THE CLIFF DWELLERS
In the canons of the Colorado river and its tributaries are found the
ruins of an ancient race of cliff dwellers. These ruins are numerous
and are scattered over a wide scope of country, which includes Arizona
and portions of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. Many of them are yet in
a good state of preservation, but all show the marks of age and decay.
They are not less than four hundred years old and are, in all
probability, much older. Their preservation is largely due to their
sheltered position among the rocks and an exceptionally dry climate.
The houses are invariably built upon high cliffs on shelving rocks in
places that are almost inaccessible. In some instances they can only
be reached by steps cut into the solid rock, which are so old and worn
that they are almost obliterated. Their walls so nearly resemble the
stratified rocks upon which they stand, that they are not easily
distinguished from their surroundings.
The cliffs are often sloping, sometimes overhanging, but more
frequently perpendicular. The weather erosion of many centuries has
caused the softer strata of exposed rocks in the cliffs to disintegrate
and fall away, which left numberless caverns wherein this ancient and
mysterious people chose to build their eyrie homes to live with the
eagles. The houses are built of all shapes and sizes and, apparently,
were planned to fit the irregular and limited space of their
environment. Circular watch towers look down from commanding heights
which, from their shape and position, were evidently intended to serve
the double purpose of observation and defense.
In the search for evidence of their antiquity it is believed that data
has been found which denotes great age. In the construction of some of
their houses, notably those in the Mancos Canon, is displayed a
technical knowledge of architecture and a mathematical accuracy which
savages do not possess; and the fine masonry of dressed stone and
superior cement seem to prove that Indians were not the builders. On
the contrary, to quote a recent writer, "The evidence goes to show that
the work was done by skilled workmen who were white masons and who
built for white people in a prehistoric age." In this connection it is
singular, if not significant, that the natives when first discovered
believed in a bearded white man whom they deified as the Fair God of
whose existence they had obtained knowledge from some source and in
whose honor they kept their sacred altar fires burning unquenched.
The relics that have been found in the ruins are principally implements
of the stone age, but are of sufficient variety to indicate a
succession of races that were both primitive and cultured and as widely
separated in time as in knowledge.
The cliff dwellings were not only the abodes of their original
builders, but were occupied and deserted successively by the chipped
stone implement maker, the polisher of hard stone, the basket maker and
the weaver.
Among the relics that have been found in the ruins are some very fine
specimens of pottery which are as symmetrical and well finished as if
they had been turned on a potter's wheel, and covered with an opaque
enamel of stanniferous glaze composed of lead and tin that originated
with the Phoenicians, and is as old as history. Can it be possible
that the cliff dwellers are a lost fragment of Egyptian civilization?
The cliff ruins in Arizona are not only found in the canons of the
Colorado river, but also in many other places. The finest of them are
Montezuma's Castle on Beaver creek, and the Casa Blanca in Canon de
Chelly. Numerous other ruins are found on the Rio Verde, Gila river,
Walnut Canon and elsewhere.
The largest and finest group of cliff dwellings are those on the Mesa
Verde in Colorado. They are fully described in the great work[1] of
Nordenskiold, who spent much time among them. The different houses are
named after some peculiarity of appearance or construction, like the
Cliff Palace, which contains more than one hundred rooms, Long House,
Balcony House, Spruce Tree House, etc.
He obtained a large quantity of relics, which are also fully described,
consisting of stone implements, pottery, cotton and feather cloth,
osier and palmillo mats, yucca sandals, weaving sticks, bone awls, corn
and beans.
Many well-preserved mummies were found buried in graves that were
carefully closed and sealed. The bodies were wrapped in a fine cotton
cloth of drawn work, which was covered by a coarser cloth resembling
burlap, and all inclosed in a wrapping of palmillo matting tied with a
cord made of the fiber of cedar bark. The hair is fine and of a brown
color, and not coarse and black like the hair of the wild Indians.
Mummies have been exhumed that have red or light colored hair such as
usually goes with a fair skin. This fact has led some to believe that
the cliff dwellers belonged to the white race, but not necessarily so,
as this quality of hair also belongs to albinos, who doubtless lived
among the cliff dwellers as they do among the Moquis and Zunis at the
present day, and explains the peculiarity of hair just mentioned.
These remains may be very modern, as some choose to believe, but, in
all probability, they are more ancient than modern. Mummies encased in
wood and cloth have been taken from the tombs of Egypt in an almost
perfect state of preservation which cannot be less than two thousand
years old, and are, perhaps, more than double that age. As there is no
positive knowledge as to when the cliff dwellers flourished, one man's
guess on the subject is as good as another's.
An important discovery was recently made near Mancos, Colorado, where a
party of explorers found in some old cliff dwellings graves beneath
graves that were entirely different from anything yet discovered. They
were egg-shaped, built of stone and plastered smoothly with clay. They
contained mummies, cloth, sandals, beads and various other trinkets.
There was no pottery, but many well-made baskets, and their owners have
been called the basket makers. There was also a difference in the
skulls found. The cliff dwellers' skull is short and flattened behind,
while the skulls that were found in these old graves were long, narrow
and round on the back.[2]
Rev. H. M. Baum, who has traveled all over the southwest and visited
every large ruin in the country, considers that Canon de Chelly and its
branch, del Muerto, is the most interesting prehistoric locality in the
United States. The Navajos, who now live in the canon, have a
tradition that the people who occupied the old cliff houses were all
destroyed in one day by a wind of fire.[3] The occurrence, evidently,
was similar to what happened recently on the island of Martinique, when
all the inhabitants of the village of St. Pierre perished in an hour by
the eruption of Mont Pelee.
Contemporaneous with the cliff dwellers there seems to have lived a
race of people in the adjoining valleys who built cities and tilled the
soil. Judged by their works they must have been an industrious,
intelligent and numerous people. All over the ground are strewn broken
pieces of pottery that are painted in bright colors and artistic
designs which, after ages of exposure to the weather, look as fresh as
if newly made, The relics that have been taken from the ruins are
similar to those found in the cliff houses, and consist mostly of stone
implements and pottery.
In the Gila valley, near the town of Florence, stands the now famous
Casa Grande ruin, which is the best preserved of all these ancient
cities. It was a ruin when the Spaniards first discovered it, and is a
type of the ancient communal house. Its thick walls are composed of a
concrete adobe that is as hard as rock, and its base lines conform to
the cardinal points of, the compass. It is an interesting relic of a
past age and an extinct race and, if it cannot yield up its secrets to
science, it at least appeals to the spirit of romance and mystery.
Irrigating ditches which were fed from reservoirs supplied their fields
and houses with water. Portions of these old canals are yet in
existence and furnish proof of the diligence and skill of their
builders. The ditches were located on levels that could not be
improved upon for utilizing the land and water to the best advantage.
Modern engineers have not been able to better them and in many places
the old levels are used in new ditches at the present time.
Whatever may have been the fate of this ancient people their
destruction must be sought in natural causes rather than by human
warfare. An adverse fate probably cut off their water supply and laid
waste their productive fields. With their crops a failure and all
supplies gone what else could the people do but either starve or move,
but as to the nature of the exodus history is silent.
Just how ancient these works are might be difficult to prove, but they
are certainly not modern. The evidence denotes that they have existed
a long time. Where the water in a canal flowed over solid rock the
rock has been much worn. Portions of the old ditches are filled with
lava and houses lie buried in the vitreous flood. It is certain that
the country was inhabited prior to the last lava flow whether that
event occurred hundreds or thousands of years ago.
It is claimed that the Pueblo Indians and cliff dwellers are identical
and that the latter were driven from their peaceful valley homes by a
hostile foe to find temporary shelter among the rocks, but such a
conclusion seems to be erroneous in view of certain facts.
The cliff dwellings were not temporary camps, as such a migration would
imply, but places of permanent abode. The houses are too numerous and
well constructed to be accounted for on any other hypothesis. A people
fleeing periodically to the cliffs to escape from an enemy could not
have built such houses. Indeed, they are simply marvelous when
considered as to location and construction. The time that must
necessarily have been consumed in doing the work and the amount of
danger and labor involved--labor in preparing and getting the material
into place and danger in scaling the dizzy heights over an almost
impassible trail, it seems the boldest assumption to assert that the
work was done by a fleeing and demoralized mob.
Again, it would be a physical impossibility for a people who were only
accustomed to agricultural pursuits to suddenly and completely change
their habits of life such as living among the rocks would necessitate.
Only by native instinct and daily practice from childhood would it be
possible for any people to follow the narrow and difficult paths which
were habitually traveled by the cliff dwellers. It requires a clear
head and steady nerves to perform the daring feat in safety--to the
truth of which statement modern explorers can testify who have made the
attempt in recent years at the peril of life and limb while engaged in
searching for archaeological treasures.
Judged by the everyday life that is familiar to us it seems incredible
that houses should ever have been built or homes established in such
hazardous places, or that any people should have ever lived there. But
that they did is an established fact as there stand the houses which
were built and occupied by human beings in the midst of surroundings
that might appall the stoutest heart. Children played and men and
women wrought on the brink of frightful precipices in a space so
limited and dangerous that a single misstep made it fatal.
It is almost impossible to conceive of any condition in life, or
combination of circumstances in the affairs of men, that should drive
any people to the rash act of living in the houses of the cliff
dwellers. Men will sometimes do from choice what they cannot be made
to do by compulsion. It is easier to believe that the cliff dwellers,
being free people, chose of their own accord the site of their
habitation rather than that from any cause they were compelled to make
the choice. Their preference was to live upon the cliffs, as they were
fitted by nature for such an environment.
For no other reason, apparently, do the Moquis live upon their rocky
and barren mesas away from everything which the civilized white man
deems desirable, yet, in seeming contentment. The Supais, likewise,
choose to live alone at the bottom of Cataract Canon where they are
completely shut in by high cliffs. Their only road out is by a narrow
and dangerous trail up the side of the canon, which is little traveled
as they seldom leave home and are rarely visited.
To affirm that the cliff dwellers were driven from their strongholds
and dispersed by force is pure fiction, nor is there any evidence to
support such a theory. That they had enemies no one doubts, but, being
in possession of an impregnable position where one man could
successfully withstand a thousand, to surrender would have been base
cowardice, and weakness was not a characteristic of the cliff dwellers.
The question of their subsistence is likewise a puzzle. They evidently
cultivated the soil where it was practicable to do so as fragments of
farm products have been found in their dwellings, but in the vicinity
of some of the houses there is no tillable land and the inhabitants
must have depended upon other means for support. The wild game which
was, doubtless, abundant furnished them with meat and edible seeds,
fruits and roots from native plants like the pinon pine and mesquite
which together with the saguaro and mescal, supplied them with a
variety of food sufficient for their subsistence as they do, in a
measure, the wild Indian tribes of that region at the present day.
[1] The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, by F. Nordenskiold,
Stockholm. 1893.
[2] An Elder Brother of the Cliff Dwellers, by T. M. Prudden, M.D.
Harper's Magazine, June, 1897.
[3] Pueblo and Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest. Records of the Past,
December, 1902.