Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the DesertMcClintock, James H.
History
Mormon Settlement in Arizona: A Record of Peaceful Conquest of the Desert
McClintock, James H.
Arizona -- History -- To 1950; Latter Day Saints -- Arizona -- History
Possibly a great epidemic, of the sort known to have swept Mexico before
the coming of the Spaniard, gravely cut down the numbers of the ancient
valley settlers. Near every communal castle is to be found a cemetery,
filled with burial urns, their tops usually less than a foot below the
surface. These urns (ollas) are filled with calcined human bones. By them
are to be found the broken pottery, of which the spirits were to
accompany the late lamented on their journey to the happy hunting
grounds. These dishes once contained food, intended for the spirit
travelers' nourishment. When there was a child, ofttimes now is found
the clay image of a dog, for a dog always knows the way home. The dog is
believed to have been the only domestic animal of the time.
In some cases, in the greater houses, walled into crypts that might have
served as family lounging places, have been found the skeletons of those
who were of esoteric standing, considered able, by the force of will, to
separate spirit from body. In other cases the cleansing and
disintegrating effects of fire secured the necessary separation of the
spirit from the body.
With these mortuary evidences also are found domestic implements, stone
clubs, arrow points and, particularly valuable, prayer sticks and
religious implements that clearly show the archaeologist a connection
with the pueblo-dwelling peoples who still live, under similar communal
conditions, to the northward.
Northward Trend of the Ancient People
That these ancient peoples went north there can be no doubt. North of the
valley, nearly fifty miles, on the Verde, is a great stone ruin and
beyond it are cavate dwellings of remarkable sort. In Tonto Creek Valley,
a dozen miles north of the Roosevelt dam, is an immense ruin built of
gypsum blocks. To the eastward, Casa Grande, most famed of all Arizona
prehistoric remains, still stands, iron-roofed by a careful government,
probably of a later time of abandonment, but still a ruin when first seen
by Father Eusebio Kino in 1694. All the way up the Gila, and with a
notable southern stem through the Mimbres Valley, are found these same
evidences of ancient occupation. Chichilticalli, "the Red House,"
mentioned by Marco de Niza and by Coronado's historians in 1539-40, lay
somewhere near where another group of Mormons again reclaimed the desert
soil by irrigation in the upper Gila Valley. Ruins extended from Pueblo
Viejo ("Old Town"), above Solomonville, down to San Carlos.
Into the valleys of the Salt and of the Gila, from the north come many
waterways. In none of these tributary valleys can there be failure to
find evidences of the northward march of the Indians who lived in houses.
In this intermediate region, the houses usually, for protection, were
placed in the cliffs. Particularly notable are the cave dwellings of the
upper Verde and in Tonto Basin, near Roosevelt, and in the Sierra Anchas
and near Flagstaff.
[Illustration: THE ARIZONA TEMPLE AT MESA]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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