestone
into lime, supposing they had learned that lime could be thus
obtained, and some knowledge of the properties of quick-lime before
they reached the idea of a true cement. The Spanish writers
generally speak of walls of lime and stone, thus implying a mortar
of lime and sand. Thus, Bernal Diaz speaks of the great temple in
the Pueblo of Mexico as surrounded "with double enclosures built of
stone and lime."
[Footnote: The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, Keatinge's
Translation, Salem ed., 1803, vol. i, p. 208.] Clavigero remarks
that "the houses of lords and people of circumstances were built of
stone and lime." [Footnote: History of Mexico, Cullen's Trans., Phila.
ed., 1817, vol. ii, p. 232.]
Again, "the ignorant Mr. De Pauw denies that the Mexicans had either
the knowledge or made use of lime; but it is evident from the
testimony of all the historians of Mexico, by tribute rolls, and
above all from the ancient buildings still remaining, that all these
nations made the same use of lime as all the Europeans do." [Footnote:
ib., vol. ii, p. 237.]
In like manner, Herrera, speaking of Zempoala, near Vera Cruz,
remarks that the Spaniards, entering the town, found "the houses
[were] built of lime and stone;" [Footnote: History of America,
Stevens' Trans., London ed., 1725, vol ii, p. 266.] and again,
speaking of the houses in Yucatan, he remarks that "at the place
where the encounter happened, there were three houses built of lime
and stone." [Footnote: ib., p. 112.]
These several statements can hardly be said to prove the fact of the
use of a mortar of lime and sand. Mr. John L. Stephens, in speaking
of the ruins at Palenque, is more explicit: "The building was
constructed of stone, with a mortar of lime and sand, and the whole
front was covered with stucco, and painted." [Footnote: Central
America, Chiapas and Yucatan, vol. ii, p. 310.]
The back wall of the governor's house at Uxmal is nine feet thick
through its length of two hundred and seventy feet. In this wall, by
means of crowbars, "the Indians made a hole six and seven feet deep,
but throughout the wall was solid and consisted of large stones
imbedded in mortar, almost as hard as rock." [Footnote: ib., vol. i,
p. 178.]
At the ruins of Zayi, there was one row of ten apartments, two
hundred and twenty feet long, called the Casas Cerrada, or closed
house, because the core over which the triangular ceiling was
constructed had not been removed when the house was abandoned, of
which Stephens says, "We found ourselves in apartments finished with
the walls and ceilings like the others, but filled up (except so far
as they had been emptied by the Indians) with solid masses of mortar
and stones." [Footnote: Central American, Chiapas and Yucatan, vol.
ii, p. 23.]
Norman, speaking of the ruins of the House of the Cacique at Chichen,
remarks, "that the wall is made of large and uniformly square blocks
of limestone set in mortar, which appears to be as durable as the
stone itself." [Footnote: Rambles in Yucatan, p. 120.]
Elsewhere, speaking of the ruins of Yucatan generally, he observes,
"the stones are cut in parallelopipeds of about twelve inches in
length and six in breadth, the interstices filled up of the same
materials of which the terraces are composed." [Footnote: ib. p. 127]
That these tribes used mortar of some kind in their stone walls
cannot be doubted, but these several statements do not prove the use
of quick-lime, which is the main question. Mr. Stephens' statement
satisfied me until I saw the New Mexican pueblos. These show that a
very efficient mortar can be had without the use of lime. The
Indians of Mexico and the coast tribes near Vera Cruz plastered
their houses externally with gypsum, which made them a brilliant
white, and the stucco used upon the inner walls of houses in Chiapas
and Yucatan was not unlikely made of gypsum. This mineral is
abundant as well as easily treated. From it comes plaster of Paris,
and from it may have come in some form the bond which held the
mortar together, to the strength of which Mr. Stephens refers.
The neatness and general correctness of the masonry is now best seen
in the doorways. In the standing walls of the second story, and of
the first, where occasionally uncovered, there are to be seen two
doorways in each room, as before stated, running in all cases across
the building from the court side toward the external wall, and never
in the direction of its length. These doorways measured some three
feet two inches in height by two feet six inches in width, and
others three feet four inches by two feet seven inches.
The stone used in these doorways are rather smaller than those in
other parts of the wall, but prepared in the same manner.
I brought away two of these stones, taken from the standing walls of
the main building, as samples of the character of the work with
respect to size and dressing. Fig. 41 represents one of them,
engraved from a photograph. It measures eight inches in its greatest
length by six inches in its greatest width, and it is two and
three-quarter inches in thickness.
[Illustration: Fig. 41.--Stone from doorway.]
The upper and lower faces of the stone are substantially but not
exactly, parallel. It also shows one angle, which is substantially,
but not exactly a right angle and it was so adjusted that the long
edge was on the doorway and short one in the wall of a chamber or
apartment, with the right angle at the corner between them. This
stone was evidently prepared by fracture, probably with a stone maul,
and the regularity of the breakage was doubtless partly due to skill
and partly to accident. It shows no marks of the chisel or the drove,
or of having been rubbed, and where the square is applied to the
sides or angles the rudeness of the stone is perfectly apparent.
Fig. 41a represents a sandstone cut by American skilled workmen in
the form of a brick, and it is intended to show by comparison the
great difference between the dressed stone of the civilized man and
the ruder stone of the mason in the condition of barbarism. The
comparison shows that no instruments of exactness were used in the
stone work of the pueblo, and that exactness was not attempted. But
the accuracy of a practiced eye and hand, such as their methods
afforded, was reached, and this was all they attempted. With stones
as rude as that shown in the figure, a fair and even respectable
stone wall may be laid. The art of architecture in stone is of slow
and difficult growth. Stone prepared by fracture with a stone hammer
precedes dressed stone, which requires metallic implements. In like
manner mud mortar or adobe mortar precedes a mortar of lime and sand.
The Village Indians of America were working their way experimentally,
and step by step, in the art of house-building, as all mankind have
been obliged to do, each race for itself; and the structures the
Village Indians have raised in various parts of America, imperfect
as they are by contrast, are highly creditable to their intelligence.
Stone lintels were not used for these doorways, as stones three feet
long would have been required. No stones of half that length are to
be seen in any of the walls. They had, however, the idea of a stone
lintel, for they used them in this structure over the foot-square
openings for light and air. We found a stone lintel over an opening
eighteen inches wide in a cliff house on the Mancos River. This was
so firmly imbedded that we found its removal impossible. They used
for a lintel six round cedar cross-pieces, Fig. 42, each about four
inches in diameter and now perfectly sound.
[Illustration: Fig. 42.--Section of Cedar Lintel.]
In some of these doorways we noticed a peculiar feature. On the side
toward the external wall, one and sometimes two of these wooden
lintels were placed, four and sometimes six inches lower than the
remainder, so that on entering from the outside room into the second
room, the top of the doorway rose higher as the room was entered. A
necessity was experienced to save the head from bumps, and the
wonder is that it did not occur to them to raise the doorways to the
height of the body. As the doorways were always open, no doors being
used, it may well be that larger openings would have created
stronger currents of air through the building than they wished. The
ends of these lintels were hacked off by stone implements of some
kind.
The peculiar arrangement of the doorways tends to show that this
great house was divided into sections by the partition walls
extending from the court to the exterior wall; and that the rooms
above were connected with those below by means of trap-doors and
ladders. If this supposition be well founded, the five rooms on the
ground floor; from the court back; communicated with each other by
doorways. The four in the second story communicated with each other
in the same manner, and with those below through trap-doors in the
floors. The three rooms in the third story communicated with each
other by doorways, and with those below as before. The same would be
true of the two rooms of the fourth story. It seems probable that
the connected rooms were occupied by a group of related families.
We afterwards found the same thing nearly exemplified in the present
occupied Pueblo of Taos, in New Mexico. We found that the families
lived in the second and upper stories, and used the rooms below them
for storage and for granaries. Each family had two, four, and six
rooms, and those who held the upper rooms held those below.
In the south wing before mentioned, several rooms on the ground
floor are still perfect, with the ceilings in place upholding the
rubbish above. The openings or trap-doorways of two of these rooms
are still perfect, but the ladders are gone. The rooms had been
opened, us elsewhere stated, by late explorers. One of these
trap-doors measured sixteen by seventeen inches, and the other
sixteen inches square. Each was formed in the floor by pieces of
wood put together. The work was neatly done. These rooms were
smaller than the rooms above. Some were as narrow as four feet six
inches, others six feet, showing that one room had been divided into
two. The basement rooms were probably occupied for storage
exclusively, whence their division. They were dark, except as light
entered through the trap-doorway from above.
The structure connecting the wings and bounding the court was
evidently a single or double row of apartments. This is shown by the
amount of fallen material, which is larger than a wall would require,
and from pits or depressions which plainly marked the outline of
apartments.
There are two circular estufas in the main building, one
twenty-three feet and the other twenty-eight feet in diameter. A
part of the wall of the first estufa is still standing. It is of
stone, mostly of blocks about five inches square, and laid in courses,
with considerable regularity. The work is equal to the best masonry
in the edifice. In the open court, and near the outer structure,
bounding it in front, is another estufa of great size, sixty-three
and a half feet in diameter. These estufas, which are used as places
of council, and for the performance of their religious rites, are
still found at all the present occupied pueblos in New Mexico. There
are six at Taos, three at each house, and they are partly sunk in
the ground by an excavation. They are entered through a trap-doorway
in the roof, the descent being by a ladder.
Outside the front wall closing the court, and about thirty feet
distance therefrom, are the remains of a low wall crossing the
entire front and extending beyond it. The end structures were about
sixty-five feet long by forty feet wide, while at the center was a
smaller structure, fifty-four feet long by eighteen wide. All its
parts were connected. It was evidently erected for defensive purposes;
but it is impossible to make out its character from the remains. One
wing is several feet longer than the other, and the wall on the
court side is about twenty feet longer than the opposite exterior
wall, thus showing that they used no exact measurements.
There were no fire-places with chimneys in this structure. There are
none in the ruins in Yucatan and Central America. It is a fair
inference, therefore, that chimneys were entirely unknown to the
aborigines at the time of their discovery. They have since that time
been adopted into the old pueblo houses from American or Spanish
sources. They are placed in one corner of the room. We saw recently
at Taos two chimneys and two fire-places in one and the same room,
one for cooking and the other for a fire to warm the room; proof
conclusive that they were not to the chimney born. They were in an
apartment of one of the principal chiefs.
In a number of rooms are recesses like niches left in the wall,
about two feet six inches wide and high, and about eighteen inches
deep. These furnished places to set household articles in, in the
place of a mantel or shelf. We afterwards saw niches precisely
similar at Taos, and thus used.
It remains to consider the number of rooms or apartments contained
in this great edifice. It is plain that it was built in the terraced
form, the second story set back from the first, the third from the
second, and so on to the last, which was a single row of apartments,
on the top somewhere, but not necessarily on the back side. Pueblos
were not entirely uniform in this respect The edifice at Taos
recedes in front and rear and even upon the sides. This may have
been built in the same way, but it can neither be proved nor
disproved from the ruins. The number of apartments would not vary
much whether the upper stories were symmetrically or irregularly
formed. If symmetrical, the main building contained two hundred and
sixty apartments, and each wing seventy, making the computation for
the latter by area and from the number of depression still
discernible, thus making an aggregate of four hundred rooms.
The house was a fortress, proving the insecurity in which the people
lived. It was also a joint tenement house of the aboriginal American
model, indicating a plan of life not well understood. It may
indicate an ancient communism in living, practiced by large
households formed on the principle of kin. In such a case the
communism was limited to the household as a part of a kinship.
Those familiar with the remains of Indian Pueblos in ruins will
recognize at once the resemblance between this pueblo and the stone
pueblos in ruins on the Rio Chaco, in New Mexico, about sixty miles
distant from these ruins, particularly the one called Hungo Pavie,
so fully described by General J. H. Simpson. There is one particular
in which the masonry agrees, viz., in the use of courses of thin
stones, about half an inch in thickness, sometimes three together,
and sometimes five and six. These courses are carried along the wall
from one side to the other, but often broken in upon. The effect is
quite pretty. These stones measure six inches in length by one-half
an inch in thickness. General Simpson found the same courses of thin
stones, and even thinner, in the Chaco ruins, and comments upon the
pleasing effect they produced.
This edifice was a credit to the skill and industry of the men among
the Village Indians; for the men, and not the women, were the
architects and the masons, although the women undoubtedly assisted
in doing the work. Women brought stone and adobe and cedar, and made
adobe mortar, without a doubt, as they still do. One of the hopeful
features in their advancement was the beginning of the reversal of
the old usage which put all labor upon the women. It is now the rule
among the Village Indians for the men to assume the heavy work,
which was doubtless the case when this pueblo was constructed. They
cultivated maize, beans, and squashes, in garden beds, and irrigated
them with water drawn from the river by means of a canal, and passed
in several smaller streams through their gardens. The men now engage
in the work of cultivation. This is a sure sign of progress.
Off the south wing of the building, and without it, are the remains
of an additional building, large enough for twenty or thirty rooms
on the ground, some part of which were, doubtless, carried up two or
more stories high; but it is a mass of indistinct ruins, about which
little can be said except that some of the rooms were unusually large.
This may have been the first building constructed, and the one
occupied while the stone pueblo was being built.
[Illustration: Fig. 43.--Outline of a Stone Pueblo on Animus River.]
This outline plan is submitted with some hesitation, because the
sketch from which it is taken was made in haste, and with no
expectation of using it. It is but an approximation. Near the pueblo
last described, and about five hundred feet northeasterly therefrom,
is another pueblo in two sections, Fig. 43, with a space about
fifteen feet wide between them. They may have been, and probably were,
connected and inhabited as one structure. Some of the walls are
still standing, and a number of the rooms in the ground story are
well preserved, the ceilings still remaining in place. Although the
structure is chiefly of stone like the last, some of the walls are
of cobblestone and adobe mortar. The largest section seems to have
had an open court in the center in the form of a parallelogram. This
feature increased the difficulty of understanding the original form
of the house and the arrangement of the rooms. The walls of the first,
of parts of the second, and occasionally of parts of the third story,
are still standing in places. Many of the rooms are small, as the
measurements of the following rooms in the second story of the
smallest building of the two will show:
3 feet 4 inches by 6 feet 6 inches, 4 feet by 8 feet 4 inches, 4 feet
7 inches by 14 feet 2 inches, 6 feet 5 inches by 14 feet 9 inches,
7 feet 3 inches by 16 feet 9 inches, 6 feet 4 inches by 11 feet 7
inches, 7 feet 3 inches by 7 feet 5 inches, 8 feet 7 inches by 15
feet. Height of rooms, 8 feet. The rooms were faced with stone laid
up in the main in courses. They were small, from four to eight
inches square, and the walls from two to three feet in thickness.
Adobe mortar was used abundantly in the inner part of the wall, but
not showing on the face at the joints, the stones being laid
together as closely as the natural surfaces of the stone would permit,
and without mortar near the edge. This feature was also
characteristic of the walls of the pueblo first described.
Mr. Bandelier made to me recently the important suggestion that as
far as any progress or improvement in this architecture, in style or
character, can be discerned, it seems to have been from smaller to
larger rooms, followed by a reduction of the size of the house in
ground dimensions. The last is more particularly illustrated by the
houses in Yucatan, where single rooms are found, in rare cases,
sixty feet long, but where the size of the house in ground
dimensions is much smaller than of those in New Mexico. It was in
consequence of an examination of some very old pueblo ruins in New
Mexico, east of the Rio Grande, near Santo Domingo. There the pueblo
was more like a cluster of cells than of rooms, as many of them were
but four or five feet square, contrasting strongly with the present
inhabited pueblos. The same fact may be seen at Taos. It was
mentioned (p. 144) that the Taos Indians many years ago conquered
and dispossessed the former occupants of a pueblo at this place,
and that some remains of the old pueblo were still standing. In
1878 I visited one of the ground-rooms in the old structure still
standing, and entirely alone. It was about five feet by six in
ground-dimensions, and was then occupied by a solitary Taos Indian,
a sort of hermit, as his place of residence. A bunk across one side
furnished him both a bed and a seat, and the remaining room was
scarcely sufficient to turn around in, but it gave him all the home
he had, and, doubtless, all the room he needed. Another room, a few
feet distant, also a part of the old pueblo, was still standing.
These rooms were of adobe, and were about six feet high. As the
Indian gained in experience and knowledge in the use and
construction of the joint-tenement houses, improvements would
gradually manifest themselves. It is important to find and trace
this progress, as we have every reason to believe that it is one
system of architecture throughout North America at least, with a
connection of all its forms.
Along the curving or westerly side of the first building, and along
the northerly side, there are cedar beams projecting about four feet
from the wall in the second story on the line of the ceiling. They
are about four inches in diameter. Their object is not apparent.
In one of the basement rooms of the second building are a series of
pictographs upon a plastered wall. Our limited time would not permit
a sketch.
Midway between the pueblo, Fig. 40, and the one now being considered
is a circular ruin three hundred and thirty feet in circuit, which
seems to have consisted of two concentric rows of apartments around
an inclosed estufa. It was built of cobblestone and adobe mortar.
Pit-holes indicate the form and plan of the inclosing rooms, but the
ruin is too indistinct to form a clear idea of its structure. A
removal of the loose material would probably disclose the original
ground plan.
A few hundred feet north are the ruins of four other structures of
cobblestone and adobe quite near each other. They were, without doubt,
pueblo houses, but they are now a mass of undistinguishable ruins,
and, from present appearance, were probably ruins, when the stone
pueblos were inhabited. The river here runs nearer the western
border of the valley than the eastern, and quite near the pueblo
last noticed, but from this point it bears toward the east side of
the valley.
About a mile in a direction a little south of east and near the
river are the ruins of two other large pueblos, of which the lower
one is one thousand and forty feet in circuit, and the one above
four hundred and fifty-two feet. Both are built of sandstone and
cobblestone and adobe mortar. No part of the walls are standing
above the rubbish; but they were apparently contemporary with the
stone pueblos. The first stands upon the brink of the river, which
is now cutting away its foundations, thus proving that it was
insecurely located. The mass of fallen material is very great,
showing an apparent depth of at least fifteen feet. Some of the
basement rooms in each of these pueblos are probably still entire,
judging from the great mass of material over them. Great pit-holes
indicate the position of chambers and inclosing-walls. The largest
of the two pueblos is 300 feet in depth. In one place, where some
excavation has been done, the corner of a basement room is in sight.
All these ruins ought to be re-examined, and so far excavated as to
recover complete ground plans.
Near the mouth of the river are said to be still other ruins, and
still others on the east side of the river, which we had no time to
examine.
The valley of the Animas River is here broad and beautiful, about
three miles wide. The river passes nearly through the center of the
valley. The cliff, on the east side of the level plain, is bold and
mountainous, rising from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet high,
while on the west side the valley is bordered with the mesa
formation in two benches, one rising back of the other, and both as
level as a floor, with the highlands forming the divide between the
Animas and La Plata Rivers in the distance.
From the number and size of the houses, there was probably a
population of at least five thousand persons at this settlement,
living by horticulture. It is not now known by what tribe of Indians
these pueblos were inhabited or constructed.
These pueblos, newly constructed and in their best condition, must
have presented a commanding appearance. From the materials used in
their construction, from their palatial size and unique design, and
from the cultivated gardens by which they were doubtless surrounded,
they were calculated to impress the beholder very favorably with the
degree of culture to which the people had attained. It is a singular
fact that none of the occupied pueblos in New Mexico at the present
time are equal in materials or in construction with those found in
ruins. It tends to show a decadence of art among them since the
period of European discovery.
Westward of the Animas, the La Plata, and the Mancos Rivers, which
run southwesterly into the San Juan, is the Montezuma Valley, a
broad and level plain, so named by General Heffernan, of Animas City.
It is about fifty miles in length, and apparently ten miles wide at
the ranch of Mr. Henry L. Mitchell, which is situated at the
commencement of the McElmo Canyon.
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Pueblos at commencement of McElmo Canyon.]
It stretches southward thirty-six miles to the San Juan. In this
valley, which has no flowing stream through it at present (and there
is no certainty that it ever had), and which is without water,
except in springs and pools, and has but a slight rainfall during
the year, Mr. Mitchell was successfully cultivating, at the time of
our visit, wheat, oats, maize, and the garden vegetables. The valley
is uninhabited, except by the family of Mr. Mitchell, and a solitary
man living four miles westward. Their nearest neighbors are on the
Mancos River, twenty-five miles distant. The bluffs bordering the
eastern side of the valley rise boldly about fifteen hundred feet,
with table lands above, while on the west the valley is bordered
with mountains. About ten miles southwest of Mr. Mitchell's ranch
the Ute Mountain rises out of the plain, and from this point appears
as a solitary and detached mountain. The McElmo Canyon passes along
its north and westerly sides, while the main valley passes southward
along its eastern base. This high and noble mountain is situated in
the southwest corner of Colorado, near the intersection of the
boundary lines of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. It is a
conspicuous object from the La Plata Valley. The Montezuma Valley
possesses features of remarkable natural beauty.
Near Mr. Mitchell's ranch, and within a space of less than a mile
square are the ruins of nine pueblo houses of moderate size. They
are built of sandstone intermixed with cobblestone and adobe mortar.
They are now in a very ruinous condition, without standing walls in
any part of them above the rubbish. The largest of the number is
marked No. 1 in the plan Fig. 44, of which the outline of the
original structure is still discernible. It is ninety-four feet in
length and forty-seven feet in depth, and shows the remains of a
stone wall in front inclosing a small court about fifteen feet wide.
The mass of material over some parts of this structure is ten or
twelve feet deep. There are, no doubt, rooms with a portion of the
walls still standing covered with rubbish, the removal of which
would reveal a considerable portion of the original ground-plan.
A short distance below the pueblos last named is another cluster of
the same number of pueblos, and much in the same condition; and upon
rising ground near the foot of the bluff, on the east side of the
valley, there are, as Mr. Mitchell informed me, the ruins of several
pueblos of stone. He also informed me that similar ruins were to be
found here and there in the valley to the San Juan. Four miles
westerly, near the ranch of Mr. Shirt, are the ruins of another
large stone pueblo, together with an Indian cemetery, where each
grave is marked by a border of flat stones set level with the ground
in the form of a parallelogram eight feet by four feet. Near the
cluster of nine pueblos shown in the figure are found strewn on the
ground numerous fragments of pottery of high grade in the
ornamentation, and small arrow-heads of flint, quartz, and
chalcedony delicately formed, and small knife-blades with convex and
serrated edges in considerable numbers.
[Illustration: Fig. 45.--Outline plan of a stone pueblo near the
base of Ute Mountain.]
This is an immense ruin with small portions of the walls still
standing, particularly of the round tower of stone of three
concentric walls, incorporated in the structure, and a few chambers
in the north end of the main building. The round tower is still
standing nearly to the height of the first story. In its present
condition it was impossible to make a ground-plan showing the
several chambers, or to determine with certainty which side was the
front of the structure, assuming that it was constructed in the
terraced form. It is situated upon a vertical bluff of yellowish
sandstone rock about twenty feet high and about four miles below
Mr. Mitchell's ranch in the direction of the Ute Mountain and near
its northeastern base. The bluff is broken through to the bottom in
one place about twenty feet wide. Here there are some evidences that
a spring of water was inclosed in a reservoir by means of masonry.
The building is in two sections, separated by this break, of which
the main one is five hundred and ten feet long, and the smallest one
hundred and twenty feet, forming a nearly continuous front. They
stand back ten or fifteen feet from the verge of the bluff, and are
built of tabular pieces of sandstone and adobe mortar. Numerous
pit-holes in each structure indicate the chambers and the line of
the inclosing walls. The removal of the loose material would
doubtless disclose the ground-plan, but it would involve immense
labor. With the Ute Mountain rising majestically in the background,
and the broad valley in front, the situation of the pueblo is
remarkably fine.
The Round Tower is the most singular feature in this structure.
While it resembles the ordinary estufa, common to all these
structures, it differs from them in having three concentric walls.
No doorways are visible in the portion still standing, consequently
it must have been entered through the roof, in which respect it
agrees with the ordinary estufa. The inner chamber is about twenty
feet in diameter, and the spaces between the encircling walls are
about two feet each; the walls are about two feet in thickness, and
were laid up mainly with stones about four inches square, and, for
the most part, in courses. There is a similar round tower, having
but two concentric walls, at the head of the McElmo Canyon, and near
the ranch of Mr. Mitchell. It is shown in Fig. 44, and stands
entirely isolated. The diameter of the tower is thirty-four feet, of
which the inner chamber is twenty-three feet; the space between the
two walls is about six feet, and the thickness of the walls about
two feet six inches. It is laid up in the same manner as the one
last named, with stones about the same size, and the walls still
standing are about five feet in height. Partition walls divide the
outer space, one of which measured twenty inches in thickness.
Several hundred feet from the pueblo last named, further down the
valley, is another pueblo of large extent, and in a very ruined
condition.
A mile or more below the ranch of Mr. Mitchell, in the bordering
walls of the McElmo Canyon, are two cliff houses. The walls of the
bluff are here about twenty feet high, with large cavities formed in
them here and there. These houses, each of which consists of but two
or three small chambers, are built of stone, and stand but a few
feet above the bottom of the canyon. They are narrow, and not very
high, as the cavity in the rock is not very deep. Corrals for some
kind of domestic animals are found by the side of these houses in
the same hollows in the rock. This is proved by a mass of excrement,
about a foot in depth, still there, whether of the goat or sheep
cannot be stated, but this fact shows that they were inhabited
subsequent to the period of European discovery, although they may
have been built and used before. The canyon, at this point, is from
three hundred to five hundred feet wide.
I wish to call attention again to the San Juan district, to its
numerous ruins, and to its importance as an early seat of Village
Indian life. These ruins and those of a similar character in the
valley of the Chaco, together with numerous remains of structures of
sandstone, of cobblestone, and adobe in the San Juan Valley, in the
Pine River Valley, in the La Plata Valley, in the Animas River Valley,
in the Montezuma Valley, on the Hovenweep, and on the Rio Dolores,
suggest the probability that the remarkable area within the drainage
of the San Juan River and its tributaries has held a prominent place
in the first and most ancient development of Village Indian life in
America. The evidence of Indian occupation and cultivation
throughout the greater part of this area is sufficient to suggest
the hypothesis that the Indian here first attained to the condition
of the Middle Status of barbarism, and sent forth the migrating
bands who carried this advanced culture to the Mississippi Valley,
to Mexico, and Central America, and not unlikely to South America as
well.
Indian migrations are gradual outflows from an overstocked area,
followed by organization into independent tribes, and continuing
through centuries of time, until the ethnic life of each tribe is
expended, or a successful establishment is finally gained in a new
and perhaps far distant land. They planted gardens and constructed
houses as they advanced from district to district, and removed as
circumstances prompted a change of location.
Since the cultivation of maize and plants precedes or is synchronous
with this stage of development, it leads to the supposition that
maize must have been indigenous in this region, and that it was here
first brought under cultivation. There are some facts that seem to
favor this hypothesis.
[Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
At present I wish to call attention to such existing evidence as
points to the San Juan district as the anterior home of a number of
historic Indian tribes.
1. The Mound-Builders. Although these tribes had disappeared at the
epoch of European discovery, and cannot be classed with any known
Indian stock, their condition as horticultural tribes, their
knowledge of some of the native metals, and the high character of
their stone implements and pottery place them in the clans of
Village Indians. The nearest region from which they could have been
derived is New Mexico. There is no reason for referring them to the
San Juan region more than to the nearer country of the Rio Grande,
unless it should appear probable that the inhabitants of the latter
valley were themselves migrants from the same region. But there are
good reasons for deriving the Mound-Builders from the Village
Indians in some part of New Mexico.
2. The Mexican Tribes. The seven principal tribes of Mexico, called
collectively the Nahuatlacs, spoke dialects of the same language,
and all alike had a tradition that their ancestors came from the
north, and that the separate tribes came into Mexico at long
intervals apart. They arrived in the following order as to time: 1,
Sochomilcos; 2, Chalcas; 3, Tepanecans; 4, Tescucans; 5, Tlatluicans;
6, Tlascalans; 7, Aztecs or Mexicans. They settled in different
parts of Mexico. The Cholulans, Tepeacas, and Huexatsincos spoke
dialects of the Nahuatlac language, and were severally subdivisions
of one or the other preceding tribes. They had the same tradition of
a northern origin. These several tribes were among the most
prominent in Mexico at the period of Spanish discovery. Some of the
tribes of Yucatan and Central America also had similar traditions of
an original migration of their ancestors from the north.
Acosta, who visited Mexico in 1585, and whose work was published at
Seville in 1589, states the order of the migration of the Mexican
tribes as above given, and further says that they "come from other
far countries which lie toward the north, where now they have
discovered a kingdom they call New Mexico. There are two provinces
in this country, the one called Aztlan, which is to say, a place of
Herons [Cranes], and the other Teculhuacan, which signifies a land
of such whose grandfathers were divine. The Navatalcas [Nahuatlacs]
point their beginning and first territory in the figure of a cave,
and say they came forth of seven caves to come and people the land
of Mexico." [Footnote: The Natural and Moral History of the East and
West Indies, London ed., 1604, Grimstone's Trans., pp. 497, 504.]
The same tradition substantially, is given by Herrera, [Footnote:
General History of America, London ed., 1725, Stevens's Trans. III,
188.] and also by Clavigero.
[Footnote: History of Mexico, Cullen's Trans., 1, 119.]
If by the word Aztlan was intended "place of Cranes", and on the
supposition that these tribes migrated from the San Juan region, the
reasons for the designation are justified. The Sandhill Crane
(Grus Canadensis) is one of the largest and most conspicuous of
American birds, and is still found from the British Possessions to
New Mexico, and winters in the latter. I saw a pair of these great
birds in 1878, in the valley of the Animas River. Dr. Cones remarks
that "thousands of Sandhill Cranes repair each year to the Colorado
River Valley, flock succeeding flock along the course of the great
stream from their arrival in September until their departure the
following spring. Taller than the Wood Ibises or the largest Herons
with which they are associated, the stately birds stand in the
foreground of the scenery of the valley.... Such ponderous bodies
moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from
mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod
along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to
sustain themselves." [Footnote: Birds of the Northwest, 1874, p. 534.]
It is an Indian trait to mark localities by some conspicuous feature
or fact, and the selection of the Sandhill Crane to indicate their
home country would have accorded with Indian usages.
Again, Herrera, who presents the current traditions, observes, that
"these peoples painted their original in the manner of a cave, and
said they came out of seven caves to people the country of Mexico....
After the six above mentioned races departed from their country, and
settled in New Spain, where they were much increased, the seventh
race being the Mexican nation, a warlike and polite people, who
adoring their god Vitsilpuztli, he commanded them to leave their own
country, promising them they should rule over other races in a
plentiful country, and much wealth." [Footnote: History of America,
iii, p. 188, 190.]
It is worthy of remark that the cave dwellings or cliff houses are
in the San Juan district, the most of them being on the Mancos River,
and on the western portion of the San Juan. These traditions may in
fact refer to these cave dwellings as the original homes of their
ancestors, and at the same time without precluding the supposition
that they also constructed and inhabited some of the pueblo
structures now in ruins in other parts of the same area. All the
early accounts concur in representing the Aztecs or Mexicans, when
they first arrived in Mexico, as subsisting by the cultivation of
maize and plants, as constructing houses of stone, and with a
religious system which recognized personal gods. These statements
are probably true. They had attained to the statue of Village Indians.
This again renders New Mexico their probable original home as the
only area in the north where ruins of structures of tribes so far
advanced have been found.
The San Juan district is remarkably situated in its geographical
relations. This river, rising in the crests of the high mountains
forming the water-shed or divide between the Atlantic and Pacific,
flows southward until it enters the table-land formation, through
which it flows in a southwesterly and then northwesterly direction,
making a long, sweeping curve in New Mexico and Arizona, after which
it runs westerly to its confluence with the Colorado. It receives
from the north the following tributaries, rising like itself in the
high mountains, the Piedra, Pine River (Los Pinos), the Animas, the
La Plata, the Mancos, the McElmo, now dry, and the Hovenweep and
Montezuma creeks, now nearly dry. Its southern tributaries are the
Navajo, Chaco, and De Chelly.
With such evidences of ancient occupation, here and elsewhere in the
San Juan country, we are led to the conclusion that the Village
Indians increased and multiplied in this area, and that at some
early period there was here a remarkable display of this form of
Indian life, and of house architecture in the nature of fortresses,
which must have made itself felt in distant parts of the continent.
On the hypothesis that the valley of the Columbia was the seed-land
of the Ganowanian family, where they depended chiefly upon a fish
subsistence, we have in the San Juan country a second center and
initial point of migrations founded upon farinaceous subsistence.
That the struggle of the Village Indians to resist the ever
continuous streams of migration flowing southward along the mountain
chains has been a hard one through many centuries of time, is proved
by the many ruins of abandoned or conquered pueblos which still mark
their settlements in so many places. At the present moment there is
not a Village Indian in the San Juan district. It is entirely
deserted of this class of inhabitants.
That the original ancestors of the principal historic tribes of
Mexico once inhabited the San Juan country is extremely probable.
That the ancestors of the principal tribes of Yucatan and Central
America owe their remote origin to the same region is equally
probable. And that the Mound Builders came originally from the same
country, is, with our present knowledge, at least a reasonable
conclusion.
Indian migrations have occurred under the influence, almost
exclusively, of physical causes, operating in a uniform manner.
These migrations, involving the entire period of the existence here
of the inhabitants of both American continents, will be found to
have a common and connected history. A study of all the facts may
yet lead to an elucidation and explanation of these migrations with
some degree of certainty. The hypothesis that the valley of the
Columbia River was the seed-land of the Ganowanian family holds the
best chance of solving the great problem of the origin and
distribution of the Indian tribes.
[Relocated Footnote: Where maize was indigenous is unknown, except
that it was somewhere upon the American continent. It is the only
cereal America has given to the world. At the period of European
discovery, it was found cultivated and a staple article of food in a
large part of North America and in parts of South America. There
were also found beans, squashes, and tobacco, with the addition in
some areas of peppers, tomatoes, cocoa and cotton. The problem of
the place of the origin of maize is probably insoluble, but
speculations are legitimate and such are all I have to offer.
The fecundity of plant-life in the Rocky Mountains is remarkable,
particularly on the southern slopes, where they subside into the mesa,
or table-land formation, north of the San Juan River. The
continental divide is in the eastern margin of the region. The first
suggestion I wish to make is that all cereals and cultivated plants
must have originated in the great continental mountains of the two
hemispheres, and have propagated themselves along the water courses
of the mountain valleys down to the plains traversed by the great
rivers formed by these mountain tributaries. All the cereals belong
to the family of the Grasses (Gramineae), and each of them, doubtless,
is the last of a series of antecedent forms.
I saw rye, barley and oats growing wild by self-propagation in the
mountain valleys of Colorado the present season; and also the wild
pea, whose stunted seeds had the taste of the cultivated pea. Turnips,
onions, tomatoes, and hops are found growing wild in the Pine River
Valley, and the pie-plant or rhubarb is said to grow luxuriantly in
the Elk Mountain valleys. I also saw wild flax and the gourd growing
by self-propagation in the valley of the Animas. Currants,
gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries are found in the
mountain valleys in numerous places, together with flowering plants
of many species and varieties. Tiny forms of flowering plants are to
be seen above patches of snow in places where the snow had recently
melted. This fecundity of plant-life from ten to twelve thousand
feet above sea level, and the relation of these mountain tributaries
to the San Juan, which runs from east to west, not remotely from the
base of these mountains, in such a manner as to invite and receive
into its lap, so to express it, the vegetable wealth developed in
these mountain chains, are facts that force themselves upon the
attention of the observer.
The altitude of the San Juan Valley ranges from seven thousand feet
at Pagosa Springs to five thousand nine hundred and seventy feet at
the mouth of the Animas, and diminishing to four thousand four
hundred and forty-six feet near the point where it empties into the
Colorado (Hayden's Atlas of Colorado, Sheet 111). The altitude at
Conejos is seven thousand eight hundred and eighty feet (ib.,) which
is about as great an elevation as admits of the successful
cultivation of maize. I noticed in a field of maize growing at
Conejos that the stalk grew only about three feet high, and that the
ear grew out of it but six inches from the ground. Specimens of the
ear we obtained showed that it was about five inches long, with the
kernel small and flinty. The ear is in four colors, white, red,
yellow, and black, each being one or the other of these colors. In a
few cases two colors were intermixed in the same ear. It seemed
probable that this the primitive maize of the American aborigines,
from which all other varieties have been developed. A few cobs which
we found at a cliff house on the Mancos River corresponded with the
Conejos ear in size, and were probably the same variety. Afterwards
at Taos I found the same ear in white, red, yellow, and black; the
staple maize now cultivated at this pueblo, but much larger. I
brought away several fine ears saved for seed. One black ear
measured twelve inches in length, with twelve rows of kernels, while
the white variety, both at Conejos and Taos, had each fourteen rows.
Finally, a dry country, neither excessively hot nor moist, like the
San Juan region, would seem to be most favorable for the development
and self-propagation of maize as well as plants until man appeared
for their domestication. These are but speculations, but if they
should prompt further investigations concerning the place of
nativity of this wonderful cereal, which has been such an important
factor in the advancement of the Indian family, and which is also
destined to prove such a support to our own, these suggestions will
have not been made in vain.]