Basketry And
Pottery In Large Quantities Were Found, All Showing Ability In
Manufacture, Also Artistic Skill, Anti-Aesthetic Conception In The Form Of
The Articles And The Designs Portrayed Upon Them.
Excavated Relics.
Stone hammers and axes, obsidian, flint and other
arrow-heads, spear-heads, and knives, mortars and pestles, metates or meal
grinders, obsidian and flint drills for making holes through stone or
shell, bows and arrows, - the bows of tough wood often brought from afar,
and the arrows pointed with chipped flint or obsidian, deftly and securely
tied to the shaft with tough and durable strings of sinews; shell beads,
pipes, bone awls, punches, needles, etc.; stone fetiches in semblance of
animals, the like of which were never seen on land or sea; ornaments of
shell, turquoise and onyx, and even a kind of jade; sandals and mats of
yucca fibre, and exquisitely delicate feather robes, - these are some of the
things that the excavators have found. Corn-cobs, melon rinds and grass
seeds may be added to the list.
Old Cemeteries. Then - most interesting of finds - a number of cemeteries
were located, and these were raked and scraped over until every visible
secret hidden in their depths was brought into the light of the sun.
Tracing the Indian Races. Now here were numbers of facts to work upon. Then
the myths, legends and traditions of the Indians living near by were
carefully collected and studied, and light began to dawn in the minds of
our archaeologists. The Hopis in Northern Arizona, the Zunis in New
Mexico, the Acomas who live on the massive cliff twenty miles south of the
Santa Fe Railway at Laguna Station, the score of pueblos on the banks of
the Rio Grande, even to far-away Taos, - all contributed their share to the
elucidation of the mystery. Even the semi-nomadic Navaho had something to
say which helped. Cushing found among the Zuni stories galore of their
struggles with the fierce and warlike wandering tribes, who constantly
harassed the home-loving people who built their rude villages. Fewkes not
only unearthed whole cities of the past, but, gained from the nearby Hopis
their traditions, which told in reasonable and intelligible form what was
most probably their history. He listened while their old men and women
recited the stories and legends of their migration from the south
northwards, and how certain families or clans came from this or that
direction, building and inhabiting certain now ruined dwellings in ages
long past. Others heard similar stories, which they investigated as far as
possible, compared with the ruins named, and then recorded, with such
discovered facts as helped in the elucidation of the problems involved.
Ancestors of the Pueblo People. All these investigations pointed to one
great fact, and that was that the cliff and cave dwellers of the Grand
Canyon region and all the contiguous country were none other than the
ancestors of the present pueblo people, - those who live in the Hopi
villages, the Zuni villages, Acoma, Laguna, Santo Domingo, Isleta, Teseque,
Jemez, Taos, San Ildefonso, Zia and the rest.
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