Cliff Dwellers

an Indian tribe formerly dwelling in the cliffs bordering the canons of the Rio Grande and the Colorado. The dwellings were excavated in the cliffs, and consisted often of several rooms with doorways and windows having wooden sills. It is thought that the openings were closed by hangings of the skins of wild animals. The interior was neatly plastered with native clay, suitable for the purpose. Often the outer wall was built of stonework laid in clay, or of adobe. These dwellings were made usually high up in the face of a cliff, sometimes 300 feet. Many are now inaccessible, owing to the crumbling away of the ledges along which the builders made their way. As the country is quite rocky and barren, the inhabitants must have depended on the river valley for hunting and fishing. These ancient Indians understood irrigation. They raised corn, beans, watermelons, cotton, and tobacco. They domesticated the turkey. Some explorers claim to have found traces of the Andean llama. The arts of weaving and of making pottery were understood. Their weapons and tools were of bone or flint. Metals, save copper ornaments, were seemingly unknown. Judging from the ruins, some of the communities must have comprised at least 1,000 persons. One of these old strongholds contained 127 apartments. For some account of their supposed descendants, see PUEBLO INDIANS.

In scores of such canyons we explored the ruins of structures made by some ancient race, more ancient than any others which have left traces of their existence in America. There we found stone axes and spear heads, cords made from fiber of the oose plant, pieces of feathered funeral robes, sandals skilfully woven of fiber, long pieces of beautifully twisted black thread, strong and lustrous as silk; bone needles and awls; but never a bit of metal of any description. Pieces of well decorated pottery are strewn everywhere. Many of the walls are covered with hieroglyphics, most of them rude and intended to convey simple thoughts, although sometimes they appear to have been sketched by a master hand and to have a more complicated meaning. They seem to have been brief epitaphs, showing the exploits of those who are sepulchered among the near-by ledges. Some of the ruins are easy of access, while others can only be entered with great toil, and by the use of rope ladders. One of the largest in White Canyon is supplied with the remains of an ancient ladder. Above this, steps have been cut out in the rock, and a stairway of crumbling cedar affords a dangerous but possible means of ascent. This lofty cave is well fortified, and contains a number of apartments, pottery kilns, and storehouses. Here, as in other places, the walls show many handprints stained with red, brown, and white pigments, as though the inhabitants had proclaimed their titles to the places by setting their hand and seal upon them.--H. L. A. Culmer, in Technical World Magazine.