Cliff Dwellers

“ The cliff is pierced with windows and doors, and niches for a pigeonry. This, till comparatively recently, was a truly Troglodyte village. But well-to-do inhabitants of Tours have taken a fancy to the site and have reared pretentious villas that mask the face of the cliff, and with the advent of these rich people the humble cave-dwellers have "flitted." One singular feature remains, however, unspoiled. A mass of the cretaceous tufa has slipped bodily down to the foot of the crag, against which it leans in an inclined position. ”

“ These cave-dwellers of Wick were the offscourings of society, such as might be found in any town slum. "Virtue and chastity exist feebly among them, and honour and truth more feebly still; they neither read nor write; they go to no church, and have scarcely any sort of religious belief or worship. ”

“ The description given above of cliff dwellings in Oregon might be employed, without changing a word, for those in Europe.
To the best of my knowledge, the theme of European Troglodytes has remained hitherto undealt with, though occasional mention has been made of those on the Loire. It has been taken for granted that cave-dwellers belonged to a remote past in civilised Europe; but they are only now being expelled in Nottinghamshire and Shropshire, by the interference of sanitary officers.
Elsewhere, the race is by no means extinct. In France more people live underground than most suppose. ”

“ They know little or nothing of their history beyond what can be referred to personal recollection."
These, like the slum dwellers of a town, are recruited from outside, they do not constitute a race; they are the dregs of a race—persons who have dropped out of the line of march. ”

“ McDowell sometimes joked about his customers, but never about his lands. He shed upon them the transfiguring light of the imagination, which is so useful and necessary in the environs of Chicago. Land generally—that is, subdivided and recorded land—he regarded as a serious thing, if not indeed as a high and holy thing, and his view of his own landed possessions—mortgaged though they might be, and so partly unpaid for—was not only serious but idealistic. He was able to ignore the pools whose rising and falling befouled the supports of his sidewalks with a green slime ”

“ None of these people have any fixed occupation, and it is difficult to discover how they subsist. In fact, the life of every one of them is a problem. One might have supposed that they maintained a precarious existence by thieving or by begging, as they are far below the ordinary tramp; for with the exception of perhaps two or three of them, these cave-dwellers possess absolutely nothing, and know no trade whatever. ”

“ Sky-scraping is bad enough, but the demands of the modern house-builder are worse. Ingles, you're not as evil as I said you were; I'm sorry I ever called you a Philistine."
"Why did you do that?" asked Fairchild, amused.
"Because," answered Ingles, "I took two weeks to consider whether I could afford to let the Clifton have four good street-fronts."
"Didn't you say," demanded Atwater, "that you wanted to put up an architectural monument that would be a credit to the town? Would an eighteen-story flank of bare brick have been a pleasant object? ”

“ Never did the town of his adoption seem less, indeed, like a kindergarten than when he took his way northward to dinner, or when, later in the early evening, he made his way over to the West Side to call at the Brainards. The thousands of acres of ramshackle that made up the bulk of the city, and the tens of thousands of raw and ugly and half-built prairie that composed its environs, seemed together to constitute a great checker-board over whose squares of "section" and "township" keenness and rapacity played their daring and wary game. ”

“ As the shadows lengthen the 300 or 400 inhabitants are safe within the shelter of their fortress-like village. Cooking fires have been kindled and columns of smoke drift lazily up the cliff and into the sky. The odors of corn bread and stewing or roasting meat rise on the evening air and soon the people separate into many small family groups for the evening meal. Now it is quiet: only the murmur of low voices rises from the cave. The day’s activities are over and the happy, contented people are ready for the night. ”

“ Long ago the people of Two-Story House were neighbors of the people of Cliff Palace, the great cliff dwelling toward which we are moving. To them it must have been a metropolis, a great city, the largest they ever knew. It took only an hour for them to trot up the canyon to the larger community. Often the men of the little village must have slung their prized possessions over their shoulders and set out for Cliff Palace on trading and gambling expeditions. ”

“ In them are not only the people, engaged in their many activities, but all the things they used in their daily lives. The diorama pictured below is a reproduction of Spruce Tree House, one of the largest of the cliff dwellings. One-half of the thirteenth century village has been reproduced as accurately as possible. In it 50 people are engaged in the various activities that occupied the inhabitants of the village seven centuries ago. The adult human figures are four inches high and all objects are on the same scale. ”

“ The population of Cliff Palace was composed of many clans, more or less distinct and independent, which were rapidly being amalgamated by marriage; so we may regard the population as progressing toward a homogeneous community. Cliff Palace was practically a pueblo built in a cave; its population grew from both without and within: new clans from time to time joined those existing, while new births continually augmented the number of inhabitants. ”

“ Upon a high ledge of rock jutting out into the Pacific, at the very entrance to the Bay of San Francisco, stands the Cliff House, a white, wooden, many-windowed monstrosity with glazed verandas, cupolas, frivolous dormers, cheap, garish, bulky, gay, seemingly almost toppling into the water. Here come not only such innocently holidaying folk as Fancy Gray and Gay P. Summer, not only jaded tourists and the Sunday-outing citizens who lie upon the warm beach below and doze away a morning in the sun and wind. ”

“ Writing of it later he said: "Our life was as full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . . Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the beach of fair Burwell's Bay, and the spirited brushes of our little force with the enemy."*
— * Letter to Northrup, June 11, 1866. ”

“ The term “living room,” as we use it today, is really not a good term for the rooms in the cliff dwellings. Actually these were, for the most part, sleeping and storage rooms. Probably few of the activities of daily life took place in them. The real “living space” was the great open areas in the villages, the kiva courts and the terraced housetops. The cave itself served as a roof over the entire village and the people probably spent most of their active life outside the rooms. ”

“ Often and often the boys traveled this road, yet each time they reached Bitter Cliff, as it was called, and looked off over that vast stretch of country, they halted, fascinated anew by the beauty of the scene before them. ”

“ Without pausing, he went on into the cavern, along the rock ledge, to step at last upon the deck of the black galley.
"Pleasant thoughts," he said gently as he dropped Cliff to the spongy boards. "You have only to wait till dark!"
Cliff listened to his rapid footfalls till they died in distance; then there was no sound save his own breathing.
Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the heavy gloom, and he saw that Corio had dropped him just at the edge of the rowers' pit. There were white things down there—bones, pale as marble, scattered about aimlessly. ”

“ It would not have suited everybody. It was a long low house, made of three fishermen's cottages thrown into one, built so close to the edge of the cliff that it seemed like a sea-bird's nest, with windows overlooking the channel and the harbour, and a strip of stony garden behind. Inside, the accommodation was somewhat cramped, but the rooms, if small, were quaint, with an old-fashioned air about the panelled parlour and raftered dining- room that suggested bygone days of smugglers and privateers. ”

“ The Luck of the Dice
The summer passed pleasantly in the village of the Cliff. When the men went to the field to work the women often accompanied them, helping in the cultivation of the crop and gathering the wild berries and edible plants that grew in profusion in the fertile valley. ”

“ The poor maiden after this misfortune felt a bitter resentment swelling in her heart, and scorning to remain among her kind in that costume, took her way to the Cliff House, where she arrived, worn and weary, about breakfast-time.
The landlord received her kindly, and offered her a pair of his best trousers; but she was of noble blood, and having been reared in luxury, respectfully declined to receive charity from a low-born stranger. All efforts to induce her to eat were equally unavailing. ”

“ The excavated cliff dwellings that visitors enter are empty. Seven centuries ago the Indians themselves walked away, driven to the south by enemies and a great drouth. Most of their belongings were left behind but the early explorers and later archeologists removed them.
Because of this a cliff dwelling may seem, at first glance, to be an empty house. Too often visitors see only the stone walls and fail to see the people who built them. One must always remember that a cliff dwelling is the architectural expression of a settled, industrious agricultural people. ”

“ To us Cliff Palace seems like a great two-hundred-room apartment house. To the occupants it is a city of two hundred houses, occupied by scores of families. Over four hundred people live in the city; they swarm about the courts and over the roofs like so many busy brown ants.
As we enter the city we notice immediately the appearance of the people. They are typical Indians. They seem rather short, the men averaging about five feet four inches in height and the women about five feet. They are heavy-set and as we watch them we get the impression that as a rule they are a short, stocky people. ”

“ All the people who lived there were very poor, and gained a precarious living by fishing, while their wives occupied the spare time left after "keeping house, and minding the childer," by cultivating the very small bits of garden ground that belonged to them, and which were situated on the top of a very lofty cliff, some height above the nestling cottages which were huddled under its shelter on the shore, not so very far above the high tide line. ”

“ The Hunters’ place was insured for ten thousand dollars, and if it had been offered for sale, Cliff couldn’t have gotten more than a couple thousand at a time like this.”
“But the Hunters are rich,” objected Mary Louise. “They don’t need the money.”
“Everybody needs money. And I happen to know that Cliff wants to go around the world this fall.”
“He wouldn’t give up college?”
“No. There’s a college course in the bargain. They study and travel at the same time. It costs a small fortune.”
“I don’t believe he set that bungalow on fire,” announced Jane. “He’s too honest. ”

“ This group of buildings was, at the time we write of, an outpost of the fur-traders, those hardy pioneers of civilisation, to whom, chiefly, we are indebted for opening up the way into the northern wilderness of America. The outpost was named the Cliff after the bold precipice near the base of which it stood. ”

“ This is typical of the innumerable single room structures that are to be found in the nooks and crannies in the cliffs. The ruin pictured is less than three feet high and the longest dimension is about four feet.
Containing five small but well-built rooms this structure was without doubt a dwelling. There was little space for the activities of the people but the location provided excellent security. With small amounts of food and water in the village the residents probably had little fear of raiders. ”

“ Cliff to be sending her money to the colored poor of South America, but a person who has lived as she has lived in days gone by ought to remember that there are poor people who are not colored, and who live a great deal nearer than South America. ”

“ Because of the fact that Cliff Palace is the largest of all cliff dwellings, its population is of special interest. A close inspection of the rooms in the ruin shows that they are smaller, on the average, than the rooms in any of the other large cliff dwellings. When judged from our modern standards, it is difficult to imagine more than a couple of people living in each one. Our modern ideas, however, will not help us in understanding the people who once lived in Cliff Palace. ”

“ Black-on-white jars and corrugated jar on yucca fiber jar rest
57
Occasionally, during the spring, a marriage takes place in Cliff Palace. When this happens there is much excitement and activity among the two clans affected. The clans are social divisions within the tribe. Each individual is born into a clan and that remains his social group throughout his life. In Cliff Palace, with its large population, there are many clans while in a small village there may be only one or two. The clans have very little to do with the religious life; they are a part of the social organization. ”