Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos: Papers Of The Archæological Institute Of America, American Series, Vol. IBandelier, Adolph Francis Alphonse
History
Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos: Papers Of The Archæological Institute Of America, American Series, Vol. I
Bandelier, Adolph Francis Alphonse
New Mexico -- Antiquities; Pecos National Monument (N.M.); Pueblo Indians
Expecting daily a supply of paper for "squeezes," I have until now
deferred taking any exact copies of these vestiges. Therefore this
report contains but superficial notice of them. It would have been
useless labor to make sketches and take measurements when I knew that,
within the period of time I shall spend in New Mexico, I should
certainly be able to secure fac-similes. The carvings are certainly old;
they are much worn, and represent mainly so-called footprints (of adults
as well as of children), turkey tracks, a human form, and a circle
formed by small cup-shaped holes, of the patterns about which I hope
that my friend Professor C. C. Rau, of Washington, will by this time
have finished his elaborate and very interesting work. The human figure
is as rude and childlike an effort as any represented on the plates
accompanying the reports of General Simpson and of my friend Mr. W. H.
Holmes; the footmarks are fair, and the circle is rather perfect.
Something like a "diamond" appears within its periphery, but I am not
yet quite certain whether it is a carving or the result of decay. Some
of the tracks seem to point to the high mesa, others to the north.[126]
By the side of these original efforts there are recent additions,
destined, perhaps, to become at some future time as successful
archæological frauds as many of the most interesting products of
excavation in the States of Ohio and Iowa. About the sculptured stones I
again met with fragments of painted pottery. Still further down, on the
east bank of the Arroyo de Pecos, about a mile from the church in a
southerly direction, and on a low promontory of red clay jutting out
into the creek-bed, there are vestiges of other ruins,--a low, flat
mound covered with stones. I saw no pottery about it.
Directly opposite the sculptured rocks, on the other bank of the arroyo
to the west, the cliffs of clay bordering it form a huge cauldron, out
of which the contents seem to have been originally removed, leaving a
semicircle of vertical bluffs of clay and drift about 3 m.--10
ft.--high. It is out of this locality that I suggested the clay for the
adobe of the church might have been secured. The faces of the slope
cannot have been washed out, for the creek runs straight far to the
east, hugging closely that side of its banks; there is no trace of an
old stream-bed winding to the westward, neither is there any sufficient
drainage from the west in the shape of gulches or branches. It appears
as if there had been an original start, at least, given to the present
basin by a removal of earth in a curve, subsequent wearing and weakening
enlarging the cauldron to its actual form and size. This size is
constantly increased by decay and by the work of diggers; for this bluff
has been of late a favorite resort for them, from the fact that in its
face human bones--nay, complete graves--have been found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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