The record-union., 1895-09-14
LIVED IN HOLES.
Prehistoric Men Who Dug Homes Out
of the HiIIsides.
Great Tiers of Subterransan Rooms
Full of Relics-Graves
IN the Rock.

Explorations in the Rio Verde Valley
OF Arizona, conducted for the Bureau oi
Ethnology by Cosmos Mindeleff, have
brought about interesting discoveries re-
specting prehistoric race. These peo-
pie burrowed in the earth like rats.
Their houses were holes in the hills,
some Of them so extensive as to be veri-
table subterranean hotels, the apartments
being in suits for the occupancy of fam
lilies.
Eight miles south of Verde, on the east
side of the river, is the now empty home
of once prosperous underground COM
munity. It has 200 rooms on the main
level, divided into seventy-four distinct
stituting a second story, are fifty-six
rooms in twenty-four sets. 1t is believed
that the entire establishment accommo-
dated $50 to 200 people.
followed out of the faces of the cliffs in
that region are thousands of rooms,
sometimes in clusters of two or three,
while now and then will be found such an
elaborate excavation as that just de-
scriDed, affording quarters for COM
munity of considerable size. The places
chosen for such workings are along the
faces of cliffs, where strata OF soft rock
occur. The rooms generally are rudely
circular, the largest being thirty feet and
the smallest five or six feet in diameter.
In the underground hotels suite or
dinarily consists of one large main room
in 'front.' entered by narrow hall from
the face of the bluff, and number OF
smaller rooms connected by narrow door
ways or short passages. There is no out
let into the open except through the main
room or parlor. Usually there are num-
ber of little estorage-rooms or cuDby-holes,
corresponding to closets. These are from
one foot to five feet in diameter, on level
with the floors.
Not much is known about the history
of the Rio Verde Valley. Within recent
years that region has been stamping
ground of the hostile Apache and Wal
apal.
Remains of large villages are found on
the river terraces, some of them of elab-
crate and complex ground-plan, indicat-
ing long occupancy. The ruins cover q
space Of five acres. This village, like all
OF the others, was built after the fashion
of a pueblo, being merely al aggregation
of rooms, most Of which were only one
story in hight. 1t had 225 rooms on the
ground floor and about 800 rooms in all,
providing accommodation for perhaps
450 persons. This interesting structure
of antiquity is of rough dressed stone,
with number of courts or open spaces
separating the clusters of rooms. One
room that stands by itself is thought TO
have been sacred ceremonial chamber.
The ancient inhabitants of the Verde
| Valley relied mainly, II not wholly, upon
agriculture for their support OF the
military art they knew SO little that they
built no fortifcations of any kind. They
grew much corn, and remains OF lrriga-
ton canals and reservoirs utilized by
them are found. That they domesticated
the sheep and the dog is proved by pic
| tographic writings.
In the rooms were found fragments of
baskets, bits of grinding stones. bundles
OF fibers, pieces of cotton cloth, pottery,
arrow-shafts and sandals Of woven yucca
fiber. Sometimes the house had a cavity
in the rock for holding fifteen or twenty
gallons of water-a months supply for
ad aboriginal family.
These people buried their dead in
inches u the rock. A few of their mum
mics have been found, preserved merely
by the dryness of the atmosphere in the
arid region. That climate is particularly
favorable to the preservation of bones.
The origin of mummihcation is natural
and not artificial. 1t was so in ancient
Egypt, which is very dry country.
The population of the Verde Valley
was never large. probably not exceeding
1000 souls. There were few tillable
areas, and apart from these the country is
forDidding and not suited to agriculture.
The ruins in the region are SO numerous
and extensive as to be attributed for
merly to an immense population, esti-
mates running as high as 100000. But
these people had way Of moving con-
tinually on and on, and band OF 500 of
them might leave behind them the re-
mains of fifty villages in a century,
New York World.