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.
