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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

BULLETIN 70

PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND
TOWERS OF SOUTHWESTERN
COLORADO

BY

J. WALTER FEWKES

WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
1919

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION,
Bureau or AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY,
; Washington, D. C., January 23, 1919.
Srr: I have the honor to transmit the accompanying manuscript,
entitled ‘‘Prehistoric Villages, Castles, and Towers of Southwestern
Colorado,”’ by J. Walter Fewkes, and to recommend its publication,
subject to your approval, as Bulletin 70 of this Bureau,
Very respectfully,

J. WALTER FEewxEs,

Chief.

Dr. Cuartes D, Watcort,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

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CONTENTS

LUAU GIORGI LE WG BR eee BS ee ene eo SE
LE lseeimeril. cle 2 Se Se ee ee 2 ee = 6 ge)

Villages... ...

Rectangular ruins of the pure type. ...-.-- oe hit oh Ald Cue Cees
Roe umuMnCOePeeraars Arete en Se ee OE cee

Bug

MGR tee eae aes te eames ioe ts ALAA AAT ATS eee

OURO So nS PD pee ee ae at ce a a
Maniesprino smrcbarat evan. ae see Se a OSL.
Ruin with semicircular core-.............---- eRe es, -
Ny siereluimiche Tween hy eokP re eaeee meme OT
Imanebanrduitmins «ack stansee oe So Cee eaters occ te ee
Psa hE INS hows SPs lek ters Te eee eis tities sss --
Great open-air ruins south and southwest of Dove Creek post office .
Sua eTIRS ees ee eek ee ce cae e ee sece ce pecspe
Nerve RINGO | Sho Oop eG Re eS GOSS Ree SMe ata el ae a

Oak

cir cmnin sa ieee ee LE ee RRS Se eae in

0 TTITEEAES RT: PPT OPT EEA BEAM aia Ds Saclay) We aU ee ene ia ae eRe ene
amnon ball trims ie (rhcenecn sis Sons eks Sek TES ASE. «24 begndi agli

Circular

ruins with peripheral compartments.........-----.---------

VOGT OR ETC TRUSS SI [cate AE aOR ea a a eG

IS QGLOCEGIIU Tepes oe eRe RR eee en Le ee ee

I TAETS OMSL: EIS S eee yes etn ee er eR | Sn nt etek eS To
ISS @ AL AACE MELTS este eee IE ee SE et v7 5 Petes PES
CLR! COS Ee oa ht ey Ceo: Se ae
Cheawellines in Sand:Canyon. 22) 10-0: 2 226-2 e ee ee ewes eee
ita eLeMe-TORISC ee eso es ere oe ye. >, = ok epee Met crey sal rast

Scaffold

CSET O08 CISC Ue ae eee se 8 ed a

Dieters OUR ITL-CAVER (2 25.5% 2. 2.60 css sn ae wes - yes. et.
Citietemeerin aOSe, CANYONS 5224 Lan =.c.~ Sw aaa Seo C ERR Ebe eae 2 ee ee

Great houses
Masonry

SATCLOLO WOES Reena cetera eee a ee Bes S

SE EE Sc ee eager aici
RENODENCIREMICE®. 2 Smee <iair ote Sov ngesewe tb dus he kaso) -b4- eee -
erm nitwatie we cert int Pe aoricc ae oa oe deesp = Hde's|.< £045 Sewer
SUE i) ond Ooh) Oe eee ee er
Classification: of ruins in Square Tower Canyon.....-.---.--------
Movenweer curse (ruin 1h). cis. cecicee oS ees - aden t dee ne os
Heucnwerp Oastle ture sac. cu cake as co. Se'sr- nese Hee eto 5

Western section of Hovenweep Castle.....-.--.-------------

6 CONTENTS

Classification—Continued.
Great houses and towers—Continued.

Hovenweep district—Continued. Page

Broded: bowlder houge (Ruin! 7) At Y-2 = 2c. Se ee Ss ee 49

Twin, Towers Chama 2.2 4. Jo cere sd tape ee 2 beeen 50

Foun: 9. oo oe eee meee betas eee eae SIE ec One ae 50
Unit-typesHouse (Ratn0) 722 2 ee ee 50

Stronghold: Homse (Rimi Wye ce ek ke 5L

Ruins in’ Holly Camgam ee eset ce Fc oo Se il METS ae 2s 7) 52

Ruin A, Great House, Hackberry Castle .......--....- weed! 52

Towers: [Cand Diath et ere we eakh th oad de ee 52

Holly Houses, Gace meee ot = Jee eal 2 8 S/S ae a 53

Ruins:in Hackberry anyon). 5222: 0 ese 4.5728 Yee eee 53

Horseshoe House. 22. 122. 5.4ccec. <= 2GRSt eee. eee 53

Towers in the Main Yellow Jacket Canyon.............---..--+------ 54

Davis: Towers. <2. eco... = 2 uct okt ss cape et coe See oF 09 eae 55

iuion: (datinell) Dower... ..:.6s1\a68 adda eb dee eee 55

McLean Gasimetic2 2... os 2-0 oy aden ge eee ee ee eee 55

Tower injSand-Canyon. ..). 22523 << oss. ace ee ee ee bi

Towers in Road (Wickyup) Canyon :...: 222.25 22451 6 eee eee 57

Towers of the Mancos: 2..24..0..-2h.2 ssceeeeaee ote de tee eee 58

Holmes, Towerjedeccc eh thks eek Le efi oh ie a 58

Towers on the Mancos River below the bridge..-........-------- 59

Tower Ate 24 soph ovo osans tee BES eee = aie ae eee ee 59

Tower Bs 2.5 2. DG a ake Mc ets hehe oe i 59

Megalithic and slab house ruins at McElmo Bluff..............----------- 60
Grass’ Mesa Cemetery.,...32 552% 2.25... Ald sce eee aoe leit ee en eee 64
TRPSERVOIS 2 ~ oF-545. wo. eet eih cite x Ae ee ee irae Sat De oee a oe 64
Pictographs. ascje.0 < o.cus/ tb op box © aca s se ee See ee ea nc 65
Minor antiquities....2:1.2222... 2.2 2skse-oe ete ee: 2 ee 66
‘Hustoric remains. . 22... Ses. 2.3 sete ceo ee 68
Conclusions... 2 25... SB aia ciic ow Gee ade d oa Se ee ee a 68

| brea [35 geen ane maim at! 1 Fe eM LATIN ee Da taesi gh 52 See eee fil

15.

16.

LZ.
18.

10s

20.

21.

22.
23.

24,
25.

26.

27.
28.

29.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

. a, Butte Ruin. 6b, Aztec Spring Ruin. c, Surouaro, Yellow Jacket Spring Ruin.
. a, Blanchard Ruin. 6, Blanchard Ruin, Mound 2. ec, Surouaro, Yellow Jacket

Spring Ruin.

. a, Acmen Ruin. 6, Mud Spring Ruin.
. a, Building on rock pinnacle, near Stone Arch, Sand Canyon. b, Stone Arch,

Sand Canyon.

. a, Tower in Sand Canyon. 6, Unit-type House in Sand Canyon.
. a, Stone Arch House, Sand Canyon. 6, Cliff-house, showing broken corner.
. a, Scaffold in Sand Canyon. 6, Storage cist in Mancos Valley. c, Pictographs

near Unit-type House in cave.

. Double cliff-dwelling, Sand Canyon.

. a, Cliff-dwelling under Horseshoe Ruin. 8}, Cliff-dwelling, Ruin Canyon.

. a, Kiva of cliff ruin, Lost Canyon. |, Cliff ruin, Lost Canyon.

. a, Square Tower in Square Tower Canyon. 6, Tower in McLean Basin. c, Ruin

in Hill Canyon, Utah.

. Head of South Fork, Square Tower Canyon.
. North Fork of Square Tower Canyon, looking west.
. a, Hovenweep House and Hovenweep Castle, from the south. 6, Hovenweep

Castle, from the west. c, Hovenweep Castle, from the south.

a, West end of Twin Tower, showing small cliff-house. 6, Twin Towers, Square
Tower Canyon, from the south. c, Tower 4, junction of North and South
Forks, Square Tower Canyon.

a, Hovenweep Castle, with Sleeping Ute Mountain, South Fork, Square Tower
Canyon. 6, Entrance to South Fork, Square Tower Canyon.

Stronghold House, Square Tower Canyon.

a, Head of Holly Canyon. 6, South side of Hovenweep Castle, Square Tower
Canyon.

a, Holly Canyon group, from the east. 6, Great House at head of Holly Can-
yon, from the north. c, Unit-type Ruin, from the east.

a, Great House at head of Holly Canyon, from the south. 6, Ruin B at head
of Holly Canyon, from the west. c, Great House at head of Holly Canyon.

a, Great House, Holly Canyon. 6, Stronghold House and Twin Towers, Square
Tower Canyon.

a, Hovenweep Castle. 6, Southern part of Cannonball Ruin, McEImo Canyon.

a, Square tower with rounded corners, Holly Canyon. 6, Holly Tower in Holly
Canyon. c, Horseshoe House.

a, Horseshoe Ruin. 6, Bowlder Castle, Road (Wickyup) Canyon.

a, Closed doorway in Bowlder Castle, Road (Wickyup) Canyon. 6, Broken-
down round tower, Square Tower Canyon.

a, North side of tower, Square Tower Canyon. 6, D-shaped tower near Davis
ranch, Yellow Jacket Canyon. c, Model of towers in McLean Basin.

Round tower and D-shaped tower in McLean Basin.

a, D-shaped tower in McLean Basin, showing cross section of wall. 6, Round
tower in McLean Basin, showing standing stone slab.

a, Holmes Tower, Mancos Canyon. b, Lion Tower, Yellow Jacket Canyon.

7

30.

33.

ILLUSTRATIONS

a, Tower above cavate storehouses, Mancos Canyon, below bridge. 6, Tower on
mesa between eroded cliffs and bridge over Mancos Canyon, on Cortez Ship-
rock Road.

. a, Tower above cavate storehouses, Mancos Canyon, below bridge. b, Eroded shale

formation in which are small walled cavate storehouses.

. a, Reservoir near Picket corral, showing retaining wall. 6, Kiva, Unit-type

House, Square Tower Canyon.
Pictographs, Yellow Jacket Canyon.

TEXT FIGURES

Page
Tt. Ground plan of Aztec Spring, Bilin, 225342 tas 6 oS: Sioa ae ee 26
2. Ground plan of Wood) Canyon Ruin 5322 ye. ee Sacer. et ae ee 32
3. Metes and bounds of Manerson Ripe See ee nt «ae ae 34
4. Schematic ground plan: of meron Kuan: . 3.2. ...-.-- .-22 spe ee ee 35
5. Ground plan of Unit-type Howse im cave 125. -2 - <2 3-6 ee Reese oe 39
6. Square Tower Canyons os+ eos om wane = ake ep ae ee ee a ele 45
7.. Ground plan of Hayenweep. House. .-\. (25-5. - 24. 08) Sic es 46
8. Ground plan of Hovenweep Castle... /-. 2. 4: pn. - doce cee See 47
9. Ground ‘plan .of -TwinTowets. . 2c:):<2 2s. 9... ence Ae 50
10.. Ground plan of Unit-type Houses: sui¢o=. ji rl; oho eae, oe 51
1). Holly Canyon Rung 3.25). \bs sp seek es os aetna oe a 52
12, Horseshoe (Hackberry) Camyotte 2-2-2. ci te oiacint ance seca he ee 53
13."Ground plan‘of Horseshoe House 25.25. : 2240 se 2's = eek eae eee 54
14. Ground plan’ of Davis Raine: 2 2.2352 e ae oe die a 5d
15. Ground plan. of “Lion: House 23... ee pe ek ero me 55
16. Ground plan of ruin with towers in McLean Basin .......-.-...--------- 56
17. Doorway in Round Tower, McLean Basin, one 2 6. en vt nnier ee 57
18.

Megalithic stone inclosure, McElmo Bluff............2.-.-4.42-s2---5-' 61

PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS OF
SOUTHWESTERN COLORADO

By J. Watter Fewkes

INTRODUCTION

The science of archeology has contributed to our knowledge some
of the most fascinating chapters in culture history, for it has brought
to light, from the night of the past, periods of human development
hitherto unrecorded. As the paleontologist through his method has
revealed faunas whose like were formerly unknown to the naturalist,
the archeologist by the use of the same method of research has
resurrected extinct phases of culture that have attained a high
development and declined before recorded history began. No
achievements in American anthropology are more striking than those
that, from a study of human buildings and artifacts antedating the
historic period, reveal the existence of an advanced prehistoric
culture of man in America.

The evidences of a phase of culture that had developed and was
on the decline before the interior of North America was explored by
Europeans are nowhere better shown than in southwestern Colorado,
New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, the domain of the Cliff-dwellers,
or the cradle of the Pueblos. There flourished on what is now called
the Mesa Verde National Park, in prehistoric times, a characteristic
culture unlike that of any region in the United States. This culture
reached its apogee and declined before the historic epoch, but did not
perish before it had left an influence extending over a wide territory,
which persisted into modern times. Through the researches of
archeologists the nature of this culture is now emerging into full view;
but much material yet remains awaiting investigation before it can
be adequately understood. The purpose of this article is to call
attention to new observations bearing upon its interpretation made
by the author, under the auspices of the Bureau of American Eth-
nology, on brief trips to Colorado and Utah in 1917 and 1918.

The peculiar cliff-dwellings and open-air villages of the Mesa Verde
are here shown to be typical of those found over a region many miles
in extent. They indicate a distinct culture area, which is easily
distinguished from others where similar buildings do not exist, but

9

10 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL 70

not as readily separated from that of adjacent regions where the
buildings are superficially similar but structurally different. In
order to distinguish it from its neighbors and determine its horizon,
we must become familiar with certain architectural characteristics.
As our knowledge of the character of buildings in this area is incom-
plete, the intention of the author is to define the several different
types of buildings that characterize it.

When, in 1915, there was brought to light on the Mesa Verde
National Park, Colorado, the mysterious structure, Sun Temple, the
author recalled well-known descriptions of towers and other related
buildings that have been recorded from other localities in south-
western Colorado and Utah. The published descriptions of these
structures did not seem to him adequate for comparisons, and he
planned an examination of these great houses and towers, hoping to
gather new data that would shed some light on his interpretation of
Sun Temple. During the field work in 1917, thanks to an allotment
from the Bureau of American Ethnology for that purpose, he under-
took a reconnoissance in the McElmo district, where similar buildings
are found and where he believed cultural relatives of the former
inhabitants of Mesa Verde once lived. In 1918 he extended his field
work still farther. He investigated ruins as far as the western tribu-
taries of the Yellow Jacket Canyon, penetrating a short distance -
beyond the Colorado border into Utah. The object of the following
pages is to make known the more important results of this visit, and
interpret the evidence they present as a contribution to our knowledge
of the extension in prehistoric times of the Mesa Verde culture area.

HISTORICAL

Attention was first publicly called, about 40 years ago (1875-1877),
by Messrs. Jackson,! Holmes, Morgan, and others, to some of the
ruins here considered. It is difficult to identify all of the ruins
mentioned or described by these pioneers. Their ‘‘Hovenweep
Castle’’ is supposed to lie in about the center of the district here
considered, possibly on Square Tower (Ruin) Canyon, although the
large castellated building? in Holly Canyon would also fulfill con-
ditions equally well. Their ‘‘Pueblo”? may have been situated on
the McElmo near the mouth of Yellow Jacket Canyon. Early
writers rather vaguely refer to a cluster of castles and towers as
situated some distance from the ‘‘Burial Place,’’ which is readily
identified on the promontory at the mouth of the McElmo, as prob-
ably those in Square Tower (Ruin) Canyon, but the cluster may be

1 Ancient Ruins in Southwestern Colorado. Rept. U. 8S. Geol. Surv. Terr. (Hayden Survey) for 1874,
Washington, 1876.

2 The situation of a spring near Hovenweep Castle indicates that the Great House may be the Hoven-
weep Castle of early writers.

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS i f

either at Square Tower or Holly Canyon, both of which are’ about
the same distance from this site. As ‘‘Pueblo”’ is not indicated on
the map accompanying the Hayden. report, the sites of rock shelters
‘some 7 miles from ‘Pueblo’ and 3 miles from the McElmo”’ remain
doubtful. The author retains the name ‘‘Hovenweep Castle’’ for
the ruin in Square Tower Canyon.

In his account of ruins in the region visited, Prof. W. H. Holmes!
considers several other ruins, as ‘‘the triple-walled tower’ (here
called Mud Spring village, p. 20), ruins at Aztec Spring (p. 23),
cliff-dwellings and towers of the San Juan and Mancos, the ‘‘slab
cysts” or burial places on the Dolores, and the promontory at the
junction of the Hovenweep and McElmo (p. 60). The best-
preserved towers and castellated buildings which his article considers
occur on the San Juan and Mancos Canyons, districts on the periphery
of the region covered by this account.

These pioneer reports of Jackson and Holmes not only called
attention to a new archeological field, but also introduced to the
archeologist several new types of prehistoric American architecture
of which nothing was previously known. They have been repeatedly
quoted and are still constantly referred to by writers on southwestern
archeology.

Although Jackson made many photographs of the castles and
towers of the Hovenweep, none of these were published in his reports,
possibly because halftone methods of reproduction were then un-
known. The illustrations that appear in the text of early reports
are mainly reproductions of sketches. These reports, in which the
discovery of the tower type of architecture and its adjacent cliff-
dwellings were announced, should thus rightly rank as the first
important steps in the scientific investigations of the stone-house
builders of this district of our Southwest; although the allied ‘‘Casas
Grandes”’ or great houses of the Chaco had been described a few
years before by Gregg, Stimpson, and others.

We have, in addition to these pioneer reports, several magazine
articles of about the same date, the material for which was largely
drawn from them. One of the most important newspaper articles
of that date was written by Mr. Ernest Ingersoll, published in the
New York Tribune, and another, of anonymous authorship, is to be
found in the Century Magazine for the year 1877. New forms of
towers and castellated buildings were added in these accounts to
those of the earlier authors.

One of the most important contributions to the antiquities of the
region about Mesa Verde was made by the veteran ethnologist, Mor-
gan, who published notes contributed by Mr. Mitchell on a cluster of

1 Report on the ancient ruins of Southwestern Colorado, Tenth Ann, Rept. U.S. Geol. Surv. Terr.
(Hayden Survey) for 1876, Washington, 1879.

13 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULL, 70

mounds near his ranch. As no name was given. this village it is here
called the Mitchell Spring Village. Morgan likewise mentions the
ruin at Mud Spring and a tower in the ruin near his spring. Professor
Newberry was the first author to affix the name Surouaro to a ruin
situated at the head of the Yellow Jacket Canyon.

Several of these ruins were described and figured by Mr. Warren K.
Moorehead as ‘The Great Ruins of Upper McElmo Creek’’ in the
Illustrated American for July 9, 1892, the sixth of a series of articles
under a general title ‘‘In search of a Lost Race.’’ He gives descrip-
tions of a ‘‘cave shelter’? found near Twin Towers, Square Tower in
‘Ruin Canyon,” a building (Hovenweep Castle), and the tower at
the junction of the North and South Forks of Ruin Canyon. This
paper is accompanied by a map of Ruin Canyon by Mr. Cowen. In
Moorehead’s discussion of these remains, individual towers and other
ruins are designated by capital letters, A-V, to some of which are
also affixed the names ‘‘ Hollow Boulder,” ‘‘Twin Towers,” ‘‘Square
Tower,” etc. Details of structure and measurements of the more
striking buildings and a discussion of certain features of structure,
some of which will be considered later under individual ruins, are
likewise given.

The most important general article yet published on the prehis-
toric remains of the region here considered is by Dr. T. Mitchell
Prudden,! who also mentions several of the ruins here treated. His
most important contribution is a description of what he calls the
‘unit type,’ which he recognized as a fundamental structural
feature in the pueblos of this region. He also showed that the kiva
in Montezuma Valley villages is identical with that of cliff-dwellings
in the Mesa Verde, and emphasized, as an important feature, the
union of the tower and the pueblo, a characteristic of the highest
form of pueblo architecture.

Doctor Prudden has followed his comprehensive paper above
mentioned with an account ? of the excavation of one of the mounds
at, Mitchell Spring in which he adds to our knowledge of the structure
of his ‘‘unit type.”’

In “A Further Study of Prehistoric Small House Ruins in the San
Juan Watershed,’’? Doctor Prudden has furnished important addi-
tional data which shows the uniformity of the unit type over a
large area of the San Juan drainage.

The following among other prehistoric remains in the district
mentioned or described by Doctor Prudden are covered by the
author’s reconnoissance:

1The Prehistoric Ruins of the San Juan Watershed in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico.,
Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. v, no. 2, 1903.
2The Circular Kivas of Small Ruins in the San Juan Watershed. Amer, Anthrop., n.s. vol. xvi, no. 1,

1914.
3 Memoirs Amer, Anthrop. Asso., vol. v, no. 1, 1918.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 13

1. Ruins at Dolores Bend (Escalante Ruin).

2. Wolley Ranch Ruin.

3. Burkhardt Ruin (Mud Spring Village).

4. Goodman Point Ruin.

5. Unnamed ruin west of Goodman Lake.

6. Ruin at junction of McElmo and Yellow Jacket.

7. Group on Yellow Jacket nearly opposite mouth of Dawson
Canyon (Davis or Littrell Tower).

8. Surouaro.

9. Cannonball Ruin.

10. Towers and buildings of Ruin and Bridge Canyons.

11. Pierson Spring Ruin.

12. Bug Spring Ruins.

The following towers can be identified from his figures: !

1. “Square building opposite mouth of Dawson Creek.’ Prud-
den, pl. xviii, fig. 2. (This building is not square, but semicircular.)

2. Cannonball Ruin. Prudden, pl. xxi [xxii].

3. ‘Small tower-like structure . . . at the head of Ruin Canyon,
in the Yellow Jacket group.’ Prudden, pl. xxiii, fig. 2. (This
building is not in Ruin Canyon, but in Holly Canyon.)

4. “Tower... about the head of Ruin Canyon.’ Prudden,
pl. xxiii, fig. 1. (This is the most eastern of the Twin Towers, but
not about the head of the canyon.)

5. Sand Canyon Tower. Prudden, pl. xxiv, fig. 2.

Although mainly devoted to descriptions of the cliff-houses of the
Mesa Verde, Baron G. Nordenskiéld’s ‘‘ Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa
Verde” discusses in so broad a manner the relationship of pueblo
ruins and cliff-houses that no student can overlook this epoch-making
work. In fact, Nordenskidld laid the foundations for subsequent
students of pueblo morphology, although some of his comparisons
and generalizations were premature because based on imperfect
observations which have been superseded by later investigations.

The partial excavation of the excellent ruin at the head of Cannon-
ball Canyon by S. G. Morley ? sheds considerable light on the mor-
phology of prehistoric buildings in the McElmo district. Unfortu-
nately no attempt was made by him to repair the walls of this ruin
for permanent preservation, but it is not too late still to prevent
their further destruction and preserve them for future students and
visitors. Morley’s description of the buildings is accompanied by
good photographs and a ground plan. He brought to light in this
ruin examples of the characteristic unit-type kiva.

1 Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. v, no. 2, 1903.
2The Excavation of the Cannonball Ruins in Southwestern Colorado. Amer, Anthrop., n. s. vol. x,
no. 4, 1908,

14 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

The latest work on the McElmo Ruins, one part of which has already
appeared, is a joint contribution by Morley and Kidder.’ In this
publication accurate dimensions and sites of ruins in the McElmo
and Square Ruin Canyons are given, with other instructive data.
Morley and Kidder have designated the ruins by Arabic numbers,
and in a few instances by names. The author has preserved these
numbers so far as possible in his account.

The following ruins in Ruin Canyon and neighboring district cov-
ered by this reconnoissance are described by Morley and Kidder:

No. 1. Wickyup Canyon, Ruin 1 and Ruin 2, ‘Boulder Castle.”

No. 2. Two towers in Ruin Canyon: 1*, near the mouth; 1°, Towers
on or near forks, No. 1 [Hovenweep Pueblo], No. 2 [Hovenweep

Castle.]

No. 3. [Square Tower.]

No. 4. [Oval Tower.]

No. 5. [Tower.]

No. 6. [6.]

No. 7. [Boulder Cliff-house.]
No. 8. Twin Towers.

A
°
eo

. 9. [9.]

No. 10. [Unit-type House.]

No. 11. Gibraltar House and ruin. [Stronghold House.]

Noeoi2 12)

The pueblos and cave dwellings of the ‘Pivotal group” (those on
or near the promontory at the junction of the McElmo and Yellow
Jacket Canyons) were also studied by the authors.

Almost the whole article by Morley and Kidder, which the editor
announces will be completed in a future number of “El Palacio,”
is devoted to descriptions of buildings? in Ruin and Road (Wickyup)
Canyons and the ruins of the ‘‘Pivotal group” at the base of a
promontory between the junction of the Yellow Jacket and McEhno,

CLASSIFICATION

In the classification by Morley and Kidder and the majority of
writers, sites rather than structural features are adopted as a basis,
although all recognized that large cliff-dwellings like Cliff Palace are
practically pueblos built in caves. In the following classification
more attention is directed to differences in structure than to situation,
notwithstanding the latter is convenient for descriptive purposes.

1. Villages or clusters of houses, each having the form of the pure
pueblo type. The essential feature of the pure type is a compact

1 The Archaeology of McEImo Canyon, Colorado. El] Palacio, vol. iv, no. 4, Santa Fe, 1917.
2 The dimensions of buildings and towers given in this article are welcome additions to our knowledge,

but from lack of ground plans one can not fully determine the arrangement of rooms designated in indi-
vidual ruins,

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 15

pueblo, containing one or more unit types, circular kivas of character-
istic form, surrounded by rectangular rooms. These units, single or
consolidated, may be grouped in clusters, as Mitchell Spring or
Aztec Spring Ruins; the clusters may be fused into a large build-
ing, as at Aztec or in the community buildings on Chaco Canyon.

2. Cliff-houses. These morphologically belong to the same pure
type as pucblos; their sites in natural caves are insufficient to sepa-
rate them from open-sky buildings.

3. Towers and great houses. These buildings occur united to
cliff-dwellings or pueblos, but more often they are isolated.

4. Rooms with walls made of megaliths or small stone slabs set
on edge.

In reports on the excavation of Far View House! on the Mesa
Verde, the author called attention to clusters of mounds indicating
_ ruined buildings in the neighborhood of Mummy Lake, a little more
than 4 miles from Spruce-tree House. This cluster he considers a
village; Far View House, excavated from one of the mounds, is
regarded as a prehistoric pueblo of the pure type. The forms of
other buildigs covered by the remaining mounds of the Mummy
Lake site are unknown, but it is probable that they will be found
to resemble Far View House, or that all members of the village
have similar forms.

This grouping of small pueblos into villages at Mummy Lake on
the Mesa Verde is also a distinctive feature of ruins in the Montezuma
Valley and McKlmo district. In these villages one or more of the
component houses may be larger and more conspicuous, dominating
all the others, as at Goodman Point, or at Aztec Spring. The houses
composing the village at Mud Spring were about the same size, but at
Wolley Ranch Ruin only one mound remains, evidently the largest,
the smaller having disappeared.

The third group, towers and great houses, includes buildings of
oval, circular, semicircular, and rectangular shapes. Morphologically
speaking, they do not present structural features of pueblos, for they
are not terraced, neither have they specialized circular ceremonial
rooms, kivas with vaulted roofs surrounded by rectangular rooms, or
other essential features of the pueblo type. The group contains build-
ings which are sometimes consolidated with cliff-houses and pueblos,
but are often independent of them. In this type are included castel-
lated buildings in the Mancos, Yellow Jacket, McElmo, and the
numerous northern tributary canyons of the San Juan.

1A Prehistoric Mesa Verde Pueblo and its People. Smithson. Rept. for 1916, pp. 461-488, 1917. Far
View House—a Pure Type of Pueblo Ruin. Art and Archaeology, vol. vi, no. 3, 1917.

16 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

VILLAGES

RECTANGULAR RUINS OF THE PURE TYPE

As the word is used in this report, a village is a cluster of houses
separated from each other, each building constructed on the same plan,
viz, a circular ceremonial room or kiva with mural banquettes and
pilasters for the support of a vaulted roof, inclosed:in rectangular
rooms. When there is one kiva and surrounding angular rooms we
adopt the name ‘‘unit type.’”’ When, as in the larger mounds, there
are indications of several kivas or unit types consolidated—the size
being in direct proportion to the number—we speak of the building
as belonging to the ‘‘pure type.”’ Doctor Prudden, who first pointed
out the characteristics of the ‘‘unit type,’’! has shown its wide dis-
tribution in the McElmo district. The Mummy Lake village has 16
mounds indicating houses. Far View House, one of these houses, is .
made up of an aggregation of four unit types and hence belongs to
the author’s ‘‘pure type.”

While villages similar to the Mummy Lake group, in the valleys near
Mesa Verde, have individual variations, the essential features are the
same, aswill appear in the following descriptions of Surouaro, and ruins
at Goodman Point, Mud Spring, Aztec Spring, and Mitchell Spring.
Commonly, in these villages, one mound predominates in size over
the others, and while rectangular in form, has generally circular
depressions on the surface, recalling conditions at Far View mound
before excavation. These mounds indicate large buildings in blocks,
made up of many unit forms of the pure type, united into compact
structures. One large dominant member of the village recalls those
ruins where the village is consolidated into one community pueblo.
The separation of mounds in the village and their concentration in
the community house may be of chronological importance, although
the relative age of the simple and composite forms can not at present
be determined; but it is important to recognize that the units of con-
struction in villages and community buildings are identical.

SuUROUARO

The cluster of mounds formerly called Surouaro, now known as
Yellow Jacket Spring Ruin, is situated near the head of the canyon
of the same name to the left of the Monticello road, 14 miles west of
Dolores. This village (pls. 1, ¢; 2, ¢) contains both large and small
houses of the pure pueblo type, covering an area somewhat less than the
Mummy Lake group, on the Mesa Verde. The arrangement of mounds
in clusters naturally recalls the Galisteo and Jemez districts, New

1 The situation of the cemetery, one of the characters of Prudden’s “unit type,” appears constant in
one-kiva buildings, but is variable in the pure type, and, as shown in the author’s application of the unit
type to the crowded condition in Spruce-tree House and other cliff-houses, does not occur in the same
position as in pueblos of the pure type open to the sky.

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS ys

Mexico, where, however, the arrangement of the mounds and the
structure of each is different. The individual houses in a Mesa Verde
or Yellow Jacket village were not so grouped as to inclose a rectangu-
lar court, but were irregularly distributed with intervals of consider-
able size between them.!

The largest mound in the Surouaro village, shown in plate 1, ¢,
corresponds with the so-called “Upper House’’ of Aztec Spring Ruin,
but is much larger than Far View or any other single mound in the
Mummy Lake village.

Surouaro was one of the first ruins in this region described by
American explorers, attention having been first called to it by Pro-
fessor Newberry,’ whose description follows: ‘“‘Surouaro is the name
of a ruined town which must have once contained a*population of
several thousands. The name is said to be of Indian (Utah) origin,
and to signify desolation, and certainly no better could have been
selected. ... The houses are, many of them, large, and all built of
stone, hammer dressed on the exposed faces. Fragments of pot-
tery are exceedingly common, though like the buildings, showing
ereat age. ... The remains of metates (corn mills) are abundant
about the ruins. The ruins of several large reservoirs, built of
masonry, may be seen at Surouaro, and there are traces of acequias
which led to them, through which water was brought, perhaps from

a great distance.”’
GoopMAN Potnt RuIN

This ruin is a cluster of small mounds surrounding larger ones,
recalling the arrangement at Aztec Sprmg. They naturally fall
into two groups which from their direction or relation to the adja-
cent spring may be called the south and north sections.

The most important mound of the south section, Block A, meas-
ures 74 feet on the north, 79 feet on the south, and 76 feet on the
west side. This large mound corresponds morphologically to the
“Upper House” at Aztec Spring (fig. 1, A). About it there are
arranged at intervals, mainly on the north and east sides, other
smaller mounds generally indicating rectangular buildings. The
southeast angle of the largest is connected by a low wall with one
of the smaller mounds, forming an enclosure called a court, whose
northern border is the rim of the canyon just above the spring. A
determination of the detailed architectural features of the building

1 In his valuable study, Pueblo Ruins of the Galisteo Basin, New Mexico (Anthrop. Papers of the Amer.
Mus. Nat. Hist., vol. xv, pt. 1, 1914), Mr. Nelson figures (Plan I, B) an embedded circular kiva in what he
calls the “‘historie part” of the Galisteo Ruin, but does not state how he distinguishes the historic from
the prehistoric part of this building. The other kivas at Galisteo are few in number and not embedded,
but situated outside the house masses as in historic pueblos.

2 Report of the exploring expedition from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Junction of the Grand and Green
Rivers of the Great Colorado of the West in 1859, under the command of Capt, J. N. Macomb, p. 88, Wash-
ington, 1876.

108852°—19—Bull. T0——2

18 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL, 70

buried under Block A is not possible, as none of its walls stand above
the mass of fallen stones, but it is evident, from circular depressions
-and fragments of straight walls that appear over the surface of the
mound, that the rooms were of two kinds, rectangular forms, or
dwellings, and circular chambers, or kivas. This mound resembles
Far View House on the Mesa Verde before excavation.

A large circular depression, 56 feet in diameter, is situated in the
midst of the largest mounds. A unique feature of this depression,
recognized and described by Doctor Prudden, are four piles of stones,
regularly arranged on the floor. The author adopts the suggestion
that this area was once roofed and served as a central circular kiva,
necessitating a roof of such dimensions that four masonry pillars
served for its support. The mound measures about 15 feet in height,
and has large trees growing on its surface, offering evidence of a
considerable age. Several other rooms are indicated by circular
surface depressions, but their relation to the rectangular rooms can
be determined only by excavation.

JOHNSON RuIN

This ruin, to which the author was conducted by Mr. C. K. Davis,
is about 4 miles west of the Goodman Point Ruin near Mr. John-
son’s ranch house, in section 12, township 36, range 18. It is said
to be situated at the head of Sand Canyon, a tributary of the McEImo,
and is one of the largest ruins visited. The remains of former houses
skirt the rim of the canyon head for fully half a mile, forming a con-
tinuous series of mounds in which can be traced towers, great houses,
and other types of buildings, and numerous depressions indicating
sunken kivas. The walls of these buildings were, however, so tum-
bled down that little now remains above ground save piles of stones
in which tops of buried walls may still be detected, but not without
some difficulty. In a cave under the ‘‘mesa rim” there is a small
cliff-house in the walls of which extremities of the original wooden
rafters still remain in place.

In an open clearing, about 3 miles south and west of Mr. J. W.

Fulk’s house, Renaraye post office, there is a small ruin of rectangu-
lar form, the ground plan of which shows two rectangular sections

of different sizes, joined at one angle. The largest section measures
approximately 20 by 50 feet. It consists of low rooms surrounding
two circular depressions, possibly kivas. Although constructed on
a small scale, this section reminds one of the Upper House of Aztec
Spring Ruin. The smaller section, which also has a rectangular
form, has remains of high rooms on opposite sides and low walls on
the remaining sides. In the enclosed area there is a circular depres-
sion or reservoir, corresponding with the reservoir of the Lower
House at Aztec Spring Ruin.

FEWKES]] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 19

Bue Mesa Ruin

The author was guided by Mr. H. S. Merchant to a viilage ruin,
one of the largest visited, situated a few miles from his ranch house.
This village is about 10 miles due south of the store at the head of
Dove Creek, and consists of several large mounds, each about 500
feet long, arranged parallel to each other, and numerous isolated
smaller mounds. Nor far from this large ruin there is a prehistoric
reservoir estimated as covering about 4 acres. Many circular depres-
sions, indicated kivas, and lines of stones showed tops of buried rec-
tangular rooms. [Excavations in a small mound near this ruin were
conducted by Doctor Prudden.*

The canyon which heads near the corral on the road to Merchant’s
house revealed no evidence of prehistoric dwellings.

MircHet Serine Ruin

This ruin takes its name from the earliest known description of it
by Morgan,? which was compiled from notes by Mr. Mitchell, one of
the early settlers in Montezuma Valley. Morgan’s account is as
follows:

“Near Mr. Mitchell’s ranch, and within a space of less than a mile
square, are the ruins of nine pueblo houses of moderate size. They
are built of sandstone intermixed with cobblestone and adobe mortar.
They are now in a very ruinous condition, without standing walls in
any part of them above the rubbish. The largest of the number is
marked No. 1 in the plan, figure 44, of which the outline of the
original structure is still discernible. It is 94 feet in length and 47
feet in depth, and shows the remains of a stone wall in front inclosing
a small court about 15 feet wide. The mass of material over some
parts of this structure is 10 or 12 feet deep. There are, no doubt,
rooms with a portion of the walls still standing covered with rubbish,
the removal of which would reveal a considerable portion of the
original ground plan.”

The author paid a short visit to the Mitchell Spring village and by
means of Morgan’s sketch map was able to identify without difficulty
the nine mounds and tower he represents. The village at Mitchell
Spring differs from that at Mud Spring and at Aztec Spring mainly
in the small size and diffuse distribution of the component mounds
and an absence of any one mound larger than the remainder. It
had, however, a round tower, but unlike that at Mud Spring village,
this structure is not united to one of the houses. The addition of
towers to pueblos, as pointed out by Doctor Prudden® several years
ago, marks the highest development of pueblo architecture as shown

1 Memoirs Amer. Anthrop. Asso., vol. v, no. 1, 1918.

2 Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines. Cont. N. Amer. Ethn., vol. iv, pp. 189-190, 1831.

3 Prudden excavated a unit-type ruin from one of the Mitchell Spring mounds. (Amer, Anthrop., vol.
Xvi, no. 1, 1914.)

20 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

not only in open-air villages but also in some of the large cliff pueblos,
like Cliff Palace. Isolated towers are as a rule earlier in construction.

The unit-type mound uncovered by Doctor Prudden is one of
the most instructive examples of this type in Montezuma Canyon, but
the author in subsequent pages will call attention to the existence
of the same type in Square Tower Canyon. All of these pueblos
probably have kivas of the pure type, practically the same in structure
as Far View House on the Mesa Verde National Park.

Mup Serine (BuRKHARDT) RuIN

The collection of mounds (pl. 3, 6), sometimes called Burkhardt
Ruin, situated at Mud Spring, belongs to the McEImo series. This
ruin, in which is the ‘‘triple-walled tower” of Holmes, for uniformity
with Mitchell Spring Ruin and Aztec Spring Ruin, is named after a
neighboring spring. Like these, it is a cluster of mounds forming a
village which covers a considerable area. The arroyo on which it is
situated opens into the McElmo, and is about 7 miles southwest
from Cortez, at a point where the road enters the McElmo Canyon.

The extension of the area covered by the Mud Spring mounds is
east-west, the largest mounds being those on the east. These latter
are separated from the remainder, or those on the west, by a shallow,
narrow gulch. There are two towers united to the western section
overlooking the spring, the following description of one of which,
with a sketch of the ground plan, is given by Holmes.!

“The circular structures or towers have been built, in the usual
manner, of roughly hewn stone, and rank among the very best
specimens of this ancient architecture. The great tower is especially
noticeable . . . In dimensions it is almost identical with the great
tower of the Rio Mancos. The walls are traceable nearly all the way
round, and the space between the two outer ones, which is about
5 feet in width, contains 14 apartments or cells. The walls about
one of these cells are still standing to the height of 12 feet; but the
interior can not be examined on account of the rubbish which fills
it to the top. No openings are noticeable in the circular walls, but
doorways seem to have been made to communicate between the apart-
ments; one is preserved at d ... This tower stands back about
100 feet from the edge of the mesa near the border of the village.
The smaller tower, b, stands forward on a point that overlooks the
Shallow gulch; it is 15 feet in diameter; the walls are 34 feet thick
and 5 feet high on the outside. Beneath this ruin, in a little side
gulch, are the remains of a wall 12 feet high and 20 inches thick .. .
The apartments number nearly a hundred, and seem, generally, to
have been rectangular. They are not, however, of uniform size, and_
certainly not arranged in regular order.”

1 Op. cit., pp. 398-399.

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 21

Morgan! gives the following description of the same ruin which
seems to the author to be the Mud Creek village:

“Four miles westerly [from Mitchell ranch], near the ranch of Mr.
Shirt, are the ruins of another large stone pueblo, together with an
Indian cemetery, where each grave is marked by a border of flat
stones set level with the ground in the form of a parallelogram 8 feet
by 4 feet. Near the cluster of nine pueblos shown in the figure are
found strewn on the ground numeroys fragments of pottery of high
grade in the ornamentation, and small arrowheads of flint, quartz, and
chalcedony delicately formed, and small knife blades with convex
and serrated edges in considerable numbers.

‘“This is an immense ruin with small portions of the walls still
standing, particularly of the round tower of stone of three concentric
walls, incorporated in the structure, and a few chambers in the north
end of the main building. The round tower is still standing nearly
to the height of the first story. In its present condition it was
impossible to make a ground plan showing the several chambers,
or to determine with certainty which side was the front of the struc-
ture, assuming that it was constructed in the terraced form ... The
Round Tower is the most singular feature in this structure. While it
resembles the ordinary estufa, common to all these structures, it
differs from them in having three concentric walls. No doorways
are visible in the portion still standing, consequently it must have
been entered through the roof, in which respect it agrees with the
ordinary estufa. The inner chamber is about 20 feot in diameter,
and the spaces between the encircling walls are about 2 feet each;
the walls are about 2 feet in thickness, and were laid up mainly with
stones about 4 inches square, and, for the most part, in courses.
There is a similar round tower, having but two concentric walls,
at the head of the McElmo Canyon, pre near the ranch of Nee
Mitchell [Mitchell Ruin].”

As the name Mud Spring is locally,known to the natives, especially
to employees of livery stables and garages, the ruin is here called
Mud Spring. The tower and the other circular buildings are united
to other rooms as in similar groups of mounds. The presence
of surface depressions, thought to indicate circular kivas,’? shows that
the Mud Spring moundsare remainsof a village of thesame type as the
Mummy Lake group, but with towers united to the largest mounds.

The time the author could give to his visit to the Mud Spring Ruin
(pl. 3, 6) was too limited to survey it, but he noticed in addition. to the
two eieulas, buildings already recorded, a large mound situated on
the west side of the gulch, and numerous small mounds on the east

1 Op. cit., p. 190.

2 Although the kivas of Mud Spring Ruin have not been excavated there is little doubt from surface
indications that they belong to the unit type.

22 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

side of the same, each apparently with a central depression like a kiva.
All these mounds have been more or less mutilated by indiscriminate
digging, but many mounds, still untouched, remain to be excavated
before we can form an adequate conception of the group. The
‘triple-walled tower’? is now in such a condition that the author
could not determine whether it was formerly circular or D-shaped;
the ‘‘small tower” is in even worse condition and its previous form
could not be made out. The Mud Spring mounds cover a much
larger area than descriptions or ground plans thus far published would
indicate.

Originally Mud Spring Ruin consisted of a cluster of pueblos of
various sizes, each probably with a circular kiva and rectangular rooms,
combined with one or more towers at present too much dilapidated
to determine architectural details without excavations. Like the
other clusters of pueblos in the McElmo and Montezuma Valley, the
cemetery near Mud Spring Ruin has suffered considerably from
pothunters, but there still remain many standing walls that are well
preserved.

RvIN witH SEMICIRCULAR CORE

This ruin is situated on the San Juan about 3 miles below the
sandy bed of the mouth of the Montezuma, on a bluff 50 feet above
the river. The ground plan by Jackson * indicates a building shaped
like a trapezoid, 158 feet on the northeast side, 120 on the southeast,
and 32 on the northwest side. The southwest side is broken mid-
way by a reentering area at the rim of the bluff over the river.

In the center of this trapezoidal structure there is represented a
series of rooms arranged like those of Horseshoe House, but com-
posed of a half-circular chamber surrounded by seven rooms between.
two concentric circular walls.. Thus far the homology to Horseshoe
House is close but beyond this, series of rooms, following out the
trapezoidal form, at least five other rooms appear on the ground
plan. The position of these recalls thé walls arranged around the
tower at Mud Spring village. In other words, the ruin resembles
Horseshoe House, but has in addition rectangular rooms added on
three sides, forming an angular building. So far as the author’s
information goes, no other ruin of exactly this type, which recalls
Sun Temple, has been described by other observers.

Wo.uutey Rancnw ‘Ruin

Wolley Ranch Ruin, situated 10 miles south of Dolores, is one of
the largest mounds near Cortez. There are evidences of the former
existence of a cluster of mounds at this place, only one of which
now remains. This is covered with bushes, rendering it difficult
to trace the bounding walls.

1 Tenth Ann, Rept. U. S. Geol. Surv. Terr. (Hayden Survey) for 1876, pl. xlviii, fig. 2, 1879.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 23
BLANCHARD RuIN

Several years ago private parties constructed at Manitou, near
Colorado Springs, a cliff-dwelling on the combined plan of Spruce-
tree House and Cliff Palace. The rocks used for that purpose were
transported from a large mound on the Blanchard ranch near Leba-
non, in the Montezuma Valley, at the head of Hartman’s draw,
about 6 miles south of Dolores. Two mounds (pl. 2, a, b), about
three-quarters of a mile apart, are all that now remain of a consider-
able village; the other smaller mounds, reported by pioneer settlers,
have long since bten leveled by cultivation. As both of these mounds
have been extensively dug into to obtain stones, the walls that
remain standing show much mutilation.. The present condition of
the largest Blanchard mound, as seen from its southwest angle, is
shown in plate 2, b. About half of the mound, now covered with
a growth of bushes, still remains entire, exposing walls of fine masonry,
on its south side. The rooms in the buried buildings are hard to
make out on account of this covering of vegetation and accumu-
lated débris; but the central depressions, supposed to be kivas, almost
always present in the middle of mounds in this district, show that
the structure of Blanchard Ruin follows the pure type.

Ruins at Aztec SPRING

The mounds at Aztec Spring (pl. 1, 0), situated on the eastern
flank of Ute Mountain, at a site looking across the valley to the
west end of Mesa Verde, were described forty years ago by W. W.
Jackson ' and Prof. W. H. Holmes.? The descriptions given by both
these pioneers are quoted at length for the reason that subsequent
authors have added little from direct observation since that time,
notwithstanding they have been constantly referred to and the
illustrations reproduced.

As a result of a short visit, the author is able to add the few fol-
lowing notes on the Aztec Spring mounds. The ruin is a village
consisting of a cluster of unit pueblos of the pure type in various
stages of consolidation. No excavations were made, but the surface
indications point to the conclusion that the different mounds indi-
cate that these pueblos have different shapes and sizes.

The author’s observations differ in several unimportant partic-
ulars from those of previous writers, and while it is not his intention
to describe in detail the Aztec Spring village he will call attention
to certain features it shares with other villages in the Montezuma

Valley.

1 Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey Terr. (Hayden Survey) for 1874, Washington, 1876. 2 Op. cit.

24 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

The best, almost the only accounts of this village are the follow-
ing taken from the descriptions by Jackson and Holmes published
in 1877. Mr. Jackson gives the following description :*

‘Immediately adjoining the spring, on the right, as we face it
from below, is the ruin of a great massive structure [Upper House ?]
of some kind, about 100 feet square in exterior dimensions; a portion
only of the wall upon the northern face remaining in its original posi-
tion. The débris of the ruin now forms a great mound of crumbling
rock, from 12 to 20 feet in height, overgrown with artemisia, but
showing clearly, however, its rectangular structure, adjusted approx-
imately to the four points of the compass. Inside this square is
a circle, about 60 feet in diameter, deeply depressed in the center.
The space between the square and the circle appeared, upon a hasty
examination, to have been filled in solidly with a sort of rubble-
masonry. Cross-walls were noticed in two places; but whether
they were to strengthen the walls or divided apartments could
only be conjectured. That portion of the outer wall remaining
standing is some 40 feet in length and 15 in height. Thestones were
dressed to a uniform size and finish. Upon thesame level as this ruin,
and extending back some distance, were grouped line after line of
foundations and mounds, the great mass of which is of stone but not
one remaining upon another . . . Below the above group, some 200
yards distant, and communicating by indistinct lines of débris, is
another great wall, inclosing a space of about 200 feet square [Lower
House?] ... This better preserved portion is some 50 feet in
length, 7 or 8 feet in height, and 20 feet thick, the two exterior sur-
faces of well-dressed and evenly laid courses, and the center packed
in solidly with rubble-masonry, looking entirely different from those
rooms which had been filled with débris, though it is difficult to
assign any reason for its being so massively constructed ... The
town built about this spring is nearly a square mile in extent, the
larger and more enduring buildings in the center, while all about
are scattered and grouped the remnants of smaller structures, com-
prising the suburbs.’

The déscription by Professor Holmes” is more detailed and
accompanied by a ground plan, and is quoted below:

“The site of the spring I found, but without the least appearance
of water. The depression formerly occupied by it is near the center
of a large mass of ruins, similar to the group [Mud Spring village]
last described, but having a rectangular instead of a circular building
as the chief and central structure. This I have called the upper
house in the plate, and a large walled enclosure a little lower on the
slope I have for the sake of distinction called the lower house.

1 Op. cit., pp. 377-378. 2 Op. cit., p. 400.

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 25

“These ruins form the most imposing pile of masonry yet [1875]
found in Colorado. The whole group covers an area about 480,000
square feet, and has an average depth of from 3 to 4 feet. This
would give in the vicinity of 1,500,000 solid feet of stonework, The
stone used is chiefly of the fossiliferous limestone that outcrop
along the base of the Mesa Verde a mile or more away, and its trans-
portation to this place has doubtless been a great work for a people
so totally without facilities. .

“The upper house is rectangular, measuring 80 feet by 100 feet,
and is built with the cardinal points to within a few degrees. The
pile is from 12 to 15 feet in height, and its massiveness suggests an

original height at least twice as great. The plan is somewhat difficult
to make out on account of the very great quantity of débris.

“The walls seem to have been double, with a space 7 feet be-
tween; a number of cross walls at regular intervals indicate that this
space has been divided into apartments, as seen in the plan.

“The walls are 26 inches thick, and are built of roughly dressed
stones, which were probably laid in mortar, as in other cases.

“The enclosed space, which is somewhat depressed, has two lines
of débris, probably the remains of partition-walls, separating it into
three apartments, a, 6, ¢ [note]. Enclosing’ this great house is a
network of fallen walls, so completely reduced that none of the
stones seem to remain in place; and I am at a loss to determine
whether they mark the site of a cluster of irregular apartments,
having low, loosely built walls, or whether they are the remains of
some imposing adobe structure built after the manner of the ruined
pueblos of the Rio Chaco.

““Two well-defined circular enclosures or estufas [kivas] are situated
in the midst of the southern wing of the ruin. The upper one, <A,
is on the opposite side of the spring from the great house, is 60 feet
in diameter, and is surrounded by a lowstone wall. West of the house
is a small open court, which seems to have had a gateway opening
out to the west, through the surrounding walls.

“The lower house is 200 feet in length by 180 in width, and its
wails vary 15 degrees from the cardinal points. The northern wall,
a, is double and contains a row of eight apartments about 7 feet in
width by 24 in length. The walls of the other sides are low, and
seem to have served simply to enclose the great court, near the
center of which is a large walled depression (estufa B).”’

The number of buildings that composed the Aztec Spring village
(fig. 1) when it was inhabited can not be exactly estimated, but as
indicated by the largest mound, the most important block of rooms
exceeds in size any at Mitchell Spring Ruin. While this village also
covered more ground than that at Mud Spring, it shows no evidence
of added towers, a prominent feature of the largest mound of the

26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [RULL. 70

latter. Two sections (fig. 1, A, B) may be distinguished in the
arrangement of mounds in the village; one may be known as the
western and the other as the eastern division.

The highest and most conspicuous mound of the western section
(A) is referred to by Professor Holmes as the “Upper House.”
Surface characteristics now indicate that this is the remains of a
compact rectangular building, with circular kivas and domiciliary
rooms of different shapes, the arrangément of which can not be de-

N.

wn

Pee Sepenarenngrane antag peti

~ e , S20 Pepe, 12 0

Piheel. ml = a 3 oe a
S va ES tr

2 '
sherk cccose Sat
ee

Fig. 1.—Ground plan of Aztec Spring Ruin.

termined without extensive excavations. The plan of this pueblo
published by Holmes! shows two large and one small depression,
indicating peripheral rectangular chambers surrounded by walls of
rectangular rooms.

The author interprets the depressions, K, as kivas, but supposes
that they were not rectangular as figured by Holmes, but circular,
surrounded on all four sides by square secular chambers, the “Upper
House”’ being formed by the consolidation of several units of the pure
pueblo type. Although Aztec Spring Ruin is now much mutilated

ie 1 Op. cit., pl. x1.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 27

and its walls difficult to trace, the surface indications, aided Dy. com-
parative studies of the rooms, show that Holmes’ “a,” “6,” and
“c,” now shown by Aesresions, are circular, Suiptoreaean kivas.
They are the same kind of chambers as the Gbodlar depressions in
the mounds on the south side of the spring. The height of the
mound called ‘Upper House” indicates that the building had more
than one story on the west and north sides, and that a series of rooms
one story high with accompanying circular depressions existed on
the east side.

The “Upper House”’ is only one of several pueblos composing the
western cluster of the Aztec Spring village. Its proximity to the
source of water may in part account for its predominant size,’ but
there are evidences of several other mounds (/—//) in its neighbor-
hood, also remains of pueblos. Those on the north (@) and west
sides (H-H) are small and separated from it by intervals sometimes
called courts. The most extensive accumulation of rooms. next the
“Upper House”’ is situated across the draw in which the spring
lies, south of the ‘‘Upper House”’ cluster already considered. The
aggregation of houses near the ‘‘ Upper House’ is mainly composed of
low rectangular buildings among which are recognized scattered
circular depressions indicating kivas. The largest of these buildings
is indicated by the mound on the south rim of the draw, where we
can make out remains of a number of circular depressions or kivas
(Jf), as if several unit’forms fused together; on the north and west
sides of the spring there are small, low mounds, unconnected, also
suggesting several similar unit forms. The most densely populated
part of the village at Aztec Spring, as indicated by the size of the
mounds clustered on the rim around the head of the draw, is above
the spring, on the northwest and south sides.

There remains to be mentioned the eastern annex (2) of the Aztec
Spring village, the most striking remains of which is a rectangular
inclosure called ‘Lower House,” situated east of the spring and
lower down the draw, or at a lower level than the section already
considered. The type of this structure, which undoubtedly belonged
to the same village, is different from that already described. It
resembles a reservoir rather than a kiva, inclosed by a low rectan-
gular wall, with rows of rooms on the north side. The court of the
‘‘Lower House’”’ measures 218 feet. The wall on the east, south,
‘and west sides is only a few feet high and is narrow; that on the
north is broader and higher, evidently the remains of rooms, over-
looking the inclosed area.

Perhaps the most enigmatical structures in the vicinity of Aztec
Spring village are situated on a low mesa south of the mounds, a few
hundred fect away. These are circular depressions without accom-
panying mounds, one of which was excavated a few years ago to the

28 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

depth of 12 feet; on the south there was discovered a well-made wall
of a circular opening, now visible, by which there was a communica-
tion through a horizontal tunnel with the open air. 4he author was
informed that this tunnel is artificial and that one of the workmen
crawled through it to its opening in the side of a bank many yards
distant.

No attempt was made to get the exact dimensions of the com-
ponent houses at Aztec Spring, as the walls are now concealed in the
mounds, and measurements can only be approximations if obtained
from surface indications without excavation. The sketch plan here
introduced (fig. 1) is schematic, but although not claimed as accurate,
may, serve to convey a better idea of the relation of the two great
structures and their annexed buildings than any previously advanced.

The author saw no ruined prehistoric village in the Montezuma
Valley that so stirred his enthusiasm to properly éxcavate and repair
as that at Aztec Spring,’ notwithstanding it has been considerably
dug over for commercial purposes.

Great OrEen-Arirn Rurns SoutH AND SOUTHWEST OF DovE CREEK Post OFFICE

Tn the region south and southwest of Dove Creek there are several
large pueblo ruins, indicated by mounds formed of trimmed stone,
eolean sand, and clay from plastermg, which have certain charac-
ters in common. Kach mound is a large heap of stones (pl. 3, a)
near which is a depression or reservoir, with smaller heaps which in
different ruins show the small buildings of the unit type. These
clusters or villages are somewhat modified in form by the configura-
tion of the mesa surface. The larger have rectangular forms regu-
larly disposed in blocks with passageways between them or are
without any definite arrangement.

Sauaw Pornt Ruin

This large ruin, which has been described by Doctor Prudden as
Squaw Point Ruin and as Pierson Lake Ruin, was visited by the
author, who has little to add to this description. One of the small
heaps of stone or mounds has been excavated and its structure
found to conform with the definition of the unit type. The subter-
ranean communication between one of the rectangular rooms and
the kiva could be well seen at the time of the author’s visit and
recalls the feature pointed out by him in some of the kivas of Spruce-
tree House. The large reservoir and the great ruin are noteworthy
features of the Squaw Point settlement.

It seems to the author that the large block of buildings is simply a
congeries of unit types the structure of one of which is indicated by

1Mr. Van Kleeck, of Denver, has offered this ruin to the Public Parks Service for permanent preser-
vation, It is proposed to rename it the Yucca House National Monument.
.

VEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 29

the small buildings excavated by Doctor Prudden, and that structur-
ally there is the same condition in it as in the pueblo ruins of Monte-
zuma Valley, a conclusion to which the several artifacts mentioned
and figured by Doctor Prudden also point.

The same holds true of Bug Point Ruin, a few miles away, also
excavated and described by Doctor Prudden. Here also excavation
of a small mound shows the unit type, and while no one has yet
opened the larger mound or pueblo, superficial evidences indicate that
it also is a complex of many unit types joined together. Until more
facts are available the relative age of the small unit types as com-
pared to the large pueblo can not be definitely stated, but there is
little reason to doubt that they are contemporaneous, and nothing to
support the belief that they do not indicate the same culture.

AcMEN RvuIN

Following the Old Bluff Road and leaving it about 5 miles west
of Acmen post office, one comes to a low canyon beyond Pigge ranch.
The heaps of stone or large mounds cover an area of about 10 acres,
the largest being about 15 feet high. East of this is a circular
depression surrounded by stones, indicating either a reservoir or a
ruined building.

The top of the highest mound (pl. 3, a)—no walls stand above the
surface—is depressed like mounds of the Mummy Lake group on the
Mesa Verde. This depression probably indicates a circular kive
embedded in square walls, the masonry of which so far as can be
judged superficially is not very fine. There are many smaller mounds
in the vicinity and evidences of cemeteries on the south, east, and
west sides, where there are evidences of desultory digging; fragments
of pottery are numerous.

These mounds indicate a considerable village which would well
repay excavation, as shown by the numerous specimens of corrugated,
black and white, and red pottery in the Pigge collection, made in a
small mound near the Pigge ranch.

The specimens in this collection present few features different from
those indicated by the fragments of pottery picked up on the larger
mounds a mile west of the site where they were excavated. They
are the same as shards from the mounds in the McElmo region.

Oak Sprina House

About 15 miles southwest of Dove Creek on Monument Canyon
there is a good spring called Oak Spring, near which are several piles
of stones indicating former buildings, the largest of which, about a
quarter of a mile away, has a central depression with surroundin
walls now covered with rock or buried in soil or blown sand. Very
large pifion trees grow on top of the highest walls of this ruin, the

30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

general features of which recall those at Bug Spring, though their
size is considerably less. In the surface of rock above the spring
there are numerous potholes of small size. One of these, 4 feet deep
and about 18 feet in diameter, is almost perfectly circular and has
some signs of having been deepened artificially. It holds water
much of the time and was undoubtedly a source of water supply to
the aborigines, as it now is to stock in that neighborhood.

Ruin in Ruin Canyon

One of the large rim-rock ruins may be seen on the left bank of Ruin
Canyon in full view from the Old Bluff Road. The ruin is an immense
pile of stones perched on the very edge of the rim, with no walls
standing above the surface. The most striking feature of this ruin
is the cliff-house below, the walls and entrance into which are visible
from the road (pl. 9, 6). It is readily accessible and one of the
largest in the country. On either side of the Old Bluff Road from
Ruin Canyon to the ‘‘Aztec Reservoir” small piles of stone mark the
sites of many former buildings of the one-house type which can readily
be seen, especially in the sagebrush clearings as the road descends to
the Picket corral, the reservoirs, and the McElmo Canyon.

CANNONBALL RUIN

One of the most instructive ruins of the McEJmo Canyon region is
situated at the head of Cannonball Canyon, a short distance across
the mesa north of the McElmo, at a point nearly opposite the store.
This ruin is made up of two separate pueblos facing each other, one
of which is known as the northern, the other as the southern pueblo
(pl. 22, 6). Both show castellated chambers and towers, one of which
is situated at the bottom of the canyon. The southern pueblo was
excavated a few years ago by Mr. S. G. Morley, who published an
excellent plan and a good description of it, and made several sug-
gestions regarding additions of new rooms to the kivas which are
valuable. Its walls were not protected and are rapidly deteriorating.

This pueblo, as pointed out by Mr. Morley,* has 29 secular rooms
arranged with little regularity, and 7 circular kivas, belonging to the
vaulted-roofed variety. It is a fine example of a composite pueblo
of the pure type, in which there are several large kivas. Morley has
pointed out a possible sequence in the addition of the different kivas
to a preexisting tower and offers an explanation of the chronological
steps by which he thinks the aggregation of rooms was brought about.
Occasionally we find inserted in the walls of these houses large arti-
ficially worked or uncut flat stones, such as the author has mentioned
as existing in the walls of the northwest corner of the court of Far
View House. This Cyclopean form of masonry is primitive and may

1 Amer, Anthrop., n. s. vol. x, no. 4, pp. 596-610, 1908,

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 3}

be looked upon as a survival of a ruder and more archaic condition
best shown in the Montezuma Mesa ruins farther west, a good ex-
ample of which was described by Jackson.!

CIRCULAR RUINS WITIL PERIPHERAL COMPARTMENTS

Tt has long been recognized that circular ruins in the Southwest
differ from rectangular ruins, not only in shape but also in struc
tural features, as relative position and character of kivas. ‘The rela-
tion of the ceremonial chambers to the houses, no less than the
external forms of the two, at first sight appear to separate them from
the pure type.?. They are more numerous and probably more ancient,
as their relative abundance implies.

These circular ruins, in which group is included certain modifica-
tions where the curve of one side is replaced (generally on the south)
by a straight wall or chord, have several concentric walls; again, they
take the form of simple towers with one row of encircling compart-
ments, or they may have a double wall with inclosed compartments.

Many representations of semicircular ruins were found in the region
here considered, some of which are of considerable size. The simplest
form is well illustrated by the D-shaped building, Horseshoe House,
in Hackberry Canyon, a ruin which will be considered later in this
article. Other examples occur in the Yellow Jacket, and there are
several, as Butte Ruin, Emerson, and Escalante Ruins, in the neigh-
borhood of Dolores,

In contrast to the village type consisting of a number of pueblos
clustered together, but separated from each other, where the growth
takes place mainly through the union of components, the circular
ruin in enlarging its size apparently did so by the addition of new
compartments peripherally or like additional rings in exogenous
trées. Judging from their frequency, the center of distribution of -
the circular type lies somewhere in the San Juan culture area. This
type does not occur in the Gila Valley or its tributaries, where we
have an architectural zone denoting that a people somewhat different
in culture from the Pueblos exists, but occurs throughout the ‘Cen-
tral Zone,” so called, extending across New Mexico from Colorado as
far south as Zui. Many additional observations remain to be made
before we can adequately define the group known as the circular type
and the extent of the area over which it is distributed.

The following examples of this type have been studied by the
author:

i Op. eit., pp. 428-429.
2Tt is premature to declare that the kivas in circular ruins do not belong to the vaulted-roofed type
simply from want of observation to that effect. In Penasco Blanco and other ruins of the Chaco Canyon
group, as shown in ground plans, they appear to be embedded in secular rooms. Additional studies of
the architectural features of circular pueblos are desirable,

32 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70
Woop Canyon Rutns

Reports were brought to the author of large ruins on the rim of
Wood Canyon, about 4 miles south of Yellow Jacket post office, in
October, 1918, when he had almost finished the season’s work. Two
ruins of size were examined, one of which, situated in the open sage-
brush clearing, belongs to the village type composed of large and
small rectangular mounds. The other is composed of small circular
or semicircular buildings with a surrounding wall. The form of this
latter (fig. 2) would seem to place it in a subgroup or village type.

OME
“I

WY

i NN

SS RY
Bee, os
cS : SK
HK En RE
9 4 S
~ Ly b/ oa ¥
is Be
See SP ¥
Soa =
PS
SS \N ‘ S

Fig. 2.—Ground plan of Wood Canyon Ruin.

Approach to the inclosed circular mounds was debarred by a high
bluff of a canyon on one side and by a low defensive curved wall (£),
some of the stones of which are large, almost megaliths, on the side
of the mesa. From fragmentary sections of the buried walls of one
of these circular mounds (A, B), which appear on the surface, it
would seem that the buildings were like towers (C, D). This is one
of the few known examples of circular buildings in an area protected
by a curved wall. In the cliffs below Wood Canyon Ruin is a cliff-
dwelling (@ I, J) remarkable mainly in its site.

Burre Ruin

The so-called Butte Ruin, situated in Lost Canyon, 5 miles east of
Dolores, belongs to the circular type. It crowns a low elevation,
steep on the west side, sloping more gradually on the east, and sur-

FEWKES]] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 33

rounded by cultivated fields. The view from its top looking toward
Ute Mountain and the Mesa Verde plateau is particularly extensive.
The butte is forested by a few spruces growing at the base and
extending up the sides, which are replaced at the summit by a
thick growth of sage and other bushes which cover the mound,
rendering it difficult to make out the ground plan of the ruin on
its top.

From what appears on the surface it would seem that this ruin
was a circular or semicircular building about 60 feet in diameter, the
walls rising about 10 feet high. Like other circular mounds it shows
a well-marked depression in the middle, from which radiate walls
or indications of walled compartments. Like the majority of the
buildings of the circular form, the walls on one side have fallen,
suggesting that a low straight wall, possibly with rectangular rooms,
was annexed to this side.

In the neighborhood of Butte Ruin there is another hill crowned
with a pile of stones, probably a round building of smaller size and
with more dilapidated walls. Old cedar beams project in places out
of the mounds.

The cliff-houses below the largest of these mounds show well-
made walls with a few rafters and beams. There are pictographs on
the cliff a short distance away.

Emerson RUIN

This ruin crowns a low hill about 3 miles south of Dolores (fig. 3).
The form of the mound is semicircular with a depression in the
middle around which can be traced radiating partitions suggesting
compartments. Its outer wall on the south side, as in so many
other examples of this type, has fallen, and the indications are that
here the wall was straight, or like that on the south side of Horse-
shoe Ruin.

The author’s attention was first called to this ruin by Mr. Gordon
Parker, supervisor of the Montezuma Forest Reserve, it having been
discovered by Mr. J. W. Emerson, one of his rangers. The circular
or semicircular form (fig. 4) of the mound indicates at once that it
does not belong to the same type as Far View House; the central
depression is surrounded by a series of compartments separated by
radiating walls like the circular ruins in the pueblo region to the
south. Mr. Emerson’s report, which follows, points out the main
features of this remarkable ruin,’

1 The letter referring tothe circular ruin near Dolores was prepared by Mr. Emerson, the discoverer of
this ruin, and was transmitted to the Smithsonian Institution as part of a phase of cooperative work with
the Forest Service, by Mr. Gordon Parker, superintendent cf the Montezuma Forest Reserve.

108852°—19—Bull. 70 3

34 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

Dotores, Cotorapo, July 7, 1917.

In August, 1916, I visited Mesa Verde National Park. While there Doctor Fewkes
inquired in regard to ruins in the vicinity of the Big Bend of the Dolores River. He
informed me that the log of two old Spanish explorers of 1775 described a ruin near
the bend of the Dolores River as of great value.

Later, during October, 1916, I visited a number of ruins in this vicinity, including
the one which (for the want of a better name) I have mapped and named Sun Dial
Palace. Later, last fall, I again visited these ruins with Mr. R. W. Williamson, of
Dolores, Colorado.

ie Old,
iFeb.25, 188]
oo ©) RESERVOIR

So Se SE aSeT SUES Ee oe ese

' aD '
EMERSON RUIN |

li

JessieMOShaunessy : : iS ,
hh Filed on. ions nf
Oct 21, 1912 | All of section filed on, ! N SS
A} ASO EEA Hy alte 1 bué sence last date onmap | Sirs
so not patented. = a oy
er
ig «
ee

|
U
f
U
l
t
l
l
Y
Ht

Scale 4in.-Imi. Var 14° 30E.

Fig. 3.—Metes and bounds of Emerson Ruin. (After Emerson.)

On July 5, 1917, I again visited these ruins, which I have designated as Reservoir
Group and Sun Dial Palace.! For location and status of land on which they lie see
map of sec. 17, T. 37 N., R. 15 W., N. M: P. M. [fig. 3].

While examining Sun Dial Palace I noted the ‘‘D-shaped construction, also that
the south wall of the building ran due east and west.’’ Also please note the regu-
larity of wall bearings from the approximate center of the elliptical center chamber.
I also noted that a shadow cast by the sun apparently coincides with some of these
walls at different hours during the day. This last gave suggestion to the name.

1 Also see detailed map of construction of Sun Dial Palace [fig. 4].

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 35

Also please note that the first tier of rooms around the middle chamber does not show
a complete set of bearings but seems to suggest that these regular bearings were
obtained from observation and study of a master builder. The result of his study
was built as the next circular room ticr was added. The two missing rooms on the
western side of the building seem to suggest that this building was never completed,
and also bear out my theory of an outward building of room tiers from the middle
chamber.

On the ground this building is fully completed on the south side and forms a due
east and west line. An error in mapping the elliptical middle chamber has given
the south side an incomplete appearance.

I believe that the excavation and study of this ruin will recall something of value,
as Father Escalante wrote in his log in 1775.

Respectfully submitted.

(Signed) J. Warp Emerson,
Forest Ranger.

Fic. 4.—Schematic ground plan of Emerson Ruin. (After Emerson.)

A personal examination of the remains of this building leads the
author to the conclusion that while it belongs to the circular group,
with a ground plan resembling Horseshoe House, and while the central
part had a wall completely circular, the outer concentric curved walls
did not complete their course on the south side, but ended in straight
walls comparable with the partitions separating compartments. The
author identifies another ruin as that mentioned by the Catholic
fathers in 1775.

36 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

EscaLANTE RuINn

The name Escalante Ruin, given to the first ruin recorded by a
white man in Colorado, is situated about 3 miles from Dolores on
top of a low hill to the right of the Monticello Road, just beyond
where it diverges from the road to Cortez. The outline of the pile
of stones suggests a D-shaped or semicircular house with a central
depression surrounded by rooms separated by radiating partitions.
The wall on the south or east sides was probably straight, rendering
the form not greatly unlike the other ruins on hilltops in the neigh-
borhood of Dolores.

This is supposed to be the ruin to which reference is made in the
following quotation from an article in Science: !

“There is in the Congressional Library, among the documents
collected by Peter Force, a manuscript diary of early exploration in
New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah, dated 1776, written by two Cath-
olic priests, Father Silvester Velez Escalante and Father Francisco
Atanacio Dominguez. This diary is valuable to students of arche-
ology, as it contains the first reference to a prehistoric ruin in the con-
fines of the present State of Colorado, although the mention is too
brief for positive identification of the ruin.?, While the context indi-
cates its approximate site, there are at this place at least two large
ruins, either of which might be that referred to. Ihave no doubt which
one of these two ruins was indicated by these early explorers, but my
interest in this ruin is both archeological and historical. Our
knowledge of the structure of these ruins is at the present day almost
as imperfect as it was a century and a half ago.

“The route followed by the writers of the diary was possibly an
Indian pathway, and is now called the Old Spanish Trail. After
entering Colorado it ran from near the present site of Mancos to the
Dolores. On the fourteenth day from Santa Fe, we find the following
entry: ‘En la vanda austral del Vio [Rio] sobre un alto, huvo anti-
quam (te) una Poblacion pequefia, de la misma forma q?® las de los
Indios el Nuevo Mexico, segun manifieran las Ruinas q® de invento
registramos.’

“By tracing the trip day by day, up to that time, it appears that
the ruin referred to by these early fathers was situated somewhere
near the bend of the Dolores River, or not far from the present town
Dolores, Colo. The above quotation indicates that the ruin was a
small settlement, and situated on a hill, on the south side of the river
or trail, but it did not differ greatly from the ruined settlements of
the Indians of New Mexico with which the writers were-familiar, and
had already described.’’

1 Fewkes, J. W., The First Pueblo Ruin in Colorado Mentioned in Spanish Documents. Science, vol.
XLVI, Sept. 14, 1917.

2 Diario y Dereotero de las nuevas descubrimientos de tierras a losr’bos N. N. OE. OE. del Nuevo Mexico
por los R. R. P. P. Fr. Silvester Velez Escalante, Fr. Francisco Atanacio Dominguez, 1776, ( Vide Sen,
Ex. Doe, 33d Congress, No. 78, pt. 3, pp. 119-127.)

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS Si

CiirF-DWELLINGS

There are numerous cliff-houses in this district, but while, as a
rule, they are much smaller than the magnificent examples in the
Mesa Verde, they are built on the same architectural lines as their
more pretentious relatives. Both large and small have circular
subterranean kivas, similarly constructed to those of Spruce-tree
House, and have mural pilasters (to support a vaulted roof, now de-
stroyed), ventilators, and deflectors.

There are also many rooms in cliffs, possibly used for storage or
for some other unknown purposes, but too small for habitations. It
is significant that these are identical so far as their size is concerned
with the ‘‘ledge houses,’? near Spruce-tree House, indicating similar
or identical uses.

The kivas of cliff-dwellings of size in the region considered have the
same structural features as those of -adjacent ruins, but very little
resemblance, save in site, to those of cliff-dwellings in southern Ari-
zona, as in the Sierra Ancha or Verde Valley, the structure of which
resembles adjacent pueblos.

The absence in the McElmo region of very large cliff-houses is due
partly but not wholly to geological conditions, the immense caves of
the Mesa Verde not being duplicated in the tributaries of the McElmo;
but wherever caverns do occur, as in Sand Canyon, we commonly find
diminutive representatives. While differences in geological features
may account for the size of these prehistoric buildings, the nature
of the site or its size is not all important.'

Here and there one sees from the road through the McElmo Canyon
a few small cliff-houses, and if he penetrates some of the tributaries,
he finds many others. The canyon is dominated by the Ute Moun-
tain on the south, but on the north are numerous eroded cliffs in
which are many caves affording good opportunities for the con-
struction of cliff-houses.

These buildings do not differ save in size from the cliff-houses of
the Mesa Verde. Their kivas resemble the vaulted variety and the
masonry is identical.

Although the existence of cliff-dwellings in the tributaries of the
McElmo has long been known, the characteristic circular kivas which
occur in the Mesa Verde had not been recognized previous to the
present report.

The relative age of the pueblos and great towers and the same
structures in caves can not be decided by the data at hand, but the
indications are that they were contemporary.

On account of the similarity in structure of the McKElmo cliff-
dwellings to those on Mesa Verde, only a few examples from the

1 Attention may be called to the fact that often we find very commodious caves without correspondingly
largo cliff-houses, even in the Mesa Verde.

38 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

former region are here considered. It may be worthy of note that
while McElmo cliff-dwellings are generally accompanied by large
open-air pueblos and towers or great houses on the cliffs above, in
the Mesa Verde open-air buildings' are generally situated some
distance from the cliff-dwellings.

CLIFF-DWELLINGS IN SAND CANYON

Several small cliff-houses occur in Sand Canyon, one of the northern
tributaries of the McElmo. Stone Arch House, here figured (pl.
6, a), so called from the eroded cliff (pl. 4, b) near by. It is situated
in the cliff, about a mile from where the canyon enters the McElmo
Canyon near Battle Rock. Abundant pifion trees and a few scrubby
cedars grow in the low mounds of the talus below the ruin, near which,
on top of a neighboring rock pinnacle, still stand the well-constructed
walls of a small house (pl. 4, a).

DOUBLE CLIFF-HOUSE

The formerly unnamed cliff-house shown in plate 8? is one of the
best preserved in Sand Canyon. It consists of an upper and a lower
house, the former sittiated far back in the cave, the latter on a pro-
jecting terrace below. Unfortunately it is impossible to introduce
an extended description of this building as it was not entered by the
author’s party, but from a distance the walls exhibit fine masonry.
It is unique in having double buildings on different levels, an arrange-
ment not rare in a few examples of cliff-dwellings on the Mesa Verde.
As shown in plate 8, the character of the rock on which the lower
house stands is harder than that above in which the cave has been
eroded. The upper house is wholly protected by the roof* of the cave
and occupies its entire floor. The lower house shows from a distance
at least two rooms, the front wall of one having fallen.

From a distance the walls of both the lower and the upper house
seem to be well preserved, although many of the component stones
have fallen to the base of the cliff.

SCAFFOLD IN SAND CANYON

One of the cliffs bordering Sand Canyon has an inaccessible cave
in which is an artificial platform or lookout shown in plate 7, a.
Although this structure is not as well preserved as the scaffold in
the neighborhood of Scaffold House in Laguna (Sosi) Canyon, on the
Navaho National Monument, it seems to have had a similar purpose.

1 Sun Temple, however, is a seeming exception and follows the McEImo rule of proximity; several large
cliff-dwellings occur under the cliff on which this mysterious building stands.

2 Taken from a point across the canyon, the only one from which both houses can be included in the same
photograph.

5 For a good example ofcliff-houses at different levels, see Clifl-Dwellings in Fewkes Canyon, Mesa Verde
National Park, Holmes Anniversary Volume.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 39

It is constructed of logs reaching from one side of the cave to the
other supporting a floor of flat stones and adobe. Its elevated
situation would necessitate for entrance either holes cut in the cliffs
or ladders.

UNIT-TYPE HOUSES IN CAVES

’

In subsequent pages the author will describe a ruin called the
Unit-type House, situated in the open on the north rim of Square
Tower Canyon. A similar type of unit-type house is found in a
cave in Sand Canyon. The reader’s attention may first be called
to the definition of a unit type, which is a building composed of a
circular kiva, with mural banquettes and pedestals supporting a
vaulted roof, with ventilator, reflector, and generally a ceremonial
opening near a central fire hole in the floor. This kiva (fig. 5) is
generally embedded in or surrounded by rectangular rooms. The

ah ; , os. >
LY a phe ve 0%, <a

a 7 rt
ae

Fic, 5.—Ground plan of Unit-type House in cave.

single-unit type has one kiva with several surrounding rooms; the so-
called pure type is composed of these units united.

In an almost inaccessible cave (pl. 5, b) in Sand Canyon a few
miles from the McElmo road near the scaffold already mentioned
there is a cliff ruin, so far as known the first described single-unit
house in a cave. It covers the whole floor of the cave (fig. 5) and
its walls are considerably dilapidated, but the kiva shows this instruc-
tive condition: The walls are double, one inside the other, with two
sets of pedestals, the outer of which are very much blackened with
smoke of constant fires; the inner fresh and untarnished, evidently of
late construction. A similar double-walled kiva known as ‘‘ Kiva A”’
exists in Spruce-tree House, as described in the author’s account of
that ruin. On the perpendicular wall of the precipice at the right
hand of the ruin in the cave above mentioned are several pictographs
shown in plate 7, c.

1 Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park: Spruce-tree House. Bull. 41, Bur. Amer. Ethn., 1909.

40 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

The rectangular rooms about the kiva are in places excavated out
of the cliffs, but show standing walls on the front. These were
not, however, constructed with the same care as those of the kiva.

The cliff-house in Hackberry Canyon (pl. 9, a) is one of the most
instructive. It lies below Horseshoe House and appears to be a sec-
ond example of a unit-type kiva and surrounding rooms.

The cliff-dwelling in Ruin Canyon! visible across the canyon from
the Old Bluff City Road is well preserved. On the rim of the canyon
are piles of stone indicating a very large pueblo, with surface circu-
lar depressions indicating unit-type houses.

CLIFF-HOUSES IN LOST CANYON

Lost Canyon, a southern tributary of the Dolores River, contains
instructive cliff-houses to which my attention was called by Mr.
Gordon Parker, superintendent of the Montezuma Forest Reserve,
who has kindly allowed me to use the accompanying photographs,
This cliff-house (pl. 10, a, b) belongs to the true Mesa Verde type
and shows comparatively good preservation of its walls, some of
the beams being in place. It is most easily approached from Mancos.

There are small cliff-houses in the same canyon not far from Dolo-
res, but these are smaller and their walls very poorly preserved.

An interesting feature of these cliff-houses in Lost Canyon is that
they mark the northern horizon of cliff-dwellings of the Mesa Verde
type, having kivas similarly constructed.

GREAT Houses AND TOWERS

Great houses and towers differ from pueblos of the pure type but
may often be combined with them, forming composite houses ar-
ranged in clusters called villages. Castles and towers may be iso-
lated structures without additional chambers, or may have many
annexed rooms which are rectangular, round, or semicircular in
form. Semicircular towers surrounded by concentric curved walls
connected by radial partitions forming compartments are shown in
Horseshoe Ruin, to which attention has been called in preceding
pages, and possibly in the circular or semicircular ruins on hilltops
near Dolores.

MASONRY

The masonry of the great house and tower type (pl. 11, a, 6)
varies in excellence, not only in different examples but also in dif-
ferent portions of the same building. Some of the walls contain
some of the best-constructed masonry north of Mexico; others (see

FEWKES } PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 41

group, where the walls show superior construction, the lowest courses
of rock are larger than those above, but in Hovenweep Castle small
stones are found below those of larger size; the Round Tower in
McLean Basin shows small and large stones introduced for orna-
mentation.

The ambitious constructors of several towers have built the foun-
dations of these towers on bowlders sloping at a considerable angle,
and it is a source of wonder that these walls have stood for so many
years without sliding from their bases. Although so well constructed
in Many instances, the courses were weak from their want of binding
to the remaining wall. As a consequence many corners have fallen,
leaving the remaining walls intact. The builders often failed to tie
in the partitions to the outer walls, by which failure they lost a
brace and have sprung away from their attachment.

In a general way we may recognize masonry of two varieties.

1. That in which horizontal courses are obscure or absent. This
has resulted from the use of stones of different sizes, the intervals
between which are filled in with masses of adobe. These stones are
little fashioned, or dressed only on one side, that forming the face
of the wall.

2. That constructed of horizontal courses, constituting by far the
larger number of these buildings. Each course of this masonry is
made of well-dressed stones, carefully pecked, and of the same size.
In this horizontal masonry the thickness of stones used may vary
in different courses (pl. 11, 6). They may be alternately narrow or
thick, or layers of thick stones may be separated by one or more
layers of tabular or thin stones. This method of alternation may be
so regular as to please the eye and thus become decorative, a mode
of decoration that reached a high development in the Chaco Ruins.
The stones in the horizontal style of masonry are equal in size through-
out the whole building in some cases, and show not only care in
choice of stones but also in dressing them to the same regulation
size. In these cases the joints fit so aceurately that chinking has
not been found necessary and a minimum use of adobe was required.

The inner walls of kivas are much better constructed than the
outer walls of the same or of the walls about them. The masonry
here is regular horizontal. The sides, lintels, and thresholds of door-
ways are among the finest examples of construction. With the
exception of walls sheltered by overhanging cliffs, the plastering has
completely disappeared, but there is no reason to doubt that the
interiors of all the great houses and towers were formerly plastered.

It is instructive to compare the masonry of the great houses and
towers of the Mancos with that of the towers in Hill Canyon (pl. 11, e)
in Utah, the most northern extension of these two types. In Eight
Mile Ruin, one of the largest of these buildings in Hill Canyon, we have

42 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

a circular tower with annexed great houses, all constructed of well-
dressed stones, the masonry in the walls showing on one side of the
tower. No excavations, however, have yet been undertaken in Hill
Canyon Ruins, and it is not known whether the unit type of kiva is
found there, but the combination of great houses and towers is evi-
dent from the ground plans elsewhere published."

The feature of the towers in Hill Canyon is the clustering into
groups, somewhat recalling the condition in Cannonball Ruin, where,
however, they are united. In the Eight Mile Ruin one of the towers
is separated from the remaining houses.

Several towers have accompanying circular depressions with
surrounding mounds. This association can well be seen in Holmes
Tower on the Mancos Canyon and in Davis Tower and one or two
others on the Yellow Jacket. These depressions, sometimes called
reservoirs, have never been excavated, but from what is known of
rooms accompanying towers in the western section of Hoyenweep
Castle it may be that they indicate kivas. Some towers have no
sunken area in the immediate vicinity, especially those mounted on
rocky points or perched on bowlders. At Cannonball Ruin there
are several kivas side by side in one section and towering above them
is a massive walled tower and other rooms.

STRUCTURE OF TOWERS

None of the towers examined have evidences of mural pilasters
to support a roof or recesses in the walls as in vaulted-roofed kivas.
They are sometimes two stories high, the rafters and flooring resting
on ledges of the inner wall. Lateral entrances are common and
windows are absent.?

While the author has found no ruin of the same ground plan as Sun
Temple on the Mesa Verde, D-shaped towers or great houses from
several localities distantly recall this mysterious building, and there
may be an identity in use between Sun Temple and the massive-
walled structures of the McElmo and Yellow Jacket; what that use
was has not thus far been determined.’ If they were constructed for
observatories we can not account for the square tower in the South
Fork of Square Tower Canyon, from which one can not even look
down the canyon, much less in other directions, hemmed in as it is

1 Smithson. Mise. Colls., vol. 68, no. 1, 1917.

2 Our knowledge of the entrances into kivas of the vaulted-roofed type is not all that could be desired.
Kiva D of Spruce-tree House has a passageway opening through the floor of an adjacent room, and Kiva A
of Cliff Palace has the same feature. Doctor Prudden has found lateral entrances from kivas into adjoin-
ing rooms in his unit-type pueblo. The majority of cliff-dwellers’ kivas show no evidence of lateral en-
trances.

3 Mr. Jackson, op. cit., p. 415, regarded it likely that the towers were “‘lookouts or places of refuge for
the sheep herders who brought their sheep or goats up here to graze, just as the Navajos used to and as
the Utes do at the present time.” This explanation is impossible, for there is no evidence that the
builders of the towers had either sheep or goats, the Navajos and the Utes obtaining both from the
Spaniards.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 43

by cliffs. Isolated towers are often too small for defense; and they
show no signs of habitation.

Are they granaries for storage of corn or places for rites and cere-
monies? Do they combine several functions—observation, defense,
and storage of food? Thus far in studies of more than 30 towers
and great houses not one has been found so well preserved that
enough remains to determine its use, and yet their walls are among
the best in all southwestern ruins. Some future archeologist may
find objects in towers that will demonstrate their function, but
from our present knowledge no theory of their use yet suggested is
satisfactory.

It is impossible from the data available to determine the century
in which the towers and great houses of the region were constructed.
Thus far a few were seen with great trees growing in them, but none
with roofs; the state of preservation of the walls does not point to a
great age. Several writers have regarded them as occupied subse-
quently to the Spanish conquest, while others have ascribed to them
a very remote antiquity. It can hardly be questioned that the cliff-
dwellers, and by inference their kindred, the tower builders, were
superior in their arts to modern Pueblos.

It is important to determine first of all the forms of these towers;
whether their ground plans are circular, oval, square, rectangular, or
semicircular. The northern wall of many is uniformly curved and
the last to fall, which might lead to the belief that the southern side,
generally straight, was poorly made, but one can not determine that
by direct observation, since the latter has fallen. Asa matter of fact
the south wall was generally low and straight, over 50 per cent of
the ‘“‘round”’ towers being semicircular, D-shaped, or some modifica-
tion of that form; but we also have square and rectangular towers. It
is also important to determine whether these had single or multiple
chambers and the arrangement of the rooms in relation to them.
This is especially desirable in towers with concentric compartments.

It is also instructive to know more of the association of towers
with pueblos and cliff-dwellings or to analyze component archi-
tectural features. The tower type often occurs without appended
rooms. At Cliff Palace and Square Tower House it is united with a
pueblo village under cliffs; in Mud Spring Ruin it has a like relation
to rooms of a pueblo in the open. Has its function changed by that
union? What use did the tower serve when isolated and had it
the same use when united with other kinds of rooms in cliff-dwellings
and pueblos?

No writer on the prehistoric towers of Colorado and Utah has
emphasized the fact that a large number of these buildings are
semicircular or D-shaped, but it has been taken for granted that the
fallen wall on the south side was curved, rendering the tower circular

44 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

or oval. In most cases this wall was the straight side of a D-shaped
tower. Doctor Prudden, who first recognized the importance of a
union of towers with other types of architecture m the McKlmo
district, says:? ‘‘Towers of various forms and heights occasion-
ally form a part of composite ruins of various types.’ He says
also: ‘‘Several of the houses are modified by the introduction of a
round tower.’ And again: ‘At the head of a short canyon north of
the Alkali, which I have called Jackson Canyon . . . each building
consists of an irregular mass of rooms about 200 feet long, with low
towers among them.”

As our studies are morphological, dealing with forms rather than
sites of towers, little attention need be paid to their situation on
bowlders, in cliffs, or at the bottoms of canyons. The majority of
the castellated ruins considered in the following pages are in the
proposed Hovenweep National Monument, but there are others in
the main Yellow Jacket and its other tributaries.

HOVENWEEP DISTRICT

The name Hovenweep (‘‘Deserted Valley’) is an old one in the
nomenclature of the canyons of southwestern Colorado and formerly
(1877) was applied to the canyon now called the Yellow Jacket, but
at present is limited to one of the tributaries. The name is here
used to designate an area situated just over the Colorado State line,
in Utah, part of which it is hoped will later be reserved from the
public domain and made a monument to be called Hovenweep
National Monument.

The ruined castles and towers in this district are marvelously well
preserved, considering their age and imperfect masonry. We can de-
termine their original appearance with no difficulty and use them in
reconstructing the possible forms of more dilapidated ruins, now piles
of débris. The best castles and towers known to the author are local-
ized in three canyons: (1) Square Tower Canyon, (2) Holly Canyon,
(3) Hackberry Canyon. There are, of course, other castles and towers
in the Yellow Jacket-McEbno region, but there is no locality where
so many different forms appear in equal numbers in a small area.

Ruin Canyon

The Old Bluff Road from Dolores diverges southward from that to
Monticello at Sandstone post office and passes a pile of rocks visible
from the road on the Ruin Canyon long before it reaches Square
Tower Canyon (fig.6). This large ruin is situated on the east rim and
under it in the side of the cliff are fairly well-preserved cliff-houses.

1 The tower figured by Prudden (Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. v, no. 2, pl. xviii, fig. 2) as a ‘round tower”
is really semicircular, as shown in the ground plan (fig. 14) here published.
2 Ibid., pp. 241, 263, 273.

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 45

Other ruins with high standing walls were reported in Ruin Canyon
but were not visited. ;

The duplication of names of canyons in this district is misleading.
Names like Ruin Canyon are naturally applied to canyons in which
there are ruins. When the author learned at Dolores of Ruin Canyon,
he supposed it was a tributary of the Yellow Jacket or McElImo,
but while the canyon known to cowboys at Dolores by this name
has large ruins on its rim, it is not the “Ruin Canyon” to which
attention is now directed. The duplication of names has led me to
retain the name Ruin Canyon for one and to suggest the name Square
Tower Canyon for the other.

After leaving Ruin Canyon the Old Bluff Road takes a southerly
course, passing through the cedars until a sagebrush clearing replaces
the ‘‘timber,’’ where it crosses two well-preserved Indian reservoirs,
or bare surfaces of rock, dipping south, the southern border having as

ry

Cliff Rous 6, “cHouse =
. ig We :
8 8 Twin Towers
a SQUARE TOWER CANYON

Fic. 6.—Square Tower Canyon.

a retaining wall a low ridge of earth to hold back the water. The
retaining wall of the second reservoir has been built up by stockmen
and, when the author was there, contained considerable water. Cross-
ing the second reservoir a trail turns east or to the left and follows
the road to Keeley Camp, near which are the ‘‘ Keeley Towers.”

At present an automobile can approach within a mile of these
ruins.

SquarE TOWER CANYON

To reach the Square Tower Canyon (pls. 11-17) one returns to the
reservoir on the Bluff Road and continues east about 3 miles farther,
where a signboard on the left hand indicates the turn off to Square
Tower Canyon. Following the new direction about southeast the
great buildings are visible a mile away. An automobile can go to the
very head of this canyon and a camp can be made within a few feet
of Hovenweep House. If the visitor approaches Square Tower
Canyon from the McElmo, he passes through Wickyup Canyon, where
there are two towers on the summits of elevated buttes, not far from
the junction of the canyon and the Yellow Jacket,

46 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 10

The castles and towers in Square Tower Canyon have been known
for many years and have been repeatedly photographed.*

Several descriptions of these ruins have been printed, but no satis-
factory studies of their structure have been published. They are
recognized as prehistoric and are generally thought to have been
inhabited contemporaneously with the cliff-dwellers of the Mesa
Verde, being built in the same style of architecture.

CLASSIFICATION OF RuINS IN SQUARE TOWER CANYON

The ruins in Square Tower Canyon are classified for convenience
in description as follows:

(1) Ruins which have indications of inclosed circular kivas, with
mural pilasters and banquettes, and closely approximated surround-
ing rooms. ‘'o this class belong ruins 1, 2, and 10. Of these, Unit-
type Ruin (No. 10) has only one kiva and belongs to the simplest or
unit form of the pure type. Ruins
1 and 2 have two or more kivas and
are formed by a union of several
units, combined with towers and
great houses. (2) Ruins, the main
feature of which is absence of a cir-
cular kiva. The Twin ToWers be-
long to this second or ‘‘ great house”’
type. The few cliff-dwellings in
this canyon are small, generally
without kivas, resembling storage
cists rather than domiciles.

Hovenweerp Hovuse (Rutn 1)

This ruin (fig. 7), the largest in the
canyon, is situated at the head of
the South Fork. Although many
of its walls have fallen, there still
remains a semicircular great house (B, C, D) with high walls con-
spicuous for some distance. The ruin is a pueblo of rectangular
form belonging to the pure type, showing circular depressions iden-
tified as kivas (/{), embedded in collections of square and rectangular
rooms, and massive walled buildings (/) on the south side.

The standing walls of the ruin are remains of a conspicuous
D-shaped tower (B, C, D), which is multichambered. Its straight
wall measures 23 feet, the curved wall 56 feet, and its highest wall,
which is on the northeast corner, is 15 feet high. At the northwest
angle of the ruin (A) there stand remains of high walls which indi-

Fic. 7.—Ground plan of Hovenweep House,

1 Among the older photographs seen by the author are those of W. H. Jackson, prints of which are on
exhibition in the State Historical Museum at Denver, Colo.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 47

cate that corner of a rectangular pueblo. Hovenweep House (pl.
14, a) was the largest building in this canyon, but with the exception
of the addition of a semicircular tower or great house, does not differ
greatly from a pueblo like Far View House on the Mesa Verde. The
piles of stone and earth indicating rooms below justify the conjec-
ture that when the fallen débris is removed the unfallen walls will
still rise several feet above their rocky foundations. If properly
excavated, Hovenweep House would be an instructive building, but
in its present condition, while very picturesque, its structure is
difficult to determine.

=
ot ony

lee
ut
{yi,

iyi 1».

Ante eines

Higa

ae

a

Fig. 8.—Ground plan of Hovenweep Castle.
HovEeNnweEer CASstLe

This ruin (pls. 14, 6, c; 18, b), like the preceding; has circular kivas
compactly embedded in rectangular rooms arranged about them, indi-
cating the pure type of pueblos. The massive-walled semicircular
towers and great houses are combined with square rooms and kivas,
indicating that it is distinguished by two sections, an eastern and a
western, which, united, impart to the whole the shape of a letter L
(fig. 8).

WESTERN SECTION OF HOVENWEEP CASTLE

The western section (fig. 8, A—D, 1) of-Hovenweep Castle is made
up of five rooms, the most western of which, J, is semicircular, while
A, B, C, and D are rectangular. Room A is almost square, one of its
walls forming the straight wall of the south side of the semicircular

48 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

tower, M. At the union its walls are not tied into the masonry of
the circular wall of the tower, as may be seen in the illustration,
plate 14, 6, implying that it was constructed later. There is an
entrance into A from, the south or cliff side, and a passageway from
A to Room B, which latter opens by a doorway into Room C. All
rectangular rooms of the western section communicate with each
other, but none except A seem, to have had an external entrance.
The photograph of the south wall of the west section of the ruin
(pl. 14, c) shows small portholes in the second story and narrow slits
in the tower walls. The lower courses of masonry are formed of
thinner stones than the rows above, but smaller stones compose the
courses at the top of the wall. A view of the north wall of the
western section (pl. 22, a) shows the tower and rooms united to it.
There is no kiva in the western section.

EASTERN SECTION OF HOVENWEEP CASTLE

The longest dimension of the western section (pls. 12, 14, ¢) is
approximately east-west; that of the eastern is nearly north-south.
The eastern section (fig. 8, H—L), like the western, has a tower (L),
which is situated between two circular depressions or kivas (K). On
the north and south ends the eastern section is flanked by rectangular
rooms. Those at the north end were better constructed, and even
now stand as high as the walls of the western tower. The views
show that their corners are not as well preserved as their faces, which
is due to defects in masonry, as lack of bonding. Although much
débris has accumulated around the kivas, especially in their cavities,
it is evident that these ceremonial rooms were formerly one storied,
and practically subterranean on account of the surrounding rooms.
Several fragments of walls projecting above the accumulated débris
indicate rooms at the junction of the eastern and western sections
of the ruin, but their form and arrangement at that point are not
evident and can be determined only by excavation. The inner kiva
walls show evidences of mural pilasters and banquettes like those of
cliff dwellings and other pure pueblo types.

Ruin 3

The square tower (pl. 11, a@), standing on a large angular rock in
the canyon below Hovenweep Castle, is a remarkable example of
prehistoric masonry so situated that it is shut in by cliffs, rendering
the outlook limited. Several published photographs of this tower
give the impression that it stands in the open and was an outlook,
but that this is hardly the case will be seen from a general view
looking west up the South Fork.

WEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 49

Ruin 4

This ruin is a small tower situated in a commanding position on
the point of the mesa where the canyon forks. The section of the
wall still standing indicates a circular form, the north side of which
has fallen; the part still intact, or that on the south side, exhibits
good masonry about 8 feet high (pl. 15, ¢).

Ruin 5

The walls of the north segment of a tower stand on a large angular
block of stone rising from a ledge above the arroyo, or bed of the
canyon, below Ruin 4, on the South Fork. What appears to have
been a doorway opens on its north side; this opening is defended by
a wall, remains of a former protected passageway into the tower.

On the perpendicular cliff of the precipice near Ruin 5 and below
the point on which Ruin 4 stands there are several almost illegible
pictographs, below which are rather obscure evidences of a building,
the features of which can be determined only by excavation.

Instructive features of Tower No. 5 are two parallel walls, one on
each side of the doorway, like those of the circular towers on the
promontory at the junction of the Yellow Jacket and McElmo. Other
towers on the canyon rim show defensive walls, as in Ruin 9, con-
structed about their entrances from corners of the buildings to the
mesa rim, effectually preventing passage. Morley and Kidder have
suggested that the walled recess in the cliff below Ruin 9 was probably
built to prevent access from below. This feature is found in the
floor entrances of a building near the Great House of the Holly group.

RvuIn 6

This ruin is a small tower whose curved walls are so broken down
that the form is not evident. It is situated in the base of the talus
at the head of the South Fork (pl. 26, a).

Eropep BowxiperR House (RurIn 7)

This house, more remarkable from its site than its structure, was
constructed in an eroded cave of a bowlder halfway down the talus
of the cliff. The front walls are somewhat broken down, but others
built in the rear of the cave still remain intact. On the top of the
bowlder is the débris of fallen walls, suggesting a former tower, but
not much remains in place to determine its outlines. Where the
walls are protected the mortar shows impressions of human hands
and at one place there are the indentations of a corncob used by
the plasterers to press the mortar between the layers of stone. There
were formerly at least two rooms in the rear of the cave, the front
walls of which have fallen and are strewn down the talus to the
bottom of the canyon.

108852 °—19—Bull. 7724

50 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70
Twin Towers (Ruin 8)

The so-called Twin Towers, which seen together from certain points
appear as one ruin (pl. 15, a, 6), rank among the most impressive
buildings in Square Tower Canyon. They stand on the south side
of the canyon on a rock isolated by a cleft from the adjoining cliff.
The larger (fig. 9, A—Z/) has
an oval ground plan and a
doorway in the southwest
corner; the smaller (fF, G,
H, I) is horseshoe shaped
with a doorway in the east
wall, which is straight. The
arrangement of rooms is seen
in figure 9. Small walled-up caves are found below the foundation
on the northwest base of the larger room.

Fig. 9.—Ground plan of Twin Towers.

Ruin 9

The ground plan of this ruin is rectangular in form, 19 feet 6 inches
long by 10 feet wide. The standing walls measure 11 feet in altitude.
It is situated on the southrim at the mouth of the South Fork, just
above Ruin 7, a few feet back from the cliff. A doorway opening in
the middle of its north wall was formerly made difficult of entrance
by walls, now fallen, extending from the northeast and northwest
angles to the edge of the cliff. The masonry throughout is rough;
projecting ends of rafters indicate a building two stories high. There
are peepholes with plastered surfaces through the southeast and west
walls, which suggest ports. A short distance east of the building is
a circle of stones reminding the author of a shrine.

Unit-Tyre Houses (Rurn 10)

This pueblo (pl. 19, c), from a comparative point of view, is one of
the most interesting ruins in the Hovenweep, and is situated on the
very edge of the canyon on the North Fork not far from where it
begins. It is the simplest form of prehistoric pueblo, or the unit *
of a pure type, made up of a centrally placed circular ceremonial room
(fig. 10, AK) embedded in rectangular rooms, six in number (A—F).
The resulting or external form is rectangular, oriented about due north
and south; the southern side, which formerly rose from the edge of
the canyon, being much broken down and its masonry precipitated
over the cliff.

The central kiva (fig. 10) is made of exceptionally fine masonry and
shows by what remains that it had mural banquettes, and pilasters
to support the roof, with other features like a typical kiva of the

1 The “unit type” was first recognized by Doctor Prudden in his illuminating studies of the pueblos of
the San Juan Basin. The author was the first to point out its existence in cliff-houses of the same area.

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 51.

Mesa Verde cliff-houses. A side entrance opens in one corner into a
small room (fig. 10, @) in which ceremonial objects may have been
formerly stored (pl. 32, 0).

The kiva of Unit-type House is architecturally the same as those
with vaulted roofs at Spruce-tree House, Cliff Palace, and Far View
House on the Mesa Verde. A similar structure, according to
Prudden,' occurs at Mitchell Spring Ruin in the Montezuma Valley,
and near the Picket corral. The same type was found by Morley? at
the Cannonball Ruin and by Kidder * in a kiva on Montezuma Creek
in Utah, where clusters of mounds would appear to be composed of

Yy P Se
My) Mine

MUM yy il

Fig, 10.—Ground plan of Unit-type House.

single or composite ruins of this type. This small pueblo was prob-
ably inhabited by one social unit, and may be regarded as the first
stage of a compound pueblo.

StroneHoLtD House (Rurn 11)

Ruin 11 is composed of a cluster of several small buildings, one of
which is situated on the north edge of the mesa somewhat east of Ruin
10 (pl. 25, 6); another, called by Morley and Kidder Gibraltar House,
formerly of considerable size, was built on the sloping surface of an
angular bowlder (pl. 17, 21, 6). Although many walls have fallen,
enough remains to render it a picturesque ruin, attractive to the visitor
and instructive to the archeologist, by whom it has been classed as a
tower. This building from the east appears to be asquare tower, but it
is in reality composed of several rooms perched on an inaccessible rock.

1 Circular Kivas in San Juan Watershed. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. 16, no. 1, 1914.

2 Excavation of the Cannonball Ruins in southwestern Colorado. Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. x, no. 4,
1908.

3 Explorations in southeastern Utah. Amer. Journ. Archzol., 2d ser., vol. xiv, no. 3, 1910.

52 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

Ruins 1In Hotty Canyon

The towers in Holly Canyon (fig. 11) are in about the same con-
dition of preservation as those in Square Tower Canyon. They
cluster about the head of a small canyon (pl. 18, a) and may be
approached on foot along the mesa above Keeley Camp, about a mile
distant. Two of the Holly ruins belong to the tower type and were
built on fallen bowlders. One of these has two rooms on the ground
floor. (Pls. 19, a, b; 20 a, c.)

BUI RALT eee
ee US ay
Bay) /77 |

j Hyper

Fia, 11.—DHolly Canyon Ruins.
RUIN A, GREAT HOUSE, HACKBERRY CASTLE

Ruin A (pl. 21, a), the largest building of the group, which stands
on the edge of the canyon, is rectangular in form, measuring 31 by 9
feet, and is 20 feet high (fig. 11, A). Evidences of two rooms appear
on the ground plan, one of which is 14 feet long, the other 12 feet
inside measurement. The partition separating the two rooms is not
tied into the outer walls, an almost constant feature in ancient
masonry. The ends of the rafters are still seen in the wall at a level
12 feet above the base. Fallen stones have accumulated in the
rooms to a considerable depth, and the tops of the remaining wall,
where the mortar is washed out, will tumble in a short time.

_ Ruin B (pl. 20, 6), situated a short distance north of Ruin A, also
stands on the canyon rim. The north wall is entire, but the south
wall has fallen. What remains indicates that the ruin was about
square, with corners on the north side rounded, imparting to it a
semicircular form. The entrance into this room may have been

through the floor.
TOWERS [C AND D]

These towers (pl. 23, a, b) show some of the finest masonry known
in this region, being constructed on fallen bowlders which their

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 53

foundations almost completely cover. Holly Tower (pl. 23, })
measures 16 feet high and 21 feet in diameter. It is 7 feet wide, its
top rising to a height level with that of the mesa on which stand build-
ings already considered. One of the two rooms of this tower is
narrower and wider than the other, shown in an offset as if con-
structed at a different time. Its foundations are 17 feet long by 8
feet wide, the highest wall measuring, at the southeast corner, 12
feet 8 inches. There is a fine doorway, wide above and narrow below,
in the north wall. The approach at present is difficult on account of
the height of the rock on which it stands, but there are evidences of
former footholes.
HOLLY HOUSE

Several broken-down walls, some of which are over 6 feet high,
situated east of Ruin A, appear to belong to a pueblo of considerable
size (fig. 11, EH, Ff), but the large foundation rock on which it is
situated has settled, its top having separated from the edge of the
canyon, so that the corner of the building (/’) is out of plumb. The
walls on the adjoining cliff are also much broken down, although
several sections of them rise a few feet above the general surface.
The cause of this change in level of the base may have been an earth-
quake or the settling or sliding of the bowlder on the talus down the
hill. The united building appears to have been a pueblo of rectan-
gular form. Its walls are so broken down that it was not possible to

. determine its exact dimensions.

Ruins In Hacksperry CANYON

HORSESHOE HOUSE

The large building in Hackberry Canyon, one of the terminal spurs
of Bridge Canyon, a mile northeast of the cluster in Holly Canyon, is
particularly instructive from the fact
that surrounding the remains of a
circular tower, for two-thirds of its
circumference, is a concentric wall
with compartments separated by
radial partitions (fig. 12, 1).

Horseshoe House (pl. 23, ¢) stands
on the north edge of the canyon (fig.
12, 1), having its straight wall on the
south side, as is usually the case,
the well-preserved north side being
curved. The northeastern corner still stands several feet high. The
southeastern corner formerly rested on a projecting rock, which recalls
the cornerstone of Sun Temple. The masonry of most of the southern
segment of the enclosed circular room or tower has fallen down the cliff.

= fe 1 Horse Shoe House

Fic. 12.—Horseshoe (Hackberry) Canyon.

54 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

There does not appear to have been a doorway on the south side, and
there is not space for rooms on this side on account of the nearness
to the edge of the cliff. While the form (fig. 13) of Horseshoe Ruin re-
calls that of Sun Temple, in details of room structure it is widely
divergent. The length of the south wall, or that connecting the two
ends of the horseshoe, is 30 feet, its width 27 feet; the highest wall on
the northwest side is 12 feet. Figure 13 shows the arrangement of
the rooms and the mutilation of the south wall of the rum. The dis-
tance between the outer and inner concentric walls averages 4 feet;
the circular room is 17 feet in diameter.

In the same cluster as Horseshoe Ruin (pl. 24, a) there is another
well-made tower (fig. 12, 4), constructed on a point at the entrance to
the canyon, and below it in a cave are well-preserved walls of a cliff-
dwelling.

5 ' Nd Ge) ert ars eterna erty)
Aan ty if NY, } tH

AD tt NM TAN aa

il j Mt NU ints rreREETET ili

Fic, 13.—Ground plan of Horseshoe House.

A short distance due north of Horseshoe House, at the head of
a small canyon, a tributary of Bridge Canyon, there are two large
pueblos and a round tower. The pueblos are mentioned by Prudden,
who gives a ground plan which indicates an extensive settlement.

TOWERS IN THE MAIN YELLOW JACKET CANYON

Of the several towers and great houses of the main Yellow Jacket
Canyon two may suffice to show their resemblance to those in Square
Tower Canyon. The two towers considered belong to the D-shaped
variety, the straight wall, as is almost always the case, being on the
south side.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 55

Davis TowER

Mr. C. K. Davis, who lives not far from the Yellow Jacket Spring,
conducted the author to a tower of semicircular ground plan (fig. 14)
near his ranch. This ruin (pl. 26, 6), is situated on a rocky ridge on
top of the talus halfway down
to the bottom of the canyon, on
its right side.

Lion (Lirrreny) Tower !

This tower (pl. 29, b) is built
on a bowlder situated in Yellow ¢§
Jacket Canyon a mile from Mr.
Littrell’s ranch and about 5 miles
south of the Yellow Jacket post
office; approximately 20 miles
from Dolores, Colorado. Its
ground plan (fig. 15) is D-shaped,
the lower story being divided by
partitions into four rooms. The wall of the middle room seems to
be double, or to have been reenforced. It measures 40 feet on the
straight side, the highest wall being about 25 feet above the base.
The foundations rest on the irregular surface of a bowlder to which
it conforms.

Fia. 14.—Ground plan of Davis Ruin.

- M’LEAN BASIN

McLean Basin is 3 miles from the Old Bluff City Road near Picket
corral, 32 miles from Dolores. - It has been a favorite wintering place
for stock and is well known to herdsmen. One can approach the
ruin from the road to Bluff City and the towers here referred to
are easily reached by a trail
down the mesa to the high-
est terrace. There are said
to be several ruins in the
McLean Basin, the two tow-
ers (pls. 26, c, 27, 28, a, b)
visited being placed in an
exceptional position in
reference to surrounding
rooms. One of these towers is circular, the other D-shaped or semi-
circular in ground plan (fig. 16, A, B).

Previously to the author’s study of the southwestern towers two
forms of these structures were recognized; the square or rectangular,
and the circular or oval. It is now known that several of the towers

Fig. 15.—Ground plan of Lion House.

1 This tower is reputed to be the home of a mountain lion, hence the name Lion House.

56 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

previously described as circular are in reality D-shaped, and this
form is probably more common than the circular.

The rectangular building in the McLean Basin has a circular
tower (pl. 28, 6) on the southwest angle and a D-shaped tower (pl.
28, a) on the northeast. They resemble two turrets rising above
the remaining walls that form the sides of the rectangles. These
towers average about 12 feet high, and are well constructed, while
low connecting walls of coarse masonry rise slightly above the surface.
It would appear from the amount of débris that the remaining walls
indicate a row of buildings, one story high, with circular subterranean
kivas, but this can not be accurately determined without excavation
of the ruin. Outside of the rectangle, however, there are at least

Fig. 16.—Ground plan of ruin with towers in McLean Basin.

two circular areas, possibly kiva pits. The rectangular building
measures about 50 feet square. The ground on which the buildings
formerly stood slopes to the south, and back of it on the north rises
a low perpendicular bluff which effectually shelters it in that direction.

The union of a circular and a semicircular tower with a rectangular
ruin is a feature not common in the McElmo-Yellow Jacket region,
but appears in Hovenweep Castle, elsewhere described. Lower down
the sides of the basin and near by are many indications of walls of
buildings.

The pottery in the neighborhood belongs to the same black and
white types commonly found in the Hovenweep and Mesa Verde
areas.

Except for their peculiar relation to the rectangular building
the McLean towers do not differ essentially from others, which

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS Bi

leads to the inference that they were used contemporaneously and
for the same purpose. There is a well-made doorway (fig. 17) in
the Round Tower.

TOWER IN SAND CANYON

Sand Canyon, which opens into McElmo Canyon near Battle Rock,
has several types of prehistoric ruins, viz, towers, cliff-houses, and large
rim-rock pueblos. The tower type of architecture represented by
the example here figured (pl. 5, @) is isolated from other forms of
‘buildings. This tower is figured by Doctor Prudden, who mentions
another in the neighborhood which the author did not visit.

TOWERS IN ROAD (WICKYUP) CANYON

The nomenclature of the northern canyons of the McElmo has
considerably changed in the last 40 years. What we now call the
Yellow Jacket was formerly known through its entire course as the
Hovenweep. A small canyon opening near its mouth, now known
as Road Canyon, was formerly called the Wickyup. The Old Bluff
City Road from Dolores, Colorado, to Bluff City, Utah, divides into
two branches a short distance before
it descends into the McEImo, its left
branch passing through Road Canyon,
the right bank of which follows the
Yellow Jacket, which the traveler
fords a short distance above its junc-
tion with the McElmo. Wickyup
Canyon may be called picturesque,
its cliffs being worn into fantastic
shapes by water andsand. It hasim-
portant antiquities, among the most
striking of which are two towers (pl.
D4 b) crowning the tops of low Fie. 17.—Doorway in Round Tower,
feo hills. “The walls of these ee Sais
towers are well constructed, one being a simple structure with
a single room, the other having appended rectangular rooms ex-
tending toward the northwest, some distance along a ridge of
rocks. An examination of these two towers, which are about
one-quarter of a mile apart, shows that they belong to the same
type as the simple forms of those above mentioned, and as the
entrance to Square Tower Canyon is not far away, they probably be-
long to the same series. The first of the towers, called ‘‘Bowlder
Castle,” is situated a few hundred feet east of the road, from which it
is easily seen. This ruin is rectangular in shape and rises from a basal
mass of débris indicating broken-down walls of rooms. Ata level with

a S45
SS
——

aa

SS
KN
patsy

a

we

58 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

the top of this débris on its southern side stands a well-constructed
tower with well-made doorway, the threshold and lintel of which
are smooth stones, whose edges project slightly from the surface of
the wall. One remarkable feature of this tower is that the doorway
has been walled up with rude secondary masonry (pl. 25, a). The
south wall of this building has tumbled over, as is usually the case,
but the north wall rises several feet above the base. The masonry
of the second tower is also broken down on the south side, but the
standing remains of the north wall, which is circular, are over 10
feet high. The indications are that the ground plan of this building
was oval in shape and that it inclined inward slightly from founda-
tion to apex. Scattered over the surface are the remnants of fallen
walls, and near it there is a well-marked depression, not unlike those
found in unit-type mounds, indicating kivas.

TOWERS OF THE MANCOS

The author’s examination of the towers in the region considered
embraced likewise a few in the Mancos Canyon. and valley. In all
essential features the Mancos towers resemble those of Mesa Verde,
the McElmo, and the Yellow Jacket Canyons, and were evidently
built by the same people who constructed the towers on Navaho
Canyon and elsewhere on the Mesa Verde National Park. A brief
reference to two or three of these Mancos River towers may suffice
to point out their general structure.

Houtmes TowrER

One of the towers figured by Holmes in 1877 is still among the best
preserved in this region and can be visited by following up the Mancos
Canyon from the west about 10 miles from where the Cortez road
crosses the Mancos River before going on to Ship Rock. There is at
this point a bridge and near the crossing an industrial farm of the Ute
Reservation where accommodations were obtained. The Mancos
Valley widens after leaving the canyon, the southern side of Mesa
Verde appearing as a series of high mesas separated by canyons. In
the neighborhood of the western end of Mesa Verde are lofty buttes,
one called Chimney Rock, another the Ute Woman. This valley and
the canyons extending into the Mesa Verde contain numerous piles of
stone indicative of buildings of rectangular shape with numerous
circular depressions. No cluster of mounds like those in Montezuma
Valley was seen, but about 40 sites of buildings were distributed at
intervals. None of these have standing walls above ground.

Following up the Mancos Canyon in a wagon about 9 miles an
arroyo was encountered and from there horses were taken and the
river crossed to its south bank, above which, on the shelving terrace,
is the Holmes Tower, visible many miles down the canyon. This

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 59

tower (pl. 29, a) is in much the same condition as when sketched by
Holmes over 40 years ago. It is circular in form, about 10 feet in
diameter, and about 16 feet high, with a broken window on the north
side. The sky line is irregular. It is one of the best preserved
towers, but not as high or as well constructed as some of the Hoven-
weep specimens.

Accompanying this tower on the north there are mounds indicative
of rooms and two circular saucer-like depressions. Excavations
revealing a few human bones, including a well-worn human skull,
have been made in a burial place southeast of the tower, where the
surface is covered with fragments of pottery. Except in size Holmes
Tower does not differ from others already described, but, like them, is
connected with rectangular rooms. Farther up the Mancos Canyon
there are other towers, one of which, Great Tower, is mentioned by
Holmes in his report.

On the way up the canyon, perhaps two-thirds of the distance from
the bridge to the Holmes Tower, midway in the alluvial plain and on
the right bank of Mancos Creek, stands a circular ruin which conforms
to Holmes’s description of Great Tower but is too poorly preserved
to be positively identified. All that now remains of this building is
alarge pile of rocks with a central depression, but no signs of radiating
partitions, although such may have existed when it was constructed
and for many years after it began to fall into ruin.

TOWERS ON THE Mancos River Betow THE BripGE

TOWER A

There are two towers situated on the south side of the Mancos below
the bridge on the Ship-rock Road, one about 6, the other 7 miles
distant. The walls of the first of these (pl. 30, b) are visible for some
distance and are about 6 feet high, evidently very much broken down
on the south and east sides. Its shape is round and there is a pile of
stones indicating rooms on the east side separated from the tower
by a depression. It would be a valuable contribution to our knowl-
edge of these ruins if some one would determine the nature of these
pits, which can hardly be regarded as reservoirs, but suggest kivas.

TOWER B

The tower (pl. 31, a) situated farther down the Mancos River has a
more commanding position than Tower A and is conspicuous because
it stands on a projecting precipice, below the rim of which are walled-
up artificial caves. These caves have apparently never been entered
by white men; the walls of masonry are unbroken and there arc
square openings, windows or doorways, which can be made out long
before reaching the place.

60 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

This tower (pl. 30, a) is almost perfectly round, about 10 feet in
diameter, and stands at least 6 feet high. The south wall has fallen.
In the pile of rocks on that side may be readily seen the top of a
straight wall reaching to the edge of the cliff as if for protection, but
no other fallen walls may now be seen in the neighborhood. The
face of the cliff below this tower (pls. 7, 6; 31, b) is almost perpen-
dicular, the component strata of soft shale alternating with harder
rocks, the former well fitted for artificial excavations.

The author was not impressed with the idea that any considerable
number of troglodytic inhabitants dwelt in the small cliff rooms
(pl. 31, 6)! dug in it. Farther on there are other caves the walls of
the.entrance to which are still in sight. It is true the surface of the
cliff may have been eroded and fallen in the time since they were
abandoned. They appeared to be storage cists rather than inhabited
rooms.

Along the valley by the side of the road down the Mancos from the
bridge to the ruins many heaps of stone were noticed in the valley
but none of these were extensive or had walls standing above ground.
Nor were they arranged in clusters as is common in the Montezuma
Valley. On top of these heaps were found large fragments of slag
in which was embedded charred corn, indicating a great fire. Similar
slag also with burnt corn has often been found by the author on the
floor of excavated rooms.

MEGALITHIC AND SLAB Houss Ruins at McEtmo Biurr

The ruined walls on the bluff situated at the junction of the McElno
and Yellow Jacket Canyons are archeologically instructive. As the
mesa between the two canyons narrows in a promontory, about 100
feet in altitude, its configuration reminds one of the East Mesa
of the Hopi. It is inaccessible on three sides, but on the fourth,
where the width of the mesa is contracted, there are remains of a
low zigzag wall, extending from one side to the other. At the western
base of this promontory, on the ledge higher than the river, there are
artificial walls built on bowlders in the sides of which shallow caves
are eroded and near by them circular depressions. There are likewise
remains of a small pueblo with walls much broken down and across
the river the ruins of a community house, one of the largest in the
district. The exceptional character of the ruins on top of this
promontory das been mentioned or described by several visitors,
as Holmes, Jackson, and Morley and Kidder, and various conjectures
have been made as to their character and relation to the other ruins
in this neighborhood.

1A good figure of these cavate rooms is given by Holmes, op. cit. Comparing the photograph with his
figure it appears that their surrounding shale has worn away somewhat in the last four decades.

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS GL

The ruins on this mesa are of two kinds: small inclosures made
of slabs of stone set on edge and semicircular structures (fig. 18),
also constructed of upright stone slabs or megaliths. Three of the
latter have concentric surrounding walls with a ‘‘vestibule”’
entrance (7?) at the south somewhat like rooms at the bases of towers.
One of these is said by Morley and Kidder to have three concentric
walls. The small box-like structures are numerous, and are rudely
constructed, united in an imperfect ring about the circular rooms.

In verification of the various theories that have been suggested
to account for these rectangular structures—their interpretation as
storage bins, burial places, and cremation rooms—we have no proof.
Similar rooms of megaliths
exist on Sandstone Canyon
and at other places to the
north and in Montezuma
Canyon to the west. The
rude, massive character of the
masonry leads me to refer
them to the slab-house cul-
ture of Kidder and the im-
perfect masonry suggests
they were habitations in a
period antedating that of the
pure pueblo culture. Such
fragments of pottery as were
found were, like the archi-
tecture, rude and archaic,
adding weight to the inter-
pretation that they belonged
to a very old epoch.

The author regards the
structures made of stones set Fic. 18.—Megalithic stone inclosure, McElmo Bluff.
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 inclo-
sures, although similar remains have been reported at various points
from Dolores far into Utah. They are called cemeteries and crema-
‘tories 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

62 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

their significance can be determined. Their association with cir-
cular rooms appears in Jackson’s account! of the stone structures on
the promontory at the mouth of the Yellow Jacket. He says:

“The perpendicular scarp of the mesa ran round very regularly, 50
to 100 feet in height, the talus sloving down at asteep 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 imple-
ment. 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 com-
pass. 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, however, a
thin scattered layer of bits of charcoal was found from 6 to 18 inches
beneath the surface. In one instance, near the Mesa Verde, the
upright slabs of rock which inclosed one of these rectangles were
sunk 2 feet into the earth and projected 6 inches above it.”

Holmes (op. cit., pp. 385-386) describes similar structures:

“The greater portion of what are supposed to be burial places
occur on the summits of hills or on high, barren promontories that
overlook the valleys and cafions. In these places considerable areas,
amounting in some cases to half an acre or more, are thickly set
with rows of stone slabs, which are set in the ground and arranged
in circles or parallelograms of greatly varying dimensions. At first
sight the idea of a cemetery is suggested, although on examination it
is found that the soil upon the solid rock surfaces is but a few inches

1 Tenth Ann, Rept. U, 8, Geol, Surv. (Hayden Survey) for 1876, p. 414, 1879,

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 63

deep, or if deeper, so compact that with the best implements it is
very difficult to penetrate it.

“On the west bank of the Dolores, near the second bend, I came
upon a cluster of these standing stones on the summit of a low,
rounded hill, and in the midst of a dense growth of full-grown pifion
pines.”’

The rows of stones at this place, according to the same author,
were composed of undressed slabs, many of which had fallen, the
parallelograms averaging 3 by 8 feet in dimensions. Thin layers of
bits of charcoal and pottery occur in the neighborhood. The date
these slabs were placed upright was very early, for trees growing in
the inclosures were estimated to be three or four hundred years old.
These stones were sometimes ‘embedded in the sides and roots of
the trees.’’ Holmes had the “impression that these places, if not
actually burying grounds, were at least places used for the per-
formance of funeral rites . . . the remains of the dead being
burned or left to decay in the open air.”

The interiors of the inclosures were found on excavation to be
filled to a depth of about a foot with soil mixed with ashes. There
were many fragments of pottery, and some other objects near them,
but nothing to indicate, as suggested by previous observations, that
they were burial cists or even crematories for burying the dead. Ne
charred human remains occur, but charcoalis abundant. 1t may have
been that these places were used as ovens for roasting corn or for
some culinary purposes, the neighboring circular rooms being pos-
sibly used for the same purposes as towers by the people who formerly
inhabited this region. They are not large enough for dwellings and
the soil in them is too shallow for burial purposes. They belong to a
type which is widely distributed over the district visited by the author.
Hspecially fine examples occur north of Sandstone Canyon district.

At the base of the great cliff, on the top of which the remains in
question are found, under the shelter of an overhanging bowlder,
may be seen one of the finest collections of pictographs of animals
and human beings. Not far from the last-mentioned bowlder the
walls of a large pueblo can readily be traced along the banks of the
McElmo Canyon. In his studies of the antiquities of this region the
author did not penetrate west of the mouth of Yellow Jacket Canyon,
but he was told by stockmen and sheep herders of the existence of
many other ruins contiguous to the road all the way from this point
to Bluff City. The most important of these have already been
described in a general way.

64 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

GRASS MESA CEMETERY

Grass Mesa, a plateau with precipitous sides overlooking the Dolores
River, is about 10 miles down the river from Dolores on the right
bank of the stream. There remain few signs of former buildings at
this place, but very many artifacts, pottery, stone implements, and
fragments of well-worn metates occur at various places, some of
which are among the best ever seen by the author. This bluff seems
to have been the site of a settlement, possibly pre-Puebloan, like
that on McElmo Bluff, with rough walls, resorted to for refuge, and
later used as a cemetery. It i's well adapted for these purposes, its
top being almost inaccessible on the river side. There are many
other similar sites of Indian settlements farther down the river, but
this is one of the most typical. The scenery along the road that fol-
lows the banks of the river from Dolores is ever to be remembered
on account of high cliffs on each side.

RESERVOIRS

Many artificial reservoirs dating to prehistoric times were observed
in the area covered by the author’s reconnoissance. These fall into
two well-marked types, one form being a circular depression, ap-
parently excavated and sometimes walled up with earth or stones.
The other form was not excavated by man, but the sloping surface of
rock was surrounded on. the lowest level by a bank of earth, forming a
dam or retaining wall. Both types of reservoirs are commonly formed
near some former center of population, but sometimes occur far from
mounds, wherever the surface of the land has a convenient slope
and the water can be compounded by a retaining wall. The height
of the bank that holds back the water of these prehistoric reservoirs
has been increased in some cases by stockmen; the walls of others
still remain practically the same height they were when constructed
by the aborigines. One of the best examples of the second type of
reservoir, the retaining wall of which is shown in plate 32, a, is crossed
by the road to Bluff City near the ruins in Holly Canyon, not far from
Picket corral. A few miles north of this reservoir, at the edge of the
cedars, the road crosses another of these ancient reservoirs, whose
retaining bank has been considerably increased in height by stockmen.
The ancient reservoir at Bug Mesa covers fully 4 acres, and the reser-
voir near Goodman Point Ruin is almost as large, and, although
somewhat changed from its aboriginal condition, is still used by
farmers dwelling in the neighborhood. The latter belongs to the
first type; the former to the second. Reservoirs of one or the other
type are generally found in the neighborhood of all large heaps of
rocks, the so-called mounds that indicate the former existence of
pueblos. The reservoir of the Mummy Lake village on the Mesa
Verde belongs to the excavated type.

FEWKES] = PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 65
PICTOGRAPHS

At many places covered by this reconnoissance there were found
interesting collections of engraved figures of ancient date cut
on bowlders or vertical cliffs. These are generally situated in
the neighborhood of ruins, but sometimes exist far from human
remains. They generally have geometrical forms, rectangular and
spiral predominating. Associated with these occur also representa-
tions of human beings, birds, and animals, and figures of bird tracks,
human hands, and bear claws. There is a remarkable similarity in
all these figures which sometimes occur on the stones composing the
masonry of the buildings which indicates they were contemporaneous.
They were pecked on the stones with rude stone chisels, but as a
rule show no indication of paint. None of these figures could be
regarded, without the wildest flights of the imagination, as letters or
hieroglyphics, and there is no indication that inscriptions were
intended. Their general character, as shown in a cluster (ply oo).
indicates rather clan symbols; in some instances spiral forms were
probably made to indicate the presence of water. The incised figures
on the walls of buildings were probably decorative in character, the
first efforts of primitive man to embellish the walls of his dwellings,
an art which reached a very high development in Mexico and Central
America. There are, however, indications that these figures were
covered with plaster and were therefore invisible, so that we might
suppose them to be masons’ signs, indicating the clan kinship of
those who constructed the walls. Perhaps the largest group of these
pictographs occurs on an eroded bowlder near the mouth of the
Yellow Jacket Canyon, just below the great promontory separating
it from the McElImo, on the surface of which are the remarkable
dwellings composed of slabs of stone set on edge. Another large
cluster, the members of which are of the same general style as that
already mentioned, was seen in Sandstone Canyon, a few miles
south of the road from Dolores to Monticello. There are several
groups of pictographs in the neighborhood of the large towers else-
where described. The most noteworthy of these is situated at the
head of the south fork of Square Tower Canyon on a vertical cliff
below the ruined Tower No. 4. The face of the cliff is very much
eroded, and the figures are in places almost illegible. They consist of
bird designs, accompanied with figures of snakes, rain clouds, and
other designs, portions of which are obliterated and impossible of
determination. As a rule, these pictographs resemble very closely
those in the cliff-houses of the Mesa Verde and add their evidence
of a uniformity of art design in these two regions.

In addition to pictographs cut on the surface of the cliff, we also
find in sheltered caves others not incised but with indications of

108852°—19—Bull. 70——5

66 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

color, showing the former existence of painted figures. Some of
these, however, are not ascribed to the Indians who built the towers,
but to a later tribe who camped in this region after the house build-
ers had disappeared. They were probably made by wandering bands
of Ute Indians, and are not significant in a comparison of the differ-
ent kinds of buildings described in this article.

MINOR ANTIQUITIES

The preceding pages deal wholly with the immovable antiquities,
as buildings, reservoirs, and the like. In addition to these evidences
of a former population, there should be mentioned likewise the smaller
antiquities, as pottery, stone objects, weapons, baskets, fabrics, bone
and other implements. No excavation was attempted in the course of
the reconnoissance, so that this chapter in the author’s report is natu-
rally a very brief one. The few statements which follow are mainly
based on local collections, one of which, owned by Mr. Williamson, of
the First National Bank of Dolores, is comprehensive. The most sug-
gestive of these minor antiquities are objects of burnt clay or pottery,
which occur generally in piles of débris or accompany human burials.
It was the custom of these people, like the cliff-dwellers, to deposit,
near the dead, food in bowls and other household utensils, varying in
shape, technique, decoration, and color. The most important fact
regarding these ceramics is that they belong to the same archaic type
as those from the ruins of the Mesa Verde. The predominating colors
are white or gray with black figures, within and without, almost
universally geometrical in form. There occurs also a relatively large
number of corrugated vessels, and those made by using coils of clay,
the figures on their exterior being indented with some implement, as
a bone, stone, or even with the finger nail. While the majority
belong to the black-and-white group, the red ware decorated with
black figures is found but comparatively rarely, which is also true of
the pottery of the cliff-dwellers. In the large variety of forms of
burnt clay objects, the most remarkable in shape is a double water
jar, connected by a transverse tube, the ends of which project beyond
the opening into the jar, much in the form of an animal with a head
at one end, body elongated, terminating in a short tail, the legs not
being represented. While the number of unbroken mortuary bowls
obtained from this region thus far known is comparatively small,
we find in many places large quantities of broken fragments, all of
which belong to the varieties of ware above enumerated.

None of the bowls, vases, dippers, or other ceramic objects from
the region of the ruins described have that significant feature com-
monly called the ‘‘life line;” the encircling lines are continuous
around the vessel, and not broken at one point. The broken line
never occurs on archaic pottery like black-and-white ware, and we

FEWKES ] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 67

may accept the hypothesis that the conception which gave rise to it
was foreign to the people of the Mesa Verde and adjacent areas. It
would be instructive to map out the distribution of this custom which
was so prevalent in pottery from the Gila and Little Colorado and its
tributaries, and absent in that from ruins on the San Juan and
Mimbres. It occurs in ware from certain Rio Grande prehistoric
ruins, as if it were a connecting link with the ancient culture of the
Little Colorado.

Of the stone implements found in this region the most characteristic
is the celt called tcamahia which is not found in regions not affected
by the San Juan culture. These objects are found from Mesa Verde
to the Hopi pueblos.t_ A peculiar form of prehistoric chipped chert
implement occurs at Mesa Verde and elsewhere in the area. A flint
knife in the Williamson collection at Dolores was purchased from
a Ute woman who said it was found on a ruin. She wore it attached
to her belt by a buckskin thong fastened to a bead-worked cover. —

Bone objects were mainly needles, dirks, and bodkins, presenting
in the main no essential differences from those repeatedly described,
especially by Nordenskiéld in his important memoir on the cliff-
dwellers of the Mesa Verde. Objects made of marine shell are rare.
The presence of flattened slabs of stone or metates showing on the
surface evidences of grinding occur with human bones in many
localities, indicating either that a custom still extant among the
Pueblos of burying the metates with the dead was observed, or that
the burials were made under floors of these long-abandoned houses.
It would seem, on the former hypothesis, that these objects were
buried with the women, but as the condition of the skeletal remains
is poor the sex could not be determined by direct observation.

The unprotected nature of the sites and the condition of the ruins
prevented the preservation of fragile articles like baskets and fabrics,
which frequently occur in caves, in one or two instances buried under
the floors. There is little doubt that excavations in cemeteries of
the open-sky ruins would reveal considerable material of this nature,
which would probably duplicate that which has been produced from
the adjacent eliff-houses. Many parts of wooden beams, mainly the
remains of flooring and roofs, were seen still in the walls, but these
as a rule were fragmentary. The ends of the timbers still adhering
to the walls show that they were cut into shape by stone implements,
aided by live embers. They appear to have been split by means of
wedges made of stone and often rubbed down smooth with polishing
instruments of the same material. The majority of these wooden
beams plainly show the action of fire, but no roof was intact. From
the size of the logs shown in fragments of beams, it is evident that

1 The use of these objects as heirlooms in the Antelope altar of the Hopi supports the tradition of the
Snake people that their ancestors brought them from the San Juan, ;

68 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

the roof supports had been brought there from some distance; trees
of the magnitude they imply do not now grow in the neighborhood
of some of the ruins where these beams occur.

HISTORIC REMAINS

The various objects found in the ruins or on the surface of. the
ground as a rule are characteristic of a people in the stone-age cul-
ture, ignorant of metals, and therefore prehistoric, but here and there
on the surface have been picked up iron weapons which belonged
to the historic period. The old “Spanish Trail”? mentioned in pre-
ceding pages was the early highway from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the
Great Salt Lake, and followed approximately an- old Indian trail that
was probably used by the prehistoric inhabitants or the builders of
the towers. Not far from the head of Yellow Jacket Canyon a
ranchman discovered on his farm afew years ago the blades of two
Spanish iron lance heads or knives, still well preserved, the hilts,
however, being destroyed. These objects, now in Mr. Williamson’s
collection at Dolores, may have belonged to a party of Spanish sol-
diers who explored this region, but their form, in addition to the mate-
rial, is so characteristic that no one would assign them to aboriginal
manufacture. Fragments of a stirrup of metal, parts of the harness
or saddle, also belonging to the Spanish epoch, have also been found.
The indications are that these objects are historic, but their owners
may have been Indians who obtained them from Europeans. They
probably do not antedate the middle of the eighteenth century,
when two Catholic fathers, with an escort of soldiers, made their
trip of discovery from Santa Fe into what is now Utah. They shed
no light on the-epoch of the aborigines who constructed the castles
and towers considered in this paper.

CONCLUSIONS

In the preceding pages the author has considered several different
types of buildings, which, notwithstanding their variety in forms,
have much in common and can be interpreted as indicating an iden-
tical phase of pueblo development. A comparative study of their
distribution shows us that they occur in a well-defined geographical
area. In comparison with stone buildings in other parts of the
Southwestern States, this phase shows superior masonry. : It is
considered as chronologically antedating the historic epoch and post-
dating an earlier, and as yet not clearly defined, phase out of which
it sprung in the natural evolution from simple to complex forms.

These buildings express the communal thought of the builders,
since they were constructed by groups of people rather than by indi-
viduals. Architecture representing the thoughts of many minds is

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 69

conservative, or less liable to innovation or departure from pre-
scribed forms and methods. These community houses express the
thought of men in groups at different times, and, so far as archeology
teaches, are the best exponents of what we call contemporary social
conditions, while pottery and other small portable objects, being prod-
ucts of individual endeavor, furnish little on social organization, or
general cultural conditions of communities. Although determination
of cultural areas built on identity of pottery often coincides with
those determined by buildings, this is not always the case. Special-
ized culture areas determined by highly conventionalized designs on
ceramics are localized, more numerous, and as a rule more modern.
Hence a culture area determined by architectural features may include
several subareas determined by pottery.

The author has thought it possible to differentiate two distinct
epochs or phases of house building in the upper part of the San Juan
drainage, viz, the early and the middle stages of development. There
are included in the early condition certain crude architectural efforts
similar to the non-Pueblos represented in regions adjoining the Pueblo
area. This early condition, though not clearly defined, is begin-
ning to be revealed by intensive studies of the so-called slab-house
dwellings and isolated brush houses. Evidences of this stage have
been found in several localities, as on McElmo Bluff, or combined
with walls of what may be called true pueblo buildings. The dif-
ferences between some of the buildings of the early stage and those
of the aborigines in southern California, or of the Utes and Shoshonean
tribes, are slight; resemblances which point to relations are not
considered in detail.

From their advance in house building, it has been commonly
stated that the Pueblo people were either derived from Mexican
tribes or, as was customary in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies to suppose, their descendants had made their way south and
developed into the more advanced Mexican culture as the Aztecs.
These conclusions are not supported by comparison with available
architectural data observed among these two peoples. The basal
error is the mistake in considering the earth houses of the Gila the
same as pueblos. The habitations of the Gila compounds were
structurally different from pueblos, and their sanctuaries or ceremo-
nial rooms had not the same form or relation to the dwellings. The
Gila compounds are allied to Mexican buildings; but there is little
in common between them and pure pueblos. The same is true of
the type of stone dwellings on the Verde, Tonto, and Little Colorado.
Certain likenesses exist between the Casas Grandes of the Gila and
those of Mexico, although little relationship exists between the tem-
ples or ceremonial buildings of the valley of Mexico and the Casas
Grandes of the Gila. The architecture of the Pueblos and the Az-

70 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

tecs is very different; the habitations of Mexican tribes resemble
those of the Gila. The forms of ceremonial chambers differ, one
being rectangular mounds or pyramids, the other circular, generally
subterranean.

Rather than seek the origin of the house builders of the San Juan,
or the parent Pueblos, from Mexican sources, the author believes
the custom of building stone houses in the pueblo region was not
derived from any locality not now included in the pueblo area, but
it developed as an autochthonous growth, the earliest stages as well
as the most complex forms being of local origin. Incoming Indians
may have introduced ideas of foreign birth but they did not bring in
the mason’s craft. That custom developed in the Southwest, where
we find the whole series from a single stone house or a cave with
walls closing the entrance to the most highly developed architec-
tural production north of Mexico. There are cliff-dwellmgs in many
other localities in the world but there are nowhere, except in the
region here considered, cliff-dwellings with circular kivas constructed
on this unique plan. It is generally supposed that a type of room
called ‘“‘small house’”’ was the predecessor of the multiple commu-
nity dwelling throughout the Southwest. This type, defined as a
simple four-walled, one-story building with a flat roof, is widely
spread in New Mexico and Arizona. The strongest arguments in
favor of its greater antiquity are possibly its simplicity of form and
the character of accompanying ceramics—corrugated, black and
white, and red pottery. Characteristic small houses of the Mesa
Verde and McElmo Canyon belong to the same type of pueblo as the
largest extensive villages which are more complicated than the so-
called small house. It is what the author has called the pure type
which is structurally different from the “small house,’’ the so-called
archaic form of the mixed pueblos of the Rio Grande. This unit
type is likewise unlike the small house of the Little Colorado, includ-
ing those of the Zuii Valley and the Hopi Wash, although the Hopi
kivas show the influence of the Mesa Verde culture in the persist-
ence of the ceremonial opening in the floor called the sipapu.

A cluster of small houses or the village such as we find at Mummy
Lake on the Mesa Verde is composed of several scattered members,
each containing for the religious and secular life the ‘‘pure type”
rooms constructed on the same plan. In a village like the Aztec
Spring House several unit buildings are united, forming one com-
munity house larger than the rest, which was the dominant one of
the village, the remaining houses being smaller and scattered.
Aztec Spring, Mitchell Spring, and Mud Spring villages show a
similar consolidation of units with outlying smaller houses, and the
number of units in such a union is believed to be indicated by the

1 Temples of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent Sun God, are circular buildings like towers.

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS ia

number of circular rooms, or kivas. Thus, four kivas might be
supposed to indicate four consolidated social units.

The complete concentration of several unit pueblos into one or
more large communal buildings! is also found in several cases in
the area we have studied, but we must look to the great ruin at
Aztec or those on the Chaco Canyon for examples of almost com-
plete amalgamation. Thus these large pueblos where an almost com-
plete consolidation has occurred have resulted from a fusion or
condensation of what might have formerly been a rambling village
composed of several separate units. This clustering of small separated
houses in a village is not peculiar to the San Juan but exists elsewhere
in the Southwest, as in the Rio Grande region, where, however, the
structure of each component small house is different. These separate
mounds do not indicate the unit type as defined, and the Rio Grande
pueblo of modern date has its kiva separated from the house masses,
which have grouped themselves in rectangular lines or rooms sur-
rounding courts. There are, perhaps, examples in this region where
a circular kiva is found embedded in house masses, but these are so
few in number that they may possibly be regarded as incorporate
survivals due to acculturation.

In the Gila Valley compounds, as Casa Grande, and on the Little
Colorado, the unit type is unknown. Several blocks of buildings
on the Gila are surrounded by a rectangular wall which is wanting
in ruins of the Little Colorado and its tributaries. Here one of the
units may be enlarged, following in some respects the conditions
at Aztec Spring Ruin. A surrounding wall also appears in some
of the Pueblo villages and pueblos, but when we compare one of
the units of a Casa Grande compound with that of a Montezuma
Valley village, we find little in common, the main difference, so far
as form is concerned, being the absence of a circular kiva.? There is
nothing in a Gila Valley compound we can structurally call a cir-
cular kiva, and no morphological equivalent of the circular kiva
in ruins on the tributaries of the Salt and Gila. On the horizon of
the Gila culture area there are no circular kivas, due to accultura-
tion. There are rooms analogous to kivas used for ceremonials at
Hopi and Zui, but they are not true kivas as we have interpreted
them in the San Juan area. Both Hopi and Zufii are composite
people and have elements derived from Gila and Pueblo influences,
but neither belong to the pure type in the sense the author defines it.

The author has attempted to show that the structure of the
houses whose clustering composes villages in the Montezuma. Val-

1 The likeness of the Mesa Verde cliff-houses to the pueblos of Chaco Canyon was long ago suggested by
Nordenskiéld. The excavation of Far View House proved that suggestion to be true.

2 This subject is treated at length in my report on Casa Grande in the Twenty-eighth Annual Report of
the Bureau of American Ethnology.

12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

ley is the same as that of Far View House of the Mummy Lake
village on top of Mesa Verde; and that these architectural resem-
blances are close enough to indicate that the villages of the two -
localities were inhabited by people of the same general culture.
He has proved that the pure type of such a village as shown in
Far View House was constructed on the same plan as a cliff-dwelling,
notwithstanding one is built in the open, the other in a caye. The
geographic extension of this type has been traced into Utah. Ruined
pueblos on the Chaco Canyon or at Aztec on the Animas, which
is geographically nearer the Mesa Verde, are more concentrated but
indicate the same culture. Renewed research is necessary to deter-
raine the southern and western extension of the pure type; the
northern and eastern horizon is fairly well known.

Granting that the great ruins on the Chaco Canyon belong to
the same people as those on Mesa Verde, the question arises, Which
buildings are the most ancient, those on the Mesa Verde or those
on the Chaco? A correct answer to this question should reveal
the cradle of the culture indicated by the pure or prehistoric type
of pueblo. The author believes that the pure pueblo culture origi-
nated in the northern part of the area and migrated southward to the
Chaco Valley in prehistoric times, ultimately affecting the people of
the Rio Grande, where sedentary people no doubt lived before written
history of the area began. The result was a mixture; the mixed
population are the modern Pueblos.

In the great cliff-houses of the Mesa Verde and the extensive
pueblos of the McElmo we find towers combined with pure types of
pueblos, either simple or complex. In the Chaco ruins these towers
are not found in this combination. To this may be added the
great-house type of the McElmo, also absent in the Chaco. Here
there appears to be an essential difference on which the author
ventures a suggestion, but which future research must elucidate.

If this pure type originated in the southern tributaries of the San
Juan as the Chaco and migrated to the northern we would expect in
the latter more distinctly southern objects, as shell ornaments,
turquoise mosaics, and a great variety of pottery of a southern type.

The pure or unit type is believed to be autochthonous in the San
Juan Basin and characteristic of a middle phase of architectural
development, the highest north of Mexico. It is self-centered and
has preserved its characteristics over an extensive area, influencing
regions far beyond. H

The evolution of this type took place in the region mentioned
before the fifteenth century of the Christian era. ‘Traces of its
influence have persisted into the country of mixed pueblos down to
the present time, but the architectural skill has deteriorated and shows

FEWKES] PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 73

evidence of acculturation! from sources outside the San Juan area
where it originated.

One word in regard to the adjectives, prehistoric and historic,
applied to southwestern ruins. They are relative ones and obtained
from data somewhat diverse in character. Casa Grande on the
Gila was called a ruin when first seen by the European. It was
inhabited in prehistoric times. From documentary evidence the
historian learns that certain other buildings were not inhabited at
the advent of the Spaniards, and if their statements are trustworthy
these also are prehistoric. Legends of modern Pueblos claim that
certain other ruins were inhabited houses of their ancestors before
the coming of the white man. The author sees no good reason to
throw this evidence out of court without investigation because some
of the incidents in it betray late introduction. Many other ruins
are classified as prehistoric from the purely negative, but not decisive,
evidence that no objects of European make have been found in
them. The ruin Sun Temple, on the Mesa Verde, is considered
prehistoric from the fact that a tree with over 360 annual rings of,
growth was found growing on top of its highest wall. We are justi-
fied in calling this a prehistoric ruin. :

The evidences that villages, cliff-dwellings, castles and towers,
and other types considered in this article antedate the advent of the
white man are as follows: No historian has recorded an inhabited
building of this form in this or other regions; no objects of European
manufacture have been found in them, and the buildings and pottery
which characterize them are different from those of any inhabited
when the Spanish entered the Southwest.

The complex, which is thought to be the highest form of pueblo
architecture, is composed of the following elements united: (1) Sev-
eral ‘‘pure types’’? representing a religio-sociological complexion of
the inhabitants; (2) towers of various forms—round, D-shaped, and
rectangular; (3) the great houses; (4) unit type in cave. In Cliff
Palace these four types occur united in a pueblo built in a natural
cave; in Mud Spring Ruin two and possibly three of these types are
found in one open-air village, more spread out as site permits. In
Aztec Spring and Mitchell Spring pueblos the arrangement is more
defined. In the cluster at the head of South Fork of Square Tower
Canyon we have all the elements united in Hovenweep House and
Hovenweep Castle. Unit-type House shows the single-unit type
with tower near by; in Twin Towers we have the great house with
cave pueblo and towers separated. Several other towers isolated
from other types also occur.

1 These acculturation modifications due to Hispanic influences in modern pueblos are too well marked
to need more than a mention.

2 The author uses the words “‘pure type”’ instead of ‘‘unit type’’ as a general term to denote “ one-unit
types,” “‘ two-unit types,”’ “‘three-unit types,” etc.

74 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70

The Holly Canyon group shows the types separated. The great
house is represented by Holly Castle; the towers are situated on
huge bowlders. The unit type of this group is represented by Holly
House, the foundation of part of which has fallen, covering the ruins
of another pueblo of the unit type formerly in the cave below.

The Hackberry group is also composed of three elemental types
separated; the great house is represented by Hackberry House, the
unit type by the cliff-dwelling below and by the pueblo on the oppo-
site side of the gulch, and the towers by isolated towers.

A similar analysis may be made of other ruins. Sometimes the
component types are united; often one type only occurs, the others
being absent. The union of all is best marked in the northern tribu-
taries of the San Juan, as at Aztec, and in the southern tributaries, as
at Chaco Canyon and Chelly Canyon. These pueblos, whether in the
open or in caves, belong to the pure or concentrated multiple unit type.

Some light may be shed on the probable process of consolidation
of the individual units of a community house by a comparative study
of the pueblos on the East Mesa of the Hopi. Hano, for instance,
was settled by a group of Tanoan clans about 1710 A. D. The list
of Hano‘clans that originally came to the East Mesa is known from
legends and the present localization of their survivors has been indi-
cated in the author’s article on ‘‘The Sun’s Influence on the Form
of Hopi Pueblos.’! In 1890 Hano was composed of four blocks of
rooms, each housing one or more clans. Earlier there were six, one
of which had fallen into disuse, a few less than the traditional number
of clans. When the colonists arrived, they settled near Coyote
Spring, the houses of which are now covered with drifted sand, but
when they constructed their village on the mesa at the head of the
trail each house of a cluster housed a clan. Increase in population,
both internal and external, led to the union and enlargement of these
houses so that they inclosed a central plaza. A similar growth has
taken place in Sichomoyi, the pueblo halfway between Walpi and
Hano; first single houses, then rows of houses with terraces on the
south and east sides. Some of the original houses have been deserted
and rebuilt nearer the others. Thus at Hano the Katcina clan
house was north and east of the chief kiva but is now in the east row.

In the same way we may suppose that in a consolidation of a com-
munity dwelling several units may have drawn together and united.
There is evidence of a union of this kind in many ruins in the South-
west.

The data here published should not be interpreted to mean that
the author regards the builders of the towers and great houses here
described as evidences of a race other than the Indians. Indeed he
believes that in both blood and culture they have left survivals

1 Amer, Anthrop., n. s. vol. viii, no. 1, 1906.

FEWKES] § PREHISTORIC VILLAGES, CASTLES, AND TOWERS 45

among the modern Pueblos. He also does not hold that as a whole
they necessarily belonged to a radically different phase of culture,
notwithstanding the buildings they constructed show a greater
variety of form and masonry superior to that of their descendants.

The evidences are cumulative that there existed and disappeared
in a wide geographical area of the Southwest a people whose build-
ings differed so much from those of any other area in North America
that the area in which they occur may be designated as a character-
istic one.

The variety and type of buildings have a bearing on social organi-
zation. A large building composed of many units is probably but
not necessarily later in time than a single house; an isolated single
house would probably be of earlier construction than a collection of
several single houses of the same character compactly arranged in a
village; a complete consolidation of several houses of such a village
into a community house would naturally be more modern than a
group of isolated single houses.

City blocks postdate hamlets. Between a stage indicated by
single houses and one characterized by consolidated building, there
is a phase in which the buildings are grouped in clusters and are not
united. We may theoretically suppose that the single house was
inhabited by one social unit as a clan or family. As the food quest
became more intensified and defense more urgent, social units, as
indicated by single houses, would be brought together, and as the
population increased the amalgamation would be more complete.
This social organization, in the beginning loose, in the course of time
would become more homogeneous, and as it did so the union of these
separate social units would have been closer; and if we combine with
that tendency the powerful stimulus of protection, we can readily
see how a compact form of architecture characteristic of the buildings
here described was brought about. The element of defense in the
villages with scattered houses does not appear to have been very
important, but might be adduced to explain the consolidation of
these into large community houses.

If the growth of the large pueblos has followed the lines above
indicated, and if each unit type indicates a social unit as well, we
necessarily have in this growth of the community house the story of
the social evolution of the Pueblo people. Clans or social units at
first isolated later joined each other, intermarriage always tending
to make the population more homogeneous. The social result of the
amalgamation of clans seeking common defense would in time be
marked. The inevitable outcome would be a breaking down of clan
priesthoods or clan religions and the formation of fraternities of
priesthoods recruited from several clans. This in turn would lead
to a corresponding reduction and enlargement of ceremonial rooms

76 * BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 70, FEWKES|

remaining. Two kivas suffice for the ceremonies of the majority of
the Rio Grande pueblos; but Cliff Palace with a population of the
same size had 23 and Spruce-tree House, a much smaller clit pueblo,
had 8.

One can not fail to notice a similarity in sites of some of the great
houses of the McElmo to neighboring cliff habitations and a like
relation of Sun Temple to the cliff-dwellings in Fewkes Canyon in the
Mesa Verde. Possibly the purpose of these great houses and Sun
Temple was identical. Some of the great houses were probably
granaries and Sun Temple may have been intended partly for a like
use. No indications of remains of stored corn have been observed in
any of these buildings, but Castafieda* speaks of a village of sub-
terranean granaries (‘‘silos’’) in the Rio Grande country, which is
instructive in this connection.

1 Fourteenth Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., pt. 1, p. 523. This village is spoken ofas “lately destroyed; ”
in other words it was a ruin in 1540,

INDEX

Page
ACMEN Ronin, described...............----- 29
ANTIOCUITES: THIN’ 2 n.-cccsaemececmnneeees 66
ARCHITECTURE, culture areas determined by. 63
ARCHITECTURE, PUEBLO—
GlOTOONUS Ole a se nc 2 se oner moe aan ate 73
Oflocaliarigine |. > 32-2 seco ie sseseolee ce 7
AZTEC ARCHITECTURE, unlike that of Pueblos. 69
NZTEC SPRING, FUNS QU <5 2 sac seestn<si<<' 23
described. by: Holmes): 5... .23s.252 22 24
described by Jackson.............-...--- 24
STOHME PAM Ofer. 25s 52 sacs e Sosa seaseeee 26
BEAMS, WOODEN, method of shaping. ....... 67
EBENGHAIDAVULN c2-.2,5-b ch xcoxa-aiedoeeeeceme 23
Bonw objects: made of......255:5 A262. ok 67
BOWLDER CASTLE, description of.....-...--- 57
GWE MORTUARR =... 2255.5). ae 66
Bua Mesa Ruin, description of......-.-...- 19
Bue Point Run, excavation of, showing unit
PYRO» Soa ce tee aha skw totee oes se eek wie 29
SR RTATSOUSTOMS = opp cae suds eee dasseeee 66, 67
BURIAL PLACES—
mentioned by Morgan................... 21
nearHolmes; Tower. sites. ss -bocbte. 59
OnrGrassMesas 2. 5..2.2 .2ee ees Sees ok 64
omthe Dolores. soe) ete esa SE oo 5 ll
BURKHARDT Ruin. See MuD SPRING RUIN.
Burrs Rom, description of.) 2.7. Seeds ne: 32
CANNONBALL Ruin—
Gescriplaon Of.0 >.< 2 ssc Si gacthsts sonar 30
Siructuralifeaturesiof sa. Setter a.cnss ee ss 42
CASTLES, structural features of............... 40
CavES—
apparently used for storage.............. 60
ella (SS a Reger Peeerposnccoe ascocee 59
CEMETERIES. See BURIAL PLACES.

CEREMONIAL ROOMS, Hepi and Zuni, not true

CHaco CANYON Rumns, comparative age of ..
CIRCULAR RvUINS—
GISGIIDUNON Ole -. ais eoes wack eisalets veep
Suructurabteatures Of... -s-.sceueneet
CLIFF-D WELLERS—
IRIN laid Socic c iso cin ora Ge oc se Se seine =
MEPIOWMGCCUPION DY can a2 ~ ecco weeennels
CLIFF-DWELLINGS—

TURMONY CARON. e sass - keene datiaacs

small, in the McElmo region........-..--
COMMUNAL DWELLINGS..........--------+---

preceded by “‘small house’’......-....---

social conditions indiceted by........-.-
CONSOLIDATION OF UNITS, process of......---
CorN, CHARRED, found embedded in slag...
Davis TOWER—

PLOMMEUBEN Ee hoa cse skies cicccenecsnccdecee

LePAWOR Giese a ot ocs sc ccccmeeeaee serecns

Page
DEPRESSIONS INDICATING KIVAS...........-.- 42
DOVE: CREEK RUINGS. Jose sacee sees eee oe 28
EIGHT MILE RUIN, masonry in............-- 41
EMERSON, J. W., description of ruin by. ..-. 34
EMERSON Ruin, description of.........-...- 33
ENTRANCES—
tokivas hacs.dccthseesc cess se eee ae oe 42
LOTOW CIS Toe Oa cae eae eee ce eee 3 42
WUD eters. acid bob eet eee 57
ERODED BOWLDER Hous, description of... 49

ESCALANTE AND DOMINGUEZ, manuscript
CHET Vine Seer eee ee ee oe Sees ee eee
ESCALANTE Rutn, description of...........-.
Far View Howse, a pueblo of pure type.... 15,16
GIBRALTAR HOUSE. Sce STRONGHOLD HOUSE.

GILA VALLEY COMPOUNDS?.2.-2 sccescecee cee 71
allied to Mexican buildings.............. 67
GOOPMAN PornTt Rutn, description of....... 17
Grass MESA, cemetery on...........-......- 64
GREAT HOUSES—
date of construction undetermined. .....- 43
Massiblenise vote Mees kee et ae a 42,76
Suructnral features: Ofso2— os: 07 occ ale 40
HACKBERRY CANYON CLIFF-HOUSE, 2 “unit
UIA US NA a ees cre hey Seas a RR 40
HACKBERRY CASTLE, description of........-.- 52
HACKBERRY GROUP, elements composing. ... 74
HED CANYON HVUINS 225-5 sce csr noe a 42
MASUREV(Ol nae aece ee eeen ieee cease eens 42
Hotty CANYON—
ground plan oo eco cise'c on cn = > ais econo 52
GUNS Olen 4 < bee Cec me neistan's Seeman = ama tenn 52
HOoLity CANYON GROUP, elements composing. 74
Hotty House Ruins, description of......... 53
THlotmes, W. H.—
on probable use of towers.....---.-------- 42
on tower at Mud Spring................- 20
report of, as reference Work.........-.--- il
LOPON OM INS OV Soe oo aman eae a 10,11
slab inclosures described by.......------ €2
IIoLMES TOWER, description of.............- 58

Hort CEREMONIAL ROOMS, not true kivas.... 7
HORSESHOE HOUSE—

compared with Sun Temple. ..........-- 54

GESCUI PMO Olsc.- =~ - osc5enenne mean ee ae 53

STOUNG IDES sa5se cee set eee eee eee 54

structural features Of 1c ..<< acon cee ay ome 40
HOVENWEEP CASTLE—

description Oiea a5 -c paer neces teens seers 47

STOUNG PIA Ole cis cen diner a aeeee ae 47
HOVENWEEP DISTRICT—

a proposed National Monument.......-- 44

canyons of, containing ruins..........-.- 44

PUIDS Olas ocee eee s ee aan sacs seas <a eee 44
HOVENWEEP HOUSE, description of. .....--- 46
TMPLE MENTS STONER vec ccceue ne cuntctvensecs 67
INGERSOLL, ERNEST, newspaper article by... il

HU

78 INDEX
Page |
Jackson, WM. H.— Mup SprinG Rutn, description of..........-.
report of, as work of reference........---- TY Neoacy: Tee MOUNDS» 620» eh eee ee
report of, on ruins.....-.---+--+-++------ 10,11 | Netson, N. C., on Pueblo ruins............
slab inclosures described by.-...--------- 62 NEWBERRY, J. S., on Surouaro.........-.-.-
JOHNSON RUIN, description of........------- 18 NORDENSKIOLD, BARON G., work of........
KEELEY TowERS, location of........------- 45 | Oax Sprrne House, description of-.......-
Kipper, A. V. See MORLEY AND KIDDER. OLD SPANISH TRAIL, route of...........-..--
Kiva oF UNIt-TYPE Hovsg, architectural OPEN-AIR RUINS OF DOVE CREEK..........-
features Of ...--.++2+2+0---+-+-2eee0s oD 51 | ParKER, GoRDON, assistance of...........--
Krvas— PICTOGRAPHS—
double-walled... 3225. 2.ccuscacesencns= 39 colored. 22. Rett See Se
entrances tO. ..-.-+--++0e++eee eee eeeee eee 42 covered with plaster.............---2.---
indicated by depressions.........------. 42 incised’on stone... seca
indicative of social units................- 70 Tear Rin het ate ea
structural features of... .-.-...-.--s.-= 37 néarslabanclostires 2) ss. eee
Lion TOWER— PIERSON LAKE Ruin. See SQuAW Port
CescriptiontOl acces cele teee ep ees ceenee 55 Run.
ground plan Of. .......-..+---++++e+ee+e- 55 | PILASTERS LACKING IN TOWERS........---.2-
LittRELL TOWER. See LION Tower. PLASTERING, interiors covered with.........
Lost CANYON CLIFF-HOUSES........--------- 40 | porrery—
“LOWER House,” of Aztec Spring Ruin. ... 25,27 culture areas determined by........--..-
MCEEMO -BLUFK; TWINS Bb. oo cec ears ae mete) pa LOO. description Of........--0-eeeeeeeeceececes
McELMo DISTRICI— ; PRUDDEN, T. MITCHELL—
distinctive feature of ruins of...-.-...--- 15 articles by, on ruins of San Juan water-
investigations in, of 1917..........-...-.- 10 shed". 3.2. Sah ao eee ee
McELMo RwIns, latest work on.........-... 14 excavations conducted by......--.------
MoleaN BASU ; on towers as part of composite ruins. ....
ground plan of ruins of ee = eee 56 PUEBLO ARCHITECTURE—
pottery found Ale Aaresisvsctcch ssn 2 scescicr 56 elements of complex..:.........22cesetee
THINS!Ol, described = 2450 osemcwsacacin sce 55 of local origin. 2.2 )..c¢4 Ace
towers Of. ...-----+-+-2++2+02s0ereeeeenee 56 | PuEBLO CULTURE, direction ofits migration.
MANCOS REGION, towers of. ........-.------- 58 | purpLo TRIBES origin of
Origin Of-5- 28h seeeeeses
MASONRY— “PURE TYPE” defined..........------------
a eee eae 42 | ReseRvor Group, named by J. Ward Em-
skill shown in construction.........-..-- 40 eran . Mi egh cian ed eee ae
varieties Of. .-.---+-+++-+++++eeeeeeeeeeee 41 | ResERvorrs, INDIAN—
MEG AUER BEANE “Sy o--e" 0 -rpeecsae Reha 3 crossed by Old Bluff Road.......-......
MEGALITHS, circular structures of.........--- 60 oinienland artideml= teace
MESA’ Venn f ROAD CANYON, formerly called the Wickyup-.
cliff-dwellings and villages of........--.- 9 | Rooms, with megalithic walls-............-.
culture of inhabitants of..............-.. 9! Rum 3, deveripiomer
MESA VERDE RUINS, comparative age of.... 72 Ray is description. of reo ie Renee
description Ofs222 2. 1e eee ee
4, Seer 5 Ru 5, description of --./......-225:-:0.-es
es ‘i di krish AUPE Ge hs Ruin 6, description of-.......-..-----se22e-
ipunnenneme Tt Tete heres es te RvuIN 7. See ERODED BOWLDER HOUSE.
MEXICAN TRIBES AND THE PUEBLOS, rela- GEIS See Tran Towees
Pitell gk gern baa: ered) cae") | ha fe Ruin 9; description of 2:22 ea
MITcHELL, H. L., notes contributed by.....- il Gece lic Sen Uae Eee ee
MITCHELL SPRING Rut, description of...... 19 ie ie See SaROMGEOED House
MITCHELL SPRING VILLAGE, origin of the ple Gisscenee nip
MAING SS ainioc Soe cts Weis yao roams ees ee ee 12 ier ye : :
MaoNoirias Ik Wits. ai es 30 duplication of name misleading. -........
MoNTEZUMA VALLEY, distinctive feature of sad at a hidisadoh® te uk one
VOINS iti. oe Soa w tetas te cease ener 15 R ie Fh bb emcee or
MOOREHEAD, WARREN K., ruins described Yea sain tion of
DY ---------2--eeeeee SE OA AAU ae LS Tepe 2 evidences of'are Of-5.5.5. 2225. -2. eee
Morean, L. H.— Sanp CANYON—
investigation ofruins by.............---- 10,11 cliff dwellingsin
notes of, on ruins of Mesa Verde......-.-. 11 seafigldin ...-: Cones ae Gee
on Mitchell Spring Ruin........ poses seus 19 courant Maa se ats
on Mud Creek village..................-- 7) hal ee se EE I Ter ar tr
Morey, 8. G.— SCAFFOLD FOR LOOKOUT we reeteececececeeeee
excavations conducted by......-..------ 39 | SEMICIRCULAR RUINS, description of.........
WEDLIC Ofc tie anna ee ae Pa 13 | SLAB INCLOSURES—
Morey, S. G., and Kipper, A. V., ruins de- described by Jackson......-.-.-+-+-+++-+
geribed bys---.ckerescecreve settee aes 14 described by Holmes. ......-.2-...2.s.05
Mounps— SLAB STRUCTURES—
near Mummy Lake-s- sete eee. eeeiee 15 DOS-UKG ei cas outeuucacsmcecse arc enteenn
of Mud Spring Ruins. seen eaneras eens 21 circular 05. ie ostece ceees aeons soeee

INDEX 79

SLAB STRUCTURES—Continued. Page | TOWERS—Continued. Page
MOUuLeNY LOUNG MGANe=\. «cece oe stele cen ise 61 structural features/of... 2... ec enccencee 40
URROMES | CONCOENING. c< Sec n— osetia meee 61 WiINGOWS:BDSONG IMs <<<. ecccckweecence 42

““SMALL-HOUSE”’ TYPE OF ARCHITECTURE.... 70
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, relation between arch-

ASO TERAC Vee NSS ee a 75
“SPANISH TRAIL’? See OLD SPANISH TRAIL.
SQUARE TOWER CANYON—

classification of ruinsin....-............ 46

directions for reaching... 2. ccc eenc ces 45
PMCs wea deniantas ec cue seamen cas 45
new name for Ruin Canyon...........- 45
Squaw Pornt Rony, described --............ 28
StonE ArcH HOUSE, location of-..........-.. 38
STRONGHOLD Hovsg, description of..-...... 52
Sun Dra PALACE, named by J. Ward Emer-
SOEs Ce Meee oe tele ttininte mbsante’t cinta niiare a fel lsie 34
Sun TEMPLE—
@iscovery Olek. S22 cho. see eee wedese cose 10
Ovidence of age Of. 2... sie cocec ewe cnsces iB:
DOSSIDIOMISH Oe see as tae eh Be ett ciate Bere 76
unique ground planiof-. 2 222s. ce cc. at 42
SuROUARO—
descriptiom offe9. sp sae ceessck cesses teen. 16
named by Newberry -.-...2.2..2..5-000- 12
signification of name.....-............-- 17
TOWERS—
WasNApOMeemas see eee doesn hs sane see 44
date of construction undetermined ..-.... 43
GHUOPANEE TO cade decncasncenec aan Sewsisiaca 42
entrance: walled Up - 2.2 .c.ccs-<dencseccse 57
HOTMIS OLS eet ae a atcisn cas nce sce been ceccse 43
OMAouyCanyOn.. 2. ces sctwccsdee css eee 52
OL Mchesn Basinn 2. ..05)6 os cess cite not =. 56
OM MANCOSTOPION Rete = see een ec ce conte 58
of Sand Canyon....-....-. See Beet oe ee 57
OMWACEV RD CANyORe so. -2-s5-cinv es sane 57
MOSSIDIONSS Of Kol cgpemcoes epsceeeeeecms 42

TOWERS AND GREAT HOUSES—
form and construction of.......

situation of....... Bees ont on ceaeca deen 15
‘¢TRIPLE-WALLED TOWER’’—

at Mud Spring Rain: cos cscs ence cocs 20

Condiior Givin TRRUS. 7 oe Sa. esc 8 21

visited: by: Holmes, t.5 so. ccastecctstewne alt
Twin TOWERS—

deseription of.) s- Jesse se ee seen seoees 50

ground! plam oft ackeses sence cee aducncee 50
UNIT TYPE—

Gefned: % seas ee ste Ao cae cee cee 16,39

Gescribed’"py Pruddenms: isos. ceeeee seen 12

OLiginiiots ce. he Asccan se bacned soued selec 72

unlike small house of Little Colorado.... 7
UNIT-TYPE HousE—

GascriptiomOfss 2 se22.. 5 .taeese secede ee 50

eround plano. 2- ces -ondeeweman eens 51
UNIT-TYPE HOUSES—

RIMOAVONE Ainicicc a5 ssc senieee res seen teas cum 39

intHackberry Canyon s-cstccpeeececane 40

“‘UpreR House” of Aztec Spring Ruin .. 25, 26, 27
VILLAGES—

defined. 32 yes ee eee seater eee. 16
essential features of. . 22.2.2. nec cecewe 14, 16
WEAPONS, irons. csscccceare Geeinineanee eet 68
Wickyupr CANYON—
COSChipllomOmacteemesreonceater se seme 57
HOWELS Tse tee bimcicleca cee vice lees 57
Wo.tLey RANcH Rua, description of........ 22
Woop CANYON Rus, description of........ 32
YELLOW JACKET CANYON— i:
formerly known as Hovenweep.......-.. 57
INVESTS ALONG Ms cme sac we sie sess ee 10
GOWONS Obs cise ere eee Ree we awneence = 54
ZuNI CEREMONIAL ROOMS NOT TRUE KIVAS.. 71

oe

=
4,
*

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 1

a, BUTTE RUIN

b, AZTEC SPRING RUIN

c, SUROUARO, YELLOW JACKET SPRING RUIN
(Photographs by Jacob Wirsula)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUELETIN 70) (PEATE 2

a, BLANCHARD RUIN

b, BLANCHARD RUIN, MOUND 2

c, SUROUARO, YELLOW JACKET SPRING RUIN
(Photographs by Jacob Wirsula)

BULLETIN 70 PLATE 3

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

a, ACMEN RUIN
(Photograph by T. G. Lemmon)

MUD SPRING RUIN

b
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

(SoOyMOT IOITCM *¢ Aq syde1803077)

NOANVO
NOANVO GNVS ‘HOYV ANOLS ‘q GNVS ‘HOYV ANOLS YVAN ‘STIOVNNId MOOYN NO ONIGTING ‘2

v’3A3LVId OZ NILAIING ADOIONHILA NVOIYAWYV 3O NVAYNE

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 5

a, TOWER IN SAND CANYON

b, UNIT-TYPE HOUSE IN SAND CANYON

(Photographs by T. G. Lemmon.)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 6

a, STONE ARCH HOUSE, SAND CANYON

b, CLIFF-HOUSE, SHOWING BROKEN CORNER
(Photographs by Jacob Wirsula)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 7

a, SCAFFOLD IN SAND CANYON

b, STORAGE CIST IN MANCOS c, PICTOGRAPHS NEAR UNIT-TYPE HOUSE IN
VALLEY CAVE

(Photographs by T. G. Lemmon)

(Cuomu10y *4 “1, Aq yder30j,04q)
NOANVO GNVS ‘SNIT1SMa-s4!I19 31gnod

8 43L1V1id OZ NIL3771Ng ADSOIONHLA NVOIYMAWY SO NVaYdNd

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 9

a, CLIFF-DWELLING UNDER HORSESHOE RUIN

b, CLIFF-DWELLING, RUIN CANYON
(Photographs by Jacob Wirsula)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 10

a, KIVA OF CLIFF RUIN, LOST CANYON

b, CLIFF RUIN, LOST CANYON
(Photographs by Gordon Parker)

BUIEFETIN Om PEATE 1d

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

IN McLEAN BASIN

b TOWER

a, SQUARE TOWER IN SQUARE TOWER

CANYON

c, RUIN IN HILL CANYON, UTAH

(Photographs by T. G. Lemmon)

(peorreryy opuery ony yp 1oaueq ey} Jo Asoymog ‘ureeg “Ty ‘oan Aq YdeIs0}0T 7)
NOANVOS YSMOL AYVNOS ‘MYO HLNOS 40 GV3H

¢lL 3LV1id OZ NILS11ING ASOIONHILA NVOIYSAWV SO NVAYNE

(pvorpiexy opuesy ony 7p IoAMeq ey} Jo AsoyImo0g + “mreeg "TJ ‘00 Aq Ydvais0j04q7)

asnoH adA}j-1uA ‘4
"s1OMOL UIML ‘8 ‘S404 Y}NOS pue YYON Jo uonounf je Yulod uo daMO] ‘p ‘6 ‘ON 4AaMOL ‘0 ‘“asSNOH daaMmuUsAOH ‘q ‘al}sed daamusAoH ‘e

. 1SHM SNIMOOT ‘NOANVO YSMOL 3YVNOS SO MYOA HLYON

} E) p e q fo)
rath GHA /qel OVS INIT als| - ADOIONHLA NVOIYAWNYV 40 NVSAYUNE

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 14

ead

a ia

b, HOVENWEEP CASTLE, FROM THE WEST

“te ditties

bs ~ ay ated
ato: EF in P ind :
c, HOVENWEEP CASTLE, FROM THE SOUTH
(Photographs by Jacob Wirsula)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 15

a, WEST END OF TWIN TOWER, SHOWING SMALL CLIFF-HOUSE
(Photograph by J. Walter Fewkes)

ae ~ : baiex =e he te! :
b, TWIN TOWERS, SQUARE TOWER CANYON, FROM THE SOUTH
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

c, TOWER 4, JUNCTION OF NORTH AND SOUTH FORKS, SQUARE TOWER CANYON
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 16

a, HOVENWEEP CASTLE, WITH SLEEPING UTE MOUNTAIN, SOUTH FORK, SQUARE
TOWER CANYON

b, ENTRANCE TO SOUTH FORK, SQUARE TOWER CANYON
(Photographs by Geo. L. Beam. Courtesy of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 17

STRONGHOLD HOUSE, SQUARE TOWER CANYON
e Railroad)

(Photograph by Geo. L. Beam. Courtesy of the Denver & Rio Grand

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 18

a, HEAD OF HOLLY CANYON

b, SOUTH SIDE OF HOVENWEEP CASTLE, SQUARE TOWER CANYON
(Photographs by Geo. L. Beam. Courtesy of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 19

Pied ue sl Gee =

a, HOLLY CANYON GROUP, FROM THE EAST
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

b, GREAT HOUSE AT HEAD OF HOLLY CANYON, FROM THE NORTH
(Photograph by T. G. Lemmon)

c, UNIT-TYPE RUIN, FROM THE EAST
(Photograph by T. G. Lemmon)

BULLETIN 70 PLATE 20

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

te

i

/

FROM THE SOUTH

GREAT HOUSE AT HEAD OF HOLLY CANYON,

a

FROM THE WEST

RUIN B AT HEAD OF HOLLY CANYON

b

c, GREAT HOUSE AT HEAD OF HOLLY CANYON

(Photographs by Jacob Wirsula)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BUEEETING 70) PEATE 21

a, GREAT HOUSE, HOLLY CANYON

b, STRONGHOLD HOUSE AND TWIN TOWERS, SQUARE TOWER CANYON

(Photographs by Geo. L. Beam. Courtesy of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad)

BULEEETIN ZOss BEAT Ea22

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

a, HOVENWEEP CASTLE®

b, SOUTHERN PART OF CANNONBALL RUIN, McELMO CANYON

(Photographs by T. G. Lemmon)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

BULLETIN 70 PLATE 23

aM.

iy
ne

Pit

++
Y

—
-3

b, HOLLY TOWER IN HOLLY CANYON
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

9 on
BB Em m1
ED gens

~S

c; HORSESHOE HOUSE
(Photograph by T: G. Lemmon)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 24

a, HORSESHOE RUIN
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

b, BOWLDER CASTLE, ROAD (WICKYUP) CANYON

(Photograph by T. G. Lemmon)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 25

a, CLOSED DOORWAY IN BOWLDER CASTLE, ROAD (WICKYUP) CANYON
(Photograph by J. Walter Fewkes)

b, BROKEN-DOWN ROUND TOWER, SQUARE TOWER CANYON
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 26

a, NORTH SIDE OF TOWER, SQUARE TOWER CANYON
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

b, D-SHAPED TOWER NEAR DAVIS RANCH, YELLOW JACKET CANYON
(Photograph by Jacob Wirsula)

c, MODEL OF TOWERS IN McLEAN BASIN
(Photograph by De Lancey Gill)

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BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 30

a, TOWER ABOVE CAVATE STOREHOUSES, MANCOS CANYON BELOW BRIDGE

b, TOWER ON MESA BETWEEN ERODED CLIFFS AND BRIDGE OVER MANCOS
CANYON ON CORTEZ SHIP-ROCK ROAD

(Photographs by T. G. Lemmon)

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BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY BULLETIN 70 PLATE 32

b, KIVA, UNIT-TYPE HOUSE, SQUARE TOWER CANYON
(Photographs by T. G. Lemmon)

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