Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1893-02-24
Description of q Country To-day
Without Even a Vestige of
Civilization.
Palmer Henderson Depicts the Trip
From Durango to Southwest
ern Colorado.
1.-THE Senator" is On the Qui Vive 40
to Whom the Governor Will APP
point as Senator.
MANCos, Col, Feb. IA. 1893.

MANCOs, Col, Feb. II. 1893.
What an entertaining, odd and instruct
i've lot OF stuff one would strike in u short
time If several widely-traveled, well educat-
ed people with eyes in their heads, were to
relate. each, the very strangest sight he had
ever beheld. 1t wouldn't take me Il NOM
ent to decide upon mine; it would be my
first view of a cliff. house village, perched
1000 feet down and 1900 feet up the pre-
cipitous canon's side; the tiny houses the
exact color of the rock in which, and under
which the snuggle, almost inaccessible in
their dizzy solitude, still rs the hearts
which built them, hundreds, some say
thousands of years ago, yet still standing
looking ont upon the Wild country which
has until recently separated them from the
knowledge of q l could scarcely
breathe as l looked upon the mysterious,
weird, %uncanny, tantalizing abodes Of
which we have seemed to reach our limit
of information so exasperatingly soon.
Perhaps reason of the strong emotion
they occasion is the preparation of their
remOteness.
From Durango, in the southwestern-most
part of Colorado, you take train perhaps
thirty miles across the mountains to a tiny
station called Mancos, and after that there
is scarce a vestige of civilization. You
must engage guides, for the country is un-
surveyed, veined with canons, without
roads and traversed by p~erilous trails up
and down the canon sides, along the edges
of precipices. and through the low-grow-
ing pinOns which look like trees, indeed
pass as such, but are in reality clutching
devils trying to gouge out your eyes. tear
bits from your flesh and pull you off your
broncho. You must ride great distances
so and over the sterile mesas, sleep on the
ground, take your provisions on pack ami
mails, and finally leave your animals and
climb up those fearful places to the cliff
houses the best way you can. l have rid
den over 200 miles already and am fairly
b%ow-legged. The region l have so far
traversed is where-the only place in the
United States four states meet-Colorado,
Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. The stone
which was erected by the govern nent to
mark the exact spot is gone; so no one can
be certain that he has been in four
states at once. as was possible before. The
%clitf-houses usually show masonry which
would do a modern sky-scraper credit.
The walls are two, three and four feet
thick. The mortar was made by mixing
water with "rOtten rock" that which the
'rlm.rock,o the top stratum, has pressed to
powder. This formed q cement as hard as
the rock itself. The windows are usually
square, small and few, literally the "wlnd-
eyes" tne word Itself means. Doors, one
there is but one wooden bar at the top to
lean against, and without the projection
when thrust up between two poles. The
doors are secured by a stick thrust through
wooden staples at the sides. In the walls
of the living rooms are often tiny closets, a
very few inches square, where the cliff
dWeller-Jay Gould-kept his treasures,
bone needles, shell beads, etc. The doors
to these are very exactly fitted. The
F-shaped doors were undoubtedly so shaped
that the HORSEPOWER returning from his
fields on the mesa ahove-for the cliff
jewellers were purely agricultural people
might enter with the pack still Strapped
upon his back and shoulder, as ne had
carried it to his ancient Duluth home. The
c'ltt-dwellers had no pack animals, not a
b me of such have been found anywhere
near any of their dwellings,.
There were as many stories to their
hamlets. for such the groups are, as the
natural gallery or pocket scOoped by the
elements n the sandstone cliff, would adj.
mt, each five or six feet high. They arc
formed by logs thrust through holes left
IN the masonary. these covered by smaller
oouGhs, these by twlgs and mud, the
Wn0IA nQ"QnfAN q rnncf ~,rl> a..
Sometimes, but in only two or three
houses, these logs have projected to form
a balcony. The walls are covered with
thln cement. like caIcimine. The cliff
jewellers were filthy beyond words, and
tnere were many other inhabitants be.
side people to their houses. When thu
population teemed beyond endurance, the
prehistoric housewife simply rose TO the
occaclon by making a living tomb of the
apartment with another coat of the
cement. We counted sixteen of these
layers in one house. They are easily dis.
tinguished by the colors which resemble
frescoes: You see the cliffs range in colOI
from a dazzling white, by creams, yellows
grays, browns, reds and ever greens To
Amos black, and taking the rotten rock
another color. There's hardly an attsmp;
at mural decoration, though, easy a. Il
would thus have been. The arch
was unknown to, the cliff.dwellers.
and their only architectural diversion was
lowers, which are well and strongly built
by fitting wedge-shaped stones tightly to.
gether. Otherwise, the architecture ia
similar throughout, and there are abso
tateiy no carvings. Every apartment
Poo Bah room, the "estuta." circular
from nine to twenty-five feet in diameter'
the extremes mentioned, fourteen the
average, and the following are ali the parts
tllersOf: Six or eight piiasters built out
iron, the wall and connected by a low
stone counter. probably table, sideboard,
etc,; q small basin-shaped, shallow, ce,
low wall behind that and before a mali ir
hole. the only n in the room which was
usually undAr ground aud roo aLad aniu ~