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.
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