The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona: Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894-95, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 73-198Mindeleff, Cosmos
History
The Cliff Ruins of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona: Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894-95, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1897, pages 73-198
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Arizona -- Antiquities; Chelly, Canyon de (Ariz.); Cliff-dwellings -- Arizona; Pueblo Indians -- Antiquities
In the upper part of the canyon, and extending into what we may call the
middle region, there are a number of ruins that seem to be out of place
in this locality. They are exactly similar to hundreds of ruins found in
the open country; such, for example, as the older villages of Tusayan,
located on low foothills at the foot of the mesa, and the peculiar
topographic characteristics of the location have not made the slightest
impression on them. These ruins are located on gentle slopes, the
foothills of the talus, as it were, away from the cliffs, and are now
marked only by scattered fragments of building stone and broken pottery.
The ground plans are in all cases indistinguishable; in only a few
instances can even a short wall line be traced. They seem to have been
located without special reference to large areas of cultivable land,
although they always command small areas of such land. There is a
remarkable uniformity in ruins of this type in character of site
occupied, outlook, and general appearance. They are always close to the
stream bed, seldom more than 10 or 12 feet above it, and the sites were
chosen apparently without any reference to their defensibility. A
typical example occurs at the point marked 60 on the detailed map (plate
XLIII), another occurs at 58, and another at 52. One of the largest
examples is in the lower part of the canyon. At the junction of Del
Muerto there is a large mass of rock standing out alone and extending
nearly to the full height of the canyon walls. On the south it is
connected with the main wall back of it by a low tongue of rock,
sparsely covered in places by soil and sand, and on the top of this
tongue or saddle there is a large ruin of the type described, but no
ground plan can now be made out. Possibly the obliterated appearance of
this ruin and of others of the same class is due to the use of the
material, ready to hand and of the proper size, in later structures. It
is known that a similar appearance was produced in Tusayan by such a
cause. The old village of Walpi, on a foothill below the mesa point and
the site of the village at the time of the Spanish conquest, presents an
appearance of great antiquity, although it was partly occupied so late
as fifty years ago. When the movement to the summit of the mesa became
general, the material of the old houses was utilized in the construction
of the new ones, and at the present day it can almost be said that not
one stone remains above another. So complete is the obliteration that no
ground plan can be made out.
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