USA > Arizona > Arizona, prehistoric, aboriginal, pioneer, modern; the nation's youngest commonwealth within a land of ancient culture, Vol. I > Part 3
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TOLTEC AND AZTEC MIGRATIONS
Many scientists consider the primitive occupation of the southern Arizona valleys to have been cotemporaneous with the Toltec period. According to Biart, the Toltecs came from the northwest, probably from central California, finally settling around Tula, about twenty-five miles from the Mexican lake. The journey consumed 124 years and ended about the year 667. A gentle and industrious people, they suffered much at the hands of barbarous hill tribes, by famine and the ravages of locusts, and, finally, after the death of their eighth king, the race seems to have scattered from the decaying cities into Yucatan and Guatemala, where there already was even a stronger grade of relative civilization. Then came the Aztec invasion, also from the northwest, the vanguard the warlike Chichimees, who absorbed the Toltecan remnant, and utilized the agricultural and industrial knowledge possessed by their predeces- sors. The Aztec pilgrimage started down the Pacific Coast about 648, even before the date of the Toltec's final settlement. Within the migration were seven tribes. The journey must have been a severe one in the passage of the southwestern deserts. It is possible that southern Arizona for a time was pos- sessed by them, but a direct and westerly route is indicated by the fact that Culiacan is given especial mention as a point where a pavilion was erected in honor of Huitzilipochtli, the God of War. There it was that the immigrants took to themselves, the new name of Mexitli. After many vicissitudes, and, like the Hebrews, for a while in captivity, the tribesmen finally established them- selves in 1325 at Tenochtitlan, on the great lake where there had been seen on a rock an eagle, with a snake in his talons, fulfilling a prophecy of the priest- hood.
PEOPLE WHO BUILDED WITHIN THE CLIFFS
The cliff dwellings of Arizona are possibly a bit more of a puzzle to the archæologist than are the pueblo ruins of the valleys. These cliff dwellings are found, in one shape or another, all over the State. The largest settlement was in the Canon de Chelly (Tsegi) of the Navajos in the State's northeastern corner. All over northern Arizona, in the gorges that open out from the Little Colorado, in Hell Cañon, Walnut Cañon and down toward the Verde, are a suc- cession of cliff dwellings that seem of rather modern occupation and of which, indeed, the pueblo-dwellers of to-day have tradition. From some of these cliff houses have been taken mummies, desiccated in the dry Arizona air, that would appear to have been laid away in the flesh only a few score of years ago at the most. Archæologists are rather inclined to believe that the people of the cliffs were not particularly different from the people who dwelt in the val- leys, and that their houses in reality were fortresses placed at points of inacces-
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sibility to the Apaches or other primeval Ishmaelites who might attack. The fact that some of the mummies taken out were those of a small people and that the roofs of the rooms and the doorways alike were low are considered of rela- tively little moment, when the view is taken that the houses really were not intended as permanent habitations, but rather as refuges in the time of dire peril, when their builders had been driven from their fields in the valleys below, or possibly used as sleeping places in troublous times. It is told that in the Sierra Madre mountains of northern Mexico similar cliff houses were occupied within the last century by Indians who kept beyond the pale of Spanish au- thority. The Sobaipuri, now mixed with the Papago, are said to have been cliff dwellers in the mountains along the San Pedro.
The best-known and most photographed cliff dwelling in the Southwest is the so-called Montezuma Castle on Beaver Creek near Camp Verde, with smaller houses scattered around the lip of Montezuma Well, a deep and mysterious sort of small lake that occupies an ancient volcanic opening. Below Camp Verde there are also some very interesting caveate dwellings. They have been explored and described by both Cosmos Mindeleff and Doctor Fewkes.
At the head of Cherry Creek, in Tonto Basin, set in the walls of the great cañons that break through the uplifted rim of the Mogollon plateau, are several very large cliff dwellings, so inaccessibly placed that they have been subject to little vandalism either by Indians or whites. In similar cliffs on the eastern edge of the Sierra Ancha chain, facing down on Cherry Creek 2,000 feet below, in what is called Pueblo Cañon, set in an air-slaked lime stratum, is a wonder- fully interesting group of cliff dwellings, well preserved for the coming of the archæologist.
Fully typical of cliff dwellings in general, and yet embracing two of the largest of the kind in the Southwest are ruins within a canon now only a couple of miles distant from the main traveled automobile road between Phoenix and Globe and about four miles from Roosevelt. These ruins thus are readily acces- sible to the tourist and are well worth a visit by anyone interested in the pre- historic peoples of the Southwest. The lower is the smaller, but the better pre- served. Its roughly moulded walls fill a shelf-like open cave 140 feet long, forty feet in extreme depth and thirty feet in extreme height. The exterior wall, now broken, was built upon the edge of the cavern ledge, above what once was a sheer descent of about twenty feet. The building is of three floors, even now. The rooms have notably high clearance and a few years ago still in place was a rough upper flooring from which could be touched the cave roof at front and rear. Here it was, without doubt, that the primitive home guard peered over the low parapet and where the papoose in days of yore had his playground. The lowest floor is of clay, hard-trodden. The upper floors had typical con- struction. Fixed firmly in the walls were set slender red cypress logs, rough hewn at the ends, the work of the stone or obsidian axes appearing not unlike the tooth marks of beavers. Across the logs were laid small cypress or juniper boughs; then came the ribs of the giant cactus, then river reeds and lastly a well- packed coating of adobe clay.
The so-called red cypress is to be found in all the cliff dwellings of the Tonto Basin region, sound and firm wherever it has been kept dry. Some of the beams, peeled of bark, are about ten inches in thickness and often twenty feet
CLIFF DWELLINGS OF CAÑON DE CHELLY
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long. The wood is ideal to the man with a jackknife, resembling in color and grain the Spanish juniper so much used for cigar boxes. It is inferred that the trees must have been found in many parts of central Arizona at the time the cliff dwellers builded. It is said to be peculiar to Arizona, yet now it is found only in two places. One is in a grove near the Natural Bridge, sixty miles to the northward of the Roosevelt cliff dwellings, and the other, now comprising only a few trees, is in the Superstitions, about twenty miles west of the caves.
The upper ruin has suffered within very modern times by fire. Within hoth were found pottery by the wagon load, with a number of stone implements and half a dozen corn mortars (metates). The pottery closely resembles in marking that of the valleys of the Salt and Gila, with the same terrace designs, jagged lightning flashes and twice-broken life lines (signifying nourishment). When the writer first visited these ruins in 1889 he found half-carbonized corn cobs, mixed with broad bean pods and bits of fiber that indicated that mescal was on the bill of fare, either of the builders or of the Apaches who may have utilized the shelter in later years.
In the valley below are the remains of houses and of irrigating ditches, one of which had been dug through hard limestone with remarkable precision and which is assumed to have crossed Sally May Creek by some form of high and long aqueduct. A latter-day ditch follows the same line but at lower elevation, for the river bed is not where it was in prehistoric days.
There have been, tales, more or less disputed on scientific authority, to the effect that in sealed jars within the tombs of Egypt have been found grain, there placed in the days of the Pharaohs, that germinated when planted by its nine- teenth-century discoverers. Something of the same sort has been known in Arizona, for it is told there have been several instances where beans and corn found within the cliff dwellings have still proved capable of germination. The most notable instance of this sort was when, about 1905, a few very large pink beans were found by Miss Sharlot Hall in a little hole in a cliff dwelling sixteen miles from Jerome. The hole had been sealed with mud and was air tight. Several of the seeds proved fertile, producing a strange, large bean of good quality. Mrs. Frank Turner of Oak Creek tried, in her garden, the planting of a few beans found by Thomas Brown in a Verde cliff dwelling in 1898. One of the seeds proved fertile and sent out a strong vine that bore immense bean pods.
I have been told by cowboys that in the canon of the Verde, above the mouth of Deadman Creek, there is a cliff dwelling that has been overwhelmed by a lava flow, indicative of much greater age than believed possessed by such hab- itations, for there are no indications in the vicinity of recent volcanic activity. Along the same line was the report of Colonel Greenwood in 1867 of finding, in a cave in the San Francisco mountains, a broken jar into which lava had flowed and of human bones in the same volcanic material. Around these peaks undoubtedly were the last volcanic eruptions within the Southwest, not only from the main mountain, but from hundreds of small cones that surround it. The whole region, now densely forested, in places carries over 100 feet in depth of scoriæ. A fairly strong story of antiquity is that credited to Indian Trader Adams of Fort Defiance, who, on the San Juan river, is said to have found pottery in solid sandstone, fifteen feet below the surface. There are stories of
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pottery and metates and even of a primitive fireplace found, in wells dug near Phoenix and Florence.
STONE "CORRALS" IN THE HILLS
Within the mountains of Arizona occasionally are encountered what the cowboys call stone corrals. They are built usually of cobblestones, taken from the bed of some nearby creek, rarely rising over a few inches above the ground " and seemingly placed without having had any cementing material other than mud. Dr. Fewkes has an explanation of the mystery. He believes that these lines of cobblestones were merely foundations for reed built or wattled huts, such as now used by the poorer Mexicans, the light superstructure given a better basis on the stones than would have been known had it been built directly upon the ground. This method of building "jacals" on stones is known to-day among the Opatas, a very intelligent and industrious Indian tribe of southeastern Sonora, allied ethnologically with the Pimas. One of these "stone corrals" in the valley of Deadman Creek, on the western slope of the Mazatzal range of central Arizona, was measured by the writer. It was practically half a mile long, divided into many rooms, the outer lines of stones closely following the course of the creek, which seemed to have changed not at all since the time of building the great communal house. It is not at all improbable that these houses were built by Indians of a latter-day occupation, not by the prehistoric peoples.
ANCIENT MINERS OF PAINT AND TURQUOISE
Though the ancient peoples of the Southwest lived in their own stone age, nevertheless they mined. A dozen miles north of Parker have been found old workings that have been explored to the depth of 175 feet, where with stone hatchets had been dug out a ledge of remarkably pure ferric hydrate, used for paint, probably both for facial and pottery decorations. It is not improbable that the Colorado River Indians later used the same source of supply. In the croppings of the present United Verde mine at Jerome were found pits wherein the ancients and possibly the later Indians dug for red oxides and for blue and green copper carbonates, used for paint. In Mohave County, in mines now owned by the Tiffanys of New York, turquoise was mined, as also at a point in the Dragoon Mountains in southeastern Arizona.
Taking all in all, it is believed that the problem of the identity of the ancient Southwestern races, in a general way, is not so hard to solve, if the investigator starts with the present day and works backward, keeping in mind the undoubted fact that climate and natural conditions have changed little if at all during several thousands of years. This has been proven by the forest investigations of Prof. A. E. Donglass. Like' the climate, and under unvarying conditions of environment, the Indian character, either within the predatory nomadic or the sedentary pueblo type, has had little reason for change and in fact has changed little for centuries.
PETROGLYPHS, THE ABORIGINAL ROAD SIGNS
Nearly all the mountain trails of Arizona are well marked by aboriginal signboards. Few are the trails that were not laid out originally by Indians or their predecessors. The markings are found usually on boulders, chipped in,
MONTEZUMA'S CASTLE
MONTEZUMA'S WELL AND CLIFF DWELLINGS
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probably with flint or basalt tools. Fred Hodge calls them "petroglyphs." Many of them undoubtedly are the direction signs of prehistoric road associa- tions, indicating water or direction, possibly warnings of places of ambush, in this respect corresponding to the "slow-down" signs looked for by the local motor-car traveler. The commonest figure shown is the coiled snake, which may have meant either water or danger. Some of them undoubtedly were the sign manual of travelers, who decorated their routes somewhat as ambitions tramps today paint their names on railroad stations. Then again, and this is especially notable on the highways over which passed the clans that later joined with the northern pueblo-dwellers, the markings undoubtedly are ritualistic in character. Near the cliff dwellings usually are to be found rather elaborate sets of petroglyphs. Sometimes, as in the Sierra Anchas, a section of the cliff will be covered with clear designs showing a triumph on returning from battle, much with the same idea as was known in ancient Egypt. Few of the designs indicate any accurate sense of proportion. Generally they look very much like the cartoons that used to appear in newspapers showing Johnny and His Slate.
Connell, one of our best authorities on the modern Apache, states that the modern Indians have had nothing whatever to do with the hieroglyphics that we now find, unless with those of the "Painted Rocks" on the Gila, which were carven for the double purpose of indicating the separation point between the lands of the Yumas and the Maricopas and for permanent indication of a treaty of peace, thus signed far more permanent than any European "scrap of paper." Another link was found in northeastern Arizona by Dwight B. Heard of Phoenix, in Canon de Chelly, a cliff marking that clearly represents a mailed Spanish soldier and his steed. This is absolutely the best connection ever found between the petroglyphs of the hills and historic times. It was found very near one of the finest of southwestern cliff dwelling groups, but probably the etcher was a Navajo of artistic tendencies.
THERE WAS NO ANCIENT EMPIRE
It is very unlikely that any great, preponderant influence, authority or empire ever was acknowledged by the local aborigines. It is even improbable that there was any especial central influence, other than religious custom, con- trolling such a concrete settlement group as known on the Salt River, though there must have been mutual consideration involving the distribution of water. Under practically the same conditions to-day live the people of the several independent pueblos of the Hopis. Local conditions caused local changes, usually gradual and as slow as the changes in the conservative Indian mentality. Nowhere on the North American continent, possibly save in southern Mexico, does there appear to have been any sign of human progress toward enlighten- ment such as known by the Europeans, and the Indians of the land we now term the Southwest were in no respects remarkable. A thousand years ago undoubt- edly they were much the same as they were one hundred years ago. There had been communal separation and tribal minglings, and languages had changed, but natural conditions remained constant and with them a general adherence to established custom that already had been found best suited to the environment.
CHAPTER III INDIANS, HISTORIC AND TRIBAL
Aboriginal Peoples of Arizona, Peaceful and Otherwise-Origin, Customs and Develop- ment-Linguistic Stocks-Nomadic and Sedentary Tribes-Reservations-Efforts at Education.
The old-time expression, "There is no good Indian but a dead one," is far from true in Arizona, despite a bloody history of Indian warfare. Not a tenth of the Indians of Arizona have given trouble to the whites and the peaceful conditions of the average reservation rather are a reflection upon "civilization," as demonstrated in the average city. If any large proportion of the Indians of Arizona had been hostile, it is probable that travel through the Southwest still would be needing the protection of troops. Elsewhere in this work much, neces- sarily, is told of Indian warfare, but it should be understood that nearly all was with only small bands of Apaches, renegades from the reservations, repre- senting not the tribe, but groups. Possibly best is the explanation that the criminally inclined of the tribe, too lazy to work and defiant of restraint, took to the hills for pillage, with murder and torture only pleasant incidents thereto. Undoubtedly, also, there was the same keen enjoyment known in ambushing a lone prospector as the prospector himself might have felt in stalking a deer. Of course, there was jealousy of a superior race, even hatred, but the Indian outlaw; like the white outlaw, essentially was nothing more than a common thief, who preyed upon the property of the industrious. It is even probable the white settlers were welcome, for did they not bring horses and cattle that could be had for the mere taking? Before the American settler came, the Apache bandit had to go far down into Mexico to steal horses and the other valuables he craved.
It is probable to this day there are people in the East who believe that the Apache's fight was on the righteous base of defending his own land and people against a mercenary invader. In truth, the bandit Apache had no land that the white man could take, save the rugged hills, and no property, unless it were his share of the deer and rabbits. The only aboriginal loss was supremacy-the right of the red man to do as he chose, at the expense of his weaker or richer red brother. To-day the Arizona Indian as a whole is much better off than he was even thirty years ago. The peaceful Indian is protected in his peace and in his property rights. The Indian reservations are ample and satisfactory to even their occupants, while a paternal government in several of the reserves is provid- ing future riches in the installation of irrigation systems.
Indian schools are found wherever there are Indians and especial attention is being paid to practical things. There is keen medical oversight and the young
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HOPI SNAKE DANCE Snake and antelope priests and snakes
HOPI SNAKE DANCE Magie circle of corn meal
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are healthier than their forbears. The day of the "wild" Indian is past. His children are being trained toward the day of eventual independence and of capable citizenship.
INDIAN LINGUISTIC SUBDIVISIONS
Arizona Indians by scientists are divided generally into three grand linguistic divisions. Two are relatively local, the Yuman and Piman. The other, including the Apache and Navajo, are considered as Athapascan, with supposition of a northern origin. The Hopi, the only pueblo-dwelling tribe in Arizona, have a dialect declared Shoshonean in origin, though full of words traceable to con- nection with other tribes. Allotted to the northern Yuman classification are only the Cocopah, Diegueno, Havasupai, Maricopa, Mojave, Tonto, Walapai (Hualpai), Yavapai and Yuma. This segregation in Frederick Webb Hodge's "Handbook on the American Indians" is presented on the authority of Henry W. Henshaw.
The Piman family, according to Hodge, is "one of the Nahuatl or Aztec family of Buschmann, and of the Sonoran branch of the Uto-Aztecan family of Brinton, but regarded by Powell as a distinct linguistic stock." It embraces within Arizona only the Pima and Papago. The family is a tremendous one, extending far down into Mexico and closely allied with a number of the 100 or more Mex- ican Indian subdivisions, though the language has Shoshonean features. South of Casa Grande is a small, but separate Piman subdivision, the Quahatika.
An Indian tribal name frequently is merely an instance of the usual Cau- casian misunderstanding of the red brother. Without doubt, when the first Span- ish invaders thrust their forefingers at the first of their Piman captives and demanded, "Who are you ?" the prompt answer in each case was, "Pi-maa-tche," which is simply good Indian for, "I don't understand." So, owing to the primary ignorance and the stubborn insistence of others, "Pima" they ever after have been. Their real name is "O-o-tahm," which is interpreted simply as "The People," with accent presumably upon the "the." The Hopi (Hopiti- "peaceful people") of the north, by their neighbors more generally have been called Moqui, meaning "dead," "decayed" or again interpreted as "dirty- nosed." The Tonto band of Apaches can hardly like the name, for it is Spanish for "fool." "John Dazin's Band" of Cibicu Apaches was so styled from the fact that its chief had been called "Jondaisy" by Navajos, whom he had fought. The name in the Navajo-Apache tongue means "mule." Its origin lay in a tall head dress worn by the chief, possibly resembling mule ears.
THE PUEBLO-DWELLING HOPI
Among the aborigines of the Southwest the Hopi (Moqui) are to be considered as the best type of hard-and-fast conservatives. They have changed little since the coming of the Spaniard and their superstitions have withstood the assaults of christianizing influences, both militant and pacific, under which the Pueblos of New Mexico have yielded. The same repelling circle of sacred corn meal that was laid at Awatobi in 1540 against the passage of Tovar and Padre Juan Padilla seems yet to be around the hill-top towns, where the mysteries of the ancient days still are preserved, and even commercialized, as in the snake dance.
The Moqui, ethnologically considered elsewhere in this work, have been the
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subject of much purely speculative literature. The morning gatherings on the housetops for a breath of very necessary fresh air and to secure warmth from the sun have been construed as for a time of prayer for the return of Montezuma, of whom the tribesmen know as much as they do of Tolstoi. They are a gentle people, but obstinate and willing to shed blood in defense of either home or habits. In the way of abstract virtue the whites well could take pattern from them. But the tales of their departed grandeur are bosh; they are now, save for a forced education of the young in the Indian schools, much as they were 400 years agone.
Following the early Spanish exploration, missionary priests were sent into Tusayan (Hopiland) and brought with them the practical gifts of horses, cattle, sheep and fruit trees. Before the supernatural impressions of the Spanish invad- ers had worn off, the Hopi, in common with the Rio Grande Indians, nominally accepted Christianity. About 1600, three mission churches were built, namely, San Bernardino in Awatobi, San Bartolome at Shongopovi and San Francisco, for Walpi and Oraibi. At first, wonderful success attended the efforts of Padre Francisco Porres, who, it was claimed, converted and baptized 800, the entire population of a village. Yet in 1633 Porres was martyred, poisoned. It is told by the Indians of to-day that the holy friars, supported by Spanish soldiery, for a time made piety a bit burdensome. Especially onerous was a task set the Indians of bringing on their shoulders from the far-distant San Francisco Moun- tain forest the long, straight timbers needed for the roof rafters of the chapels. But, save for the Porres incident, matters seem to have moved along quietly till 1680, when the Hopi joined in the great Pueblo rebellion. Even the mission churches, with their rafters of painful memory, were burned, and to the saintly list of frontier martyrs were added the names of Padres José Figueroa of Owatobi, José Trujillo of Shongopovi and José Capeleta and Agustin de Santa Maria of Oraibi and Walpi.
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