USA > Colorado > History of the State of Colorado, Vol. I > Part 4
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HISTORY OF COLORADO.
CHAPTER III.
THE RUINS IN SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO-DESCRIPTIONS BY HOLMES AND JACKSON OF THE U. S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY-NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE CLIFF AND CAVE DWELLINGS-HOW THEY WERE BUILT-ENORMOUS LABOR INVOLVED-REMAINS OF THE RIO MANCOS, THE SAN JUAN, DOLORES, CHELLEY, AND IN CHACO CANYON-DIS- COVERJES AMONG THE RUINS-INDIAN PICTOGRAPHY-COMPARISON OF ANCIENT AND MODERN ARCHITECTURE-ANTIQUITY OF THE PEOPLE AND THEIR PROBABLE ORIGIN-AZTEC TRADITIONS-RECENT DISCOVERY OF SIMILAR TOWNS AND PEOPLE IN MOROCCO.
The basis of the account which we shall give of the ruins in Southwestern Colorado, is that which has been and necessarily must be consulted by. all writers upon the subject, namely, the reports of Holmes and Jackson, of the U. S. Geological Survey, published by the Department of the Interior in 1875-6. Omitting the minor details the greater part of the chapter will be devoted to a general outline of the works erected by our prehistoric races.
The district* embraces an area of about 6,000 square miles mainly in Colorado, but including narrow belts in the adjacent territories of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. It lies wholly on the Pacific slope, and belongs entirely to the drainage system of the Rio San Juan, a tributary of the Colorado of the West.
Lying along the west base of the mountains in a comparatively flat country, the eastern border of the great plateau region that reaches westward toward the Sierras, the surface geology is chiefly cretaceous, and the various large streams found on the west slope of the Rocky Mountains, have cut long cañoned valleys down through the nearly horizontal beds. In the greater part of this region there is little mois-
* Holmes.
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ture, apart from these streams, and, as a consequence, vegetation is very sparse, and the general aspect of the country is barren and for- bidding. It is probable that far back in the twilight of time when these people selected it for their abiding place, there were streams which have no existence at this day, fertile lands, and possibly, dense forests. At all events, whatever the conditions, a great population maintained itself in comparative abundance and comfort. Since then vast changes have occurred, and to the observer who examines it now, it seems impossible for any considerable settlements to have wrested even a scanty living from the soil.
Mr. Holmes continues: "There is scarcely a square mile in the 6,000 examined, that does not furnish evidence of previous occupation, by a race totally distinct from the nomadic savages who hold it now (the Utes), and in many ways superior to them." But the people named never were nomads. They constructed and inhabited towns, villages, fortresses and caves, had fixed habitations, tilled the soil, raised flocks and herds, manufactured fabrics, and in every way pos- sessed a higher and better civilization, as evinced by their works, than their neighbors and contemporaries who roved the plains, dwelt in tents or in wigwams, and moved about from place to place as the fancy seized them. These were the warlike, predatory bands who peri- odically assailed the villages, and whose frequent incursions compelled the erection of defensive structures.
The major part of the ruins stand upon, or near, springs and run- ning streams, and here are seen grassy meadows and broad strips of alluvial bottom land. Most of the structures are of stone, and all in the last stages of decay. Classified, we find that the lowland villages were occupied by the division which produced the crops and other supplies. The same may have been true of the cave dwellers. Un- doubtedly the cliff houses were fortresses to which the people fled for protection in time of war.
In the valleys were situated the pueblos or communities. "They form parallelograms or circles, marked out, where the nature of the
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ground permitted, with great regularity, and all built of stone carefully laid, and the crevices filled with clay and mud." The circular ruins "are sometimes those of towers," used as signal stations, "or buildings sixty feet or more in diameter, inclosing several series of little apart- ments with one in the center, often half underground, to which the Spaniards have given the name of estufas."
These estufas, which form a part of all settlements, and every group of houses, appear to have been used as council chambers, and for the practice of religious and other mysterious rites. They are so used among the pueblos of the present day ; notwithstanding all the efforts of the Catholic missionaries, supplemented by Spanish laws, enforced by Spanish troops, for their suppression, they have been pow- erless to obliterate the ancient forms of worship, and engraft the Chris- tian religion upon these people. Some have accepted the outward forms, but nearly all cling tenaciously to the ancient heathen rites. The testimony given by Mariano Ruiz, a Spaniard who lived for a long time amongst the Pecos Indians, is to the effect that they pre- served the sacred fire in an estufa until 1840, when the five families who alone survived, became affiliated with another tribe. The fire was kept in a kind of oven, and was never allowed to emit flames. Ruiz himself was, in his turn, charged to keep it up, but he refused, influ- enced by the superstitious fear of the Indians that he who should leave his brethren after having watched over the sacred fire, would inevitably perish within a year. On account of his refusal he was never allowed to enter estufas. " It is certain* that these estufas occur in all habita- tions, even in those situated above precipices or on rocks not to be scaled without extreme difficulty, so that it is evident that great im- portance was attached to them."
" The cliff housest could only have been used as places of refuge and defence. During seasons of invasion and war, families were prob- ably sent to them for security, while the warriors defended their property, or went forth to battle.
* Nadaillac. Prehistoric America. + Holmes.
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" In form the parallelogram and the circle predominate, and a con- siderable degree of architectural skill is displayed. Where the confor- mation of the ground permits, the squares are perfect squares, and the circles perfect circles. The greater part of the ordinary structures are square or rectangular ; while attached to each group, and sometimes without indications of contiguous buildings, are circular ruins, fre- quently resembling towers. These are often as much as forty feet in diameter, in many cases having double or triple walls. They are solidly built of hewn stone, dressed on the outside to the curve, neatly jointed, and laid in mortar." Imagine these patient workmen and the herculean task before them, fashioning these blocks with the crudest of stone implements, and jointing the whole in a perfect masonry which has endured through many centuries, how many no man can tell, and undisturbed, will outlive many generations to come.
" Almost invariably a circular depression or estufa occupies the center of the inclosure. The smaller single walled towns which are scattered at intervals along the river courses and cañons, frequently in commanding situations, were probably watch or signal towers." The cave dwellings are simply irregular excavations in the faces of the bluffs, the fronts of which were either walled up or left open, according as peace or war obtained. "The cliff houses conform in shape to the floor of the niche or shelf on which they are built. They are of firm, neat masonry, and the manner in which they are attached or cemented to the cliffs, is simply marvelous. Their construction has cost a great deal of labor, the rock and mortar having been brought for hundreds of feet up the most precipitous places. They have a much more modern appearance than the valley and cave remains, and are probably more recent." Which implies that the agricultural settlements, being exposed to attacks from nomadic savages, these lofty fortresses were rendered necessary as places of refuge in the event of defeat, or as the means employed for the safety of their families, whenever it became imperative for the strong men to fight for their property, or invade the neighboring territory.
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"Of works of art, other than architectural, that might assist in throwing light upon the grade of civilization reached by these people, but meager discoveries were made." The facts concealed can only be made known by patient and prolonged exhumation, which it is believed the interest lately awakened by the reports of the various scientific schools, will at no distant day cause to be undertaken.
Of the remains found and now preserved in the National Museum, there are many arrow-heads of flint and obsidian, stone implements, and articles of fictile manufacture, "that may be fairly attributed to the age of the cliff dwellers. There are no evidences whatever that metals were used. Numerous rock inscriptions were observed, both engraved and painted upon the cliffs," and in some of the burial places three entire skeletons were obtained, one from the banks of Hoven- weep Creek, near the ruins known as "Hovenweep Castle," the others from a freshly excavated arroya in an ancient village near Abiquiu, New Mexico. A skull was obtained by Captain Moss from a grave on the Rio San Juan, near the mouth of the Mancos. The greater por- tion of what are supposed to be burial places, occur on the summits of hills, or on high, barren promontories that overlook the valleys and cañons, but in all their excavations they failed to discover the least trace of human remains, though in each, layers of charcoal or charred wood were found, which suggested the idea of cremation. Many writ- ers agree that this method of disposing of the dead was practiced by these and other prehistoric peoples. Holmes continues : "That the placing of the stone inclosures", which bore the appearance of ceme- teries, "occurred at a very early date, is attested by the growth of for- est, which is at least three or four hundred years old. In a number of cases the stones are deeply embedded in the sides and roots of the trees." Similar remains were observed on a high promontory between the McElmo and Hovenweep Cañons.
After describing an ancient irregular village on the Rio La Plata, some twenty-five miles above its junction with the San Juan, and south of the line between Colorado and New Mexico, which stands on a low
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HISTORY OF COLORADO.
terrace above the river bed, in a large, fertile valley, this writer says : " Nowhere about these ruins are there any considerable indications of defensive works, and the village, which is scattered over an area fully two miles in circuit, has no natural defensive advantages whatever. Neither are there traces of ditches nor anything else that might throw important light upon the habits and customs of the people. A few arrowheads and minute cutting implements were picked up. Countless chips of jasper, obsidian, and flint were scattered around, and the soil was literally full of fragments of painted and indented pottery."
In the neighborhood of the cave dwellings and towers of the Rio San Juan, "about thirty-five miles below the mouth of the La Plata, and ten miles above the Mancos, the river is bordered by low lines of bluffs, and at this particular place the vertical bluff face is from thirty- five to forty feet in height. Here are the remains of a ruined tower and a number of cave-like openings on the cliff face." In a large group situated on the Mancos, about ten miles above its mouth, "the walls were in many places quite well preserved and new-looking, while all about, high and low, were others in all stages of decay. In one place in particular a picturesque outstanding promontory has been full of
dwellings-literally honeycombed by this earth-burrowing race. * * On the brink of the promontory above stands the ruin of a tower, still twelve feet high, and similar in most respects to those already described. These round towers are very numerous in the valley of the Mancos. * In dimensions they range from ten to sixteen feet in diame- ter, and from five to fifteen feet in height, while the walls are from one to two feet in thickness. They are in nearly every case connected with other structures, nearly rectangular in form." This indicates very clearly the purpose of their construction. From these stations the sur- rounding country could be observed by the sentinels posted there, and warning immediately conveyed to the villagers of the approach of hos- tile forces.
"At the mouth of the Mancos, however, a double circle occurs, the smaller one having been the tower proper. It is fifteen feet in diame-
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HISTORY OF COLORADO.
ter, and from eight to ten feet in height. The large circular wall is forty feet in diameter, and from two to four feet high, and is built tan- gent to the smaller. The ruin is at the point where the Mancos reaches the alluvial soil bordering the Rio San Juan, and about one mile above its junction with that river. No single mile of the lower fifty of the Mancos is without such remains.
"Fifteen miles from its junction with the San Juan the Mancos emerges from the southwest border of the Mesa Verde, through which it has cut its way." This mesa comprises about seven hundred square miles of irregular tableland. The canon is about thirty miles long, and from one to two thousand feet in depth. " It seems to have been a favorite resort of the cliff-building people, and traces of their indus- try may be found everywhere, along the bottoms, in the cliffs, and on the high, dry tablelands above." In some of these ruins various imple- ments, some complete pottery vessels, and many fragments of others, charred corn, with here and there traces of fires, were observed, the walls and ceilings of some of the buildings being blackened by smoke. The inevitable circular estufa was also a feature of each group. "It has been supposed heretofore that the occupants of these houses ob- tained water either from the river below or from springs on the mesa above; but the immense labor of carrying water up these cliffs, as well as the impossibility of securing a supply in case of siege," suggest the existence of springs or reservoirs in the cliffs themselves, or on the mesas. That they were so supplied will hereafter appear. In some of these places living springs exist to this day, but in others, where no traces are seen, it may be taken for granted that they did exist some- where near at hand, but have been filled and buried by drifting sands or dust storms, and thus concealed from the explorers of our time.
" Between the Mesa Verde and the Late Mountains, of which Ute Peak is the culminating point, there is a long, deep valley, or strip of lowland, that connects the great lowland of the Lower Mancos with the cañon-cut plain that rises toward the Dolores. The southern end of this depressed strip drains into the Mancos, the northern into the
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McElmo. The latter stream heads along the north base of the Mesa Verde, within five miles of the Mancos at the point where it enters this cañon, and flows westward, passing along the north base of Ute Moun- tain, curving around to the southwest, and reaching the San Juan nearly ten miles beyond the Utah line. The large depressed area drained by this stream, contains a great number of ruins, many of which have been," not at all, or only casually, examined.
The most imposing pile of masonry yet found in Colorado, is at Aztec Spring, between the Mesa Verde and Late Mountains, near the divide between the McElmo and the Lower Mancos drainage. "The whole group covers an area of about 480,000 square feet, and has an average depth of from three to four feet. This would give in the vicin- ity of 1,500,000 solid feet of stone work. The stone used is chiefly fossiliferous limestone, that outcrops along the base of the Mesa Verde, a mile or more away, and its transportation to this place has doubtless been a great work for a people so totally without facilities. The upper house is rectangular, measures So by 100 feet, and is built with the car- dinal points to within five degrees. The pile is from twelve to fifteen feet in height, and its massiveness suggests an original height at least twice as great. The walls seem to have been double, with a space of seven feet between; a number of cross walls at regular intervals, indi- cate that this space has been divided into apartments. The walls are twenty-six inches thick, and are built of roughly dressed stones, which were probably laid in mortar, as in other cases. Inclosing this great house is a network of fallen walls, so completely reduced that none of the stones seem to remain in place." The purpose of the structure is, of course, unknown. Here again we find two estufas in the southern wing. "The lower house is two hundred feet in length by one hundred and eighty feet in width, and its walls vary fifteen de- grees from the cardinal points. The northern wall is double, and con- tains a row of eight apartments about seven feet wide by twenty-four in length. The walls of the other sides are low, and seem to have
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served simply to inclose the great court, near the center of which is a large walled depression.
"The dry, sloping plain between the Mesa Verde and the Rio Dol- ores seems also to have been a favorite resort of the town-building tribes. Numerous ruins occur along the borders of the cañons that drain into the McElmo, and especially near the heads of these cañons, where springs usually occur. At the south bend of the Dolores there are a great number of ruins, many of which compare favorably with the low- land ruins farther south." About the sources of the Hovenweep and Montezuma Creeks there are occasional ruins, but of inconsiderable importance. A very large and interesting one is seen on the Animas River, which Dr. Newberry describes as follows :
"The houses are many of them large, and all of them built of stone, hammer dressed on the exposed faces. Fragments of pot- tery are exceedingly common, though, like the buildings, showing great age. There is every evidence that a large population resided here for many years, perhaps centuries, and that they deserted it sev- eral hundred years ago; that they were pueblo Indians, and hence peaceful, industrious, and agricultural. The ruins of several reservoirs, built of masonry, may be seen at Suronara, and there are traces of acequias which led to these, through which water was brought, perhaps from a great distance." Bourke," who visited the Moquis in 1884, men- tions an old pueblo situated fourteen miles from the Moqui agency, near which is a marked depression of not less than one hundred acres in area, which was undoubtedly used as a reservoir for storing water from melted snow and rain. Later, while with the Zunis, they informed him of similar reservoirs on the summit of Toyalani Mountain, near their town, which were constructed by their ancestors, and adds that "the prehistoric race inhabiting this part of America, the ancestors of the present Moquis and Zunis, must have been farmers of extended ac- quirements for savages. They are to be credited with the construction of reservoirs wherever needed, near their building sites, with the exca-
* Snake Dance of the Moquis, John G. Bourke, U. S. A., 1884.
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vation of irrigating ditches, the utilization of all springs and tanks, and all other provisions against the contingency of drouth." In another part of his work he speaks of following an old trail leading to a reser- voir, "still holding many hundreds of gallons of water. Sand had drifted in, and the masonry-retaining walls had been broken away, but with very little labor it might be restored, and made as good as ever, with a capacity of from 15,000 to 20,000 gallons."
Holmes describes the ruins of Ojo Caliente and those near Abi- quiu, New Mexico, and compares them with those of Colorado. At the former the buildings are chiefly of adobe, and contain rows of apartments surrounding a number of large open courts, and including, as every- where else, the estufas, without which no village was complete. He devotes a page to pictographic writings, and while it cannot be posi- tively asserted that these belong to the age of the cliff builders, the evi- dence points very strongly in that direction. Some are found on the cliffs and in the niches with the lofty dwellings, while all are in locali- ties that must have been the frequent resorts of the ancient peoples. Some are found in the cañons of the Mancos, others on the bluffs of the San Juan, and many in the canons further west. They are chipped into the rock by some very hard implement, and rudely represent human figures. He regards them, not as attempts to represent na- ture, but rather as arbitrary forms intended to symbolize imaginary be- ings. Others are painted in red and white clay upon the smooth sur- faces of the rocks. These, he concludes, were certainly the work of the cliff builders, and executed while the houses were being constructed, the material being identical with the plaster then employed.
"Again, on the Rio San Juan, about ten miles below the mouth of the Rio La Plata, a low line of bluffs, composed of light-colored mas- sive sandstones that break down in great smooth-faced blocks, rises from the river level, and sweeps around to the north. Each of these great blocks has offered a tempting tablet to the graver of the primi- tive artist, and many of them contain curious and interesting inscrip. tions. They are all engraved or cut into the face of the
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rock, and the whole body of each figure has generally been chipped out, frequently to the depth of one-fourth or one-half an inch." On some of the larger groups some skill and great labor have been ex- pended, and evidently with a view to the perpetuity of the record thus perfected. Nearly all bear the traces of great age. "Among all the figures given of the ancient work there is no animal that resembles a horse, and we can hardly suppose that artists who could so cleverly delineate birds and deer and men, would fail in an attempt to represent an animal of so marked a character." We find in the narrative of Cor- onado's march that the natives were astounded at sight of the horses, and were inclined to worship them as gods. Like incidents occurred all along the line of De Soto's expedition from Tampa to Kansas. As Coronado brought the first sheep to the cliff and cave dwellers of the West, so De Soto gave to the aborigines of the South their first knowl- edge of swine. It is quite clear that up to the time of these invasions the natives of both sections were utterly ignorant of these animals.
One of the most striking inscriptions consists of "a great proces- sion of men, birds, beasts, and fanciful figures. The whole picture as placed upon the rock, is highly spirited, and the idea of a general move- ment toward the right skillfully portrayed. A pair of winged figures hover above the train, as if to watch or direct its movements ; behind these are a number of odd figures, followed by an antlered animal, re- sembling a deer, which seems to be drawing a notched sledge, contain- ing two figures of men. The figures forming the main body of the procession appear to be tied together in a continuous line, and in form resemble one living creature about as little as another. Many of the smaller figures above and below are certainly intended to represent dogs, while a number of men are stationed about here and there as if to keep the procession in order."
The meaning of this labored and ill-defined pictography is, of course, untranslatable. It may be accepted as a myth, or the crude portrayal of some historical event, attending the migration of the race from another home to this; the annals of some victory accomplished,
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or remarkable incident in the life, or among the traditions of their race. Darkness envelopes its definition, and it will probably forever remain unsolved.
Holmes next proceeds to give an account of the ancient pottery found among the ruins, the invariable accompaniment of ancient re- mains the world over. He finds the study of the different wares to be highly interesting, and the immense quantity a constant source of won- der. A collection of the fragments of vessels, of manifestly different designs, within a certain space, resulted in the discovery that within ten feet square there were pieces of fifty-five different vessels. He says, "The pottery of the ancient tribes of the San Juan Valley is undoubt- edly superior in many respects to that of the town building tribes of to-day," and especially in composition and surface finish. But in form and ornamentation it is inferior to like wares found among the Moquis and Zunis, yet "there is great similarity in every respect, and the dif- ferences do not seem greater than could be expected in the manufact- ure of the same people at periods separated by a few generations, or even of related tribes of the same time, surrounded by different phys- ical features, or by different neighbors."
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