Prehistoric villages, castles, and towers of southwestern ColoradoFewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Prehistoric villages, castles, and towers of southwestern Colorado
Fewkes, Jesse Walter
Colorado -- Antiquities; Mesa Verde National Park (Colo.) -- Antiquities; Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities
The author regards the structures made of stones set on edge as very
old, possibly examples of the most primitive buildings in the McElmo
region, antedating the pueblos with horizontal masonry farther east.
West of the mouth of the Yellow Jacket, especially on the Montezuma
Mesa, these megalithic walls are more pretentious, as if this was the
center of the earlier phase of house buildings. In the eastern ruins
these slabs of stone set on edge sometimes appear as at Far View House
with horizontal masonry, but more as a survival.
Since their discovery and description by Jackson and Holmes 40 years
ago, little has been added to our knowledge of these inclosures,
although similar remains have been reported at various points from
Dolores far into Utah. They are called cemeteries and crematories
by the farmers and stockmen, but skeletons or burnt bones do not
occur in them; the charcoal shows wood fiber, and is not bone ash.
More knowledge must be obtained through excavations before their
significance can be determined. Their association with circular rooms
appears in Jackson’s account[53] of the stone structures on the
promontory at the mouth of the Yellow Jacket. He says:
[53] Tenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv. (Hayden Survey) for 1876, p.
414, 1879.
“The perpendicular scarp of the mesa ran round very regularly, 50
to 100 feet in height, the talus sloping down at a steep angle. On
cave-like benches at the foot of the scarp is a row of rock shelters,
much ruined, in one of which was found a very perfect polished-stone
implement. Gaining the top of the mesa with some difficulty, we found
a perfectly flat surface, 100 yards in width by about 200 in length,
separated from the main plateau by a narrow neck, across which a wall
had been thrown, but which is now nearly leveled. Almost the entire
space fenced in by this wall was covered by an extended series of
small squares, formed by thin slabs of sand-rock set on end. All were
uniform in size, measuring about 3 by 5 feet, and arranged in rows, two
and three deep, adjusted to various points of the compass. There were
also a few circles disposed irregularly about the inclosed area, each
about 20 feet in diameter, their circumferences being formed of similar
rectangular spaces, leaving a circular space of 10 feet diameter in
the center. These rectangles occur mainly in groups, and are found
indiscriminately scattered through the whole region that has come under
our observation upon the mesa tops and in the valleys. They all have
the same general shape and size, and are seldom accompanied by even the
faintest indication of a mound-like character. We have always supposed
them to be graves, but have not as yet found any evidence that would
prove them such. Some that we excavated to the depth of 5 and 6 feet in
a solid earth that had never been disturbed did not reward our search
with the faintest vestige of human remains. In nearly every case,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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