accessibility suggest a future of public use; nothing would be easier,
for instance, than a road from Babb to join the road already in from
Canada. The name naturally arouses curiosity. Why Belly? Was it not the
Anglo-Saxon frontier's pronunciation of the Frenchman's original Belle?
The river, remember, is mainly Canadian. Surely in all its forks and
tributaries it was and is the Beautiful River.
THE AVENUE OF THE GIANTS
The Avenue of the Giants looms in any forecast of Glacier's future. It
really consists of two valleys joined end on at their beginnings on
Flattop Mountain; McDonald Creek flowing south, Little Kootenai flowing
north. The road which will replace the present trail up this avenue from
the much-travelled south to Waterton Lake and Canada is a matter
doubtless of a distant future, but it is so manifestly destiny that it
must be accepted as the key to the greater Glacier to come. Uniting at
its southern end roads from both sides of the divide, it will reach the
Belly valleys by way of Ahern Pass, the Bowman and Kintla valleys by way
of Brown Pass, and will terminate at the important tourist settlement
which is destined to grow at the splendid American end of Waterton Lake.
Incidentally it will become an important motor-highway between Canada
and America. Until then, though all these are now accessible by trail,
the high distinction of the Bowman and the Kintla valleys' supreme
expression of the glowing genius of this whole country will remain
unknown to any considerable body of travellers.
THE CLIMAX OF BOWMAN AND KINTLA
And, after all, the Bowman and Kintla regions are Glacier's ultimate
expression, Bowman of her beauty, Kintla of her majesty. No one who has
seen the foaming cascades of Mount Peabody and a lost outlet of the
lofty Boulder Glacier emerging dramatically through Hole-in-the-Wall
Fall, for all the world like a horsetail fastened upon the face of a
cliff, who has looked upon the Guardhouse from Brown Pass and traced the
distant windings of Bowman Lake between the fluted precipice of Rainbow
Peak and the fading slopes of Indian Ridge; or has looked upon the
mighty monolith of Kintla Peak rising five thousand feet from the lake
in its gulf-like valley, spreading upon its shoulders, like wings
prepared for flight, the broad gleaming glaciers known as Kintla and
Agassiz, will withhold his guerdon for a moment.
[Illustration: _From a photograph by the U.S. Geological Survey_
SHOWING THE AGASSIZ GLACIER
Kintla Peak, Glacier National Park, 5,000 feet above the lake spreads
glaciers out either way like wings]
[Illustration: _From a photograph by M.R. Campbell_
BEAUTIFUL BOWMAN LAKE, GLACIER NATIONAL PARK
It heads close up under the Continental Divide, where is found some of
the most striking scenery of America]
Here again we repeat, for the hundredth or more time in our leisurely
survey of the park, what the Englishman said of the spectacle of St.
Mary: "There is nothing like it in the world."
XIV
ROCK RECORDS OF A VANISHED RACE
MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK, SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO. AREA, 77 SQUARE MILES
I
Many years, possibly centuries, before Columbus discovered America, a
community of cliff-dwellers inhabiting a group of canyons in what is now
southwestern Colorado entirely disappeared.
Many generations before that, again possibly centuries, the founders of
this community, abandoning the primitive pueblos of their people
elsewhere, had sought new homes in the valleys tributary to the Mancos
River. Perhaps they were enterprising young men and women dissatisfied
with the poor and unprogressive life at home. Perhaps they were
dissenters from ancient religious forms, outcasts and pilgrims, for
there is abundant evidence that the prehistoric sun-worshippers of our
southwest were deeply religious, and human nature is the same under
skins of all colors in every land and age. More likely they were merely
thrifty pioneers attracted to the green cedar-grown mesas by the hope of
better conditions.
Whatever the reason for their pilgrimage, it is a fair inference that,
like our own Pilgrim Fathers, they were sturdy of body and progressive
of spirit, for they had a culture which their descendants carried
beyond that of other tribes and communities of prehistoric people in
America north of the land of the Aztecs.
Beginning with modest stone structures of the usual cliff-dwellers' type
built in deep clefts in the mesa's perpendicular cliff, safe from
enemies above and below, these enterprising people developed in time a
complicated architecture of a high order; they advanced the arts beyond
the practice of their forefathers and their neighbors; they herded
cattle upon the mesas; they raised corn and melons in clearings in the
forests, and watered their crops in the dry seasons by means of simple
irrigation systems as soundly scientific, so far as they went, as those
of to-day; outgrowing their cliff homes, they invaded the neighboring
mesas, where they built pueblos and more ambitious structures.
Then, apparently suddenly, for they left behind them many of their
household goods, and left unfinished an elaborate temple to their god,
the sun, they vanished. There is no clew to the reason or the manner of
their going.
Meantime European civilization was pushing in all directions. Columbus
discovered America; De Soto explored the southeast and ascended the
Mississippi; Cortez pushed into Mexico and conquered the Aztecs; Spanish
priests carried the gospel north and west from the Antilles to the
continent; Raleigh sent explorers to Virginia; the Pilgrim Fathers
landed in Massachusetts; the white man pushed the Indian aside, and at
last the European pioneer sought a precarious living on the sands of the
southwest.
One December day in 1888 Richard and Alfred Wetherill hunted lost cattle
on the top of one of the green mesas north and west of the Mancos River.
They knew this mesa well. Many a time before had they rounded up their
herds and stalked the deer among the thin cedar and pinyon forests.
Often, doubtless, in their explorations of the broad Mancos Valley
below, they had happened upon ruins of primitive isolated or grouped
stone buildings hidden by sage-brush, half buried in rock and sand. No
doubt, around their ranch fire, they had often speculated concerning the
manner of men that had inhabited these lowly structures so many years
before that sometimes aged cedars grew upon the broken walls.
But this December day brought the Wetherills the surprise of their
uneventful lives. Some of the cattle had wandered far, and the search
led to the very brink of a deep and narrow canyon, across which, in a
long deep cleft under the overhang of the opposite cliff, they saw what
appeared to be a city. Those who have looked upon the stirring spectacle
of Cliff Palace from this point can imagine the astonishment of these
ranchmen.
Whether or not the lost cattle were ever found is not recorded, but we
may assume that living on the mesa was not plentiful enough to make the
Wetherills forget them in the pleasure of discovering a ruin. But they
lost no time in investigating their find, and soon after crossed the
canyon and climbed into this prehistoric city. They named it Cliff
Palace, most inappropriately, by the way, for it was in fact that most
democratic of structures, a community dwelling. Pushing their
explorations farther, presently they discovered also a smaller ruin,
which they named Spruce Tree House, because a prominent spruce grew in
front of it. These are the largest two cliff-dwellings in the Mesa Verde
National Park, and, until Doctor J. Walter Fewkes unearthed Sun Temple
in 1915, among the most extraordinary prehistoric buildings north of
Mexico.
There are thousands of prehistoric ruins in our southwest, and many
besides those of the Mesa Verde are examples of an aboriginal
civilization. Hundreds of canyons tell the story of the ancient
cliff-dwellers; and still more numerous are the remains of communal
houses built of stone or sun-dried brick under the open sky. These
pueblos in the open are either isolated structures like the lesser
cliff-dwellings, or are crowded together till they touch walls, as in
our modern cities; often they were several stories high, the floors
connected by ladders. Sometimes, for protection against the elements,
whole villages were built in caves. Pueblos occasionally may be seen
from the car-window in New Mexico. The least modified of the prehistoric
type which are occupied to-day are the eight villages of the Hopi near
the Grand Canyon in Arizona; a suggestive reproduction of a model
pueblo, familiar to many thousands who have visited the canyon, stands
near the El Tovar Hotel.
It was not therefore because of the rarity of prehistoric dwellings of
either type that the cliff villages of the Mesa Verde were conserved as
a national park, nor only because they are the best preserved of all
North American ruins, but because they disclose a type of this culture
in advance of all others.
The builders and inhabitants of these dwellings were Indians having
physical features common to all American tribes. That their
accomplishment differed in degree from that of the shiftless war-making
tribes north and east of them, and from that of the cultured and
artistic Mayas of Central America, was doubtless due to differences in
conditions of living. The struggle for bare existence in the southwest,
like that of the habitats of other North American Indians, was intense;
but these were agriculturalists and protected by environment. The desert
was a handicap, of course, but it offered opportunity in many places for
dry farming; the Indian raised his corn. The winters, too, were short.
It is only in the southwest that enterprise developed the architecture
of stone houses which distinguish pueblo Indians from others in North
America.
The dwellers in the Mesa Verde were more fortunate even than their
fellow pueblo dwellers. The forested mesas, so different from the arid
cliffs farther south and west, possessed constant moisture and fertile
soil. The grasses lured the deer within capture. The Mancos River
provided fish. Above all, the remoteness of these fastness canyons from
the trails of raiders and traders and their ease of defense made for
long generations of peace. The enterprise innate in the spirit of man
did the rest.
II
The history of the Mesa Verde National Park began with the making of
America. All who have travelled in the southwest have seen mesas from
the car-window. New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Utah, the
region of the pueblos, constitute an elevated plateau largely arid. Many
millions of years ago all was submerged in the intercontinental sea; in
fact the region was sea many times, for it rose and fell alternately,
accumulating thousands of feet of sands and gravels much of which
hardened into stone after the slow great uplifting which made it the
lofty plateau of to-day. Erosion did its work. For a million years or
more the floods of spring have washed down the sands and gravels, and
the rivers have carried them into the sea. Thousands of vertical feet
have disappeared in this way from the potential altitude of the region.
The spring floods are still washing down the sands and gravels, and the
canyons, cliffs, and mesas of the desert are disclosed to-day as stages
in the eternal levelling.
Thus were created the canyons and mesas of the Mesa Verde. Mesa, by the
way, is Spanish for table, and verde for green. These, then, are the
green tablelands, forest-covered and during the summer grown scantily
with grass and richly with flowers.
The Mesa Verde National Park was created by act of Congress in June,
1906, and enlarged seven years later. The Mancos River, on its way to
the San Juan and thence to the Colorado and the passage of the Grand
Canyon, forms its southern boundary. Scores of canyons, large and small,
nearly all dry except at the spring floods, are tributary. All of these
trend south; in a general way they are parallel. Each of the greater
stems has its lesser tributaries and each of these its lesser forks.
Between the canyons lie the mesas. Their tops, if continued without
break, would form a more or less level surface; that is, all had been a
plain before floods cut the separating canyons.
The region has a wonderful scenic charm. It is markedly different in
quality from other national parks, but in its own way is quite as
startling and beautiful. Comparison is impossible because of the lack of
elements in common, but it may be said that the Mesa Verde represents
our great southwest in one of its most fascinating phases, combining the
fundamentals of the desert with the flavor of the near-by mountains. The
canyons, which are seven or eight hundred feet deep and two or three
times as wide where the cliff-dwellings gather, are prevailingly tawny
yellow. Masses of sloping talus reach more than half-way up; above them
the cliffs are perpendicular; it is in cavities in these perpendiculars
that the cliff-dwellings hide. Above the cliffs are low growths of
yellowish-green cedar with pinyons and other conifers of darker foliage.
Beneath the trees and covering the many opens grows the familiar sage of
the desert, a gray which hints at green and yellow both but realizes
neither. But the sage-brush shelters desert grasses, and, around the
occasional springs and their slender outlets, grass grows rank and
plenteous; a little water counts for a great deal in the desert.
[Illustration: OUTLINE OF THE MESA VERDE FORMATION
Showing the manner in which water erosion is reducing the plains to
canyons and mesas. The Mesa Verde cliff-dwellers built their homes in
caves in the perpendicular cliffs above the sloping talus]
Summer, then, is delightful on the Mesa Verde. The plateau is high and
the air invigorating, warm by day in midsummer, always cool at night.
The atmosphere is marvellously clear, and the sunsets are famous. The
winter snows, which reach three or four feet in depth, disappear in
April. From May to Thanksgiving the region is in its prime. It is
important to realize that this land has much for the visitor besides its
ruins. It has vigor, distinction, personality, and remarkable charm. It
is the highest example of one of America's most distinctive and
important scenic phases, and this without reference to its prehistoric
dwellings. No American traveller knows his America, even the great
southwest, who does not know the border-land where desert and forest
mingle.
The Southern Ute Indian Reservation bites a large rectangle from the
southeast corner of the park, but its inhabitants are very different in
quality of mind and spirit from the ancient and reverent builders of Sun
Temple. Reservation Indians frequently enter the park, but they cannot
be persuaded to approach the cliff-dwellings. The "little people," they
tell you, live there, and neither teaching nor example will convince
them that these invisible inhabitants will not injure intruders. Some
of these Indians allege that it was their own ancestors who built the
cliff-dwellings, but there is neither record nor tradition to support
such a claim. The fact appears to be that the Utes were the ancient
enemies of this people. There is a Ute tradition of a victory over the
ancient pueblo-dwellers at Battle Rock in McElmo Canyon.
There are, on the other hand, many reasons for the opinion that the Hopi
Indians of the present day, so far at least as culture goes, are
descendants of this remarkable prehistoric people. Besides the many
similarities between the architectural types of the Mesa Verde and the
pueblos of the modern Hopi, careful investigators have found suggestive
points of similarity in their utensils, their art forms, and their
customs. Doctor Fewkes cites a Hopi tradition to that effect by
mentioning the visit of a Hopi courier a few years ago to prehistoric
ruins in the Navajo National Monument to obtain water from an ancestral
spring for use in a Hopi religious ceremonial. If these traditions are
founded in fact, the promising civilization of the Mesa Verde has sadly
retrograded in its transplanting. Hopi architecture and masonry shows
marked retrogression from the splendid types of the Mesa Verde.
When the telephone-line was under construction to connect the park with
the outside world, the Indians from the adjoining Ute reservation became
suspicious and restless. Upon hearing its purpose, they begged the
superintendent not to go on with the work, which was certain to bring
evil to the neighborhood.
"The little people," they solemnly declared, "will not like it."
They assured the superintendent that the wires would not talk.
"The little people will not let them talk," they told him.
But the line was completed and the wires talked.
The park is reached by motor and rail. From Denver, Salt Lake City, and
Santa Fe railroad routes offer choice of some of the biggest country of
the Rockies. From either direction a night is spent en route in a
mountain mining-town, an experience which has its usefulness in
preparation for the contrasted and unusual experience to come. Entrance
is through Mancos, from which motor-stages thread the maze of canyons
and mesas from the highlands of the northern border to the deep canyons
of the south where cluster the ruins of distinction.
This entry is delightful. The road crosses the northern boundary at the
base of a lofty butte known as Point Lookout, the park's highest
elevation. Encircling its eastern side and crossing the Morefield Canyon
the road perches for several miles upon the sinuous crest of a ridge
more than eight thousand feet in altitude, whose north side plunges
eighteen hundred feet into the broad Montezuma Valley, and whose gentle
southern slope holds the small beginnings of the great canyons of the
cliff-dwellers. Both north and south the panorama unfolds in impressive
grandeur, eloquent of the beautiful scanty land and of the difficult
conditions of living which confronted the sturdy builders whose ancient
masterpieces we are on our way to see. At the northern end of Chapin
Mesa we swing sharply south and follow its slope, presently entering the
warm, glowing, scented forests, through which we speed to the hotel-camp
perched upon a bluff overlooking the depths of Spruce Canyon.
Upon the top and under the eaves of this mesa are found very fine types
of prehistoric civilization. At Mummy Lake, half-way down the mesa, we
passed on the way a good example of pueblo architecture, and within an
easy walk of our terminal camp we find some of the noblest examples of
cliff-dwellings in existence. Here it was, near the head of this remote,
nearly inaccessible, canyon, guarded by nature's ramparts, that
aboriginal American genius before the coming of the Anglo-Saxon found
its culminating expression.
In this spirit the thoughtful American of to-day enters the Mesa Verde
National Park and examines its precious memorials.
III
Although the accident of the road brings the traveller first to the
mesa-top pueblos of the Mummy Lake district, historical sequence
suggests that examination begin with the cliff-dwellings.
Of the many examples of these remains in the park, Cliff Palace, Spruce
Tree House, and Balcony House are the most important because they
concisely and completely cover the range of life and the fulness of
development. This is not the place for detailed descriptions of these
ruins. The special publications of the National Park Service and
particularly the writings of Doctor J. Walter Fewkes of the Smithsonian
Institution, who has devoted many years of brilliant investigation to
American prehistoric remains, are obtainable from government sources.
Here we shall briefly consider several types.
It is impossible, without reference to photographs, to convey a concise
adequate idea of Cliff Palace. Seen from across its canyon the splendid
crescent-shaped ruin offers to the unaccustomed eye little that is
common to modern architecture. Prominently in the foreground, large
circular wells at once challenge interest. These were the kivas, or
ceremonial rooms of the community, centres of the religious activities
which counted so importantly in pueblo life. Here it was that men
gathered monthly to worship their gods. In the floors of some kivas are
small holes representing symbolically the entrance to the underworld,
and around these from time to time priests doubtless performed archaic
ceremonies and communicated with the dead. Each family or clan in the
community is supposed to have had its own kiva.
The kiva walls of Cliff Palace show some of the finest prehistoric
masonry in America. All are subterranean, which in a few instances
necessitated excavation in floors of solid rock. The roofs were
supported by pedestals rising from mural banquettes, usually six
pedestals to a kiva; the kiva supposed to have belonged to the chiefs
clan had eight pedestals, and one, perhaps belonging to a clan of lesser
prominence, had only two. Several kivas which lack roof-supports may
have been of different type or used for lesser ceremonials. All except
these have fireplaces and ventilators. Entrance was by ladder from the
roof.
Other rooms identified are living-rooms, storage-rooms, milling-rooms,
and round and square towers, besides which there are dark rooms of
unknown use and several round rooms which are neither kivas nor towers.
Several of the living-rooms have raised benches evidently used for beds,
and in one of them pegs for holding clothing still remain in the walls.
The rooms are smoothly plastered or painted.
Mills for grinding corn were found in one room in rows; in others,
singly. The work was done by women, who rubbed the upper stone against
the lower by hand. The rests for their feet while at work still remain
in place; also the brushes for sweeping up the meal. The small
storage-rooms had stone doors, carefully sealed with clay to keep out
mice and prevent moisture from spoiling the corn and meal.
One of the most striking buildings in Cliff Palace is the Round Tower,
two stories high, which not only was an observatory, as is indicated by
its peep-holes, but also served purposes in religious festivals. Its
masonry belongs to the finest north of Mexico. The stones are
beautifully fitted and dressed. The Square Tower which stands at the
southern end of the village is four stories high, reaching the roof of
the cave. The inner walls of its third story are elaborately painted
with red and white symbols, triangles, zigzags, and parallels, the
significance of which is not known.
The ledge under which Cliff Palace is built forms a roof that overhangs
the structure. An entrance, probably the principal one, came from below
to a court at a lower level than the floor, from which access was by
ladder.
Spruce Tree House, which may have been built after Cliff Palace, has a
circular room with windows which were originally supposed to have been
port-holes for defense. Doctor Fewkes, however, suggests a more probable
purpose, as the position of the room does not specially suggest a
fortress. Through the openings in this room the sun-priest may have
watched the setting sun to determine the time for ceremonies. The room
was entered from above, like a kiva. Another room, differing from any in
other cliff-dwellings, has been named the Warriors' Room because, unlike
sleeping-rooms, its bench surrounds three sides, and because, unlike any
other room, it is built above a kiva. Only the exigencies of defense, it
is supposed, would warrant so marked a departure from the prescribed
religious form of room.
Balcony House has special interest, apart from its commanding location,
perfection of workmanship and unusual beauty, and because of the
ingenuity of the defenses of its only possible entrance. At the top of a
steep trail a cave-like passage between rocks is walled so as to leave a
door capable of admitting only one at a time, behind which two or three
men could strike down, one by one, an attacking army.
Out of these simple architectural elements, together with the utensils
and weapons found in the ruins, the imagination readily constructs a
picture of the austere, laborious, highly religious, and doubtless happy
lives led by the earnest people who built these ancient dwellings in the
caves.