We Used To Read Of The Wonder Of The Discoverers Of These Dwellings,
At Finding Them So Small.
The doorways were small, the rooms themselves
less than six feet in width and length, and the ceilings so low that a
five-foot man could not stand upright in them.
It was reasonable therefore
to infer, said these discoverers, that the builders and inhabitants of the
cliff-dwellings were an exceedingly small people, dwarfs, as in no other
way could the rooms be occupied. And thousands of people who have read
about these ruins still hold to the idea that they were inhabited by
dwarfs. But who the dwarfs were, or where they have gone to, no one seems
to have the remotest idea. But by and by, such men as Bandelier, the
Mendeleffs, Stevenson, Cushing, Fewkes, Hough, Hodge and Hewett, began to
investigate. They took the field, and carefully explored hundreds of ruins.
Then, some of them with a profound knowledge of the Spanish tongue, went
through all the records and diaries of the old conquistadores and the
padres who accompanied them. They found out all that the early Spaniards
had discovered and conjectured. In the meantime, they began to study the
languages of the Indians of the regions nearest to the ruins, and question
them as to their myths, legends, and traditions bearing upon the ruins, and
their researches speedily bore fruit.
Storage Houses. First of all they classified their discoveries. Though
scores of skeletons were found, there was not a single dwarf specimen among
them.
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