Singular,
if not significant, that the natives when first discovered
believed in a bearded white man whom they deified as the Fair God
of whose existence they had obtained knowledge from some source
and in whose honor they kept their sacred altar fires burning
unquenched.
The relics that have been found in the ruins are principally
implements of the stone age, but are of sufficient variety to
indicate a succession of races that were both primitive and
cultured and as widely separated in time as in knowledge.
The cliff dwellings were not only the abodes of their original
builders, but were occupied and deserted successively by the
chipped stone implement maker, the polisher of hard stone, the
basket maker and the weaver.
Among the relics that have been found in the ruins are some very
fine specimens of pottery which are as symmetrical and well
finished as if they had been turned on a potter's wheel, and
covered with an opaque enamel of stanniferous glaze composed of
lead and tin that originated with the Phoenicians, and is as old
as history. Can it be possible that the cliff dwellers are a
lost fragment of Egyptian civilization?
The cliff ruins in Arizona are not only found in the canons of
the Colorado river, but also in many other places. 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.
These remains may be very modern, as some choose to believe, but,
in all probability, they are more ancient than modern. Mummies
encased in wood and cloth have been taken from the tombs of Egypt
in an almost perfect state of preservation which cannot be less
than two thousand years old, and are, perhaps, more than double
that age. As there is no positive knowledge as to when the cliff
dwellers flourished, one man's guess on the subject is as good as
another's.
An important discovery was recently made near Mancos, Colorado,
where a party of explorers found in some old cliff dwellings
graves beneath graves that were entirely different from anything
yet discovered. They were egg-shaped, built of stone and
plastered smoothly with clay. They contained mummies, cloth,
sandals, beads and various other trinkets. There was no pottery,
but many well-made baskets, and their owners have been called the
basket makers. There was also a difference in the skulls found.
The cliff dwellers' skull is short and flattened behind, while
the skulls that were found in these old graves were long, narrow
and round on the back.[6]
[6] An Elder Brother of the Cliff Dwellers, by T. M. Prudden,
M.D. Harper's Magazine, June, 1897.
Rev. H. M. Baum, who has traveled all over the southwest and
visited every large ruin in the country, considers that Canon de
Chelly and its branch, del Muerto, is the most interesting
prehistoric locality in the United States. The Navajos, who now
live in the canon, have a tradition that the people who occupied
the old cliff houses were all destroyed in one day by a wind of
fire.[7] The occurrence, evidently, was similar to what happened
recently on the island of Martinique, when all the inhabitants of
the village of St. Pierre perished in an hour by the eruption of
Mont Pelee.
[7] Pueblo and Cliff Dwellers of the Southwest. Records of the
Past, December, 1902.
Contemporaneous with the cliff dwellers there seems to have lived
a race of people in the adjoining valleys who built cities and
tilled the soil. judged by their works they must have been an
industrious, intelligent and numerous people. All over the
ground are strewn broken pieces of pottery that are painted in
bright colors and artistic designs which, after ages of exposure
to the weather, look as fresh as if newly made, The relics that
have been taken from the ruins are similar to those found in the
cliff houses, and consist mostly of stone implements and pottery.
In the Gila valley, near the town of Florence, stands the now
famous Casa Grande ruin, which is the best preserved of all these
ancient cities.
