Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines/Chapter 8

by Lewis Henry Morgan

 

CHAPTER VIII.

RUINS OF HOUSES OF THE SEDENTARY INDIANS OF THE SAN JUAN RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES—CONTINUED.

About sixty miles north of the pueblos on the Chaco, and in the valley of the Animas River, is a cluster of stone pueblos, very similar to the former. These I visited in 1878. The valley is broad at this point, and for some miles above and below to its mouth. At the time of our visit (July 22) the river was a broad stream, carrying a large volume of water. We followed down the river from the point of its rise in the dividing range, where it was a mere brook, nearly the whole distance through Silverton to Animas City. The constant accession of mountain streams, and the rapid descent of its bed, soon changed it into a noisy and dashing stream About twenty miles above Animas City we were compelled to ascend to the top of the bordering mountains to avoid the narrow cañon below, which was impassable; and in descending from Animas City to visit these pueblos we crossed over to the La Plata Valle}^, and after passing through this valley we recrossed to the Animas Valley to avoid similar cañons also impassable. The supply of water for irrigation at the pueblo was abundant.

The pueblo of which the ground^[1] plan is shown. Fig. 40, is one of four situated within the extent of one mile on the west side of the Animas River in New Mexico, about twelve miles above its mouth Besides these four, there are five other smaller ruins of inferior structures within the same area. This pueblo was five or perhaps six stories high, consisting of a main building three hundred and sixty-eight feet long, and two wings two hundred and seventy feet long, measured along the external wall on the right and left sides, and one hundred and ninety-nine feet measured along the inside from the end back to the main building. A fourth structure crosses from the end of one wing to the end of the other, thus inclosing an open court. It was of the width of one and perhaps two rows of apartments, and slightly

Fig. 40.—Ground plan of Pueblo on Animas River, N. M.

convex outward, which enlarged somewhat the size of the court. The main building and the wings were built in the so-called terraced form; that is to say, the first row of apartments in the main building and in each wing on the court side were but one story high. The second row back of these were carried up two stories high, the third row three stories, and so on to the number of live stories for the main building and four for each wing. The external wall rose forty or fifty feet where the structure was five stories high and but ten feet on the court side, including a low parapet wall, where the structure was but one story high There was no entrance to these great structures in the ground story. After getting admission within the court, they ascended to the roof of the first row of apartments by means of ladders, and in the same way, by ladders, to each successive story. As the second story receded from the first, the third from the second, and so on, each successive story made a great step ten feet high. The apartments were entered through trap-doors in the roof of each story, the descent being by ladders inside. In some places, without doubt, the upper stories were entered by doorways from the roof of the story in front.

The two wings are a mass of ruins. Pit-holes along the summit show the forms of the rooms, with plain traces of the original walls here and there, and excavations, made by curious settlers, have opened a number of rooms in the ground story of one of the wings. These we entered and measured. Some of the rooms were faced with stone, i. e., we found a stone wall regularly laid up, like the one in the main building, as will elsewhere be shown. Some of the walls in these rooms were of cobblestone and adobe; others were of stone with natural faces and cobblestone intermixed. We saw no wall of adobe brick alone. The fallen walls formed a mass about twelve feet deep over the site of the wings, being the deepest on the outside and thinning out on the court side.

The mass of material used in the construction of these edifices was very great and surprises the beholder. It is explained in part by the thickness of the walls. We measured a number of them. They were two feet four inches, two feet six inches, two feet nine inches, three feet, and in rare cases three feet six inches thick. None measured less than two feet.

The main building was originally the best constructed part of the edifice, it may be supposed, because a part of it now remains standing. The walls of the first story, of some part of the second, and, in some places, of a part of the third story, forming the second row of apartments from the outside, are still standing, and rise about twenty-five feet from the ground. The measurements of the second row of apartments, as shown in the diagram, were from the standing walls, and were made in the second story.

The first or basement story is filled up with the rubbish of the fallen walls, ceilings, and floors, in the second row of apartments named. In some cases they are full above the line of the original ceilings; in others nearly uj) to them. The main ceiling beams were of yellow cedar from eight to twelve inches in diameter, usually three and four in number, and were placed across the narrow way of the room. Stubs of these beams still remain in the walls parallel with the court. Just above the line of these beams in the other two walls were the ends of a row of poles about four inches in diameter, which passed transversely across the cedar beams. Stubs of these poles, broken off short at the line of the walls, still remain in place. Upon these poles were originally thin pieces of split cedar limbs, and then the floor of adobe mortar, four or five inches thick. We thus get the position and height of the floor of the first and second stories, which were about nine feet six inches for the ground story, and nine feet for the second story.

The external wall of the main building-has fallen the entire length of the structure. As these ruins are resorted to by the few settlers in the valley as a stone quarry to obtain stone for foundations to their houses and barns, and for stoning up their wells, the loose material is being gradually removed; and when the standing walls are more convenient to take they will be removed also. One farmer told me he thought that one quarter of the accessible material of this and the adjacent stone pueblo had already been removed. It is to be hoped that the number of these settlers inclined to Vandalism will not increase.

A part of the partition walls which connected the outside wall with the next parallel wall is still standing where the wall last named rises above the second story. They stand out for three or four feet like buttresses against the wall, and show that the masonry of the parallel and transverse walls was articulated, that the partition walls were continuous from front to rear, and that the walls of the several stories rested upon each other. All this is seen by a bare inspection of the walls as they now stand.

The masonry itself is the chief matter of interest in these structures. Every room in the main building was faced with stone on the four sides, having an adobe floor and a wooden ceiling. Each room had, as far as walls now remain to show, two doorways through the walls parallel with the court, and four openings about twelve inches square, two on the side of each doorway, near the ceiling. These openings were for light and ventilation. In a limited sense it may be said that the stones were dressed, and also that they were laid in courses, but, in the high and strict meaning of these terms, neither is true. The stones used were small and of different sizes. Sometimes they were nearly square, from six to eight inches on a side; sometimes a foot long by six inches wide. The latter is the size of the stones used at Uxmal and Chichen Itza, according to Norman. In some cases longer and thicker stones were used without any attempt to square the ends. In some instances thin pieces of stone were employed with parallel faces. In all cases the stone was a sandstone, now of a reddish brown color. It is the prevailing stone in the bluffs of the Animas River, and of all the rivers parallel with it running into the San Juan, as far as personal observation enabled me to judge. It is a soft rather than a hard stone, usually of a buff color when first quarried, and some of it has decayed in the using. The wasted and weatherworn appearance of some of these stones would otherwise indicate a very great age for the structure. With stone of the size used a good face can be formed by simple fracture, and a joint sufficiently close may be made by a few strokes with a stone maul. If finer work was aimed at, it must have been accomplished by rubbing the stones to a face. But this work is sufficiently explained by the former processes. In the row of apartments and stories named, both faces of each wall were of stone, so that all of the apartments were of stone on the inside. They were fair walls, both in masonry and workmanship, and creditable to the builders. There was an attempt to lay up these walls in courses of uniform thickness, but each course differing from the one above and below it. The attempt was only partially successful. They did not hesitate to break in upon the regularity of the courses. Some of the standing walls are now sprung; but most of them are straight, and fairly vertical, the adobe mortar being sound and the bond unbroken.

The Indian had a string from time immemorial. With it he could strike a circle, and lay out the four sides of a quadrangular structure with tolerable correctness. It is not too much to assume that with a string and sinker attached the Village Indian had the plumb-line, and could prove his wall as well as we can. At all events, the eye still proves the general correctness of their work.

The adobe mortar of the Pueblo Indians is something more than mud mortar, although far below a mortar of lime and sand. Adobe is a kind of finely pulverized clay with a bond of considerable strength by mechanical cohesion. In Southern Colorado, in Arizona, and New Mexico, there are immense tracts covered with what is called adobe soil. It varies somewhat in the degree of its excellence. The kind of which they make their pottery has the largest per cent, of alumina, and its presence is indicated by the salt weed which grows in this particular soil. This kind also makes the best adobe mortar. The Indians use it freely in laying their walls, as freely as our masons use lime mortar; and although it never acquires the hardness of cement, it disintegrates slowly. The mortar in these walls is still sound, so that it requires some effort of strength to loosen a stone from the wall and remove it. But this adobe mortar is adapted only to the dry climate of Southern Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, where the precipitation is less than five inches per annum. The rains and frosts of a northern climate would speedily destroy it. To the presence of this adobe soil, found in such abundance in the regions named, and to the sandstone of the bluffs, where masses are often found in fragments, we must attribute the great progress made by these Indians in house-building.

The exclusive presence of this adobe mortar in all New Mexican structures of the aboriginal period shows that the tribes of New Mexico were then ignorant of a mortar of lime and sand. And here a digression may be allowed to consider whether a cement of this grade was known to the aborigines. Theoretically, the use of a mortar composed of quick-lime and sand, which gives a cement chemically united, would not be expected of the Indian tribes either in North or South America. There is no sufficient proof that they ever produced a cement of this high grade. It requires a kiln, artificially constructed, and a concentrated heat to burn limestone into lime, supposing they had learned that lime could be thus obtained, and some knowledge of the properties of quick-lime before they reached the idea of a true cement. The Spanish writers generally speak of walls of lime and stone, thus implying a mortar of lime and sand. Thus, Bernal Diaz speaks of the great temple in the Pueblo of Mexico as surrounded "with double enclosures built of stone and lime."^[2] Clavigero remarks that "the houses of lords and people of circumstances were built of stone and lime."^[3] Again, "the ignorant Mr. De Pauw denies that the Mexicans had either the knowledge or made use of lime; but it is evident from the testimony of all the historians of Mexico, by tribute rolls, and above all from the ancient buildings still remaining, that all these nations made the same use of lime as all the Europeans do."^[4] In like manner, Herrera, speaking of Zempoala, near Vera Cruz, remarks that the Spaniards, entering the town, found "the houses [were] built of lime and stone;"^[5] and again, speaking of the houses in Yucatan, he remarks that "at the place where the encounter happened, there were three houses built of lime and stone."^[6] These several statements can hardly be said to prove the fact of the use of a mortar of lime and sand. Mr. John L. Stephens, in speaking of the ruins at Palenque, is more explicit: "The building was constructed of stone, with a mortar of lime and sand, and the whole front was covered with stucco, and painted."^[7] The back wall of the governor's house at Uxmal is nine feet thick through its length of two hundred and seventy feet In this wall, by means of crowbars, "the Indians made a hole six and seven feet deep, but throughout the wall was solid and consisted of large stones imbedded in mortar, almost as hard as rock."^[8] At the ruins of Zayi, there was one row of ten apartments, two hundred and twenty feet long, called the Casas Cerrada, or closed house, because the core over which the triangular ceiling was constructed had not been removed when the house was abandoned, of which Stephens says, "We found ourselves in apartments finished with the walls and ceilings like the others, but filled up (except so far as they had been emptied by the Indians) with solid masses of mortar and stones."^[9] Norman, speaking of the ruins of the House of the Cacique at Chichen, remarks, "that the wall is made of large and uniformly square blocks of limestone set in mortar, which appears to be as durable as the stone itself"^[10] Elsewhere, speaking of the ruins of Yucatan generally, he observes, "the stones are cut in parallelopipeds of about twelve inches in length and six in breadth, the interstices filled up of the same materials of which the terraces are composed."^[11] That these tribes used mortar of some kind in their stone walls cannot be doubted, but these several statements do not prove the use of quick-lime, which is the main question Mr. Stephens' statement satisfied me until I saw the New Mexican pueblos. These show that a very efficient mortar can be had without the use of lime. The Indians of Mexico and the coast tribes near Vera Cruz plastered their houses externally with gypsum, which made them a brilliant white, and the stucco used upon the inner walls of houses in Chiapas and Yucatan was not unlikely made of gypsum. This mineral is abundant as well as easily treated. From it comes plaster of Paris, and from it may have come in some form the bond which held the mortar together, to the strength of which Mr. Stephens refers.

The neatness and general correctness of the masonry is now best seen in the doorways. In the standing walls of the second story, and of the first, where occasionally uncovered, there are to be seen two doorways in each room, as before stated, running in all cases across the building from the court side toward the external wall, and never in the direction of its length. These doorways measured some three feet two inches in height by two feet six inches in width, and others three feet four inches by two feet seven inches.

The stone used in these doorways are rather smaller than those in other parts of the wall, but prepared in the same manner.

I brought away two of these stones, taken from the standing walls of the main building, as samples of the character of the work with respect to size and dressing. Fig. 41 represents one of them, engraved from a photograph. It measures eight inches in its greatest length by six inches in its greatest width, and it is two and three-quarter inches in thickness. The upper and lower faces of the stone are substantially, but not exactly, parallel. It also shows one angle, which is substantially, but not exactly, a right angle and it was so adjusted that the long edge was on the doorway and short one in the wall of a chamber or apartment, with the right angle at Fig. 41.—Stone from doorway. the corner between them. This stone was evidently prepared by fracture, probably with a stone maul, and the regularity of the breakage was doubtless partly to skill and partly to accident. It shows no marks of the chisel or the drove, or of having been rubbed, and where the square is applied to the sides or angles the rudeness of the stone is perfectly apparent.

Fig. 41. a represents a sandstone cut by American skilled workmen in the form of a brick, and it is intended to show by comparison the great difference between the dressed stone of the civilized man and the ruder stone of the mason in the condition of barbarism. The comparison shows that no instruments of exactness were used in the stone work of the pueblo, and that exactness was not attempted. But the accuracy of a practiced Fig. 41a.—A finished block of sandstone, for comparison with Fig. 41. eye and hand, such as their methods afforded, was reached, and this was all they attempted. With stones as rude as that shown in the figure, a fair and even respectable stone wall may be laid. The art of architecture in stone is of slow and difficult growth. Stone prepared by fracture with a stone hammer precedes dressed stone, which requires metallic implements. In like manner mud mortar or adobe mortar precedes a mortar of lime and sand. The Village Indians of America were working their way experimentally, and step by step, in the art of house-building, as all mankind have been obliged to do, each race for itself; and the structures the Village Indians have raised in various parts of America, imperfect as they are by contrast, are highly creditable to their intelligence.

Stone lintels were not used for these doorways, as stones three feet long-would have been required. No stones of half that length are to be seen in any of the walls. They had, however, the idea of a stone lintel, for they used them in this structure over the foot-square openings for light and air. We found a stone lintel over an opening eighteen inches wide in a cliff house on the Mancos River. This was so firmly imbedded that we found its removal impossible. They used for a lintel six round cedar cross-pieces, Fig. 42, each about four inches in diameter and now perfectly sound.

In some of these doorways we noticed a peculiar feature. On the side toward the external wall, one and sometimes two of these wooden lintels were placed, four and sometimes six inches lower than the remainder, so that on entering from the outside room into the second room, the top of the doorway rose higher as the room was entered. A necessity was experienced to save the head from bumps, and the wonder is that it did not occur

Fig. 42.—Section of Cedar Lintel.

to them to raise the doorways to the height of the body. As the doorways were always open, no doors being used, it may well be that larger openings would have created stronger currents of air through the building than they wished. The ends of these lintels were hacked off by stone implements of some kind.

The peculiar arrangement of the doorways tends to show that this great house was divided into sections by the partition walls extending from the court to the exterior wall; and that the rooms above were connected with those below by means of trap-doors and ladders. If this supposition be well founded, the five rooms on the ground floor, from the court back, communicated with each other by doorways. The four in the second story communicated with each other in the same manner, and with those below through trap-doors in the floors. The three rooms in the third story communicated with each other by doorways, and with those below as before. The same would be true of the two rooms of the fourth story. It seems probable that the connected rooms were occupied by a group of related families.

We afterwards found the same thing nearly exemplified in the present occupied Pueblo of Taos, in New Mexico. We found that the families lived in the second and upper stories, and used the rooms below them for storage and for granaries. Each family had two, four, and six rooms, and those who held the upper rooms held those below.

In the south wing before mentioned, several rooms on the ground floor are still perfect, with the ceilings in place upholding the rubbish above. The openings or trap-doorways of two of these rooms are still perfect, but the ladders are gone. The rooms had been opened, as elsewhere stated, by late explorers. One of these trap-doors measured sixteen by seventeen inches, and the other sixteen inches square. Each was formed in the floor by pieces of wood put together. The work was neatly done. These rooms were smaller than the rooms above. Some were as narrow as four feet six inches, others six feet, showing that one room had been divided into two. The basement rooms were probably occupied for storage exclusively, whence their division. They were dark, except as light entered through the trap-doorway from above.

The structure connecting the wings and bounding the court was evidently a single or double row of apartments. This is shown by the amount of fallen material, which is larger than a wall would require, and from pits or depressions which plainly marked the outline of apartments.

There are two circular estufas in the main building, one twenty-three feet and the other twenty-eight feet in diameter. A part of the wall of the first estufa is still standing. It is of stone, mostly of blocks about five inches square, and laid in courses, with considerable regularity. The work is equal to the best masonry in the edifice. In the open court, and near the outer structure, bounding it in front, is another estufa of great size, sixty-three and a half feet in diameter. These estufas, which are used as places of council, and for the performance of their religious rites, are still found at all the present occupied pueblos in New Mexico. There are six at Taos, three at each house, and they are partly sunk in the ground by an excavation. They are entered through a trap-doorway in the roof, the descent being by a ladder.

Outside the front wall closing the court, and about thirty feet distance therefrom, are the remains of a low wall crossing the entire front and extending beyond it. The end structures were about sixty-five feet long by forty feet wide, while at the center was a smaller structure, fifty-four feet long by eighteen wide. All its parts were connected. It was evidently erected for defensive purposes; but it is impossible to make out its character from the remains. One wing is several feet longer than the other, and the wall on the court side is about twenty feet longer than the opposite exterior wall, thus showing that they used no exact measurements.

There were no fire-places with chimneys in this structure. There are none in the ruins in Yucatan and Central America. It is a fair inference, therefore, that chimneys were entirely unknown to the aborigines at the time of their discovery. They have since that time been adopted into the old pueblo houses from American or Spanish sources. They are placed in one corner of the room. We saw recently at Taos two chimneys and two fire-places in one and the same room, one for cooking and the other for a fire to warm the room; proof conclusive that they were not to the chimney born. They were in an apartment of one of the principal chiefs

In a number of rooms are recesses like niches left in the wall, about two feet six inches wide and high, and about eighteen inches deep. These furnished places to set household articles in, in the place of a mantel or shelf. We afterwards saw niches precisely similar at Taos, and thus used.

It remains to consider the number of rooms or apartments contained in this great edifice. It is plain that it was built in the terraced form, the second story set back from the first, the third from the second, and so on to the last, which was a single row of apartments, on the top somewhere, but not necessarily on the back side. Pueblos were not entirely uniform in this respect. The edifice at Taos recedes in front and rear and even upon the sides. This may have been built in the same way, but it can neither be proved nor disproved from the ruins. The number of apartments would not vary much whether the upper stories were symmetrically or irregularly formed. If symmetrical, the main building-contained two hundred and sixty apartments, and each wing seventy, making the computation for the latter by area and from the number of depression still discernible, thus making an aggregate of four hundred rooms.

The house was a fortress, proving the insecurity in which the people lived. It was also a joint tenement house of the aboriginal American model, indicating a plan of life not well understood. It may indicate an ancient communism in living, practiced by large households formed on the principle of kin. In such a case the communism was limited to the household as a part of a kinship.

Those familiar with the remains of Indian Pueblos in ruins will recognize at once the resemblance between this pueblo and the stone pueblos in ruins on the Rio Chaco, in New Mexico, about sixty miles distant from these ruins, particularly the one called Hungo Pavie, so fully described by General J. H. Simpson. There is one particular in which the masonry agrees, viz., in the use of courses of thin stones, about half an inch in thickness, sometimes three together, and sometimes five and six. These courses are carried along the wall from one side to the other, but often broken in upon. The effect is quite pretty. These stones measure six inches in length by one-half an inch in thickness. General Simpson found the same courses of thin stones, and even thinner, in the Chaco ruins, and comments upon the pleasing effect they produced.

This edifice was a credit to the skill and industry of the men among the Village Indians; for the men, and not the women, were the architects and the masons, although the women undoubtedly assisted in doing the work. Women brought stone and adobe and cedar, and made adobe mortar, without a doubt, as they still do. One of the hopeful features in their advancement was the beginning of the reversal of the old usage which put all labor upon the women. It is now the rule among the Village Indians for the men to assume the heavy work, which was doubtless the case when this pueblo was constructed. They cultivated maize, beans, and squashes, in garden beds, and irrigated them with water drawn from the river by means of a canal, and passed in several smaller streams through their gardens. The men now^ engage in the work of cultivation. This is a sure sign of progress.

Off the south wing of the building, and without it, are the remains of an additional building, large enough for twenty or thirty rooms on the ground, some part of which were, doubtless, carried up two or more stories high; but it is a mass of indistinct ruins, about which little can be said except that some of the rooms were unusually large. This may have been the first building constructed, and the one occupied while the stone pueblo was being built.

This outline plan is submitted with some hesitation, because the sketch from which it is taken was made in haste, and with no expectation of using it. It is but an approximation. Near the pueblo last described, and about five Fig. 43.—Outline of a Stone Pueblo on Animas River. hundred feet northeasterly therefrom, is another pueblo in two sections. Fig. 43, with a space about fifteen feet wide between them. They may have been, and probably were, connected and inhabited as one structure. Some of the walls are still standing, and a number of the rooms in the ground story are well preserved, the ceilings still remaining in place. Although the structure is chiefly of stone like the last, some of the walls are of cobblestone and adobe mortar. The largest section seems to have had an open court in the center in the form of a parallelogram. This feature increased the difficulty of understanding the original form of the house and the arrangement of the rooms. The walls of the first, of parts of the second, and occasionally of parts of the third story, are still standing in places. Many of the rooms are small, as the measurements of the following rooms in the second story of the smallest building of the two will show: 3 feet 4 inches by 6 feet 6 inches, 4 feet b}' 8 feet 4 inches, 4 feet 7 inches by 14 feet 2 inches, 6 feet 5 inches by 14 feet 9 inches, 7 feet 3 inches by 16 feet 9 inches, 6 feet 4 inches by 11 feet 7 inches, 7 feet 3 inches by 7 feet 5 inches, 8 feet 7 inches by 15 feet. Height of rooms, 8 feet. The rooms were faced with stone laid up in the main in courses. They were small, from four to eight inches square, and the walls from two to three feet in thickness. Adobe mortar was used abundantly in the inner part of the wall, but not showing on the face at the joints, the stones being laid together as closely as the natural surfaces of the stone would permit, and without mortar near the edge. This feature was also characteristic of the walls of the pueblo first described.

Mr. Bandelier made to me recently the important suggestion that as far as any progress or improvement in this architecture, in style or character, can be discerned, it seems to have been from smaller to larger rooms, followed by a reduction of the size of the house in ground dimensions. The last is more particularly illustrated by the houses in Yucatan, where single rooms are found, in rare cases, sixty feet long, but where the size of the house in ground dimensions is much smaller than of those in New Mexico. It was in consequence of an examination of some very old pueblo ruins in New Mexico, east of the Rio Grande, near Santo Domingo. There the pueblo was more like a cluster of cells than of rooms, as many of them were but four or five feet square, contrasting strongly with the present inhabited pueblos. The same fact may be seen at Taos. It was mentioned (p. 144) that the Taos Indians many years ago conquered and dispossessed the former occupants of a pueblo at this place, and that some remains of the old pueblo were still standing. In 1878 I visited one of the ground-rooms in the old structure still standing, and entirely alone. It was about five feet by six in ground-dimensions, and was then occupied by a solitary Taos Indian, a sort of hermit, as his place of residence. A bunk across one side furnished him both a bed and a seat, and the remaining room was scarcely sufficient to turn around in, but it gave him all the home he had, and, doubtless, all the room he needed Another room, a few feet distant, also a part of the old pueblo, was still standing. These rooms were of adobe, and were about six feet high. As the Indian gained in experience and knowledge in the use and construction of the joint-tenement houses, improvements would gradually manifest themselves. It is important to find and trace this progress, as we have every reason to believe that it is one system of architecture throughout North America at least, with a connection of all its forms.

Along the curving or westerly side of the first building, and along the northerly side, there are cedar beams projecting about four feet from the wall in the second story on the line of the ceiling. They are about four inches in diameter. Their object is not apparent.

In one of the basement rooms of the second building are a series of pictographs upon a plastered wall. Our limited time would not permit a sketch.

Midway between the pueblo. Fig. 40, and the one now being considered is a circular ruin three hundred and thirty feet in circuit, which seems to have consisted of two concentric rows of apartments around an inclosed estufa. It was built of cobblestone and adobe mortar. Pit-holes indicate the form and plan of the inclosing rooms, but the ruin is too indistinct to form a clear idea of its structure. A removal of the loose material would probably disclose the original ground plan.

A few hundred feet north are the ruins of four other structures of cobblestone and adobe quite near each other. They were, without doubt, pueblo houses, but they are now a mass of undistinguishable ruins, and, from present appearance, were probably ruins, when the stone pueblos were inhabited. The river here runs nearer the western border of the valley than the eastern, and quite near the pueblo last noticed, but from this point it bears toward the east side of the valley.

About a mile in a direction a little south of east and near the river are the ruins of two other large pueblos, of which the lower one is one thousand and forty feet in circuit, and the one above four hundred and fifty-two feet. Both are built of sandstone and cobblestone and adobe mortar. No. part of the walls are standing above the rubbish; but they were apparently contemporary with the stone pueblos. The first stands upon the brink of the river, which is now cutting away its foundations, thus proving that it was insecurely located. The mass of fallen material is very great, showing an apparent depth of at least fifteen feet. Some of the basement rooms in each of these pueblos are probably still entire, judging from the great mass of material over them. Great pit-holes indicate the position of chambers and inclosing-walls. The largest of the two pueblos is 300 feet in depth. In one place, where some excavation has been done, the corner of a basement room is in sight. All these ruins ought to be re-examined, and so far excavated as to recover complete ground plans.

Near the mouth of the river are said to be still other ruins, and still others on the east side of the river, which we had no time to examine.

The valley of the Animas River is here broad and beautiful, about three miles wide. The river passes nearly through the center of the valley. The cliff, on the east side of the level plain, is bold and mountainous, rising from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet high, while on the west side the valley is bordered with the mesa formation in two benches, one rising back of the other, and both as level as a floor, with the highlands forming the divide between the Animas and La Plata Rivers in the distance.

From the number and size of the houses, there was probably a population of at least five thousand persons at this settlement, living by horticulture. It is not now known by what tribe of Indians these pueblos were inhabited or constructed. These pueblos, newly constructed and in their best condition, must

have presented a commanding appearance. From the materials used in their construction, from their palatial size and unique design, and from the cultivated gardens by which they were doubtless surrounded, they were calculated to impress the beholder very favorably with the degree of culture to which the people had attained. It is a singular fact that none of the occupied pueblos in New Mexico at the present time are equal in materials or in construction with those found in ruins. It tends to show a decadence of art among them since the period of European discovery.

Westward of the Animas, the La Plata, and the Mancos Rivers, which run southwesterly into the San Juan, is the Montezuma Valley, a broad and level plain, so named by General Heffernan, of Animas City. It is about fifty miles in length, and apparently ten miles wide at the ranch of Mr. Henry L. Mitchell, which is situated at the commencement of the McElmo Cañon. It stretches southward thirty-six miles to the San Juan. In this valley, which has no flowing stream through it at present (and there is no certainty that it ever had), and which is without water, except in springs and pools, and has but a slight rainfall during the year, Mr. Mitchell was successfully cultivating, at the time of our visit, wheat, oats, maize, and the garden vegetables. The valley is uninhabited, except by the family of Mr. Mitchell, and a solitary man living four miles westward. Their nearest Fig. 44.—Pueblos at commencement of McElmo Cañon. neighbors are on the Mancos River, twenty-five miles distant. The bluffs bordering the eastern side of the valley rise boldly about fifteen hundred feet, with table lands above, while on the west the valley is bordered with mountains. About ten miles southwest of Mr. Mitchell's ranch the Ute Mountain rises out of the plain, and from this point appears as a solitary and detached mountain. The McElmo Cañon passes along its north and westerly sides, while the main valley passes southward along its eastern base. This high and noble mountain is situated in the southwest corner of Colorado, near the intersection of the boundary lines of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. It is a conspicuous object from the La Plata Valley. The Montezuma Valley possesses features of remarkable natural beauty.

Near Mr. Mitchell's ranch, and within a space of less than a mile square, are the ruins of nine pueblo houses of moderate size. They are built of sandstone intermixed with cobblestone and adobe mortar. They are now in a very ruinous condition, without standing walls in any part of them above the rubbish. The largest of the number is marked No. 1 in the plan Fig. 44, of which the outline of the original structure is still discernible It is ninety-four feet in length and forty-seven feet in depth, and shows the remains of a stone wall in front inclosing a small court about fifteen feet wide. The mass of material over some parts of this structure 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 in one place about twenty feet wide. Here there are some evidences that a spring of water was inclosed in a reservoir by means of masonry. The building is in two sections, separated by this break, of which the main one is five hundred and ten feet long, and the smallest one hundred and twenty feet, forming a nearly continuous front. They stand back ten or fifteen feet from the verge of the bluff, and are built of tabular pieces of sandstone and adobe mortar. Numerous pit-holes in each structure indicate the chambers and the line of the inclosing walls. The removal of the loose material would doubtless disclose the ground-plan, but it would involve immense labor. With the Ute Mountain rising majestically in the background, and the broad valley in front, the situation of the pueblo is remarkably fine.

The Round Tower is the most singular feature in this structure. While it resembles the ordinary estufa, common to all these structures, it differs from them in having three concentric walls. No doorways are visible in the portion still standing, consequently it must have been entered through the roof, in which respect it agrees with the ordinary estufa The inner chamber is about twenty feet in diameter, and the spaces between the encircling walls are about two feet each; the walls are about two feet in thickness, and were laid up mainly with stones about four inches square, and, for the most part, in courses. There is a similar round tower, having but two concentric walls, at the head of the McElmo Cañon, and near the ranch of Mr. Mitchell. It is shown in Fig. 44, and stands entirely isolated. The diameter of the tower is thirty-four feet, of which the inner chamber is twenty-three feet; the space between the two walls is about six feet, and the thickness of the walls about two feet six inches. It is laid up in the same manner as the one last named, with stones about the same size, and the walls still standing are about five feet in height. Partition walls divide the outer space, one of which measured twenty inches in thickness.

Several hundred feet from the pueblo last named, further down the valley, is another pueblo of large extent, and in a very ruined condition.

A mile or more below the ranch of Mr. Mitchell, in the bordering walls of the McElmo Cañon, are two cliff houses. The walls of the bluff are here about twenty feet high, with large cavities formed in them here and there. These houses, each of which consists of but two or three small chambers, are built of stone, and stand but a few feet above the bottom of the canon. They are narrow, and not very high, as the cavity in the rock is not very deep. Corrals for some kind of domestic animals are found by the side of these houses in the same hollows in the rock. This is proved by a mass of excrement, about a foot in depth, still there, whether of the goat or sheep cannot be stated, but this fact shows that they were inhabited subsequent to the period of European discovery, although they may have been built and used before. The canon, at this point, is from three hundred to five hundred feet wide.

I wish to call attention again to the San Juan district, to its numerous ruins, and to its importance as an early seat of Village Indian life. These ruins and those of a similar character in the valley of the Chaco, together with numerous remains of structures of sandstone, of cobblestone, and adobe in the San Juan Valley, in the Pine River Valley, in the La Plata Valley, in the Animas River Valley, in the Montezuma Valley, on the Hovenweep, and on the Rio Dolores, suggest the probability that the remarkable area within the drainage of the San Juan River and its tributaries has held a prominent place in the first and most ancient development of Village Indian life in America. The evidence of Indian occupation and cultivation throughout the greater part of this area is sufficient to suggest the hypothesis that the Indian here first attained to the condition of the Middle Status of barbarism, and sent forth the migrating bands who carried this advanced culture to the Mississippi Valley, to Mexico, and Central America, and not unlikely to South America as well.

Indian migrations are gradual outflows from an overstocked area, followed by organization into independent tribes, and continuing through centuries of time, until the ethnic life of each tribe is expended, or a successful establishment is finally gained in a new and perhaps far distant land. They planted gardens and constructed houses as they advanced from district to district, and removed as circumstances prompted a change of location.

Since the cultivation of maize and plants precedes or is synchronous with this stage of development, it leads to the supposition that maize must have been indigenous in this region, and that it was here first brought under cultivation. There are some facts that seem to favor this hypothesis.^[12] At present I wish to call attention to such existing evidence as points to the San Juan district as the anterior home of a number of historic Indian tribes.

1 . The Mound- Builders. — Although these tribes had disappeared at the epoch of European discovery, and cannot be classed with any known Indian stock, their condition as horticultural tribes, their knowledge of some of the native metals, and the high character of their stone implements and pottery place them in the class of Village Indians. The nearest region from which they could have been derived is New Mexico. There is no reason for referring them to the San Juan region more than to the nearer country of the Rio Grande, unless it should appear probable that the inhabitants of the latter valley were themselves migrants from the same region. But there are good reasons for deriving the Mound-Builders from the Village Indians in some part of New Mexico. 2. The Mexican Tribes.—The seven principal tribes of Mexico, called collectively the Nahuatlacs, spoke dialects of the same language, and all alike had a tradition that their ancestors came from the north, and that the separate tribes came into Mexico at long intervals apart They arrived in the following order as to time: 1, Sochomilcos; 2, Chalcas; 3, Tepanecans; 4, Tescucans; 5, Tlatluicans; G, Tlascalans; 7, Aztecs or Mexicans. They settled in different parts of Mexico The Cholulans, Tepeacas, and Huexatsincos spoke dialects of the Nahuatlac language, and were severally subdivisions of one or the other preceding tribes. They had the same tradition of a northern origin. These several tribes were among the most prominent in Mexico at the period of Spanish discovery. Some of the tribes of Yucatan and Central America also had similar traditions of an original migration of their ancestors from the north.

Acosta, who visited Mexico in 1585, and whose work was published at Seville in 1589, states the order of the migration of the Mexican tribes as above given, and farther says that they "come from other far countries which lie toward the north, where now they have discovered a kingdom they oall New Mexico. There are two provinces in this country, the one called Aztlan, which is to say, a place of Herons [Cranes], and the other Teculhuacan, which signifies a land of such whose grandfathers were divine. The Navatalcas [Nahuatlacs] point their beginning and first territory in the figure of a cave, and say they came forth of seven caves to come and people the land of Mexico."^[13] The same tradition, substantially, is given by

Herrera,^[14] and also by Clavigero.^[15] If by the word Aztlan was intended "place of Cranes", and on the supposition that these tribes migrated from the San Juan region, the reasons for the designation are justified. The Sandhill Crane (Grus Canadensis) is one of the largest and most conspicuous of American birds, and is still found from the British Possessions to New Mexico, and winters in the latter. I saw a pair of these great birds in 1878, in the valley of the Animas River. Dr. Coues remarks that "thousands of Sandhill Cranes repair each year to the Colorado River Valley, flock succeeding flock along the course of the great stream from their arrival in September until their departure the following spring. Taller than the Wood Ibises or the largest Herons with which they are associated, the stately birds stand in the foreground of the scenery of the valley. * * * Such ponderous bodies moving with slowly-beating wings give a great idea of momentum from mere weight, a force of motion without swiftness; for they plod along heavily, seeming to need every inch of their ample wings to sustain themselves"^[16] It is an Indian trait to mark localities by some conspicuous feature or fact, and the selection of the Sandhill Crane to indicate their home country would have accorded with Indian usages.

Again, Herrera, who presents the current traditions, observes, that "these peoples painted their original in the manner of a cave, and said they came out of seven caves to people the country of Mexico. * * * After the six above mentioned races departed from their country, and settled in New Spain, where they were much increased, the seventh race being the Mexican nation, a warlike and polite people, who adoring their god Vitsilpuztli, he commanded them to leave their own country, promising them they should rule over other races in a plentiful country, and much wealth."^[17]

It is worthy of remark that the cave dwellings or cliff houses are in the San Juan district, the most of them being on the Mancos River, and on the western portion of the San Juan. These traditions may in fact refer to these cave dwellings as the original homes of their ancestors, and at the same time without precluding the supposition that they also constructed and inhabited some of the pueblo structures now in ruins in other parts of the same area. All the early accounts concur in representing the Aztecs or Mexicans, when they first arrived in Mexico, as subsisting by the cultivation of maize and plants, as constructing houses of stone, and with a religious system which recognized personal gods. These statements are probably true. They had attained to the status of Village Indians. This again renders New Mexico their probable original home as the only area in the north where ruins of structures of tribes so far advanced have been found.

The San Juan district is remarkably situated in its geographical relations. This river, rising in the crests of the high mountains forming the water-shed or divide between the Atlantic and Pacific, flows southward until it enters the table-land formation, through which it flows in a southwesterly and then northwesterly direction, making a long, sweeping curve in New Mexico and Arizona, after which it runs westerly to its confluence with the Colorado. It receives from the north the following tributaries, rising like itself in the high mountains, the Piedra, Pine River (Los Pinos), the Animas, the La Plata, the Mancos, the McElmo, now dry, and the Hovenweep and Montezuma creeks, now nearly dry. Its southern tributaries are the Navajo, Chaco, and De Chelly.

With such evidences of ancient occupation, here and elsewhere in the San Juan country, we are led to the conclusion that the Village Indians increased and multiplied in this area, and that at some early period there was here a remarkable display of this form of Indian life, and of house architecture in the nature of fortresses, which must have made itself felt in distant parts of the continent. On the hypothesis that the valley of the Columbia was the seed-land of the Ganowanian family, where they depended chiefly upon a fish subsistence, we have in the San Juan country a second center and initial point of migrations founded upon farinaceous subsistence. That the struggle of the Village Indians to resist the ever continuous streams of migration flowing southward along the mountain chains has been a hard one through many centuries of time, is proved by the many ruins of abandoned or conquered pueblos which still mark their settlements in so many places. At the present moment there is not a Village Indian in the San Juan district. It is entirely deserted of this class of inhabitants. That the original ancestors of the principal historic tribes of Mexico once inhabited the San Juan country is extremely probable. That the ancestors of the principal tribes of Yucatan and Central America owe their remote origin to the same region is equally probable. And that the Mound Builders came originally from the same country, is, with our present knowledge, at least a reasonable conclusion.

Indian migrations have occurred under the influence, almost exclusively, of physical causes, operating in a uniform manner. These migrations, involving the entire period of the existence here of the inhabitants of both American continents, will be found to have a common and connected history A study of all the facts may yet lead to an elucidation and explanation of these migrations with some degree of certainty. The hypothesis that the valley of the Columbia River was the seed-land of the Ganowanian family holds the best chance of solving the great problem of the origin and distribution of the Indian tribes.

 

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1. The engravings of Figs. 40, 41, and 41a, were kindly loaned by Mr. F. W. Putnam of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass.
2. The True History of the Conquest of Mexico, Keatinge's Translation, Salem ed., 1803, vol. i, p. 208.
3. History of Mexico, Cullen's Trans., Phila. ed., 1817, vol. ii, p. 232.
4. Ib., vol. ii,p.237.
5. History of America, Stevens' Trans., London ed., 1725, vol. ii, p. 266.
6. Ib., p. 112.
7. Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, vol. ii, p. 310.
8. Ib., vol. i, p. 178.
9. Central American, Chiapas and Yucatan, vol. ii, p. 23.
10. Rambles in Yucatan, p. 120.
11. Ib., p, 127.
12. Where maize was indigenous is unknown, except that it was somewhere upon the American continent. It is the only cereal America has given to the world. At the period of European discovery, it was found cultivated and a staple article of food in a large part of North America and in parts of South America. There were also found beans, squashes, and tobacco, with the addition in some areas of peppers, tomatoes, cocoa, and cotton. The problem of the place of the origin of maize is probably insoluble, but speculations are legitimate, and such are all that I have to offer.   The fecundity of plant-life in the Rocky Mountains is remarkable, particularly on the southern slopes, where they subside into the mesa, or table-land formation, north of the San Juan River. The continental divide is in the eastern margin of this region. The first suggestion I wish to make is that all cereals and cultivated plants must have originated in the great continental mountains of the two hemispheres, and have propagated themselves along the water courses of the mountain valleys down to the plains traversed by the great rivers formed by these mountain tributaries. All the cereals belong to the family of the Grasses (Gramineæ), and each of them, doubtless, is the last of a series of antece- dent forms.   I saw rye, barley, and oats growing wild by self-propagation in the mountain valleys of Colo- rado the present season ; also the wild pea, whose stunted seeds had the taste of the cultivated pea. Turnips, onions, tomatoes, and hops are found growing wild in the Pine River Valley, and the pie-plant or rhubarb is said to grow luxuriantly in the Elk Mountain valleys. I also saw wild flax and the gourd growing by self-propagation in the valley of the Animas. Currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries are found in the mountain valleys in numerous places, together with flowering plants of many species and varieties. Tiny forms of flowering plants are to be seen above patches of snow in places where the snow had recently melted. This fecundity of plant-life from ten to twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the relation of these mountain tributaries to the San Juan, which runs from east to west, not remotely from the base of these mountains, in such a manner as to invite and receive into its lap, so to express it, the vegetable wealth developed in these mountain chains, are facts that force themselves upon the attention of the observer.   The altitude of the San Juan Valley ranges from seven thousand feet at Pagosa Springs to live thousand nine hundred and seventy feet at the mouth of the Animas, and diminishing to four thousand four hundred and forty-six feet near the point where it empties into the Colorado (Hayden's Atlas of Colorado, Sheet 111). The altitude at Conejos is seven thousand eight hundred and eighty feet (Ib.,) which is about as great an elevation as admits of the successful cultivation of maize. I noticed in a field of maize growing at Conejos that the stalk grew only about three feet high, and the fact that the ear grew out of it but six inches from the ground. Specimens of the ear we obtained showed that it was about five inches-long, with the kernel small and flinty. The ear is in four colors, white, red, yellow, and black, each being one or the other of these colors. In a few cases two colors were intermixed in the same ear. It seemed probable that this was the primitive maize of the American aborigines, from which all other varieties have been developed. A few cobs which we found at a cliff house on the Mancos River corresponded with the Conejos ear in size, and were probably the same variety. Afterwards at Taos I found the same ear in white, red, yellow, and black; the staple maize now cultivated at this pueblo, but much larger. I brought away several fine ears saved for seed. One black ear measured twelve inches in length, with twelve rows of kernels, while the white variety, both at Conejos and Taos, had each fourteen rows.

    Finally, a dry country, neither excessively hot nor moist, like the San Juan region, would seem to be most favorable for the development and self-propagation of maize as well as plants until man appeared for their domestication. These are but speculations, but if they should prompt further investigations concerning the place of nativity of this wonderful cereal, which has been such an important factor in the advancement of the Indian family, and which is also destined to prove such a support to our own, these suggestions will not have been made in vain.

13. The Natural and Moral History of the East and West Indies, London ed., 1604, Grimstone's Trans., pp. 497, 504.
14. General History of America, London eel., 1725, Stevens's Trans., III, 188.
15. History of Mexico, Cullen's Trans., 1, 119.
16. Birds of the Northwest, 1874, p. 534.
17. History of America, iii, p. 188, 190.