THE

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

VOL. IX

WASHINGTON, D. C., AUGUST, 1896

No. 8

TWO RUINS RECENTLY DISCOVERED IN THE RED

ROCK COUNTRY, ARIZONA1

J. WALTER FEWKES

Not the least important part of the great domain added to the United States fifty years ago by the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo was the territory of New Mexico. Early exploration in that section indicated that it was a field rich in archeological problems, and every new explorer brought back an account of its antiquities which rivaled that of his predecessors. Perhaps no subject excited more general interest than the ruins of the cliff-houses, a style of aboriginal dwelling of which little was known to a science yet in its infancy. From year to year knowledge of these unique structures became more accurate, and speculation as to their character less fanciful, as archeology became a more exact science. The novelty of a description of cliff-houses is past, startling theories concerning them are less frequent, and the scientific student finds before him a task technical and didacticthe accumulation of data which, when multiplied, may reveal important results. In this communication I aspire to add to our knowledge descriptions of two cliff-houses which have thus far escaped notice. It is not my purpose to discuss the character of the culture of cliff-house people.

The country between the Verde valley, north of Oak creek, and Flagstaff, Arizona, is wild and mountainous, a jumbled mass of red-colored rock formation flanked on the east and north by a spur of the Mogollon plateau. To cross these cliffs is im

1 Read before the Anthropological Society of Washington, April 21, 1896.

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with the trincheras, in Sonora and the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua, described by Bandelier, or those of the Magdalena valley of Sonora investigated last winter by McGee. In the Verde valley it would appear that they were built contemporaneously with the cliff-houses or the ruins of the plains. Similar fortified hilltops are common in the mountains of Arizona. Of the several true cliff-houses in the Verde valley which have been described, I have chosen for comparison the best known, called Casa Montezuma. It needs little examination of this ruin to show that in details it differs considerably from Palatki or Honanki, although in general character it is identical with the two Red Rock cliff-houses. Whence came that difference? The rock is unlike and the cavern in which it is built is of a different geological character. If we study its architecture we should find it combined the features of a cliff-house and an excavated or cavate dwelling. The cliff-dweller had here an entirely different problem to deal with from that which he had in the Red Rocks. In the latter locality the surface of the cliff was hard, resisting excavations, and he built to the surface of a precipice, under a projecting roof, plastering his house to a perpendicular surface. At Casa Montezuma he burrowed out and enlarged a cave, which he filled in with masonry. The ruin is thus deeply sunken in a cave at Casa Montezuma, but at Palatki it stands out in relief with bow-shape front walls. There can be little doubt but that the people who built Palatki and those who made Casa Montezuma were akin, and that the architectural instinct was the same in both, and yet the difference of geological environment led to noticeable differences in construction of their dwellings. Let us take a type for study from far down the Verde on the Salt river, where the same architectural intent is again modified, but still preserved as far as possible. The cave is utilized as before, but it is situated not in the pumice-like rock of Casa Montezuma nor the hard Red Rock which repels excavation. Here we have a cavern filled with a rectangular building, the masonry of which resembles that of the neighboring plains, where adobe formed the building material. The home-maker here again adopted the material at hand. His work was directly modified by his geological environment, but there is no evidence that the character of the culture has changed.

I cannot leave this subject of the modification of pueblo hab

itations in the Verde valley without calling attention to a type of aboriginal dwellings different from those we have already considered in this region, but duplicated in other habitats of the pueblo culture wherever conditions permit. I refer to the socalled cavate habitations, nowhere better represented than lower down on the Verde near Squaw mountain.

The builders here found the rock of such a nature as to be readily dug out into caves, but the character of the objects found in the spacious chambers within the caves shows that the excavators were similar in culture to the masons of the cliff-builders of the Red Rocks. Midway between these simpler cavate dwellings and such houses as Casa Montezuma are similar cavern habitations on Oak creek where masonry plays an intermediate part in the character of the habitations.

The only paleography of the cliff peoples of the Red Rocks which may be mentioned at this time are the petrographs, of which there are many both on the walls of the ruin and the adjacent cliffs. Two distinct kinds are recognized-those of the cliff people and those of the Apaches who succeeded them-the signatures of a few white cowboys not being considered. These aboriginal petrographs of two linguistic stocks differ in objects represented and manner of production, for the cliff-dweller pictography is ordinarily pecked into the rock, while that of the Apache is painted on its surface. There is a remarkable similarity between the pictography of this region and the older paleography of the whole pueblo region; in fact, we might extend our comparisons far outside the pueblo area. These resemblances may mean much or little, but of all the treacherous quicksands which have fascinated archeologists similarities of rude symbols is one of the worst. Although the well-known totems of many of the pueblo clans occur on the Red Rocks, our knowledge of southwestern pictography is as yet too fragmentary to justify speculations in regard to the meaning of certain common forms or designs.

The close similarity of culture which is indicated by the similarity of the ruins throughout the Verde valley is not confined to this region. The cliff-house type occurs likewise in the tributaries of the Colorado, the well-known cliff-dwellings of the San Juan and its tributaries. It is a type which seems to be peculiar to the Pacific watershed and is significantly absent along

of the same culture in the adobe plains build adobe houses, in tufaceous rocks burrow troglodytic caverns, and in canyons with natural caves erect cliff-houses. The caves of the Red Rocks resemble in mode of formation those of the Mesa Verde in southern Colorado. Has that similarity led to corresponding resemblances in the architecture of cliff-houses built within them? These and many other questions impart a new interest to the two ruins we are about to consider. We have before us a detail of the effect of environment on prehistoric culture.

There is no more delightful place in the Verde valley in which to camp than among the trees fringing Oak creek, under that great buttress of rock called the Court House butte, one of the few pinnacles in the Red Rock country which is indicated on maps of the region. Near by is a ranch owned by an enterprising vineculturist named Schürmann, from whom I learned of the existence of the Red Rock cliff-houses, which lie about ten miles northwest of his ranch. There is no road leading to them, but they are easy to find by following the line of cliffs. It is very difficult to impart any very definite information regarding geographical locality in a territory so vast and little known. as some sections of Arizona, but it may give some idea of the situation of the Red Rocks if I say that a straight line drawn from Prescott, the former capital of Arizona, to Flagstaff in a northeasterly direction passes through this region in the neighborhood of these new cliff ruins, which on that line are about twothirds the distance from the former to the latter cities. Their latitude is about 35° north and longitude 112° west from Greenwich, according to the best maps at my disposal.

I have purposely limited my consideration to the two largest ruins of this section, and have given to them the names Palatki, Red House, and Honanki, Bear House, using Tusayan nomenclature, notwithstanding the Hopi have no names known to me for these ruins. The region of the Red Rocks suggests the mythic land called Palatkwabi, or Red Land of the South, from which, according to their legends, came the Water House people, one of the most important components of the Hopi stock. We have definite knowledge, through legends, that this people once lived near Winslow, in a pueblo, Homolobi, at Sunset Crossing of the Little Colorado, and their legends state that they came from a Giant Cactus country, which may have been as far south as the Gila valley.

The Verde valley is but a small section of a large area, the pueblo region, over which there is evidence that the prehistoric culture was uniform. If environment has led in this limited section to modifications in the style of building it ought to have similar effect in different sections. The same emergencies ought to be met in the same manner by men of the same culture, and we find that it is so met. The different kinds of building in the Verde reoccur in places geographically remote from this valley where conditions are similar. We find, for instance, cavate habitations homologous to those of the Verde in the soft rocks of the Rio Grande, and cliff-houses similar to those of the Red Rocks occur in the canyons of the tributaries of the San Juan.

One result to which my conclusions point is that an older view often entertained, that cliff-houses antedate other kinds of prehistoric dwellings in our Southwest, is not necessarily true. Recognizing the fact that the pueblo culture today is a survivor of an old culture, there seems no good reason to believe that in the ancient time it was limited to cliff-houses. It is, however, I believe, unprofitable to discuss the question whether the ancient cliff-house people were ancestors of any one of the Pueblos to the exclusion of others. We may find them closely related to Hopis or Zuñis, which is true so far as it goes, but a limitation to either is not broad enough to embrace the whole problem. The cliff-houses were specially adaptive dwellings, which have resulted from the influence of environment on a widespread culture, of which both Zuñis and Hopis are survivors. The ancestors of both, no doubt, were cliff-dwellers, for both are differentiations of a common substratum of culture. The nearest approach to that ancient form of culture at the present day is, I believe, to be found in Tusayan, the most primitive, but traces of it exist in greater or less degree accordingly as modern pueblo life is affected by outside or foreign influence, which occurs throughout the whole pueblo area and in the mountains of the northern states of Mexico.

While in a general way it is true that the Pueblos are related to the cliff-dwellers-were in fact in ancient days cliff-house people their present consanguinity, language, customs, and beliefs have been modified by foreign blood. The competition for supremacy between the branches of the American race in the pueblo area, as has been so often the case in other lands, has