Jesse Walter Fewkes

“ This house, more remarkable from its site than its structure, was constructed in an eroded cave of a bowlder halfway down the talus of the cliff. The front walls are somewhat broken down, but others built in the rear of the cave still remain intact. On the top of the bowlder is the débris of fallen walls, suggesting a former tower, but not much remains in place to determine its outlines. Where the walls are protected the mortar shows impressions of human hands and at one place there are the indentations of a corncob used by the plasterers to press the mortar between the layers of stone. ”

“ The science of archeology has contributed to our knowledge some of the most fascinating chapters in culture history, for it has brought to light, from the night of the past, periods of human development hitherto unrecorded. As the paleontologist through his method has revealed faunas whose like were formerly unknown to the naturalist, the archeologist by the use of the same method of research has resurrected extinct phases of culture that have attained a high development and declined before recorded history began. ”

“ Architecture representing the thoughts of many minds is conservative, or less liable to innovation or departure from prescribed forms and methods. These community houses express the thought of men in groups at different times, and, so far as archeology teaches, are the best exponents of what we call contemporary social conditions, while pottery and other small portable objects, being products of individual endeavor, furnish little on social organization, or general cultural conditions of communities. ”

“ If the growth of the large pueblos has followed the lines above indicated, and if each unit type indicates a social unit as well, we necessarily have in this growth of the community house the story of the social evolution of the Pueblo people. ”

“ The same holds true of Bug Point Ruin, a few miles away, also excavated and described by Doctor Prudden. Here also excavation of a small mound shows the unit type, and while no one has yet opened the larger mound or pueblo, superficial evidences indicate that it also is a complex of many unit types joined together. Until more facts are available the relative age of the small unit types as compared to the large pueblo can not be definitely stated, but there is little reason to doubt that they are contemporaneous, and nothing to support the belief that they do not indicate the same culture. ”

“ Approach to the inclosed circular mounds was debarred by a high bluff of a canyon on one side and by a low defensive curved wall (E) , some of the stones of which are large, almost megaliths, on the side of the mesa. From fragmentary sections of the buried walls of one of these circular mounds (A, B) , which appear on the surface, it would seem that the buildings were like towers (C, D) . This is one of the few known examples of circular buildings in an area protected by a curved wall. In the cliffs below Wood Canyon Ruin is a cliff-dwelling (G, H, J) remarkable mainly in its site. ”

“ A large building composed of many units is probably but not necessarily later in time than a single house; an isolated single house would probably be of earlier construction than a collection of several single houses of the same character compactly arranged in a village; a complete consolidation of several houses of such a village into a community house would naturally be more modern than a group of isolated single houses. ”

“ Between a stage indicated by single houses and one characterized by consolidated building, there is a phase in which the buildings are grouped in clusters and are not united. We may theoretically suppose that the single house was inhabited by one social unit as a clan or family. As the food quest became more intensified and defense more urgent, social units, as indicated by single houses, would be brought together, and as the population increased the amalgamation would be more complete. ”

“ The village at Mitchell Spring differs from that at Mud Spring and at Aztec Spring mainly in the small size and diffuse distribution of the component mounds and an absence of any one mound larger than the remainder. It had, however, a round tower, but unlike that at Mud Spring village, this structure is not united to one of the houses. The addition of towers to pueblos, as pointed out by Doctor Prudden [17] several years ago, marks the highest development of pueblo architecture as shown not only in open-air villages but also in some of the large cliff pueblos, like Cliff Palace. ”

“ Judging from their frequency, the center of distribution of the circular type lies somewhere in the San Juan culture area. This type does not occur in the Gila Valley or its tributaries, where we have an architectural zone denoting that a people somewhat different in culture from the Pueblos exists, but occurs throughout the “Central Zone,” so called, extending across New Mexico from Colorado as far south as Zuñi. Many additional observations remain to be made before we can adequately define the group known as the circular type and the extent of the area over which it is distributed. ”

“ The author believes that the pure pueblo culture originated in the northern part of the area and migrated southward to the Chaco Valley in prehistoric times, ultimately affecting the people of the Rio Grande, where sedentary people no doubt lived before written history of the area began. The result was a mixture; the mixed population are the modern Pueblos.
In the great cliff-houses of the Mesa Verde and the extensive pueblos of the McElmo we find towers combined with pure types of pueblos, either simple or complex. In the Chaco ruins these towers are not found in this combination. ”

“ If this pure type originated in the southern tributaries of the San Juan as the Chaco and migrated to the northern we would expect in the latter more distinctly southern objects, as shell ornaments, turquoise mosaics, and a great variety of pottery of a southern type.
The pure or unit type is believed to be autochthonous in the San Juan Basin and characteristic of a middle phase of architectural development, the highest north of Mexico. It is self-centered and has preserved its characteristics over an extensive area, influencing regions far beyond. ”

“ There are, perhaps, examples in this region where a circular kiva is found embedded in house masses, but these are so few in number that they may possibly be regarded as incorporate survivals due to acculturation.
In the Gila Valley compounds, as Casa Grande, and on the Little Colorado, the unit type is unknown. Several blocks of buildings on the Gila are surrounded by a rectangular wall which is wanting in ruins of the Little Colorado and its tributaries. Here one of the units may be enlarged, following in some respects the conditions at Aztec Spring Ruin. ”

“ As the name Mud Spring is locally known to the natives, especially to employees of livery stables and garages, the ruin is here called Mud Spring. The tower and the other circular buildings are united to other rooms as in similar groups of mounds. The presence of surface depressions, thought to indicate circular kivas, [20] shows that the Mud Spring mounds are remains of a village of the same type as the Mummy Lake group, but with towers united to the largest mounds. ”

“ Commonly, in these villages, one mound predominates in size over the others, and while rectangular in form, has generally circular depressions on the surface, recalling conditions at Far View mound before excavation. These mounds indicate large buildings in blocks, made up of many unit forms of the pure type, united into compact structures. One large dominant member of the village recalls those ruins where the village is consolidated into one community pueblo. ”

“ At the northwest angle of the ruin (A) there stand remains of high walls which [Pg 47] indicate that corner of a rectangular pueblo. Hovenweep House (pl. 14, a) was the largest building in this canyon, but with the exception of the addition of a semicircular tower or great house, does not differ greatly from a pueblo like Far View House on the Mesa Verde. The piles of stone and earth indicating rooms below justify the conjecture that when the fallen débris is removed the unfallen walls will still rise several feet above their rocky foundations. ”

“ The author interprets the depressions, K, as kivas, but supposes that they were not rectangular as figured by Holmes, but circular, surrounded on all four sides by square secular chambers, the “Upper House” being formed by the consolidation of several units of the pure [Pg 27] pueblo type. Although Aztec Spring Ruin is now much mutilated and its walls difficult to trace, the surface indications, aided by comparative studies of the rooms, show that Holmes’ “a,” “b,” and “c,” now shown by depressions, are circular, subterranean kivas. ”

“ The ruin Sun Temple, on the Mesa Verde, is considered prehistoric from the fact that a tree with over 360 annual rings of growth was found growing on top of its highest wall. We are justified in calling this a prehistoric ruin.
The evidences that villages, cliff-dwellings, castles and towers, and other types considered in this article antedate the advent of the white man are as follows: No historian has recorded an inhabited building of this form in this or other regions ”

“ The ancient reservoir at Bug Mesa covers fully 4 acres, and the reservoir near Goodman Point Ruin is almost as large, and, although somewhat changed from its aboriginal condition, is still used by farmers dwelling in the neighborhood. The latter belongs to the first type; the former to the second. Reservoirs of one or the other type are generally found in the neighborhood of all large heaps of rocks, the so-called mounds that indicate the former existence of pueblos. The reservoir of the Mummy Lake village on the Mesa Verde belongs to the excavated type. ”

“ In the region south and southwest of Dove Creek there are several large pueblo ruins, indicated by mounds formed of trimmed stone, eolean sand, and clay from plastering, which have certain characters in common. Each mound is a large heap of stones (pl. 3, a) near which is a depression or reservoir, with smaller heaps which in different ruins show the small buildings of the unit type. These clusters or villages are somewhat modified in form by the configuration of the mesa surface. ”

“ The Old Bluff City Road from Dolores, Colorado, to Bluff City, Utah, divides into two branches a short distance before it descends into the McElmo, its left branch passing through Road Canyon, the right bank of which follows the Yellow Jacket, which the traveler fords a short distance above its junction with the McElmo. Wickyup Canyon may be called picturesque, its cliffs being worn into fantastic shapes by water and sand. It has important antiquities, among the most striking of which are two towers (pl. 24, b) , crowning the tops of low buttes or hills. ”

“ One of the towers figured by Holmes in 1877 is still among the best preserved in this region and can be visited by following up the Mancos Canyon from the west about 10 miles from where the Cortez road crosses the Mancos River before going on to Ship-rock. There is at this point a bridge and near the crossing an industrial farm of the Ute Reservation where accommodations were obtained. The Mancos Valley widens after leaving the canyon, the southern side of Mesa Verde appearing as a series of high mesas separated by canyons. ”

“ The present condition of the largest Blanchard mound, as seen from its southwest angle, is shown in plate 2, b. About half of the mound, now covered with a growth of bushes, still remains entire, exposing walls of fine masonry, on its south side. The rooms in the buried buildings are hard to make out on account of this covering of vegetation and accumulated débris; but the central depressions, supposed to be kivas, almost always present in the middle of mounds in this district, show that the structure of Blanchard Ruin follows the pure type. ”

“ Cliff-Dwellings
There are numerous cliff-houses in this district, but while, as a rule, they are much smaller than the magnificent examples in the Mesa Verde, they are built on the same architectural lines as their more pretentious relatives. Both large and small have circular subterranean kivas, similarly constructed to those of Spruce-tree House, and have mural pilasters (to support a vaulted roof, now destroyed) , ventilators, and deflectors.
There are also many rooms in cliffs, possibly used for storage or for some other unknown purposes, but too small for habitations. ”