The Finest Of
Them Are Montezuma's Castle On Beaver Creek, And The Casa Blanca
In Canon De Chelly.
Numerous other ruins are found on the Rio
Verde, Gila river, Walnut Canon and elsewhere.
The largest and finest group of cliff dwellings are those on the
Mesa Verde in Colorado. They are fully described in the great
work[5] of Nordenskiold, who spent much time among them. The
different houses are named after some peculiarity of appearance
or construction, like the Cliff Palace, which contains more than
one hundred rooms, Long House, Balcony House, Spruce Tree House,
etc.
[5] The Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, by F. Nordenskiold,
Stockholm. 1893.
He obtained a large quantity of relics, which are also fully
described, consisting of stone implements, pottery, cotton and
feather cloth, osier and palmillo mats, yucca sandals, weaving
sticks, bone awls, corn and beans.
Many well-preserved mummies were found buried in graves that were
carefully closed and sealed. The bodies were wrapped in a fine
cotton cloth of drawn work, which was covered by a coarser cloth
resembling burlap, and all inclosed in a wrapping of palmillo
matting tied with a cord made of the fiber of cedar bark. The
hair is fine and of a brown color, and not coarse and black like
the hair of the wild Indians. Mummies have been exhumed that
have red or light colored hair such as usually goes with a fair
skin. This fact has led some to believe that the cliff dwellers
belonged to the white race, but not necessarily so, as this
quality of hair also belongs to albinos, who doubtless lived
among the cliff dwellers as they do among the Moquis and Zunis at
the present day, and explains the peculiarity of hair just
mentioned.
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