The preceding pages deal wholly with the immovable antiquities, as
buildings, reservoirs, and the like. In addition to these evidences of
a former population, there should be mentioned likewise the smaller
antiquities, as pottery, stone objects, weapons, baskets, fabrics,
bone and other implements. No excavation was attempted in the course
of the reconnoissance, so that this chapter in the author’s report is
naturally a very brief one. The few statements which follow are mainly
based on local collections, one of which, owned by Mr. Williamson,
of the First National Bank of Dolores, is comprehensive. The most
suggestive of these minor antiquities are objects of burnt clay or
pottery, which occur generally in piles of débris or accompany human
burials. It was the custom of these people, like the cliff-dwellers,
to deposit, near the dead, food in bowls and other household utensils,
varying in shape, technique, decoration, and color. The most important
fact regarding these ceramics is that they belong to the same archaic
type as those from the ruins of the Mesa Verde. The predominating
colors are white or gray with black figures, within and without, almost
universally geometrical in form. There occurs also a relatively large
number of corrugated vessels, and those made by using coils of clay,
the figures on their exterior being indented with some implement, as a
bone, stone, or even with the finger nail. While the majority belong to
the black-and-white group, the red ware decorated with black figures
is found but comparatively rarely, which is also true of the pottery
of the cliff-dwellers. In the large variety of forms of burnt clay
objects, the most remarkable in shape is a double water jar, connected
by a transverse tube, the ends of which project beyond the opening into
the jar, much in the form of an animal with a head at one end, body
elongated, terminating in a short tail, the legs not being represented.
While the number of unbroken mortuary bowls obtained from this region
thus far known is comparatively small, we find in many places large
quantities of broken fragments, all of which belong to the varieties of
ware above enumerated.
None of the bowls, vases, dippers, or other ceramic objects from the
region of the ruins described have that significant feature commonly
called the “life line;” the encircling lines are continuous around
the vessel, and not broken at one point. The broken line never occurs
on archaic pottery like black-and-white ware, and we may accept the
hypothesis that the conception which gave rise to it was foreign to the
people of the Mesa Verde and adjacent areas. It would be instructive
to map out the distribution of this custom which was so prevalent
in pottery from the Gila and Little Colorado and its tributaries,
and absent in that from ruins on the San Juan and Mimbres. It occurs
in ware from certain Rio Grande prehistoric ruins, as if it were a
connecting link with the ancient culture of the Little Colorado.
Of the stone implements found in this region the most characteristic is
the celt called _tcamahia_ which is not found in regions not affected
by the San Juan culture. These objects are found from Mesa Verde to
the Hopi pueblos.[54] A peculiar form of prehistoric chipped chert
implement occurs at Mesa Verde and elsewhere in the area. A flint knife
in the Williamson collection at Dolores was purchased from a Ute woman
who said it was found on a ruin. She wore it attached to her belt by a
buckskin thong fastened to a bead-worked cover.
[54] The use of these objects as heirlooms in the Antelope altar of the
Hopi supports the tradition of the Snake people that their ancestors
brought them from the San Juan.
Bone objects were mainly needles, dirks, and bodkins, presenting
in the main no essential differences from those repeatedly
described, especially by Nordenskiöld in his important memoir on the
cliff-dwellers of the Mesa Verde. Objects made of marine shell are
rare. The presence of flattened slabs of stone or metates showing
on the surface evidences of grinding occur with human bones in many
localities, indicating either that a custom still extant among the
Pueblos of burying the metates with the dead was observed, or that the
burials were made under floors of these long-abandoned houses. It would
seem, on the former hypothesis, that these objects were buried with the
women, but as the condition of the skeletal remains is poor the sex
could not be determined by direct observation.
The unprotected nature of the sites and the condition of the ruins
prevented the preservation of fragile articles like baskets and
fabrics, which frequently occur in caves, in one or two instances
buried under the floors. There is little doubt that excavations in
cemeteries of the open-sky ruins would reveal considerable material
of this nature, which would probably duplicate that which has been
produced from the adjacent cliff-houses. Many parts of wooden beams,
mainly the remains of flooring and roofs, were seen still in the
walls, but these as a rule were fragmentary. The ends of the timbers
still adhering to the walls show that they were cut into shape by
stone implements, aided by live embers. They appear to have been split
by means of wedges made of stone and often rubbed down smooth with
polishing instruments of the same material. The majority of these
wooden beams plainly show the action of fire, but no roof was intact.
From the size of the logs shown in fragments of beams, it is evident
that the roof supports had been brought there from some distance; trees
of the magnitude they imply do not now grow in the neighborhood of some
of the ruins where these beams occur.