Page:Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines.djvu/258

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HOUSES AND HOUSE-LIFE OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES.

is ten or twelve feet deep. There are, no doubt, rooms with a portion of the walls still standing covered with rubbish, the removal of which would reveal a considerable portion of the original ground-plan.

A short distance below the pueblos last named is another cluster of the same number of pueblos, and much in the same condition; and upon rising ground near the foot of the bluff, on the east side of the valley, there are, as Mr. Mitchell informed me, the ruins of several pueblos of stone. He also informed me that similar ruins were to be found here and there in the valley to the San Juan. Four miles westerly, near the ranch of Mr. Shirt, are the ruins of another large stone pueblo, together with an Indian cemetery, where each grave is marked by a border of flat stones set level with the ground in the form of a parallelogram eight feet by four feet. Near the cluster of nine pueblos shown in the figure are found strewn on the ground numerous fragments of pottery of high grade in the ornamentation, and small arrow-heads of flint, quartz, and chalcedony delicately formed, and small knife-blades with convex and serrated edges in considerable numbers. This is an immense ruin with small portions of the walls still standing, Fig. 45.—Outline plan of a stone pueblo near the base of Ute Mountain. particularly of the round tower of stone of three concentric walls, incorporated in the structure, and a few chambers in the north end of the main building. The round tower is still standing nearly to the height of the first story. In its present condition it was impossible to make a ground-plan showing the several chambers, or to determine with certainty which side was the front of the structure, assuming that it was constructed in the terraced form. It is situated upon a vertical bluff of yellowish sandstone rock about twenty feet high, and about four miles below Mr. Mitchell's ranch in the direction of the Ute Mountain and near its northeastern base. The bluff is broken through to the bottom