The cluster of mounds formerly called Surouaro, now known as Yellow
Jacket Spring Ruin, is situated near the head of the canyon of the same
name to the left of the Monticello road, 14 miles west of Dolores. This
village (pls. 1, _c_; 2, _c_) contains both large and small houses of
the pure pueblo type, covering an area somewhat less than the Mummy
Lake group, on the Mesa Verde. The arrangement of mounds in clusters
naturally recalls the Galisteo and Jemez districts, New Mexico, where,
however, the arrangement of the mounds and the structure of each is
different. The individual houses in a Mesa Verde or Yellow Jacket
village were not so grouped as to inclose a rectangular court, but were
irregularly distributed with intervals of considerable size between
them.[13]
The largest mound in the Surouaro village, shown in plate 1, _c_,
corresponds with the so-called “Upper House” of Aztec Spring Ruin, but
is much larger than Far View or any other single mound in the Mummy
Lake village.
Surouaro was one of the first ruins in this region described by
American explorers, attention having been first called to it by
Professor Newberry,[14] whose description follows: “Surouaro is the
name of a ruined town which must have once contained a population of
several thousands. The name is said to be of Indian (Utah) origin,
and to signify desolation, and certainly no better could have been
selected.... The houses are, many of them, large, and all built of
stone, hammer dressed on the exposed faces. Fragments of pottery are
exceedingly common, though like the buildings, showing great age....
The remains of _metates_ (corn mills) are abundant about the ruins. The
ruins of several large reservoirs, built of masonry, may be seen at
Surouaro, and there are traces of acequias which led to them, through
which water was brought, perhaps from a great distance.”
[13] In his valuable study, Pueblo Ruins of the Galisteo Basin, New
Mexico (Anthrop. Papers of the Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. XV, pt. 1,
1914), Mr. Nelson figures (Plan I, _B_) an embedded circular kiva in
what he calls the “historic part” of the Galisteo Ruin, but does not
state how he distinguishes the historic from the prehistoric part of
this building. The other kivas at Galisteo are few in number and not
embedded, but situated outside the house masses as in historic pueblos.
[14] Report of the exploring expedition from Santa Fe, New Mexico,
to the Junction of the Grand and Green Rivers of the Great Colorado
of the West in 1859, under the command of Capt. J. N. Macomb, p. 88,
Washington, 1876.