Before looking at these conjectures, however, it is
appropriate that we look first at what facts there are to justify them.
Suppositions without any facts are mere fictions of the imagination, and
this we are not indulging in. When in our day men began to explore the
Grand Canyon and its numberless tributaries, a great number of indications
of man's presence were found on the rim, on the fault lines or breaks in the
sheer precipitous walls, on the plateaus and in the Canyon beneath, in the
shape of crude house ruins, lookout houses or forts, indifferent trails,
cliff-dwellings, hewn-out water cisterns, mescal pits, with countless
pieces of broken pottery, arrowheads, stone axes, hammers, mortars, pestles
and even cemeteries. or places of cremation.
Evidences of Superior Civilization. Major J. W. Powell, in his journal of
explorations, writes that when he and his party reached the mouth of the
Uinta River, they went up to the agency of the Indians of the same name.
While visiting the Indians, and noting their fertile, irrigated farms, he
found many evidences that "this beautiful valley has been the home of a
people of a higher grade of cultivation than the present Utes. On our way
here yesterday, we discovered, in many places along the trail, fragments of
pottery, and wandering about the little farms to-day I find the foundations
of ancient houses and mealing stones that were not used by nomadic people,
as they are too heavy to be transported by such tribes, and are deeply
worn. The Indians, seeing that I am interested in these matters, take pains
to show me several other places where these evidences remain, and tell me.
that they know nothing about the people who formerly dwelt here. They
further tell me that up in the Canyon the rocks are covered with pictures."
Ancient Dwellings. When Powell and his party reached the junction of the
San Juan with the Colorado, they might have found a large number of ancient
dwellings in the cliffs not far away from where Bluff City now stands.
Further on, when the Bright Angel was discovered (the beautiful stream and
canyon on the north side of the Canyon directly opposite El Tovar), the
story of which is told in a separate chapter, Major Powell went up a little
gulch, just above Bright Angel Creek, about two hundred yards from their
camp on the Colorado, and there he discovered the ruins of two or three old
houses, which were originally of stone, laid in mortar. Only the
foundations were left, but irregular blocks, of which the houses were
constructed, were found lying scattered about. In one room he found an old
mealing stone, deeply worn, as if it had been much used. A great deal of
pottery was strewn around, and old trails, which in some places were deeply
worn into the rocks, were seen.
Ruins of a Village. Between the foot of what is now the Bright Angel Trail
and Bass's Cable Crossing, Major Powell discovered another group of ruins.
"There was evidently quite a village on this rock.
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